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Not being able to leave well enough alone, I'm experimenting with the layout of the blog. Basically I'm trying to get it simpler and more streamlined.
We may think of the joining of the physical and virtual worlds as, well, an elite activity, the kind of thing that evokes visions of bleeding-edge technology handled by computer science Ph.D.s. But the end of cyberspace-- the end of the separation of the world of atoms and bits-- is not just something that'll affect scientists working in labs, or doctors working in tele-surgical theatres. Forms of work that we may not think of as particularly high-tech will likely be changed pretty dramatically by the ability to create devices that overlay digital information on places or things, and project and retrieve information in situ.
A good example is the cell phone. Yes, it's had an effect on the professional and service workers who were targeted as its early adopters; but it may have had an even bigger impact on the working lives of laborers, contractors, delivery men, and drivers-- to say nothing of drug dealers. The contractors I've had out to do work on the house always have at least one cell phone, and often more-- one official one for talking to clients, and another that they use to keep in touch with their workers. In a field in which you've got a number of job sites going simultaneously, your labor supply is sometimes uncertain (one builder told me that he never hires guys who don't have cell phones; he wants to know he can always reach them), and the amount of labor you commit to a job depends on a variety of factors-- whether the concrete has set, whether the electricians have finished their work, whether the inspector has signed off on the last work, whether it's going to rain-- cell phones turn out to be a godsend. Likewise, for completely different reasons, cell phones are amazingly valuable for farmers in the Third World, as a tool for keeping them up-to-date on current market prices and conditions, weather forecasts, and other essential information.
Indeed, when you think about it, any kind of work that's guided by some kind of formal information holds the potential to be affected by technologies that make it possible to move knowledge out into the field, and layer it onto places or things. Some of the first users of wearable computers like the Xybernaut system have been airplane mechanics who are working with extremely complicated systems, and constantly need to refer to schematics and diagrams.
The BBC recently reported on another project that explores the possibilities opened up by mobile technology: a project to create digital maps of underground urban infrastructures that would be used by utilities and road repairmen.
Nottingham and Leeds researchers will trial new 3D mapping technologies at half a dozen UK locations.
It is thought there are enough pipes and cables below ground in Britain to stretch to the Moon and back 10 times.
Some were laid more than 200 years ago and accurate information on their precise positions is often non-existent or sketchy at best.
Even modern records will be spread across numerous databases, making it very difficult sometimes for a contractor to know what a pneumatic drill might hit when it goes into the ground.
There are 30 to 40 incidents each year where workmen are seriously injured because they have accidentally sliced through electricity cables.
"When utilities and highways authorities are digging in the street, they often find things they didn't expect, or don't find the things they were looking for," explained Mike Farrimond, director of UK Water Industry Research Ltd, which is managing the mapping project....
The project, known as Vista (Visualising integrated information on buried assets to reduce streetworks)... will pull together the current records of pipes, cables and wires - be they held in digital form or on paper - and link them to new surveys undertaken at six trial locations.
The in situ observations will use ground-penetrating radar and other sensing technologies to find the precise depth and course of the local tubeworks - to within an accuracy of 5cm.
It will pull together the current records of pipes, cables and wires - be they held in digital form or on paper - and link them to new surveys undertaken at six trial locations.
The in situ observations will use ground-penetrating radar and other sensing technologies to find the precise depth and course of the local tubeworks - to within an accuracy of 5cm.
The project team hopes to come up with a mapping system that can be rolled out to other parts of the country.
"You can't look at an Ordnance Survey map to find out what's under the ground," explained Tony Cohn, professor of automated reasoning at Leeds University.
"We will be producing an 'underlay' to the OS, to show you what's down there. We'll combine all the historical data from the utilities with the in-street data found with location-sensing technology. We want to merge this information dynamically and put it on some kind of handheld unit."
[Thanks to Peder Burgaard and Roland at Smart Mobs]
Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, mobility, pervasive computing, physical, ubicomp, work
A friend just sent me this announcement of a talk at U.C. Berkeley next week by John Perry Barlow. I plan to be there.
John Perry Barlow, "Is Cyberspace Still Anti-Sovereign?"
The U.C. Berkeley School of Information Distinguished Lecture Series
Co-sponsored by California magazine and the Institute of International Studies
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
4:00-5:30 p.m.
