Trialability is key to adopting the right innovations

Trialability is the possibility that a client or a user, in general, is given to test a particular product for a finite amount of time in order to test its characteristics and, ultimately, its suitability for a set purpose. Trialability has long been recognised as one of the 5 factors influencing the adoption rate of innovation.

'Mannequin in Venice Shop Window'
by Michael Summers under a CC license

Indeed, trialability is normally available for a wide range of products and services and is not restricted solely to the innovative ones. Depending on the country, common goods, such as clothes, video games, household equipment, electronics, etc. can be tried for a short time and then returned for a refund if they are unsatisfactory. Rules do apply for this process, e.g., goods need to be returned in good condition. I've also heard of gallery owners that give their potential customers the possibility to "try" paintings or other art objects in their premises for a while before finalising their purchase. Such practice is also becoming increasingly common in high-tech, high-price equipment, such as digital cameras, camera lenses, etc.

Manufacturers of industrial equipment typically offer trial leases of their equipment to potential clients, possibly offering a pilot scale piece of equipment or provide access to actual scale equipment within their premises.

Software products also follow that trend with developers offering feature-limited trial versions, full-featured but limited time trial versions or online trial versions.

The benefits of trialability come at a cost, which corresponds to the cost of making and providing a trial version of the real thing together with a reasonable level of support.

But what happens with products that normally require considerable customisation before becoming fit for the client? And since trialability is a sought feature for innovative (and regular) products that, however, comes at a cost, does it actually hinder new small players entering the innovation game?

Office common space as a tool for collaboration

Often it is people that define the success of an organisation. Making the most out of them is essential. The various different approaches in organisational structures are meant to contribute to that. Using talented people as units or in teams in a balanced and effective way is another way to add to the boost. Increasing casual interaction, even if that is not directly work-related may be another, fun way to get better efficiency at the workplace. For the latter to happen, the way that the office space is structured is important.

'A coffee machine at work' by
Wolfgang Lonien under a CC license

Academic environment aside, common spaces in the workplace are considered by some employers as procrastination hot spots or, at best, temptation areas where employees lose valuable work time. Likewise, third parties, i.e., people outside an organisation may often perceive negatively the practice of employees spending time in common spaces provided within their organisation.

However, today, it is increasingly realised that the interaction among co-workers in the common spaces of a workplace can be beneficial for the organisation.

Good and bad things of service integration in travelling

I'm not a true frequent traveller but I do complete my fair share of miles per year, mostly to destinations abroad. One of the things that I find particularly convenient, especially when I travel for work, is service integration across different companies. It is something that is usually meant to save time and money, often carrying the peace of mind bonus, too!

'Travel' by Vasile Hurghis
under a CC license

Service integration is not a truly novel thing but the steps we 've been seeing so far were rather timid. Some, such as the code-sharing flights of different airlines, are well established as a practice. Package holidays and all-inclusive resorts also have a long history in most places. Others, such as booking travel chains consisting of, say, airport parking - flight - car rental - hotel, are a bit newer.

Judging service integration as a practice depends on what vantage point one chooses. For the traveller, the emphasis is usually on the convenience factor. Things may seem differently, however, if one chooses to focus on value or the impact on the ecosystem of businesses (or the ecosystem in regions, including people and businesses) affected by this practice.

Investing in employee education

'Classroom' by Emory Maiden
under a CC license

Lifelong learning is not a new concept. On the contrary, it is quite established, at least as a term. Today, there are numerous courses, taught and self-taught schemes on a wide variety of topics. Some of the training schemes are even available for free - usually in the form of online courses. In many countries there are also legal or financial incentives to encourage education and training in businesses and organisations. However, despite lifelong learning schemes being abundant, there are still plenty of employers that discourage or deny the participation of their employees in such schemes.

Often, the reasons they quote include the constantly high workload, the lack of resources to cover for the employees' "lost" training time, the lack of resources to sponsor the training and the lack of clear benefit from the training. There are also cases where the potential benefits of further education simply go unnoticed by the managers responsible. In a few cases,  unfortunately, it may also be the result of tainted management beliefs, where keeping the staff's skills stuck at a certain level is thought to ensure"stability" for the management crowd.

To be fair, allowing or providing access to education for the people of an organisation needs to take into account operational constrains. But it is also something that the organisation will eventually need to do despite whatever constrains. The case for investing in employee education is too strong to be ignored.

Using technology to improve communication during crises

'Hotline' by Alex under a CC license

Despite how advanced mankind may look, when disasters strike disruptions do take place and, sometimes, human lives are put at risk (the earthquake in Nepal being a recent major such natural disaster). Regardless of the type of disaster, communication is essential both for the people in the affected zone and for the staff of the response teams.

Under normal circumstances, in or close to urban areas, voice and data communication are not normally a problem, even when demand is high as, for instance, happens in big concerts, conferences or other major events.

