What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
Augmented World Expo 2013 was really an amazing experience. I’m co-founder and co-organizer of the conference, along with Ori Inbar, so it has meant a lot to me to see our event grow over the last four years, and thrilling to make such a big splash this year. There were 1,163 attendees, and the expo show cased an ecosystem of emerging technologies – augmented reality, gesture interaction, eyewear, wearables, and connected hardware of many stripes, that mark the beginning of natural computing entering the mainstream. It was a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with what it feels like to be an augmented human in an augmented world!
Videos of AWE 2013′s 35 hours of educational sessions and inspirational keynotes are now available on our YouTube channel. I am sharing my own talk (my slides are also up on slideshare here), and a few of my favorites in this post, but there are far to many to post here, so please browse further on the Augmented World Expo youtube channel.
One notable high point of AWE2013, for me, was the showcase sponsored by Meta, a startup developing the first device allowing visualization and interaction with 3D virtual objects in the real world using your hands. It was made possible by the generous contribution from the private collections of Paul Travers, Dan Cui, Steven Feiner, Steve Mann, and Chris Grayson, and passionate volunteers who are helping advance the industry. Sean Hollister of The Verge did this excellent report on the eyewear showcase 35 years of wearable computing history at Augmented World Expo 2013
Also for more on Meta see this article by Dan Farber.
My colleagues at Syntertainment, Will Wright, Avi Bar-Zeev, Jason Shankel, and LaurenElliott all gave great talks. Ironically, we’re not building augmented reality apps or H/W. We all just happen to continue to be very interested in the field. Â
Thank you to everyone for supporting the event!
The press coverage was truly extensive:
In the shadow of Google Glass, an augmented reality industry revs its engines
The Verge, Sean Hollister, June 9, 2013, 271 Tweets
The next big thing in tech: Augmented reality
CNET, Dan Farber, June 7, 2013
Pick up on Current News Daily
350 Tweets
AWE 2013 Conference Report: Augmented Reality and Marketing
The Persuaders Marketing Podcast on Dublin City FM, June 23, 2013
AR Dirt Podcast – Ori Inbar AWE2013 Extravaganza Recap
AR Dirt by Joseph Rampolla, June 18, 2013
35 years of wearable computing history at Augmented World Expo 2013
The Verge, Sean Hollister, June 9, 2013
7 Tweets
Augmented Reality: Bruce Sterling, keynote at Augmented World Expo 2013
Wired, Bruce Sterling, June 9, 2013
9 Tweets
On the road for VR: Augmented World Expo 2013
Doc-Ok, Staff, June 7, 2013
3 Tweets
My Interview from Augmented World Expo 2013 [VIDEO] Wassom.com, Brian Wassom, June 7, 2013
Augmented World Expo
ZenFri, Staff, June 7, 2013
AWE2013: Hardware for an augmented world
FBNSantos.com, Felipe Neves Dos Santos, June 6, 2013
Augmented Reality Will Be the New Reality
InvestorPlace, Brad Moon, June 6, 2013
Wearable computing pioneer Steve Mann: Who watches the watchmen?
TechHive, Armando Rodriguez, June 6, 2013
Expo puts augmented reality in the limelight
ABC 7 News, Jonathan Bloom, June 5, 2013
These OLED microdisplays are the future of augmented reality
DVICE, Evan Ackerman, June 5, 2013
Visualized: a history of augmented and virtual reality eyewear
Engadget, Michael Gorman, June 5, 2013
Wikitude announces Wikitude Studio and in-house developed IR & Tracking engine
PapiTV, KC Leung, June 5, 2013
Augmented reality expo aims for sci-fi future today
USA Today, Marco della Cava, June 5, 2013
Augmented Reality: High Dynamic Range (HDR) Video Image Processing For Digital Glass
Wired, Bruce Sterling, June 5, 2013
Will Wright at Augmented Reality Conference: Don’t Augment Reality, Decimate It
AllThingsD, Eric Johnson, June 4, 2013
Philip Rosedale’s Second Life with High Fidelity
CNET, Dan Farber, June 4, 2013
Google Glass competitors vie for attention as industry grows
PC World, Zack Miners for IDG News Service, June 4, 2013
4D Augmented Reality Leader Daqri Announces $15 Million Financing
Press Release, June 4, 2013
CrowdOptic Powers Lancome Virtual Gallery App, Crowd-powered Heat Map
TechZone 360, Peter Bernstein, June 3, 2013
Augmented humans, enhanced happiness?
