Inspire

Gerd Leonard on the Future of Mobile Content Types at Mobile Monday Amsterdam (MoMo #10)

Below the highlight of our latest Mobile Monday Amsterdam event: Gerd Leonhard. I met Gerd at the Club of Amsterdam in 2003 and there he talked about the future of mobile music. He was incredibly spot on as a futurist back then. In the presentation below he explains his vision on the future of mobile content during 45 minutes in a passionate way. Recommended viewing!

Our next Mobile Monday Amsterdam event on Monday June 1st, 2009 will feature seven world class mobile internet speakers, each covering a different aspect of mobile internet and sharing their long term vision. The speakers are:

• Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs guru)
• Jamais Cascio (Mobile Science/Sustainability guru)
• Joseph Pine II (Multiverse guru)
• Robert Rice (Augmented Reality guru)
• Alan Moore (Mobile Society guru)
• Andrew Grill (Mobile Advertising guru)
• Eric Petersen (Mobile Analytics guru)

This will clearly be our landmark event. More information will follow at Mobile Monday Amsterdam website. All videos and presentations will be streamed and can be seen on our website afterwards. I really look forward to this event as a lot of Dutch and international mobile passionate people will be there, even from around the globe some MoMo chapters will be there. If you want to attend this free (!!) event, please drop me a note on [email protected].

Jeff Jarvis on the Success Factors of the Google Culture

Helen Fisher on Chemistry, Love, Relationships and Personality Matching

LIFT 2009: Advanced Data Visualisations, Lifestreaming and Social Networks

Immersive Science, AlloSphere and Mirror Worlds of Your Brain, Cells and Atoms at TED 2009

Recently at the TED 2009 conference professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin from the University of California showed us the AlloSphere. For me, this was clearly one of the many highlights of this years TED event!

Visualizing, hearing and exploring complex multi-dimensional data provides insight that is essential for progress in a number of critical areas of science and engineering, where the amount and complexity of the data overwhelm traditional computing environments.

The AlloSphere Research Facility is differentiated from conventional virtual reality environments by its seamless surround-view capabilities and its focus on multiple sensory modalities and interaction. Building the AlloSphere was not an off-the-shelf enterprise. Designing a large-scale multimedia environment to deliver rich, coherent, interactive, high-resolution 3D video and audio streams from voluminous amounts of scientific data, all in real-time, was a non-trivial computational and systems engineering task that involved a significant number of faculty from diverse disciplines.

You might think of it as part of the emerging Metaverse/Multiverse as the video below is in a sense a Google Maps application or Mirror World for your brain, cells and molecules.

A truly amazing video, especially considering the huge implications for future research and innovation.

Saul Griffith at Long Now Foundation on Alternative Energy Sources and Climate Change Recalculated

has multiple degrees in materials science and mechanical engineering and completed his PhD in Programmable Assembly and Self Replicating machines at MIT.  He is the co-founder of numerous companies including: Low Cost Eyeglasses, Squid Labs, Potenco, Instructables.com, HowToons and Makani Power. Saul has been awarded numerous awards for invention including the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Collegiate Inventor's award, and the Lemelson-MIT Student prize. A large focus of Saul's research efforts are in minimum and constrained energy surfaces for novel manufacturing techniques and other applications. Saul holds multiple patents and patents pending in textiles, optics, nanotechnology, and energy production. Saul is a technical advisor to Make magazine and Popular Mechanics.

In his talk below at the Long Now Foundation on climate change, ecological footprints, sustainability, global warming and alternative energy sources you can see an impressive overview of the current situation. How can you measure your own ecological footprint? How can you reduce it? What are the key trends in energy consumption and production? How much energy do we need right now and in 20 years? And how can we scale up? His talk is bombarded with a lot of interesting and illuminating numbers and statistics.

Denis Dutton on the Art Instinct - Beauty, Pleasure, Human Evolution and Universal Laws

His latest book called The Art Instinct - Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution combines two fascinating and contentious disciplines—art and evolutionary science—in a provocative new work that will change forever the way we think about the arts, from painting to literature to movies to pottery. Human tastes in the arts are evolutionary traits, shaped by Darwinian selection. They are not, as the past century of art criticism and academic theory would have it, just socially constructed.