But what are the challenges at the time of a major disaster? Are we ready to put the technology we have available into the best possible use in order to handle the crisis in the best possible way?

The amazing world of video games

Video games are amongst the non-essential things that compete for a share of our free time. Regardless of whether they are a good thing or a bad one, two things are quite certain:

'Day 220-the tetris' by ne!l chen
under a CC license

• some of them - somehow - do manage to get hold of our attention and, thus, of a fair portion of the free time of a wide range of individuals, and 
• they are the products of a very diverse market, often operating at the world-wide level, with noteworthy and increasing turnover share. 

Regardless of one 's feelings towards video games, their world - and impact - is practically hard to ignore.

Intrapreneurship: should organisations embrace the on-the-clock pet-project approach?

In a business, pet-projects are small-scale projects of individual employees, under their full personal control, carried out within the organisation, often using resources of the organisation.

'Luminous idea' by Tiago Daniel
under a CC license

Pet-projects have gained visibility through the successful practices of companies such as Google, HP, 3M, Genetech, IBM and others. There, employees have been given the flexibility - and have even been encouraged - to allocate a percentage of their normal working time between 15 and 20% to a personal project of theirs that may be (and usually is) different to and independent from their ongoing work tasks.

But is the policy of allowing employee pet-projects worth it or is it just a (persistent but limited) hype?

Finding the right balance between the group and the individual

'Balancing Rocks' by Viewminder
under a CC license

We often hear that successful organisations are based on effective teams. Almost equally often we hear that successful organisations are those with charismatic, efficient leaders. Those statements are complementing rather than contradicting each other. However, as the headcount and complexity of structure, operations and objectives of organisations increases, the importance of the teams that operate them becomes increasingly important. A major challenge in teams of a given composition is how to balance between the needs/ priorities of the individual and the needs/ priorities of the group.

Open source software: a helping hand for growth

Open source software is one of the things that occasionally gets entangled in the webs of ideology, politics and corporate marketing talk. However, open source software is a rather simple idea: Develop something, using an open, collaborative approach if possible, make it available to the public as a product, together with its source code and let them use it as they please. That simple.

Does this development model even make sense? Why would anybody do this? How can open source development pay their bills and, more importantly, who provides support to open source software users?

On open data

The idea of "open data" is not new but it seems to be gaining popularity, recently, especially for data generated by using public or publicly funded means.

'Molecular energy at work'
by Let Ideas Compete
under a CC license

"Open data", as a term is subject to different definitions and, thus, is applied in different ways. The most basic, clear-cut definition available dictates that "Open data and content can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose", although it is also possible to allow for mandatory attribution to the source.

At the legal level, things are a bit more complicated. The key problem of how to handle copyright in a way to reasonably achieve the intended objective of open data is not very hard to address. However, adding various restrictions to that, which in some cases is needed, makes it tricky. Taking into account that intellectual property legislation varies widely from country to country things become even trickier. To that end, the people at GNU and the Free Software Foundation have compiled a list of different free and non-free licenses commonly used for software and documentation projects. Further advice can be found, amongst others, on the World Bank.

Putting legal issues aside, open data, if used correctly, can help bring added value to societies. I understand that this is part of the typical pro-open data rhetoric but, for a moment, let's think of a couple of examples, besides transparency and accountability that seem to be well established already:

(a) A lot of money is invested, world-wide, on research and technological development activities. In cases where grants are provided on a competitive basis, applicants are commonly requested to demonstrate the relevance of their proposal to the current challenges and the scientific state-of-the-art. The latter normally takes a good literature review, while the former often relies on policy documents and some handful of studies that might be available on line. Even worse, during project implementation, project partners normally don't get access to additional data. Having relevant open data readily available would greatly help the research and innovation system in producing more relevant research proposals and better, closer-to-needs solutions.

(b) Competitiveness is considered to be a key for growth. But does this automatically translate to growth relevant to the needs of a society? Proving open data could stimulate growth-through-competitiveness around major needs. Further to that, it could facilitate adoption of best practices elsewhere, making it easier to compare cases and effects, hence, to identify solutions.

Is all data suitable for becoming open data? Clearly no. That wouldn't even apply to all data obtained through publicly funded means. Some data cannot not (and should not) become open because that would compromise national security or personal security, would limit or cancel a person's right to privacy, would possibly contradict court decisions and orders, etc. That means that it would be hard to apply a single approach to all kinds of data regarding their "openness".  It is still possible, though, to apply the open data policy on step at a time, or - better - a dataset at a time, keeping an eye of the effects, of course. In the future, it may be possible to define and implement a single, concise open data policy - at least for government data or data generated via public resources.