Crave Culture, Angelica Weihs, June 2, 2013
Metaio & Vuzix to Showcase AR-Ready Smart Glasses at the 2013 Augmented World Expo
Press Release, May 30, 2013
Four ways augmented reality will invade your life in 2013
Quartz, Rachel Feltman, May 30, 2013
Augmented Reality: Augmented World Expoâ„¢ is next week
Wired, Bruce Sterling, May 28, 2013
Strike it Rich with Cachetown and AWE 2013 Playing the Gold Rush 49’er Challenge In Augmented Reality
Press Release, May 24, 2013
Local Community College Student Headed to Silicon Valley to Learn More about Augmented Reality
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Staff, May 24, 2013
Explore an intricate labyrinth with smartphone AR
CNET Australia, Michelle Starr, May 21, 2013
Dartmouth firm lands super app
Herald Business, Remo Zaccagna, May 21, 2013
Augmented World Expo 2013–The Future of Augmented Reality
Silicon Angle, Saroj Kar, May 17, 2013
We had so much fun at the YCombinator Upverter Hackathon. I was honored to be part of “the beatles” team  (Sam Cuttriss, Josh Cardenas, Jason Appelbaum, Lauren Elliott, Tish Shute, Otto Leichliter III & IV) that produced the prize winning IoToaster. Rick Merritt did an awesome write up in EE Times, Slideshow: Y Combinator hackathon’s prize-winning designs. If you want to hear more about hardware startups shaping play with connected stuff, I hope you will stop by, Parsing Reality: Shaping Play with Connected Stuff, Tuesday March 12th, 12.30pm -1.30pm, Raddison Town Lake Ballroom, Austin, SXSW 2013. I’m delighted to join, Adam Wilson Founder, Chief Software Architect Orbotix, Dave Bisceglia Co-Founder & CEO The Tap Lab, Phu Nguyen Founder Romotive Inc to talk about shaping play with connected stuff – more details here.
Meanwhile enjoy Rick Merritt’s great write up of IoToaster (reprinted from EE Times).
“Y Combinator hackathon’s prize-winning designs”
“An Internet Toaster, two pair of faux Google glasses and two novel electronic gloves emerged from a hackathon organized by Upverter and hosted by Y Combinator. SAN JOSE, Calif. – Imagine sending an Instagram to your Internet toaster and printing it—on whole wheat or white bread. Imagine creating your own vision for a variant of Google’s Project Glass.
Those were among the 32 projects from more than 130 designers at a recent all-day event organized by Upverter.com and hosted by Y Combinator, a startup incubator in Mountain View, Calif.
Winners took home iPads, Pebble watches, Arduino kits and Raspberry Pi boards after dedicating about 10 hours of their Saturday to hacking on their best ideas. Some took with them hopes of products that could make it to the market or new-formed teams that could be the heart of a new startup. Others just had a good time.
Here’s a look at some of the winners.
Two teams worked on variants of Google’s $1,500 glasses-mounted computer. One team (above) used laser-cut medium-density fibreboard and embedded LEDs that could indicate when the wearer faced north. Another team (below) created Prism, a more thorough knock-off of Google’s concept complete with an embedded display and gesture recognition.
Printing on whole wheat or white
The IO Toaster (above) is sort of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of social electronics. It’s an Internet-connected combo toaster/printer that creators say can “bring the cloud to your breakfast.â€
The team adapted code from an LED matrix to control heat transmission down to the pixel level. They hope to present the device at the Augmented World Expo at SXSW as well as at other hackathons and hardware meetups.
