Insights 5.08

Design: 

• Thingiverse, the digital library for 3D printable files gets an art bot that remixes existing models and some makers seem fairly pissy about it.  Even in supposedly open and freewheeling communities that embrace "making" wholeheartedly (Star Wars tchotchkes and tools for amateur science appear to be accepted in equal measure) there are still ideas of what is unacceptable, to be kept outside the gates. 
• How Netflix redesigns their images to maximize the odds you'll keep looking.

Technology as a Threat: 

• The latest instance of Big (dumb) Data having racist consequences: algorithmic bias by Amazon lead to Roxbury being the only spot in Boston where you couldn't get same day delivery. The opacity of the privately-owned algorithm means that we can only (sometimes) identify the systemic racism retrospectively by observing the outcomes. 

Machines for Moving: 

• Containerized shipping turns 60. What started as a dream for an intermodal standard has become the go-to symbol for global trade and logistics as a field: anonymous, opaque and interchangeable, totally agnostic about its contents and set apart from the human labor creating the goods to fill them. It's an amazingly efficient system, and one we are still very much grappling with the consequences of the better part of a century later. 

 

Upgrading Ourselves: 

• The Wyss Institute at Harvard has been developing a device that vibrates the soles of your feet to "prime" nerve endings which improves balance and agility, particularly when fatigued. It's a clever bit of engineering - boosting our human capabilities through stimulating underlying sensitivities instead of grafting harder, heavier tech onto or into the body. 

More next week.

Insights 5.01

Design: 

• Amazon has had an uneven track record when it comes to developing hardware products but their voice enabled Echo products are turning out to be a big hit. A behind the scenes story of how it came to be. 
• How instrument panels for spacecraft have changed over the years. Complex, mission critical equipment that requires high legibility, accessibility and durability in unknown contexts: it's one of the most demanding of user interface design tasks out there. 

Roadmapping the Future: 

• Worries about who will control the future superpowers of artificial intelligence as giant tech companies are pulling experts from academia into the commercial sphere. There's no clarity on how big, dangerous or helpful the next generation of AI products will be, but locking up the hypothetically huge techno-cognitive powers behind patent walls might not be the best of outcomes for humanity. 

Branded: 

• The word of mouth multiplying effect in social media (among other factors) has helped to bring about an explosion of choice in consumer goods like packaged foods and clothing. A grocery store today carries about 50x as many products as 80 years ago. While a certain amount of choice and variety is good, we are mostly talking about a massive array of carefully branded commodities: products that are in essence the same, but presented differently. When society is filled with difficult and pressing problems to solve from tainted water supplies to damaged coral reefs, it seems an awful waste to be spending so much time, money and energy crafting artificial differences for inconsequential products. Building yet another athleisure brand doesn't help us get to a better future. 

Humanity Intersecting Technology: 

• There's been interest in using robots to care for the elderly for decades now. Japan, with an aging population facing a shortage of human caregivers has led the way in pushing the technology forward. A piece in The Atlantic takes a look at the current state of the art and raises some complicated questions about what it means when we let machines "care" for us. 
• A heartbreaking story about David Vetter, who spent almost his entire short life in a sterile, contained environment due to a rare immune disorder. The article looks at the psychological toll of such isolation and the implications for a life lived out in space. 

More next week.

Insights 4.24

Design: 

• A robotic advocate for Buddhism makes us think we're being too narrow (at least in the U.S.) in terms of our conception of where technology in general does or does not belong. There is often a presumed conflict between technology and spirituality, but the questions they provoke about our role in the world and what it means to be human can lead us into similar discussions. Technologists tend to see their inventions as performing roles of utility in some fashion: helping us move heavy objects, clean dishes automatically or keep us entertained. Artists, critics and writers are the ones giving technology the more difficult, complicated examination and finding both what it reveals of our desires and how it shapes them, and help us recognize that those desires often go beyond the limits of utility. 

(Dis)trusting Technology: 

• By detecting brainwaves, researchers demonstrate a "100% accurate" biometric identifier that can't be forged (maybe). You might be able to finally forget all those passwords and your social security number for the small price of letting a machine, a government, or an app peer into your brain (albeit in an abstracted way). 
• Big data and bad bargains: In order to be eligible for certain social services, the poor have to become part of a system of surveillance that keeps them tethered to what they are trying to escape. With the opacity of algorithms and databases, false information can keep you down without your knowledge. 

Roadmapping the Future: 

• The planet is never going to be the same, and we're going to have to put increasing amounts of effort and energy into engineering and rebuilding what amount to replica systems of the natural equilibrium we have broken. Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal writes on the subject for Vice's Motherboard, presumably so he can underscore the dire urgency of our situation with a few choice expletives with the editor's blessing. 

Virtually There: 

• Death in a digital world: the memorial for Prince that sprung up at Minneapolis venue First Ave was scanned and uploaded to SketchFab. In a sense, it's a natural extension of the kind of collective and public mourning it captures - to say that at this moment, you were there, felt the pain, and left a visual representation of that grief for others to see. 

More next week.