By the way, the open data call is finding top level support - at different intensities, perhaps - by entities such as the EU (http://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/), the US (http://www.data.gov/), Japan (http://www.data.go.jp/?lang=english), etc. More importantly, the Open Government Partnership, launched in 2011, now has 65 member countries and publishes reports on those.

The video that follows has been made by the Open Government Partnership in promotion of Open Government.

Revamping those to-do lists

'to do list' by Eamon Brett
under a CC license

To-do lists are nothing new. They are simple and humble yet, for some people, precious.

Personally, I'm not too much of a fan of such things. For that, I have paid the price at a number of occasions. However, having forgotten - a number of times - to get the all the things I need from the supermarket in a single go and having gotten things I didn't really need instead, I somehow convinced myself to ride the wave and install one of those 'to-do' list apps on my mobile.

I went for Wunderlist but I soon realised that there are numerous alternatives, such as Toodledo, Remember the milk (!), Asana and many. many others, including Google Tasks, which is tightly integrated with GMail and Google Calendar and the purpose-built Google Keep. Each of those has its pros and cons, some are simpler and more intuitive than others, etc., but all can, in some way, find home in your smartphone and replace that old-fashioned to-do list on a piece of paper.

(BTW, I won't be doing a review of those apps here. However, there are plenty of reviews over the internet, for example in LifeHacker, the Verge and PC World.)

I'm a bit surprised that some many people came up with an idea (or copied the idea) for an app to replace a simple piece of paper. I know, I shouldn't be. After all, this is a kind of useful app with quite some margin for extra features.

People have been creating to-do lists all the time and having them in a digital form does come with advantages, such as the possibility to re-use lists or list items, share them with others, collaborate around them, combine them with work planning, etc. It's just that such lists can easily exist on torn notebook pages and post-it notes and still reach their objective. In that sense, having such apps feels like an overkill but, at any rate, clearly, that will work, too. After all, smartphones are supposed to be much more besides a simple mobile phone and adding the to-do list functionality is another (small) step towards helping us in our daily lives.

Should we add coding to the primary education curriculum?

'Eee Keyboard-PC' by Yoshi5000
under a CC license

Yes, in my humble opinion, we should!

You may think that I have simply been a bit too influenced by the move in Finland to teach typing instead of handwriting in schools. No. In fact, although I see some advantages in introducing courses for typing instead of cursive writing, I wouldn't have gone nearly as far. After all, we still need to be able to communicate, even when electricity is not available.

With coding, however, things are different. As others have explained, coding is more of a way of thinking rather that an exercise for those that have computers. Coding, regardless of the programming language used, requires skills for describing and understanding a problem, possibly breaking it up to smaller, manageable chunks and devising a solution employing logic.

Coding can be taught almost hand-in-hand with mathematics (especially numerical analysis) and I suspect that would help the skills of kids in both fields. I wouldn't need too much time of teaching, either. Most probably, having an hour or two per week would be enough to motivate kids to engage further on the topic.

If the curriculum would also include user interface design, then coding would also blend elements of fine art, psychology, etc.

There would also be additional benefits for pupils, such as learning to collaborate across teams towards solving a particular problem, developing self-confidence in problem-solving, finding additional routes of creativity, seeking for/creating innovation in software, getting better at using computers and software, etc.

As an added bonus, coding does not require expensive infrastructures. It can be done on basic hardware (including tablets, old PCs, etc.) using free software and, today, an increasing number of households own a computer or a tablet. There is also a lot of help for coders available online, including websites with coding courses, communities of programmers, etc. Coding classes could even run without access to computers but I admit that this would rather boring for the kids.

So, yes. Let's give coding a try in schools and, who knows, maybe the coming generations will feature a higher number of brilliant coders or, at least, be better better at using logic against challenges.

The video below features Thomas Suarez (not the typical 12-year-old) giving a TEDx talk:

Cloud automation and the internet of things

'Robot' by Christelle
under a CC license

Day-by-day, our lives become increasingly digital. With internet gaining share in our everyday routine it was inevitable someone would start interconnecting our network-capable devices (for which I think I've written about before...).

At the beginning, things were a bit basic. For instance, being able to check our cloud-based mailbox and our automatically synchronising cloud-residing files from all our devices (desktop, smartphone, tablet, etc.).

Then cloud application upped their intelligence a notch. It became - for example - possible to send somebody an email proposing a meeting date, the cloud service would add that date on the recipient's calendar and the recipient's smartphone would remind the user on time for the proposed meeting.

With more-and-more web services, programs and devices having public APIs, cross-application functionality has taken off and the user mashup potential has become evident. It may sound complicated but the fact is that it can simplify our daily lives (and - possibly - increase our geek level, too!). It is now possible to check on and control web applications in order to achieve things that in the past would require a separate web service, app or program.