The team included Sam Cuttriss, Josh Cardenas, Tish Shute, Lauren Elliott, Jason Appelbaum and both Otto Leichliter III and IV.
Peripherals and apps for the IO Toaster
The potential for the IO Toaster is great, said team members who brainstormed spin off products including:
Touch screen toaster displays
Designers of the IO Toaster created this animation to show the romantic possibilities of their product.
Grand prize was a real grabber
Meet the Tactilus team
Fitness glove has something up its sleeve
Baby gets a robo rocker
And other winners were…
At the end of the day, 30 groups took two minutes each to pitch their hack (below), some of which judges pitches in the circular file. A handful of others got various levels of recognition.
The winner in the most marketable category was the DIYNot, a plug that fits between your recharging device and the socket to turn off the two amp energy flow anytime you want. The Window Blind Controller, a clip on device that keeps streetlight out in the night and lets sunlight in during the day, got a nod from judges.
Judges also liked the Walkmen, an ultrasound virtual walking stick with haptic feedback for guiding disabled people. A team from Electric Imp got the Corporate Shill Award for a networked dispenser that spits out M&Ms in response to tweets. Another group added Wi-Fi links to home switches opening a circuit for new kinds of remote controls—and pranks.
From here to China and back
I’m really excited that we opened a call for proposals today for Augmented World Expo (registration opens February!).  Our edgy conference on augmented reality has morphed into the world’s first Expo about the augmented world.  If you loved ARE you are going to find Augmented World Expo the most important event of 2013, and if you never got a chance to attend before register early to reserve your spot!
“The way we experience the world will never be the same. We no longer interact with computers. We interact with the world. A set of emerging technologies such as augmented reality, gesture interaction, eyewear, wearables, smart things, cloud computing, and ambient computing are completely changing the way we interact with people, places and things. These technologies create a digital layer that empowers humans to experience the world in a more advanced, engaging, and productive way.
Augmented World Expo will bring together the best in augmented experiences from all aspects of life: health, education, emergency response, art, media and entertainment, retail, manufacturing, brand engagement, travel, automotive, and urban design. It will be the largest ever exposition demonstrating how these technologies come together to change our lives and change the world.
Registration will open in February.”
RomoDoodleDemo from Romotive on Vimeo.
We’ve submitted a panel proposal for SXSW 2013 on a super interesting topic, “Parsing Reality: Shaping Play with Connected Stuff.” The voting opened today so please do vote – go here to vote, if you would like to see us at SXSW 2013!
The hardware startup community is on fire with kickstarter and a vibrant meetup community energizing the space. Smartphones opened the door for playful social, local experiences based on our actual lives. Now we are seeing connected stuff – hardware, cloud-connected devices, and robots bringing new forms of personal awareness into the mix. This panel will be a chance to hear from a group of people who are already deep into transforming this opportunity space into new genre of playful experiences.
The panel will be myself, Dave Bisceglia, co-founder of the mobile gaming company, The Tap Lab, and Phu Nguyen, who leads Romotive’s software team to create new experiences with robots that harness the power and extensibility of the smart phone, and Adam Wilson, co-founder and chief software architect, Orbotix – the makers of Sphero, the world’s first robotic ball gaming system.
Our panel will look at how our actual lives and everyday stuff are becoming the most interesting platform for games.  We’ll discuss, from different perspectives, the ways games are shaping our experience of a new blended digital subjective/object space. Portables, wearables, and connected stuff mean bits and networks are everywhere we go, giving us the possibility of a new deep awareness of our personal state. As Will Wright says, “we are at a turning point for mobile gaming, a shift for games from being about simulating reality to being about parsing reality.” Sensors everywhere and advances like bluetooth smart are turning everyday objects into an opportunity for play. The future of our playful sociality is “toys” that are a customization of our interactions with the actual world and everyday life. We will explore how games, robots, and playful experiences are the key to making our new habitat of digital/physical complexity more accessible and fun.