Elizabeth Gilbert at TED 2009 on Genius, Creativity, Inspiration and Revitalizing Your Inner Voice

Juan Enriquez on the Financial Crisis, Synthetic Biology, Robotics, Cyborgs and the Homo Evolutis

Juan Enriquez has a solid track record concerning delivering and sharing funny, smart, cutting edge and very interesting presentations on different subjects like the evolution of borders and nation states, biotech, economic structures, evolution at large, synthetic biology and cultural evolution. Juan Enriquez thinks and writes primaril about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society.

Previous presentations by Mr. Enriquez can be found here: PopTech2009 on Financial Crisis, Long Now Foundation 2007 on Biotechnology and Mapping Knowledge, TED 2007 on Bio-Energy, TED 2003 on The Coming Huge Biotechnology Revolution and PopTech2006 on Countries, Flags and Dynamic Borders. All these talks are highly recommended. Mr. Enriquez is clearly one of my favorite thinkers, futurists and authors around.

The talk below is from the TED 2009 Event last month. I watched the whole TED show personally for the first time. It was truly mind-blowing and very very inspirational. By far, the best event I have ever experienced in my life. All the buzz surrounding the TED event is true. The structure of the program is outstanding touching your mind, heart and soul in different ways.

The talk below by Mr. Enriquez deals with the current global financial and economic crisis as well as the coming revolutions due to synthetic biology, stam cells as well as advanced robotics. Combining these biotech trends on the bacterial, cellular and tissue level with the robotics trend will eventually lead to advanced cyborgs and the Homo Evolutis. The latter group might co-exist with normal human beings but outperform them in different tasks. And this might be sooner than we think, the speed of innovation in this fields is simply impressive.

Enjoy the rollercoaster!

Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2009 Summary and My Top 10 Movies

The last 10 days I have seen around 40 movies at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2009. It was a good year (a little better than last year) with many interesting new movies. Especially the new Turkish cinema was fascinating to me with movies like Autumn, Journey to the Sun, Pandora's Box and Innocence. I liked the style, the pace, the metaphors and symbolism and the sharp conversations.

My personal favorite by far was Troubled Water, highly recommended. Cinema is about elevation in my view and this movie blew all my senses from the start, especially the outstanding and deeply moving musical scenes. Combined with a powerful and original story about love, transparency, honesty, redemption, forgiveness, sorrow and reconnection.

1. Troubled Water
   
2. Teza
3. 35 Rhums
4. Fixer
5. Pandora's Box
6. Tokyo Sonata
7. Historias Extraordinarias
8. Frozen River
9. Rachel Getting Married
10. Slumdog Millionaire

Hope to see you all next year. It was a blast!

The Rise of Cognitive Incoherence

We live in a world of continuous partial attention (CPA), info chunks, multi-tasking and shortened time-spans. What are the implications of this on our thinking? In my view this might lead to both positive and negative effects. Positive is more lateral and associative thinking and pattern recognition. Considering the negative results I can imagine it leads to a more incoherent kind of thinking and behavior. While we need systemic, integrated and holistic thinking to solve urgent and complex global issues, we seem to go the other way. I wonder how this will progress.

My View on the Future of Human Identity, Human Potential and Self Realization

In the last few years we have witnessed incredible progress in robotics, biotech, artificial life and intelligence and cognitive neuroscience including connectomics from Harvard. Robots are already socially and emotionally intelligent to a certain extent as can be seen in the the stunning work by Cynthia Breazeal from MIT. Robots, AI and A-Life will increasingly narrow down the specific features, benefits and skills of us humans. What are our competitive advantages relative to these technological developments? My guess at this point in time this will boil down to (among other things) creativity and innovation and other right brain skills.

As all these technological developments will increasingly democratize and empower us as individuals - like almost all key technologies in the past have democratized eventually - we'll in my view probably end up with the situation in which children and adolescents will increasingly be exposed to these powerful tools. Not only as prevention or correction but simply as an 'awareness right'. In practice, we'll see that fMRI scans (benefiting from the current research on connectomics from the neuron level upwards) and personal DNA profiling (like in 23andMe) will democratize. Children and adolescents will know quite early in life what their skills, talents and dispositions are or can be. This will probably drive a deeper sense of human identity, self awareness, human potential as well as self realization. And educational system (offline as well as online) will somehow integrate these insights in the long run.