Let's take IFTTT as an example (IFTTT stands for 'If This Then That', by the way - do check their website!): A user can choose amongst a large list of web services, devices with web output, smartphone events, etc. and when something specific happens to cause a reaction. For instance, User1 can set IFTTT to monitor the Twitter posts of User2 and when a new tweet is posted, IFTTT can send an SMS to the mobile of User1 or email that post to User1's email, etc. Interesting? It can get better. Imagine using it for networked devices, such as a networked thermostat (e.g., a Nest thermostat) or a networked light installation (e.g., Philips Hue) or a signal-producing usb device (e.g., Blink(1)), etc. For instance, you can increase the temperature at home when leaving work or set the lights to the bright setting when an incoming call comes from work. All of a sudden, it is possible to achieve automation that, albeit simple, would be next-to-impossible to do (cheaply) a few years ago.

Needless to sat that IFTTT is not the only player around. Zapier, Yahoo Pipes, We Wired Wed, Cloudwork and others - many others - are available, some for free, some at a cost. I feel certain that more will follow. I believe that what we are seeing is the early days of automation for the masses :-)

Of course, by interconnecting devices and services we are exposing an even larger part of our (real) lives to third parties. This, inevitably, implies risks. Rogue or simply irresponsible service providers may opt to sell our personal data, hackers may gain control of our smartphones, lights, etc. Our privacy may be compromised in ways that may not be immediately obvious, perhaps to directions that we wouldn't really want.

As always, innovation, in itself, is not good or bad. It is just something new. It is up to us to find the best way to use it. To strike the right balance. To shape the market into the form we want, placing the right safeguards and, ultimately, to make our lives a bit better (or funnier... or geekier...), while keeping us on the safe side.

Disclosure note (and some of the usual 'fine print'): I am not affiliated to or have received any subsidy/grant/benefit in return for this post from any of the companies, whose products are mentioned above. Mentioning, in this post, a product or a service is not meant to constitute an endorsement (as I have not, personally, used all those products). The names of the above mentioned products and services are property of their respective owners.

If we want innovation we may need to re-think on the right to fail

'Failure' by Beat Küng
under a CC license

Success and failure are two terms that we come to meet very early in life. The paradox is that, while we learn and develop through failure, ultimately reaching success, later in life, we tend to look down on those who do not succeed.

Certainly, there must be an evolution element involved in that attitude of ours. Clearly, success is the desirable outcome. When it comes to making breakthroughs, though, regardless of whether those are disruptive innovations or smaller forward-leap ideas, trial-and-error or - in plain english - failure is part of the process. Our stance on somebody 's failure normally includes elements of constructive or not-so-much criticism and sympathy at ratios that vary according to our ties with the individual in question and the impact of the individual 's failure.

At any rate, despite the fact we know that failure is part of life, which may even lead to success, we often 'forget' that people have the 'right to fail', at least to some extent.

Interestingly, our legal and business norms seem better prepared to handle failure than our social instincts. Entrepreneurs can go bankrupt, for instance, and start over after a while. First offenders get a 'lighter' treatment in the justice system. In each case, of course, the impact of failure on the individual does vary - and there is always some negative impact and maybe even some longer lasting effects.

So the question is, how do we shape things in such a way that the fear of failure does not hinder innovation, including innovative thinking, innovative design, innovative practices, etc., while the impact of a likely failure is contained reasonably well?

I'm not sure I have the answer to that. But there are things, both related to the effort towards success and to the (potential) failure, most of there already tested and proved, that may help:

• Make advice easily available to innovators. That may be through free research or business development services, through subsidies available for consultants, etc.
• Develop a network of mentors available to support innovators. Having a mentor solves the problems of 'what is the right question to ask a consultant?' and 'how to I prioritise tasks?'. Such schemes - to my knowledge - have been limited to mostly within academic and large corporation environments. Maybe it worth considering how to deploy such scheme to emerging innovative entrepreneurs.
• Encourage step-wise development. Such steps would limit the cost of failure at each step with the added bonus of better awareness of all opportunities as the 'product' matures.
• Encourage pooling of resources and diversify investment. Now that is a tricky one. It can apply to both enterprises and investors, including financial institutions. The former may not have the capacity to adopt such approach but the latter, most likely, have something like that already in place. The problem is how to correctly estimate the risk for each investment, so as to allocate reasonable funds in a reasonable way. There, both underestimating the risk and overestimating it leads to serious problems for the innovation system.
• Provide guidance after (potential) failure. Yes, seriously. Failure doesn't always have to be an abrupt halt but innovators should have the means to access what went wrong and if/ how it can be fixed. And yes, the next step is to provide resources after (potential) failure, should things prove to be fixable.
• Promote success stories.
• Encourage the innovative thinking of students within the education system. That should be a no-brainer, yet in practice we choose to be on the conservative side. There many ways to do that; gamification of the challenge could be one of the alternatives. To be fair, however, that is no easy task - especially if the education system runs under limited resources. In any case, it should include advice on how to deal with failure at the factual and - possibly - at the emotional level.