What are the specific experiences of panel members in rising to this challenge?
The iphone and ipad are becoming the narrative and play control center for connected stuff. Desktop, files, folders, trashcans and lists were key metaphors that made the PC the master control center for sharing of information. What are the new metaphors for a Game OS for everyday life and connected stuff?
How is next generation connectivity like bluetooth smart going to change our attitudes to the playful potentials of toys and physical stuff? We’ll show some examples of what’s out there today and what’s coming soon.
What can simulation games teach us about the challenges of parsing reality and making it more playful and interesting? We’ll explore how this new paradigm has transformed game design while introducing new game mechanics along with interesting technical challenges.
What are the challenges for startups wanting to make apps / products for a connected playful digital/physical world? Our panelists have all experienced this first-hand and will share their stories as well as answer questions from the crowd.
ARE2012 is being live streamed this year, and the wrap up fire side chat between Bruce Sterling and Daniel Suarez and a surprise stupid fun grand finale is still to come. We have a live stream this year so you can see for yourself! Also you can catch up on any sessions you have missed, including the video of my talk, Augmented Awareness and Reality Games. My slides are here and my speaker notes are below, enjoy!
1. Hi my name is Tish Shute. Currently I am working with Will Wright and Stupid Fun Club on a new genre of personally aware mobile games that move away fromt he idea that games are a way to escape reality. If you want to know more about what I mean by Reality Architect please feel free to look up my TEDXSilicon Alley talk “On Becoming a Reality Architect..” .
2. As Will puts it, “games are getting more and more personal to the point that our actual lives are becoming the most interesting gaming platform.” Personally Aware Games, Life Based Gaming or Integrated Games are expressions that are just beginning to emerge to describe this idea that our lives are the most interesting gaming platform.
3. Will Wright’s talk at Where 2012 is a must see. He pointed too a turning point for mobile gaming.- a shift for games from being about simulating reality to being about parsing reality.
4. The ghosts of AR past. Bruce Sterling at ARE2010 mentioned that AR eyewear was haunted by the spectre of ARs Gothic Stepsister – virtual reality, and Jesse Schell probed on the other hand AR’s aspirations as the ubiquitous all seeing data eye– the man with the x-ray eyes.. As Jesse put it, “You guys are going to put it together…and then everybody is going to be like, oh my god we are freaking naked, all this information about me is out there…I had security through obscurity, but not anymore…â€
5. Yes, it seems we have put it all together. Although the ubiquitous all seeing data eye – our x ray eyes have turned out to be carried around in our pockets or integrated into our clothes and eyewear is not yet ubiquitous, at least yet. But, for the moment, we are looking at the most intimate aspects of ours lives only as an opportunity for optimization and efficiency, (but there are some interesting apps/products emerging – try out the Heart Rate app – if you hold your finger up against the camera an you will get a pretty accurate reading). But as the explorations of makers, hackers and self trackers move out into consumer culture the quantified self is ripe for new forms of expression http://www.electricfoxy.com/projects/modwells/The term “gamification†has been worn out already . We sense its shallow inadequacy. So what’s next?
6. There is barely a trace of AR’s Gothic stepsister VR in the Google glasses pitch which is super simple and seems to be aimed at optimizing Pinterest like social shopping experiences, by taking photos and videos from your direct eye-line and disseminating them through Google+ No mentions of mapping, tracking and registration or how they are working the hands free part yet – all I’ve seen for input is nods so far. Is eye movement tracking up next – or what? Thrun was pretty down on the AR ghosts – the man with the x ray eyes stuff (I’m already feeling nostalgic for classic AR!). But seeing with shared eyes is what makes AR technology super interesting as Jesse Schell pointed out at ARE2010, “The internet allowed us to think with shared memory…Augmented Reality will allow us to see with shared eyes,†Jesse Schell ARE2012. Applying our design chops to this possibility space seems like a pretty good project to me. Bruce has always said that AR should be more about creating experiences than the technology.
7. And we do need new forms of expression in our digital culture where technologies of seeing are primarily technologies of watching used for power and control.
