Cotton transistors and pixelated fashion

Is it possible for consumer technology to engineer a sense of mystery again?

Sure Google glass has gotten all the press, but a multidisciplinary approach to wearable technology might just revive the fashion industry, take the maker movement in an entirely new direction and give us back some privacy in the bargain.

This is one technology that doesn't require too much personal disclosure in exchange for convenience.

"Why wearable tech needs fashion to survive and to thrive," Wired UK:

Simon Thorogood, senior research fellow of the Fashion Digital Studio, believes there's already a trend of consumers favouring subtlety and secrecy over extraversion. We have been programmed to give so much of ourselves away -- every time we sign up to a new app we duly type in our social media details -- and though it can be to our benefit sometimes, it's always to the brand's. The public's unease at oversharing -- at giving bits of ourselves away so brands can quantify our worth and profit from that formula -- is mounting, and perhaps evident in the fact that Facebook has reportedly been losing millions of users a month, and Instagram half its customerbase after attempting to profit from photos.

'I'm sure this [retractive trend] will translate to how people use and engage with fashion and technology, as a means of exploring that notion of the experience and what that can do for us.' If there's more of an impetus on the self, rather than the self as dictated to us by a stream of alerts categorised according to Facebook's relevance algorithm, then the way is opened up for us to engage with how our technology looks and feels, and how we want to use it.

Sure, there will be plenty of opportunities when the clothing is the technology to participate in one brand's narrative or extend the story as it were, but this very personal technology is a walking embodiment of the consumer-as-agent, not product.

The piece was also reminiscent of a presentation by Creative Capital artist and 2011 IdeaFestival speaker Mark Shepard, whose "under(a)ware" clothing will alert its wearer when he or she is being surveilled by a city or merchant. For the makers out there, Shepard makes his schematics available on his Sentient City Survival web site so that you can engage with his ideas. Happily, Creative Capital is once again bringing several of its visionaries to this year's IdeaFestival.

You have purchased your Festival Pass, haven't you?

Stay curious!

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by body_pixel

Jodie Wu - How is the bicycle like an iPhone?

So how is the bicycle like the iPhone?

Jodie Wu and Global Cycle Solutions found out while working in rural areas of Tanzania that the bicycle could transform lives through pedal power, that it could host many different "apps" designed to make the lives of farmers more rewarding and productive.

Jodie spoke at IdeaFestival 2012.

Global Cycle Solutions distributes the SunKing Product Family from Greenlight Planet and will introduce World Bicycle Relief's Africa Kickback 3speed Power Take Off as part of its agricultural product line.

Her video is part of the IF Conversations series. Have a look at the most recent releases in the series, as well as a few of the more popular videos.

And don't miss IdeaFestival 2013!

Wayne

Paul Bloom's case against empathy

First, the "Wisdom of Psychopaths" and now, "The Case Against Empathy." What in the name of identifying with fellow human beings is going on here?

Paul Bloom on the limits of empathy:

Rifkin and others have argued, plausibly, that moral progress involves expanding our concern from the family and the tribe to humanity as a whole. Yet it is impossible to empathize with seven billion strangers, or to feel toward someone you’ve never met the degree of concern you feel for a child, a friend, or a lover. Our best hope for the future is not to get people to think of all humanity as family—that’s impossible. It lies, instead, in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

That’s not a call for a world without empathy. A race of psychopaths might well be smart enough to invent the principles of solidarity and fairness. (Research suggests that criminal psychopaths are adept at making moral judgments.) The problem with those who are devoid of empathy is that, although they may recognize what’s right, they have no motivation to act upon it. Some spark of fellow-feeling is needed to convert intelligence into action.

Bloom notes the identification of the sources of empathy in our respective biologies, how, for example, the neurology for personal pain and empathizing with the pain of others are one in the same. Nonetheless, empathy can be "parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate." Because we can under the right circumstances have our desire manipulated, we can be fooled, our empathy misplaced.

Over time, various institutions, from the civic to the religious, have reinforced the message that we ought to care for others. They, after all, have "the same value as the lives of the people we love." Perhaps it's true as Steven Pinker's contends that we've become less violent over time, less prone to war and its consequent heartache. But it's small comfort to far too many who will live today on the most meager of resources.

If identifying with billions of others just like we would with our own family and acquaintances is impossible - and it is -  perhaps the best we can do is to put our trust in the passage of time and robust institutions of liberal order - legislative assemblies to implement policies that a majority find acceptable and a judiciary to ensure that the rights and dignity of the minority are respected. Bloom says as much, concluding that "empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future."

It's not sexy, but I think that's his point.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by visualpun.ch

Awe, "reset button" for the mind

The mind-as-computer is a worn and outdated metaphor, dismissed by neuroscientists and philosophers alike because the brain "computes" in about the same fashion as bread rises.

Its organic processes are infinitely more productive though because the synthesis of thought and feeling that occurs there is not solely dispositive, but expositive.

The mind is capable of great leaps beyond the evidence. There is one sense, however, where the metaphor of mind-as-computer does work. Ben Casnocha, quoting Jon Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, points out that awe is "the mind's reset button."

Awe acts like a kind of reset button: it makes people forget themselves and their petty concerns. Awe opens people to new possibilities, values, and directions in life. Awe is one of the emotions most closely linked to the hive switch, along with collective love and collective joy. People describe nature in spiritual terms — as both Emerson and Darwin did — precisely because nature can trigger the hive switch and shut down the self, making you feel that you are simply a part of a whole.

The emphasis is Casnocha's. He mentions the sight of a broad expanse of rolling hills, a walk in the woods and stargazing as sources for a reset. I couldn't agree more. The night sky is one of my go to sources for awe, principally because it introduces the much needed variable of rest and reverence into an always-on culture.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by madmiked

David Foster Wallace's "This is Water," Remixed

The obvious truths are the ones we need most often to recall.

One of the lasting, iconic commencement addresses, David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" is a poetic treatment of individual importance in a world that often seems designed to thwart it. But the late writer reminds his audience that as they take their education and degrees into the future and encounter the inevitable stumbles and day-to-day frustrations, they will have one very important choice - a choice that will have nothing - and yet everything - to do with what they know.

In the midst of that tedium, the graduates' ongoing education will rely far less on the facts of the matter as they are presented and absentmindedly absorbed by a brain with a self-important "default setting," and far more on a simple awareness that offers them, instead, the chance to choose. That, he pointedly says, is learning how to think. That is "the 'capital T' truth" of the here and now.

Watch. His words are particularly moving given his prodigious talent and long, and ultimately losing, struggle against depression. If you've never read the address, be patient with the first three minutes of this short video. You will be rewarded.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Hat tip: Open Culture