The list, above, is only indicative. The bad thing is that they all come at a cost and that the potential benefit is linked to the (perhaps risky) innovation at the end of the chain. The good thing is that such measures can be applied within different environments and at suitable intensities, minimising risk while still being able to reach (and study) results.

And, for the end, a couple of relevant TED talks. As usual, inspiring to watch :)

Do we make the most out of (computing) technology?

'Typewriter' by Reavenshoe Group
under a CC license

Sadly, the brief answer is no. Most of us have in our hands, at home or at work, computing or other electronic hardware that would have been considered pure fiction 20-30 years ago. Although we have changed the way we live and work due to technology, the steps forward we have made don't necessarily go hand in hand with the leaps in technology we have witnessed.

Of course there are exceptions to the observation above but let me mention a couple of examples and tell me whether they sound familiar or not.

At the place that I work, all employees have PCs. Their (the PCs') primary tasks are e-mail, word-processing and printing and web browsing (not necessarily in that order). Yes, sure, so people do some statistical analysis, some DTP and some database design and some feed input to a number of databases but, still, the majority of PC time is devoted to the three things I mentioned before.  You may think that the volume of work or the quality of the output has increased. Indeed, it may. But there is still a small number of regular PC users that treats word processing software closer to a typewriter than a modern PC. OK, I'm exaggerating here but I believe you can see my point.

The other major change has been in the field of mobile devices. Each smart phone is practically a small computer, powerful enough to handle not only calls and messages but also browsing, voip and video chat and practically most of the stuff that would run on a desktop computer. Do people use those features? Yes, some people use some of those. But some others seem to have problems with that new technology. The following infographic shows an approximate breakdown of the various uses of smart phones.

by jaclynsalem.

According to the infographic above, new stuff (web, search, social media, news. other) account to a moderate to low 24% of the time of smart phone use. An interesting question would be if the total time interacting with smart phones is higher than before, when we had plain mobile phones. I suspect it is.

So why can't we make more and different things now that we have such computing power in our hands?

I don't really know (I'll be doing some guessing here) but here are some possible reasons:

• Bad design on the user interface. Yes, all manufacturers and software designer call their interfaces intuitive but that is not always the case. To make things worse, I don't believe that there is the perfect user-friendly, intuitive interface. It will always need persistence, imagination and luck to get to use an interface successfully. But there are design basics that can help. Below there is an early (very) critical review of Windows 8 (which btw I rather like as OS)
  
  
  
  
• Crappy or buggy software; Software incompatibilities; Software complexity; Inconsistency across platforms and devices; Lack of decent manuals or efficient tutorials. Lack of user training (it sounds old fashioned but in some cases it could help).
• Software cost and/ or poor use of open source software. This particular point always bugs me. It 's fine to pay for software that enhances productivity. But why do businesses avoid to invest in open source software in a coherent way? Especially in cases where the open source alternative proves better in usability, compatibility and, well, cost.
• Hardware restrictions. Yes, you read correctly. We have plenty of processing power but we may be having other limitations that hinder full use of that power. For instance, smart phones can do a lot but they need to be reliably connected to a fast network. That comes at a cost that in many cases is undesirable or, even, excessive. Another example is modern PCs that are powerful but often they come with the minimum possible display estate. Just adding a second monitor would boost productivity (and save on printer paper) but the majority of workplaces I know of stick to small single monitors (often badly positioned in front of the user). Another all-too-common thing is policy restrictions in the use of PCs, some of which severely impact usability, especially when that is paired with an IT department that refuses to listen to the users' needs.
• IT departments that are overloaded with the typical tasks and don't have the resources to add new capabilities to their systems (an extra programmer could do miracles under many circumstances).
• No reliable communication between (casual) users and developers to assist new product development or product improvement (yes, there are beta testers and developers can gather telemetry data but this is not even close in magnitude to what I refer to).

The disappointing thing is that most of the problems above are not-so-hard to address. Maybe the entire product-market-user model needs some rethinking. Maybe developers and, possibly, manufacturers, need to put more effort on durable platforms and commit to their support for longer periods. And, finally, maybe we, the users, need to be more conscious of our options/ choices and voice our thoughts/ wishes/ concerns when needed. Just saying....

Batteries for our power-hungry lives

'Power sunset' by Khalid
Al-Haqqan under a CC license

The use of electricity has been one huge step for mankind. I sometimes wonder whether the electricians/ engineers of the first few years of electricity (in the 19th century) could predict the magnitude of its applications some 5-7 generations in the future.