8. If you haven’t already drunk at the New Aesthetic fountain you have some googling to do after this session – start with James Bridle’s Tumblr and Bruce Sterling’s essay http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/04/ perhaps. James Bridle might have already closed the New Aesthetic tumblr but this collection of images is a provocation to explore the possibilities of feedback loops between people and machines – a reflexive augmented awareness where we play with modes of digital seeing. I think AR and digital seeing is in need of a New Aesthetic more than most technologies because augmentation implies that we have an idea of what is aesthetically valid at a given time and place, and that we have a position re the difference between augmented and degraded reality, and machinomorphic and anthropomorphic modes of perception. Howie Woo’s “in yo face facial recognition†project (pic in my opening slide too), uses crochet + cunning to transform facial recognition into a reality game.
9. Reality Games can give us new opportunities to explore the free play in the systems of our lives. AyseBirsel, a friend and brilliant designer from New York City has being showing people, in a series of innovative workshops, how to bring powerful design tools to their lives, to design not necessarily a better life but at least an original life, beginning with a method of deconstruction,reconstruction, and visualization. The goal of an original life rather than an optimized more efficient life challenges AR and reality game designers to explore the possibility space of our lives.
10. We are already parsing our lives through powerful digital filters. Four Square has shown us the power of the fundamental change to maps that has at it’s center the notion that “you are hereâ€. See Adam Greenfield’s Where 2012 talk for a deeper understanding of the significance of this change to mapping. While location is a powerful filter to parse what Will call’s the GPS “global possibility space†of our lives, it is not the only one.http://dornob.com/you-are-here-3-real-life-works-of-digital-map-inspired-art/
11. Time is another a powerful filter for our lives and games. Jonathan Blow’s Braid explores how time can be manipulated in different game worlds.
12. Cosplay (or costume role playing) is different from earlier incarnations of say renaissance fairs or civil war reenactments in its integration into the present. In Tokyo a commuting hub turns into a cosplay mecca every Sunday and as AT Wilson puts it “turns a non-place to a place.â€
13. “[TimeHop] sends users a daily e-mail reminder of what they did a year ago, and it does so by retracing the subscriber’s digital footsteps Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare.â€http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/fashion/timehop-a-new-online-service-tells-you-what-you-were-doing-a-year-ago.html
14. Reality Games have of course predated a machine readable world. This book on Cold Reading by Ian Rowland parses the rules of the game that enables “psychics†and “fortune tellers†to deploy techniques that border on actual mind reading. http://www.thecoldreadingbook.com/Life’s players – “pick up artists†& “psychics†and “con-artists†are master gamers of the intimate social dynamics of life but NLP and semantic tech are bringing digital seeing to the kind of intimate social dynamics that are the domain of cold reading.
15. Status games are a core dynamic of life. The great ethnologist Erving Goffman, devoted his career to analyzing the face-to face relations of everyday life. Goffman, described everyday social life as a strategic game that could be understood through the metaphors of the stage.- front stage and back stage. But, as we parse reality, digital hierarchies and the abstractions of data viz begin to control the information flow and create a new stage for status games that demand a a different kind of awareness of what is back stage and what is front stage in social lives.
16. We are entering a new era of social intelligence where people and algorithms are interacting in interesting new ways. OKCupid has been getting a lot of attention for offering social intelligence that can help us play better in our dating lives. Did you know your profile narratives can reveal whether you like rough or gentle sex?
17. We are also beginning to see an interesting New Aesthetic for Artificial Intelligence -the expressive interaction between algorithms and people. SIRI, for example, is no cold reader, but she does have has a more developed character than Google voice.
Jeff Kramer has an excellent post on Weavrs – personality based social – web robots. I like weavrs a lot because they are out on there at the edge with there exploration of the expressive power of bots. Bots shape our algorithmic world from call centers to Wall street but we have barely began to explore their expressive potential .
