Human 2.0 - Part 12

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Technology changes you man.

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Featured Items

Lytro – Start of a photography revolution?

An innovative new type of camera being developed in Silicon Valley offers the potential to refocus and explore photos in 3D after they are taken.

Read more » Lytro's light-field camera can refocus images after they are taken

Can computers help us remember?

With more and more things to remember every day, will we trust computers to back up our brains? Find out in this interview with Sunil Vemuri, e-memory enthusiast and founder of reQall, the digital memory aid.

Periodicity

We apply sentiment analysis to social networks to understand what communities think about a particular brand. What if we applied it to a person? Could we tell when they’re in a good mood, or angry, or ready to buy?

Behavioral Analysis and the Age of Metrics

Product design has always involved watching people. But now, armed with detailed real-world data, researchers can understand and visualize human behavior (such as gameplay) better than ever before. But what will happen when we analyse our everyday lives in this way?

Tablets, unions, and education – part one

Tablet computing could save our educational system. But tablets aren’t just a digital textbook — when you learn from a tablet, it learns from you. What if it learns that your teacher is bad? This four-part series looks at the coming war between teachers’ unions and the digital classroom.

Balancing taste and novelty: The spaghetti fetish problem

When our communities are online, our tribal brains get tricked into thinking we’re all in the moral majority. If we’re going to find common ground, we need to start thinking about the moral minority instead.

Bitnorth 2010: The Human 2.0 Weekend

On August 27th to 29th, the third annual Bitnorth event in Quebec adopted Human 2.0 as its theme – resulting in some great ideas, presentations and discussions about the ways in which technology is changing society, for better and for worse.

Is photography a human right?

There is growing fear over the photographing of police by citizens and journalists. Should such recording be criminalized? Or should we re-assert our fundamental right to capture anything we experience?

Who owns your voice online?

If I want to “friend” you, I can only do so if we both use Facebook. New digital forms of communication that did not exist before the Internet are now controlled by corporations and the messages you send with them are restricted in audience and reach. We are in a poor state for a free, open exchange of ideas.

Recent Items

Six Easy Steps To Avert the Collapse of Civilization

@ ) on April 18th, 2010

In this video lecture, neuroscientist and fiction writer David Eagleman speaks for two hours about how the Internet, and how humans are connected to it, provides six essential steps to avoid the collapse of civilization. The steps are pretty obvious in retrospect:

Try not to cough on one another
Don’t lose things
Tell each other faster
Mitigate tyranny
Get more brains involved in solving problems
Try not to run out of energy

It’s well presented, reminiscent of James Burke’s Connections and The Day The Universe Changed. Well worth the nearly 2 hours of the lecture.

Ten superpowers the Internet gave us

by Alex Bowyer (

@ ) on April 18th, 2010

Welcome, Human 2.0.

We may not realize it, but the Internet has given us superhuman abilities. We acquire new capabilities each year, and technology lets us to do things that would have seemed impossible 30 years ago.

Here are ten superpowers that you and I have today:

Read more »

What happens when the game is more engaging than real life?

by Alex Bowyer ( Follow @ on Twitter

@ ) on April 17th, 2010

This short (20 minute) film, “Play”, by David Kaplan and Eric Zimmerman, explores a world where the lines between augmented reality, virtual worlds and computer games have become so blurred that people begin to lose track of reality. Drawing on themes explored by films like The Matrix, Surrogates and Total Recall, this film is fascinating, thought-provoking and just a little disturbing.

Great summary of the state of augmented reality

by Alistair Croll (

@ ) on April 16th, 2010

For those who have been a part of the AR community since its infancy and those who are just entering the field, these are very exciting times. After decades of research, mass market AR applications are finally viable and can be delivered on a variety of platforms. If developers, investors, analysts, and consumers can develop a real understanding of what AR can and cannot do, the future of AR technology is bright, and I look forward to its evolution as an innovative and inspiring medium for creativity, communication, and commerce.

There’s a lot of news around Augmented Reality, fueled by a flurry of apps for location- and video-enabled smartphones like the Android and the iPhone. Here’s a good overview of how some of them are blending the world around us with the virtual world. Read the full article at laboratory4.com

Image by Paolo Tonon

New devices unchain your digital media

by Alex Bowyer (

@ ) on April 15th, 2010

Canadians spend more time online than watching TV, according to new research. Not surprising, since most of the content we encounter is born online. Blogs, e-mails, tweets and YouTube videos wouldn’t exist without the Internet. You need a connection. And since it’s largely just computers and phones that have Internet connectivity, this often means digesting this digital content on devices that weren’t designed for consumption. Read more »

Technology just slightly ahead of legislation

by Alistair Croll (

@ ) on April 15th, 2010

We’re rethinking many of the fundamentals on which our society is based: identity theft, privacy, employment background checks, freedom of speech, and the burden of proof. But the elder statesmen of the high courts aren’t keeping up.

Read more »

The e-memory revolution has begun

by Alex Bowyer (

@ ) on April 14th, 2010

In this Sep 2009 episode of NPR’s On Point, Tom Ashbrook interviews Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell, authors of the new book “Total Recall: The E-memory revolution”. Gordon Bell has, for over ten years, been digitizing his entire life as part of the MyLifeBits project, inspired by the concept of a “Memex” (pictured left), put forward by Vannevar Bush in 1945. Bell outsources much of his memory to computer systems designed to make him more effective. The book (and the podcast) explore the ways in which this e-memory revolution has already begun and will transform aspects of society from privacy and healthcare to learning and extra-marital affairs.

Listen to the episode (streaming audio provided by NPR).

Image credit: Memex image by p373 on Flickr

How to bring IKEA to your living room

by Alex Bowyer (

@ ) on April 12th, 2010

This concept video demonstrates a powerful application of augmented reality. With technology that exists today, retailers could bring their wares to your living room, solving one of online shopping’s biggest drawbacks – a flat 2D representation is often not enough to make product decisions. A 3D online furniture store could allow you to try out different furniture in the real physical space of your living room with minimal effort – something that both physical and online stores can’t currently do. You can read more about the video and how it was made on phedhex’s blog.

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Transhuman

Futurism

Artificial Intelligence

Audio & Video Highlights

Can computers help us remember?

With more and more things to remember every day, will we trust computers to back up our brains? Find out in this interview with Sunil Vemuri. (read more...)

Download/play audio file

Patently absurd

Patents have spread from products to processes, algorithms and even genes. This documentary examines the dangers to society of patenting everything. (read more...)

Click to view full screen

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Like all images on the site, the topic icons are based on images used under Creative Commons or in the public domain. Originals can be found from the following links. Thanks to wecand, philosophy_rebel, maniya, victornuno, splityarn, barnetcouncil, istio, jeremymates, botheredbybees and leonardodavinci.

Technology changes you man.

Featured Items

Lytro – Start of a photography revolution?

Can computers help us remember?

Periodicity

Behavioral Analysis and the Age of Metrics

Tablets, unions, and education – part one

Balancing taste and novelty: The spaghetti fetish problem

Bitnorth 2010: The Human 2.0 Weekend

Is photography a human right?

Who owns your voice online?

Recent Items

Pick a topic:

Audio & Video Highlights

Can computers help us remember?

Patently absurd

Click to view full screen

Share this page