Today, in the urban world, at least, it is very hard to leave away from a mains socket for long. True, big household appliances, such as the stove, the microwave, the washing machine and the vaccuum cleaner - to name a few - are nothing of an innovation, nowadays. But numerous other (electronic) gadgets for our daily life have emerged. Some competing for our "free" time, while others aggressively claim to be (and some truly are) productivity tools. Laptops, tablets, mobile phones and smartphones, digital cameras, mp3 players are amongst the popular ones. The list gets expanded constantly as we speak. Smartwatches, wearable devices, medical devices, and all those existing or emerging devices that gear up for the internet of things.

Don't worry... I won't be lecturing you on our level of dependence on those numerous electric and electronic devices. After all, they are here to make our lives a bit better, even if we are talking about small things, such as reading a tweet from a friend, googling an unknown word or anything of that scale (I'm being a bit unfair, since living in networked wolds offers great potential - and I've written something vaguely on that in the past).

But I will share with you that being "forced" to seek for a mains socket every so often annoys me.
OK, not so much when I'm at home or at work but definitely when I'm away on a business trip or on holidays. It is 2014, I know. There are power sockets in most places. Charging hubs in airports and cafes with wireless charging stations starting to appear, as well.

You may feel differently but I' d really applaud any development that would increase our flexibility away from a mains socket. Having said that, the options are limited. Sun charging doesn't seem to be living up to the hype (it takes too much time under intense sunlight to charge a moderate smartphone). Energy harvesting is still in development. Batteries have come a long way so as to hold more power, endure many more recharging cycles, tolerate heat or cold, etc.  but at the same time, however, our devices need more juice to "do more stuff". I feel that we are witnessing an energy stalemate, where the power storage front barely manages to meet the energy demand of our devices.

Unfortunately, as a consumer, I don't see any major consumer drive to prolonged power independence. I hope I am wrong. I hope engineers will manage to give us better energy storage options and, at the same time, manage to do more "stuff" with less power. To put it in a more naive (but challenging) way: My 10-year old mobile had a 900 mAh battery and could last for some 7-8 days albeit under low use (say, a phone call per day). My current smartphone has a 1500 mAh battery and can barely reach 4 days (with WiFi, 3G, BT and GPS off). Could a future smartphone survive for a week with all the bells and whistles on? I only wish....

An inconvinient necessity

'Morality' by wasim muklashy
under a CC license

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no news. As a concept, it probably has roots dating back at ancient times. But the corresponding research field is rather new as it is said to have been launched just in 1956.

AI has gained a lot of attention by the public, governments and corporations for the single reason that it is a very promising field towards a variety of goals ranging from helping humans in daily tasks, helping protect the environment, accelerating scientific research and discovery to boosting surveilance and gaining an upper hand in wars. And also, well, it has found room in a long list of novels, films, etc. which has contributed to the - good or bad - public image of AI (Bladerunner, the Star Wars series, the Star Trek films and TV series, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Battlestar Galactica, Almost Human being just some few of the many films/ series portraying AI in full interaction with the human world).

At the same time, ethics has been developing throughout human "evolution", formulating questions on the moral aspects of this "evolution", seeking answers to those questions and, ideally, providing guidance to resolve ethical dilemmas and move forward. Most would accept, however, that ethics has been a rather "soft" filter for human activities throughout history. But let's not focus on that right now.

As I was browsing Slashdot the other day, a post on autonomous cars caught my attention. The original article on WIRED debated on the moral and legal aspects of programming autonomous cars. In brief, the dilemma that was elaborated on was what should an autonomous car be programmed to do if an accident is inevitable. Should it choose to crash onto the most "robust" target? Should it choose to crash onto whatever minimises the damage to itself or its passengers? Should it decide randomly? Who gets the blame on legal and ethical terms (those two are not necessarily the same)? Is it the owner, the manufacturer, the original programmer, the physicist/ engineer/ mathematician who developed the driving behaviour models (who may have had nothing to do with the production of the car)?

The problem in such questions is that there are valid arguments both pro and against each of the options. Actually, the problem is not in identifying the arguments but, rather, in quantifying their importance in a way compatible to established ethics, public perception and the law. And those three can stand really far apart from each other. Even worse, the distance amongst them may change by time due to many different factors.

We may not be realising that but similar concerns should actually apply to all AI elements of our world (they are too many) - even to plain automation systems (problems do arise from time to time). Autonomous cars just happen to be a high profile case right now (BTW, the new generation of Google's autonomous cars pushes the barrier a bit further).

Should we (the human race) stop for a while to sort out the moral questions before moving forward? I think, that may not be a realistic question to ask!

Photography: the never-ending possibilities

'Camera 003' by Shutupyourface
under a CC license

Camera technology has been rapidly evolving through the years. Yes, I 've written before about that. But change is constant and multilevel. I believe that, to some extent, it is driven by the need to diversify in order to satisfy niche needs, rather than to achieve market domination.

