Books for this week?
Just finished reading Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson. He does a nice job explaining the different kinds of business models that exploit “free.” He also gives a good sense of what happens and what patterns to pay attention to when we shift from an economy of information scarcity to one of abundance (not surprising rare information and attention become the scarce commodities). Oh yeah, the book itself is free in some forms… The basic premise of the book is that something sold for any amount of money from $100 dollars to 1 penny triggers a different set of economic calculations than when it is given away for free.
What happens when garbage dumps are filled with overpowered computers stuffed in dancing Elmos, when every home in the world has 3-d printers and when traditional corporations tumble while the evil empire (in this case Disney) battles strip mall indigents and hacker entrepreneurs in epic legal IPO battles? Makers by Cory Doctorow takes these ideas (and basically the entire maker movement) to the logical extreme (or at least partway there). Not great literature, but certainly a playful exploration of the next few years.
I was at the World Health Innovation and Technology Congress in DC two weeks ago and one of the speakers was Adam Bosworth (architect of Google Health). He talked about his new startup called Keas. The idea was to create an online destination for personalized care plans that people can use to stay healthy and doctors (and others) can create and prescribe to patients. It also tracks progress and all the typical things you’d expect. I was also very impressed by what Kaiser Permenente was doing with their online presence. Patients get their lab results at the same time that the doctors do and can track their prescriptions, communicate with their doctors, and do things you’d expect to do in this era of networked computing… Kinda sad that that sounds so amazing to me, but since the entire medical profession is plagued by legal constraints that make it suicidal to do anything innovative, it seems rare.
Other standouts from the congress included: – American Well which actually lets people contact and talk in real time with doctors 24/7 (yes they’re actually in-network and the system reduces the need for actual doctor visits by a significant amount). – The Cleveland Clinic also showcased some great online activities to help their patients and their patients’ families.
Shameless self-promotional post… My favorite part of this interview? Gimme some MAYA design on that…
I also spoke at a wonderful TEDx event last weekend (the focus of the event was kids, creativity and education and I hope to post a link to the event soon, it was a secret 130 person event hidden in the mountainous woodlands of our fair state and only now am I allowed to speak of it…) My talk was about the history and future of computing and in particular what it would mean for our kids. Although my presentation hasn’t been posted yet, it was an expansion of a short film called Trillions that we made that you can find here. or here if you like higher quality and downloadable versions of films. Curiously I posted the film on Vimeo about two weeks ago in the hopes of making it google-able for the attendees by the time I spoke, over that period of time it has already had over 60,000 views. I think that’s the fastest uptake of one of our educational films that we’ve seen so far.
Ok, enough rambling. On with the top five links of the week!
——————-Top Five——————-
1. One of the other performers at TEDx was a local musician named Midge Cricket, who did a great set of performances. You can hear a smidge of Midge here.
2. Idle Human Initiative Alert!
Luis Von Ahn also took the stage to explain his reCAPTCHA efforts. Very nicely done. The system uses the wasted time spent by millions of people to help decode scanned books. Although this is clearly an example of a technology exploitation that is only useful for a short window of time (while humans are better than computers at this sort of thing), it was brilliantly conceived and executed (so much so that Google bought his company a short while ago). If you’re interested in reading more about his work, go here.
5. Love Beck.
—————-The Rest—————
If you’re in New York anytime soon, don’t miss the Tim Burton retrospective at MOMA.
Best idea for papercraft ever. I want to do this for everyone at the office and have a big head day
Cool exploration of Choose your own adventure style stories…
Legos plus paper plus a special hole punch equals something new.
Quick make a 3-d model of that thing on your desk!
I stayed in Berlin a while back at a really nice hotel in a posh urban neighborhood. One day I spent time wandering around looking for the wall (or remnants) so I could cross over into East Berlin and see what it looked like. I passed Starbuck and Versace stores as I left my hotel. I made it to the Brandenburg Gate but still couldn’t really tell where East Berlin started (I guess I was expecting some sort of cold bleak architecture). In any event it turned out that I was staying in a hotel in the heart of East Berlin. I did find a more bleak looking part of the city, but it turned out to be the cold modernism of West Berlin. I loved walking the city and was stunned by how green it was. The New York Times has a simple info-graphic essay about then and now that is worth checking out.
The classic digital finger game, a perfect gift for this holiday season!