rxdxt

On Vox: a great quote from the pope!

"Remembering that I will be dead soon is the most important tool I have encountered to help me make the big choices in life" Steve Jobs

Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com

On Vox: The Future is almost now..

There were a few quite formative books and films, which framed my vision for the future of Technology, Media and Entertainment. (Recruiters and an analysts now with the addition of Internet refer to this sector as TIME)   Three books in particular, Bruce Sterling’s Islands in the Net,

Islands in the Net

, William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Larry Niven’s California Voodoo Game were prescient in many ways for the world we live in today, if you haven’t read one or all of them – you should.  Films included Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (which is still my all time favourite film) and Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report.  

The California Voodoo Game (A Dream Park Novel)

At this years CES I saw the beginnings of the world outlined in these books and films, exciting, inspiring and terrifying all at the same time.  I think the press and certainly my friends were unanimous in what they considered the show’s biggest innovation – Panasonic’s 150” plasma television. No typo, this is one big television.  As I gazed in awe I could only think to myself, man I need a bigger house.

In all seriousness however, there was something far more interesting about screens and the CES show. They are simply everywhere!  The diaspora of plasma, LED and soon OLED (more on that later) means every company had a zillion displays of all different sizes, from the Samsung (I’ll blog about that some other time, the most beautiful almost jewellery like digital watch I’ve ever seen which has a Dick Tracy phone built-in which in combination with a handy Bluetooth headset caused me serious lust) watch and keychain photo screens (smallest was an inch square and ¼ inch thick!). Wifi enabled picture frames, every one of the Televisions at the very least has HPNA and many even have browser’s built in.  I was struck that the world which my former business partner, Schematic founder and likely the most famous UI designer alive Dale Herigstad helped imagine with Spielberg in Minority Report where screens are everywhere giant, connected and aware of your presence (this last part is still not there yet, but the rest is there) With OLED technology, demo’d all over the show, the organic diodes can be aerosoled and sprayed – paint-like on a wall – coming to a London studio apartment near you in 3-5 years.  The wall screen in Neuromancer is on the horizon.

Neuromancer

William Gibson

What struck, however, was that while the screens have migrated all over the house and office, and they are getting bigger, smaller and network aware and even connected  - that the services and experience frameworks are quite nascent.  Microsoft, with it’s windows media center + extender technology seem to be one of the few standards in the space, Sony has a framework demonstrated in the new PS3, but really for a consumer to buy one of these devices, go home and instantly be able to access all of their movies, music, photos, etc. across all of the screens still requires at least an IT guy maybe two.  The focus has been on the device capability but not on the digital DNA/framework  - across manufacture and platform – to create a consistent simple intuitive experience.  They seem to have forgotten the lessons of the past  - everyone trying to control and drive the user experience rather than creating a simple intuitive open framework to enable consumers to get what they want, when they want, where & how.

The future is almost here, but we have a lot of worked to go on its user experience.

Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com

On Vox: Data privacy - Wired talks about Screen Scraping...

From Wired:

"Should Web Giants Let Startups Use the Information They Have About You?

By Josh McHugh 12.20.07 | 6:00 PM

Just after 10 am on June 7, 2007, Ryan Sit glanced at his Gmail inbox and saw the message he had been waiting nine months to receive. Sit, a 29-year-old software developer from San Diego, is the founder of Listpic, a site that used bots — automatic software-based agents — to pull images from craigslist for-sale listings and reorganize them into an easier-to-navigate, more attractive format. Instead of tediously clicking individual links to view photos, Listpic users could see them all collected onto a single page. The service was an instant success, and by early June it was pulling in more than 43,000 visitors a day and thousands of dollars a month in Google AdSense revenue...."

Great article, read the whole thing..

This is a topic I'll be doing quite a bit of blogging on this year. Particularly I'm thinking a lot about what this means as we begin to mine this data to create better and better user experiences. So if it's on the web - is it free? How can we make our audiences into our best distributors? How can we not repeat the mistakes of the music business in the new economy? What rights do copyright holders, authors, musicians, writers have over their content.. Do they get a say in how their work is used? How can we guarantee/protect their right to participate in monies generated by new forms/uses.

In my music business days we used to ask artists to sign contracts that talked about licensing their work, "in any and all media known and unknown, or hereafter invented throughout the universe, in perpetuity." I used to think that just meant we intended to corner the market on CD's on Venus.  Now when I think about mash-ups, sampling, DJ's, iplayers, etc. it feels to me like we missed the point entirely. 

Then there is user data, metadata.. the detrius of a digital life. if you took my cookies files, amazon wish list, click-paths and 1/2 a dozen or so playlists from my last FM scrobble you would have a very odd picture of me. Mix that up with other data and data mining becomes very very strange. I saw Jeff Bezos give a talk about the 'my Tivo thinks I'm gay" phenomena at web 2.0.. his feeling was that this was a self correcting proble. Bad data = bad sales = correct alogrythm,= better data. I think he's largely right on that. 

But in his mind, you come into his store, your behavior belongs to him - end discussion.  To me it's more complicated. I think it's fine if you collect that data, especially in aggregate from your property. I think it's fine if you use it to improve your product offerings/suggestions to me. Tone down the tampax commercials give me more gadget stuff - oh yea and music more music. Less Cricket. 

On the other hand, when this data starts to build up, collect, get rusty and frankly out of date (my Synth pop Aha historical phase is largely over for those of you who share my lastfm friends list..) How can we keep this current, and how  do I prevent this information from being used in a way which hurts me, or even breaks my personal privacy (I mean come on, we all like at least ONE Neil Diamond song.

Basically, we need a framework, set of rules around this - and we all need to agree them. I'm a huge fan of the work Creative Commons have done in this area but we need a lot more. At the BBC we talk a lot about this these days, particularly as we exist to serve the public and their interest.  we aren't selling you anything, except maybe that the BBC is valuable and you should continue to support it.  More on this in future blogs.

Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com