True, some emerging products integrate improved technologies that ensure that the usual camera functions are carried out in a faster, more efficient or more user-friendly way. Better focusing speed, higher low light sensitivity with less image noise, larger sensors, smaller or lighter bodies, environmentally sealed cameras, stabilised lenses or sensors, are examples or improvements that aim the conventional photography experience.

But there, within the sea of consumer products, there are some few that aim at the curious child within us. Take a look at the Panono camera, for instance. It employs mostly conventional hardware, cleverly stitched together to produce 360 deg panoramas in fun way.

And then there are those small "wearable" cameras, such as Autographer, mecam, Narrative, etc. Also action cameras, such as GoPro, which are usually mounted on bikes, helmets, shoulders, etc.. And, of course, there is Google Glass which has put on the spot yet another camera niche.

Further to these examples, above, some have chosen to use conventional technology in an uncoventional way. For the shake of the argument, here are some vivid examples (in no particular order):

1. A camera mounted on the back of the head of an arts professor, so as to take snapshots of whatever lies behind him at regular intervals. 
2. A single fast action camera (a GoPro in this case) used to mimic the bullet time effect, which was made widely know in The Matrix movie (clip).
3. X-ray snapshots of nature-like compositions.  Well, that's not exactly conventional for most people but it uses technology that has been available for quite a few decades.

I'm sure one can go on for longer on the topic of photography niches (HDR photography, IR photography, pinhole camera photography, light field cameras, even Kirlian photography) but my point is that, in photography, technology - while multiplying possibilities - have never seriously hindered creativity.

Bugs: Coming soon in an ice-cream near you!

'Nanners and Rummy Raisin
Ice Cream"' by ulterior epicure
under a CC license

Within a few days after our birth our intestines get populated by numerous bacteria. Such bacteria will, normally, keep us company until the end of our lives. With them, we are connected by a bit more than a mere co-existence. Current knowledge describes our relationship with plenty of the gut flora microorganisms as "symbiotic": we feed them, provide warmth and shelter to them and in return the keep our guts safe from pathogens, train our immune systems and release metabolites of theirs, some of which are necessary for us. Well, that relationship does go pear-shaped occasionally, but life is full of messy stuff, isn't it?

The interesting thing is that the more we look into our intestinal population the more links we find between their existence and our lives. Yesterday, the New Scientist was highlighting research findings on rats, which suggest that the composition of the gut flora has an effect on appetite, initially, and, later on, changes in the body weight: Changing the gut flora of obesity-resistant rats to that of the obesity-inclined one increased the appetite, firstly, and the weight, secondly, of the former.

Weight changes and the composition of the gut flora is nothing new. In 2006, the New Scientist featured a corresponding article. It was based again on research carried out on mice. That time they compared normal μmice with ones that had been living in sterile conditions and, thus, had no microorganisms within their digestive track. Those mice tended to stay slim. Having their gut populated by the flora of the normal mice lead to a body weight increase of about 25%. If the flora used was similar to that of obese mice, the weight gain was much higher. That observation was attributed to the effect of the gut flora on the food that passes via the intestines; the microorganisms living there help metabolize it more efficiently, thus producing more energy the mass unit than without their intervention. The more efficient the microorganisms are, the higher the weight gain for mice.

Combining the two observations there are several questions that come to mind:

• Let's assume that gut flora that is more efficient in processing the food we normally eat leads to us getting more calories out the food. Temporarily, that will lead to weight increase unless we either reduce our food intake or increase our physical activity. However, it is suggested in the 2012 article that the appetite (of rats) is enhanced. Does this mean that the flora microorganisms mess with the energy intake - appetite mechanism of the host? And if yes, is that a temporary effect? What pathway does it messes up with?
• Since the gut flora lives on what food we consume and on the metabolites secreted by our cells, locally, do they have any mechanism to "encourage" us to eat the food that is most nutritious to them? I don't necessarily refer to "mind-control" but to any pleasant or unpleasant symptom that may encourage or discourage us from eating stuff that "tastes" nice or not-so nice, respectively, to our intestinal guests.
• Is it possible to sustainably change one's gut flora in such a way that it will lead to better weight control? Can this be done in a safe way? What will be the catches (because, surely, there will be at least one downside!)?

The last point carries particular weight for the food industry. Foodstuffs with probiotic content have been consumed practically since the beginning of civilisation; fermented dairy products being a common example. Recently, the trend has expanded and, for some time, probiotics (and prebiotics) became central to what is typically referred to as "functional food".

'Strawberry Panna Cotta'
by Matthew S. Cain under
a CC license

If probiotic microorganisms can indeed help maintain a healthy body weight, without negative side effects, they could become particularly interesting for foods that tend to be tempting and are often responsible for making a weight-loss diet feel particularly punishing.

