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There was an inspiring AR congress in Rotterdam, NL, on 4th of Dec and I had the honor to be in the hosting team with Claire Boonstra (from famous LAYAR) Christina Rittchen (Mobilizy – the guys from Austria, who created Wikitude), Truus Dokter of ItFits, Jan Misker (project manager for V2_ AR), Artm Baguinski, Carl William Kerchmar, Kwela Sabine Hermanns. See links for more here: http://portaltoyourdreamsblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/v2-ar-ecosystem-hosting-team.html
- The site for the gathering: Augmented Reality Ecosystem — V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media http://www.v2.nl/events/ar-ecosystem
- The v2ar community, growing – join! http://v2augmentedreality.ning.com/
- My presentation “Augmented Citizen (towards an ecosystem)” left my mind map behind from time to time, but here is the mind map anyway: http://www.mindmeister.com/36532577
Get some impressions of presentations and the creativity of the breakout sessions here:
Update 2009-12-21
- Find developer camps for Augmented Reality next to you: ardevcamp.org
- changed word: gathering
There has been a future conference (Übermorgenkongress) on October 19/20 in Oldenburg. The issue was living in 2020: food, body, luxury, identity in 2020.
I have had the opportunity to go a bit beyond my focus there as a technology analyst and care for my more speculative side as futurist. Normally I resist the temptation to talk about time horizons like this one, when there is no really deep research before, but in this case it was more like a nice “thought experiment”. See for yourself – sorry, preso is only available in German up to now.
This presentation is “post hoc”, the slides have not been shown at the event, since the event format was delibertely “no powerpoint please”. This is to avoid some disadvantages of powerpoint presentations, but I created this one to share my thoughts with a broader audience.
Human Enhancement Technology – Logical Evolution or Pandora’s Box?
The realm of technologizing the human being is a persistant issue in foresight, let alone science fiction. I guess that I am in a minority position in the Read the rest of this entry »
One year ago I blogged that post: iPhone 2010: Bet on mixed reality apps as a standard - and I felt the risk to fail with my prediction. Today I have found some news concerning that speculations:
Augmented reality startups want iPhone to open up
More than a dozen augmented reality companies have asked Apple to open up the iPhone 3GS’ live video feature for their apps. (mobile-ent.biz)
So wait and see. And iPhone will not stay alone – “Mobile Augmented Reality” could be one of the most exciting trends and disruptive innovations in the next years. Google that phrase and see Nokia on top of the listing … And there is that Layar video from June 2009 (“Browse the world!”).
The World-as-a-Store – uPOS, the “Ubiquitous Point of Sale”
New buzzwords for 2010 might be: MARcommerce. ARcommerce, the long tail of “reality shopping” … Scenario as shown in the clip: See something, get info, get price, (call the owner with the next click if you want), buy it. Hmm, actually a wellknown usage scenario to the futurist – but now it is knocking on your door, no longer a “vision”.
Augmented reality startups want iPhone to open up | Mobile Content | News by Mobile Entertainmenthttp://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/33644/Augmented-reality-startups-want-iPhone-to-open-up
See my business mind map
Dear reader, you realized my low blogging frequency. I am so busy with projects and my own business development of <Strategic Labs> in these days of exciting developments in the media and communication industry.
Just follow @willischroll and watch my tweets about emerging trends and the future at twitter.com/willischroll.
Will microblogging kill the blogs, will it kill my blog? No way, don’t worry. Social micro and macro media are in great symbiosis! 140 letters is just too short for complex knowledge communication. But I see a bright future for twitter and other microcommunication stuff. As I twttered: It could be some stem cell (with pluripotent applications) in the coming realtime – social – semantic – sensing – paraphysical Web 3.0. Just think about a mashup like this, found at mashable:
++ Twitter Meets Google Street View: Stweet! http://mashable.com/2009/05/09/twitter-street-view/
Prof. Knight is angry – but does this help to recover and transform? (source: thisislondon.co.uk)
G20 summit under immense pressure
Radical measures must be decided at the G20 summit or it could become the “fateful moment” when the global recession lurches into an outright slump, Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said today. (guardian.co.uk, 2009-03-30)
The crisis and the consequences for business and politics are still in the focus of mass media and the blogosphere. When I check the stats of future facts blog I find a lot of phrases containing “financial crisis” still on the top of the most used search terms. Surprisingly most of the visitors checked in here on the post of Oct. 2008 Global financial crisis may end 2009 – which is not really a typical post in a blog concerned with long-term trends. The news seemed significant at that time because
- it had been expressed by an insider, Michel Camdessus, the former chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and
- it was extraordinarily optmistic.