Weavrs exist on their own. You can ask them questions, but you can’t tell them for example ‘I like this, post more like this. Weavrs are social web bots that evolve and grow without your direct hand guiding them. But as Jeff Kramer in his interesting post on Reality Augmented notes,
“it’s also obvious that having more full featured persona creation/control options is going to be a big part of the future of social bots too.â€
18. The eruption of the digital into the physical is a catch phrase for The New Aesthetic. And RjDj’s Dimensions app and awesome Inception app, I think are exemplary explorations of new aesthetic dimensions for Sonic AR. The dimensions app pulls data from your surroundings — including movement, time of day and microphone input — to give you a very personal experience that adjusts to and transforms your environment and actions.
19. Imrov practitioners are early explorers of Reality Games. The Life Game is one of Keith Johnstone’s projects and his books on Improv have been a great source of inspiration for RPG players and game designers. A CMU student visiting Stupid Fun Club once asked Will what he should do to be a better game designer and Will said study Improv!
Will Wright’s talk at Where 2012 is brilliant. It elucidates a turning point for mobile gaming.
Will describes an important shift:
gaming has primarily up to this point been about simulating parts of reality, now I think it’s moving toward the idea that maybe we can start parsing actual reality, and incorporating that into our play experiences.
He unfolds a vision for a new genre of personally aware mobile games that move away from a “presumption that reality sucks and we want to get away from it.”
I’m super excited to be working with Will Wright and Stupid Fun Club to create a new genre of mobile experiences that express this vision.
Will notes:
as a designer nowadays, I don’t feel like there’s any meaningful limitation that I have. The amount of technology that used to be applied to NORAD, tracking incoming missiles, is basically now in my pocket, helping me find frappuccinos. Actually quite a bit more technology than NORAD had back then.
It is a rich, dense talk so enjoy the video and explore the CaptionBox too!
Also I hope you can join us at Augmented Reality Event, 2012, Santa Clara, CA on May 8th and 9th. Will Wright will be judging the Auggies with Bruce Sterling, Daniel Suarez and others. I will be talking about “Augmented Awareness & Life Based Games” in the AR Games session, along with Brian Selzer, Ogmento and Richard Wetzel, Fraunhofer
And please do use my discount count TISH375AR to register!
I am super excited to be speaking at SXSW Interactive 2012, as part of Will Wright’s Stupid Fun Club, on “A Lifestyle with a Gaming Sense.” Michael Trice just did a post on our session for SXSW.com, Screen Burn Panels at the Palmer Presents Will Wright’s Stupid Fun Club. The photos of Will Wright, Tish Shute (me!) and Peter Swearengen are by Anya Zavarzina. Thank you Anya for such great photos!
I have been too busy to blog much lately, but there is a lot to unpack in future posts in my quote in Michael’s SXSW post!
“Really we’ve entered a new era where the world has become a platform for storytelling and the goal is to turn everyday life into an opportunity for play, relatedness, and new forms of autonomy and fun. We’ve now come to a point where software has moved out of the computer and into the world. Rather than viewing this process in terms we’ve already grown out of, like gamification, we view this as an opportunity to explore everyday activities as possibility spaces.”
For the complete post, including Peter Swearengen of Stupid Fun Club on StoryMaker, see here http://sxsw.com/node/9969
1) Like most of us I wear a lot of hats. And I frequently work under a designer title. But recently someone said to me, “So you’re a Reality Architect.†I found the suggestion intriguing in part because I have been thinking about what it means to have agency in the algorithmic landscapes of the future that Kevin Slavin describes in his awesome TED talk, How Algorithms Shape the World. And, Reality Architect, if it implies anything, it implies a lot of agency and that is very appealing. But what does a “A Reality Architect do?â€
2) When a very brilliant friend came up with this tag line for me, Tish Shute, Reality Architect, “She puts the reality back in Augmented Reality,” I began to become quite enchanted with the idea.
3) My career began with motion control photography creating visual effects for film and television. The Motion Control era which includes Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Terminator, Star Trek, 2010, brought us many of the early design fictions for augmented reality.