Ice-cream is a good example. The idea has been explored a few years ago and there seems to be little concern for technological limitations. Household-oriented recipes have also been available for - say - yoghurt ice-cream or more exotic stuff, such as kefir-based chocolate ice-cream.

Having said that, I find the path of "slimming" foods to be a potentially slippery one. Regardless of how pleasant the thought is of devouring tons of yummy ice-cream and, still, lose weight, the wise thing to do is seek for a healthy, balanced diet and live a life with plenty of physical activity. And then, why not, enjoy the occasional scoop or two of our favourite dairy vice....

Pitch Black

'Natural Satellites' by Pedro
Moura Pinheiro under
a CC license

(this first 2012 post of mine is a bit off my usual fields - please bear with me until the 2nd one :-)

The Internet is a strange world. We ofter forget is the the result of adding up diverse creations of human beings. Be it like that, the internet is no perfect thing and - for sure - not a being, itself, at least not one with any of the human qualities.

Back in the '60s, when ARPANET was being expanded one network at a time, I doubt that anyone of those involved could ever have imagined that they were adding the first small bits of what we now know as "the web" (or "the internet" - although the two are not really the same thing). Back then, exchanging data and perhaps exchanging a few words with colleagues was a big step forward and that was, really, all it mattered. Now, especially for the newer generations, google, youtube, facebook and their likes are facts of life. Seriously, I bet that in big cities kids see and use google/ youtube/ facebook/ etc. years before they actually come across a living cow...

Don't get me wrong. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Those services and many, many, many others have completely transformed our lives, enabling us to do (often for free) things that would have been tedious or even technically challenging. Call them tools of creativity, business infrastructure, fun or whatever else.... Being around with the internet of today is cool and that is in-large because of those things.

BUT.....

With all good things, high expectations come, too. Think of content, for instance. There's a lot of stuff around the web. Is it of good quality? Let's - for the shake of the argument - say it is. Who maintains it? Mostly people (and in some cases, scripted robots - but that's another story). Some, because they make a living out of it, others because it is associated with their job, others because they feel it as a way to create or offer something to the masses, others because it happens to be what their circle does and others simply because they find it fun. To put it in other words, there is a huge diversity of agendas and - thus - of commitment behind each content item available on the web.

Within the last 4-5 months, 4 of the blogs I normally visited at least a few times a week have stayed inactive. Myself, I have been unable to put together a half-descent post for quite a while now...

What's the big deal, you 'll ask? Well, there is no big deal, unless you actually start counting on such small things or things affected start being not-so-small. You see, in my case with those 4 blogs I used to visit, they were something like the Sunday newspaper: It was not so much what they wrote, it was the ritual of reading them; the power of Habit! No huge loss but, plainly, an unnecessary change :( And, please, don't get me wrong, but I'll avoid describing questions, such as, "what may have happened to the people behind those blogs; are they all right?", not because such questions are invalid or irrelevant but because they are something I'd prefer to handle in a future post....

Now take the example a bit further. Imagine that something you really rely on (on the Web) vanishes. Take Gmail out the equation for a second or - even better - take Gmail AND Yahoo Mail AND Hotmail out of the equation. How does this feel? "It's not the same" you 'll reply. True! It's not exactly the same because many, many people rely on those services to run businesses or at least facilitate business tasks. But on top of those people there are others, who have their entire digital lives somewhere on those services. And in such cases, the loss wouldn't just be a question of money....

So here are the questions for you:

• How do we stop the part of the Web we like/ use/ ... from turning pitch black?
• If not (and I suspect we can't), how to we take the minimum possible loss/ frustration?
• How can we improve stability on the Web, without hindering progress?

The Internet Archive is a modest such effort of preserving content in a fashion very similar to a library. Is it a useful thing? Well, maybe. For sure it may prove useful to historians at some point, regardless of the fact that most of the content it salvages is of little practical use.

From the practical side of things, at least when it comes to our personal content on the web, the only practical solution is mirroring across different service providers or devices. It's no small feat if you have a couple of decades of digital luggage there but it's a feasible and low cost (or no cost) thing to do.

At times, there are visionaries putting together new tools to manage our digital presence and preserve it across the decades of our lives. But I can't see any solution to having the digital universe around us stay as stable as possible.

Experience suggests that digital neighbourhoods are volatile. Evolving, if you prefer. As are our real neighbourhoods, although at a much slower rate. Unlike reality, which we have learned to process, the digital change feels harder handle - especially for those old enough to have their fixed points of reference in life :)

So how about I change those questions above to something like this:

• How do we make change in the internet manageable? In what way should technologies evolve so that facing the novel we feel we experience continuity instead of the unfriendly pitch black void?

It is not a question with a single answer, I'm sure. User interfaces, functionality,  devices, education, business models, the law, personal finances, etc., they all are pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. So, let's see if evolution will take us that way....