Let us contrast this sunny quote of last year with doomsday news like this of March 25th 2009: “Russia Expects New Financial System Crisis Outburst”. Russia’s Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin said:
“We were standing on the brink of the financial collapse, but we prevented it, and I must here thank the Central Bank and the State Duma for giving us an opportunity to take decisions quickly,” (my emphasis, www.marketoracle.co.uk)
The coincidence of some news urges me to come back to the issue of the spreading crisis. In these days we read Read the rest of this entry »
STOA Report "Looking Forward in the ICT & Media Industries"
Today “Web 2.0″ is just mainstream and seems more or less boring as a subject of research. The prevailing question is how to realize practical and efficient Web 2.0 solutions, what to do and not to do with social networks, social media – as a user and in the business perspective. As a typical example see a lengthy blog post like this from Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 blog – this is what a lot of people care about: 50 Essential Strategies For Creating A Successful Web 2.0 Product
But there is still the demand for critical assessment of the dynamics, the effects and side effects of the transformation (revolution, yep) of ICT and the media industry. Even politicians have come to understand the issue, lately when they realized the role of Web 2.0 in becoming the 44th president of the USA (BTW I have been blogging in last July: “Maybe Obama can win with swarm mobilisation effects in the internet – and is the first “user generated president” of the USA.”)
In the last year I had been asked to contribute some statement in the STOA report “Looking Forward in the ICT & Media Industries”. The acronym STOA means Science and Technology Options Assessment (for the European Parliament) and you are educated enough to enjoy the allusion to the ancient philosophy school.
Critical assessment of Web 2.0 and the user’s social capital
Don’t get me wrong – my attitude concerning Web 2.0 is rather affirmative (see my record) . But as with most technological innovations there are some downsides. To know them is just a necessity if you want to secure the acceptance and value of a technology in the long run. After the “BeaconGate” there was a second “Facebook scandal” (the terms of service thing) some Read the rest of this entry »
Copernicus changed our direction of perspective (source: wikipedia.org)
Hm, what a long winter break. Well, I have been reading some predictions for 2009 (like this at RWW or that at VentureBeat), I enjoyed texts looking back at 2008, too (e.g. Andrew McAfee or McKinsey). When I came across the RWW post I thought about my own “social media wish list”. I have to confess in the first place the radical and techno heretic thought occured to me: “Could please someone just stop the noise!” The majority of folks out there has no ”social media wish list” just because they are not participating. Their social networking is working fine with phones, address books and calenders – and so the question is: Why is it a mess for so many to organize the social life(stream) on the web? There is a complexity of service options, habits, expectations, aggregators and this makes users really tired. The landscpae is unripe and there is much space for improvements. I want to pick only one issue.
Copernican revolution of the social web in 2009?
When users complain about social networking one point is fragmentation and the resulting number of services and feeds one has to manage. So, could we please have some paradigm shift with the services serving the user and not the other way round? This Copernican revolution of the social web could mean to build up a technically autonomous layer for identity, authentification, social relation management. This is like a u-turn in perspective and isn’t it this, what the ideas and approaches of social network portability etc. are about? But reducing the work load to manage the networks will not be enough to bring the social dimension to flourish.
Social network concepts of today are primitive and stupid
It is time to integrate professional experts of the social in the development process – i.e. the guys of the sociological and humanities department. Think about the “collision of worlds” and role conflicts, when the social architecture (relation modes, transparencies, “hiding places”) is not adequately designed. User control and service transparency have to be much better to avoid the user’s dilemma (what to show and what to share with whom). There have to be relation types (friends, family, relatives, colleagues etc.) with differentiated rights to share parts of your life. For the moment I would call this “transparency management” – which is more than identity management. To understand the issue just read this article: ABC News: Friended by Mom and Dad on Facebook.
Image source: en.wikipedia.org
Update: Links
Chrome browser: Next step of Google to rule the web? Picture: blogoscoped.com
SIGNAL: Google has acknowledged the existence of browser “Google Chrome”. It will be released today.
Details e.g. at blogoscoped.com
CONTEXT: Google has grown over the years and became one of the biggest economical power structures worldwide.
It looks as if Google Inc. will go on to shape the world of the beginning 21st century like no other company. Think of market domination in search and online advertising business – at least in most countries. Think of Read the rest of this entry »
Mobile social semantic web evolving - it is so 3.0!
Today I want to start a series around the emerging issue “web 3.0″, the controversial buzzword with its dazzling meaning. Like with the forerunner “web 2.0″ sober clarifications will help us discerning hype from reality. Today we start with three seemingly unjoined signals from the domains of consumer electronics fairs, web debate and killer startups .-)
Things are networked and start to speak - Nabaztag rabbit
SIGNAL 1: IFA fair opens up to household appliances – maybe they are preparing for the internet of things
Today the IFA fair is starting in Berlin. The first time the worlds largest consumer electronics fair will be sharing the spotlight with household appliances like washers and dryers. Two facts from the market trends department:
- Trend: From “passive cocooning” to “active cocooning”, e.g. having guests and cooking at home. Funny symptom: A lot of shows around flat, garden, house and … the kitchen. You will hardly find a minute in German tv these days, when there is no cooking show running on one channel or the other.) As a consequence of this “active cocooning / social cocooning” trend there is a growth market for household appliances.
- Growth market household appliances: Market research firm Freedonia Group forecasts an increase by 3.1 percent each year through 2011 (redOrbit)
But there should be an other good reason for IFA fair to open up to the wider spectrum of devices. In the next years we will see a jump in the ict evolution. Maybe it will be more radical than the innovations brought by web 2.0 with the blogosophere, youtube, social networking, Google maps etc. that changed lives and business. Read the rest of this entry »