In short, the psychological trend of the last 20 years in which magazines, TV programs, books and educational systems test their users/readers (and successfully as this spreads around and around while users love it) will broaden into the fields biotech and cognitive neuroscience. With a strong focus on what makes us uniquely human relative to the advances in robotics, AI and A-Life.

I am thrilled by this prospect as this will probably enhance a lot of lives in the future.

My Top 10 Movies of 2008

Ever year I share my favorite movies of the year with my readers. Here are the years 2007, 2006 and 2005. What strikes me is that the years 2007 and 2006 seem to resonate more with me relative to 2008. I am wondering if my readers have experienced the same of something different. Here goes for top10 favorite movies of the year 2008:

1. Il y a longtemps que je t'aime
2. Secret Sunshine
3. Cloud Nine
4. The Dark Knight
5. No Country for Old Men
6. I'm not there
7. Die Stille Vor Bach
8. Auf Der Anderen Seite
9. Waltz with Bashir
10. Persepolis

Some movies didn't make my top10 list but are IMO still very interesting to watch:

• Into The Wild
• Entre Les Murs 
• Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Soon the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2009 will start at January 21th, 2009. 10 days of exploring all kinds of new movies. Always a great adventure to me, a way of traveling with your own mind and heart. This will be my 14th year in a row to experience this highly interesting film festival. I will blog the highlights again like every year since 2005.

Synthetic Biology: Debate by Drew Endy and Jim Thomas

The Long Foundation keeps amazing me every time. The last video as can be seen below is on the pros and cons of Synthetic Biology. Like every big new technology, there is an intense debate on the benefits and risks. Craig Venter recently gave a powerful and high-impact presentation on Synthetic Biology as well. Recommended viewing as this development might have a considerable impact on the future of us all. Not only in terms of the environment and the substitution of oil but also with respect to human enhancement and tackling different human diseases.

Jay Parkinson on Health 2.0 and the Modern Doctor-Patient-Relationships

Jay Parkinson is re-imagining the doctor/patient relationship, marrying a 21st century toolkit - think social networking, IM, video chat, SMS and PayPal - with old-fashioned, doctor-in-your-neighborhood, quality care. Pay a virtual visit to his Web 2.0 primary care practice, Hello Health, which offers a new way of keeping people well.

Not applicable for all patients and demographics as yet but very inspiring to watch IMO.

@ Yahoo! Video

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow, Creativity and Happiness

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has contributed pioneering work to our understanding of happiness, creativity, human fulfillment and the notion of "flow", a state of heightened focus and immersion. One of the most influential psychologists around today.

In a world of multi-tasking (especially within the Digital Natives) we might ask the question what the view of Mihaly might suggest for this next generation. Linda Stone wrote about continuous partial attention (CPA) as a big issue. Eckhart Tolle talks about the Power of Now. Otto Scharmer from MIT talks about open mind, heart and will within his outstanding book Theory U to boost Presencing. All views seem to point to the same state of mind in my view. Personally, I believe 'soul gazing' seem to resonate with the vision of Csikszentmihalyi as well. My father - a painter - wrote a book on his life called Visible Absence in which he describes his work and the state of mind of being somewhere while being absent at the same time. Flow :)

Highlight in the video below is at 15 minutes and beyond. Stunning insights related to skills, challenges and flow. 

Leaving SPRXmobile

A few weeks ago I decided to leave SPRXmobile. This has been a very difficult and emotional decision.

It has been a very challenging and demanding roller coaster ride with both many highs and lows like in any start-up and perhaps even a little more. And it is not all a projection of my personality I would say ;-) The key highlights for the SPRXmobile team in my view are the deliverables with NOS Mobile and Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2008 with its grand final at the PICNIC event. I will remember this with a positive note.

As all insiders know, a lot has happened within the team. This impacted me considerably in different ways. The main reason for me to leave this startup though is a different point of view in relation to the company basics, strategy and its future. When this becomes structural it necessiates to take responsibility.