110 South Hall
John Perry Barlow is a former Wyoming rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist. He graduated in 1969 with High Honors in comparative religion from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. More recently, he co-founded and still co-chairs the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He was the first to apply the term Cyberspace to the "place" it presently describes. He has written for a diversity of publications, including Communications of the ACM, Mondo 2000, The New York Times, and Time. He has been on the masthead of Wired Magazine since it was founded. His piece on the future of copyright, "The Economy of Ideas" is taught in many law schools and his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" is posted on thousands of web sites. In 1997, he was a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and has been, since 1998, a Berkman Fellow at the Harvard Law School. He works actively with several consulting groups, including Diamond Technology Partners, Vanguard, and Global Business Network. In June 1999, FutureBanker Magazine named him "One of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Services." He writes, speaks, and consults on a broad variety of subjects, particularly digital
economy.
Technorati Tags: Berkeley, cyberspace, end of cyberspace, internet, John Perry Barlow
Via Luarnet, I found that Jakob Nielsen talked about Harry Potter as a harbinger of the future well before my own "Harry Potter and the Internet of Things."
In the Future, We'll All Be Harry Potter
The world of magic is a world where inanimate objects come alive; it's as if they had computational power, sensors, awareness, and connectivity.
By saying that we'll one day be like Harry Potter, I don't mean that we'll fly around on broomsticks or play three-dimensional ballgames (though virtual reality will let enthusiasts play Quidditch matches). What I do mean is that we're about to experience a world where spirit inhabits formerly inanimate objects.
Much of the Harry Potter books' charm comes from the quirky magic objects that surround Harry and his friends. Rather than being solid and static, these objects embody initiative and activity. This is precisely the shift we'll experience as computational power moves beyond the desktop into everyday objects.
Ah well.... Still, maybe it just confirms that it is an interesting idea.
Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter, magic, pervasive computing, science_fiction, ubicomp
He's skeptical that the term means anything:
There's an easy way to describe today's online culture of participation without invoking Web 2.0 at all. Just call it the Internet. That way, everyone will know what you mean.
Update: This is balanced by Demitri Martin's excellent piece on social networking.
Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, social software, Web 2.0
The last paragraph of the this week's Newsweek cover article by Steven Levy and Brad Stone:
Less than a decade ago, when we were first getting used to the idea of an Internet, people described the act of going online as venturing into some foreign realm called cyberspace. But that metaphor no longer applies. MySpace, Flickr and all the other newcomers aren't places to go, but things to do, ways to express yourself, means to connect with others and extend your own horizons. Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is where we live.
As Jerry Michalski puts it, the next killer app isn't e-commerce, or entertainment, or storage. The next killer app is other people. Or to paraphrase Ross Mayfield, we're not moving to an Internet of nouns, but an Internet of verbs.
[Hat tip to David Pescovtiz]
Technorati Tags: culture, cyberspace, end of cyberspace, internet, physical, social software
Another data-point supporting my argument that information and communication technologies start out as tools for increasing efficiency, and morph into tools for enhancing sociability, this from Wil Wright's latest piece in Wired:
[T]he Internet has morphed what we used to think of as a fancy calculator into a fancy telephone with email, chat groups, IM, and blogs. It turns out that we don't use computers to enhance our math skills - we use them to expand our people skills.
Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, games, mmorpg
Cyberspace is a "metaphor we live by," born two decades ago at the intersection of computers, networks, ideas, and experience. It has reflected our experiences with information technology, and also shaped the way we think about new technologies and the challenges they present. It had been a vivid and useful metaphor for decades; but in a rapidly-emerging world of mobile, always-on information devices (and eventually cybernetic implants, prosthetics, and swarm intelligence), the rules that define the relationship between information, places, and daily life are going to be rewritten. As the Internet becomes more pervasive-- as it moves off desktops and screen and becomes embedded in things, spaces, and minds-- cyberspace will disappear.
This blog is about what happens next. It's about the end of cyberspace, but more important, about what new possibilities will emerge as new technologies, interfaces, use practices, games, legal theory, regulation, and culture adjust-- and eventually dissolve-- the boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is an historian of science and futurist.
Part of the Corante Innovation Hub.
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