4) With the arrival of smart phones I focused on the mobile local experience and making AR a reality. I co-founded Augmented Reality Event and ARWave – a completely open federated, realtime updating system for geolocated data of any sort.
5) But the AR dream has a dark side. This is a still from Keichi Matsuda’s great dystopic vision of AR’s future. Kevin Slavin pointed out in his talk, Reality is Plenty Thanks, that AR as visual layers over reality can obscure what is best about reality rather than enhancing it.
6) Recently I have been exploring what it means to make reality more interesting. Meet Gatsby is a location aware networking startup that I love. Gatsby orchestrates small world moments and creates contextually aware opportunities and serendipity in real life.
7) But we already have experts at making reality more interesting they are called Reality Stars. And when I say I want to make reality more interesting, I have no ambitions to be a reality star. Technology and Story telling are my passions.
8) OKCupid is a startup that has been making reality more interesting and solving dating problems with a combination of data, math and story telling.
9) We are entering a new area of social intelligence where people and algorithms are interacting in interesting new ways. OKCupid has been getting a lot of attention for offering social intelligence that can help us play better in our dating lives. And by connecting social graph, interest graph and location Meet Gatsby hopes to creates new opportunities in our daily activities beyond dating.
10) The combination of math, data and story telling is also a key to a new era of corporate intelligence. Quid works with Government and big corporations, “augmenting our ability to perceive this complex world,†to help them make better decisions on big questions in a complex world.
11) Sean Gurley of Quid at Strata NY described understanding complexity as a dimensionality problem. And, where the dimensionality reduction powers of Math meet the human powers of visualization and story telling powers of people is where insight arises. This is where I think, perhaps, the work of a reality architect emerges. An alternate title for a Reality Architect might be a Data Story Teller?
12) There is also a new space of personal intelligence emerging. Quantified Self, Self Tracking and Start Ups like, MyMee – that transforms “symptoms into empowering data,” are giving us new tools to understand ourselves and unravel pressing problems like allergies that frequently leave Drs drawing a blank.
13) Moodscope adds the power of sharing and benchmarking to the personal intelligence equation. “Lift your mood with a little help from your friends?
14) I am beginning to realize I know a lot of Reality Architects. Brian Krejcarek from Green Goose is designing simple fun sensors that turn everyday things into opportunities to play and give us new ways to play life together and be happier people.
15) There is also an interesting community of practice emerging around Habit Design, Nick Crocker demonstrates in, Floss the Teeth You Want to Keep, that there are a bunch of little hacks that exist to improve your ability to change.
16) The wonderful designer Asye Birsel through her project Design the Life You Love (the illustration above is one I did from her recipe) is teaching us organizing your life is not unlike other design problems. If you can visualize it you can change it.
17) With everyone carrying a powerful sensor device in their pockets, the World is Now a Platform for Story Telling. HipGeo keeps track of your movements and then spits out a slick, animated travel diary. Narrative Science is a company that among other things can turn excel spread sheets into compelling stories for executives.
18) But to return to design fictions again. One thing interesting about the HUDs in Iron Man is the emphasis on dialogue, and the sentient portion of the HUD as a character. The Aesthetics of Artificial Intelligence is increasingly directed at the interaction between algorithms and people. SIRI, for example, has a more highly developed character than Google voice. So the Aesthetics of AI is something I think aspiring Reality Architects might want to be think about and will probably play a significant role in future job descriptions and job titles we are yet to think of.
19) There is lots more I could say particularly about the importance of agency and putting people at the center of their data – please check out The Locker Project. But here are some thoughts on what I hope Reality Architects will do.
Create tools (not just maps and visualizations) to make reality more reliable, more constructable, and more useable.
20) Build technology that helps us live extraordinary lives. Situationist is an app that “injects our present lives with the unexpected.”
21) Create more opportunities, for serendipity, and fun in our daily lives. And last, but not least, never forget the potential of the phone toss!
Thank you @chrisgrayson and @kellyhadous for organizing TEDXSiliconAlley – great work!