After resolving all remaining issues for SPRXmobile, I will be focusing my energy, love and attention on giving presentations and workshops as well as new projects concerning mobile internet as well as online marketing (my roots, especially sales-driven campaigns and conversion optimization). And as some of you would probably expect, I will continue my work on trends within the Metaverse and Multiverse and the future with biotech, nanotech, robotics, cognitive neuroscience and sustainability. After my role within NEMO 2028 and the Innovation Platform this week I discovered that my role will probably gradually shift towards more projects with more societal implications.

Furthermore, my work (sponsoring as well as some keynote speakers) within the Mobile Monday Amsterdam team will continue as this still generates a lot of positive vibes and inspiration for me.

No hard feelings, I learned more than 3 years before both privately and professionally, "dingen gaan zoals ze gaan" and hereby I wholeheartedly wish Claire Boonstra, Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald and Raimo van der Klein a highly successful future with Zcapes and SPRXmobile.

Keep On Rising!

Gary Small on iBrain, fMRI, Media and How Google Changes Our Mind

The video below with a short presentation by Gary Small is in my view interesting in many ways. It is original and shows how Digital Natives differ in their minds relative to Digital Immigrants. It is one of the first neuroscience and fMRI studies related to searching the web and it shows that the web has both positive and negative impact on our minds and learned skills. If you like this video, I strongly recommend reading the extensive discussion related to the August post in Edge.org by Nicholas Carr called Is Google Making Us Stupid? This post raises in my view some important issues related to multi-tasking, continuous partial attention (CPA), focus, critical and structured thinking, concentration and reading long, deep articles and/or books.

Daniel Suarez Presents DAEMON - Bot-Mediated Reality at the LongNow Foundation

There are many incredible, fascinating and inspiring videos and presentations available on the web and this seems to increase every year. Below one of the better ones in my view. The reason is an upcoming science fiction novel called DAEMON - Bot-Mediated Reality by Daniel Suarez. Recently, he gave a high-impact presentation at the LongNow Foundation, of which I am an active/paid member since the beginning of 2008.

DAEMON deals with bots (software based on narrow AI incorporating algorithms for specific search, retrieve and actionable goals) and the future of the (mobile) web. Daniel shows us that bots are on the rise and that they redefine what it means to be human. What strikes me about this presentation can be summed up as follows:

• The first time it impressed me, but by the time of the second viewing this video really inspired me to broaden my vision.
• Bots are within my field of interest since May 2005 when I worked with/for Yme Bosma and Bas Verhart within MediaRepublic for extending the opportunities of the Eccky bot. Artificial Intelligence (AI), both narrow and general, is key to the development of chatbots.
• Recently, I visited the The Singularity Summit 2008, a remarkable and highly recommended event with speakers like Esther Dyson, Ray Kurzweil, Nova Spivack, Eric Baum, Neil Gerschenfeld, Cynthia Breazeal (fantastic!) and Ben Goertzel. Many talks in this one-day-event considered AI, bots and robots. 
• Daniel Suarez raises several important questions based on the rise of bots. They focus on a new Internet (DarkNet with limited bot-access), lifelogging, pattern recognition, copyright (User Owned Data?), security, terrorism, privacy, authentication, authenticity, identity, outsourcing, (hyper)efficiency, games and virtual worlds and new organizational structures.
• Amazing insights related to advanced reputational (human) systems, social networks and Mobile Augmented Reality as a gateway to a newer, more secured and better Internet (DarkNet) as to block unlimited powers of bots in the next decades in the current internet.
• Bots are also related to the current global financial crisis. Bots are in almost all cases linear, dualistic and digital in nature. The non-linearity of the real world (see the remarks by Nassim Taleb) in most cases might imply sub-optimal decision making by financial bots as can be seen by our current crisis.

Recommended viewing by Peter Schwartz, Paul Saffo and Kevin Kelly! The book will be officially released on January 9th, 2009.

Leona Lewis singing Run by Snow Patrol LIVE

This LIVE performance by Leona Lewis is so incredibly fantastic and out of this world that I stop trying to convey its impact with words. Dedicated to Maaike.