|
|
NZZ Folio 06/07 - Thema: Meine erste Million  Inhaltsverzeichnis
Who will be the next millionaire?
Experts tell us who is on their watchlist.
Saul Griffiths on Manu Prakash
It is an interesting question to be asked: "Who is on your watchlist?" It made me realise that there are probably hundreds or thousands of fantastic people and ideas out there that I should be aware of, or would like to be aware of, that I’m not.
That said, there is one person, a former lab-mate of mine in fact, who has always had great ideas and an admirable energy for realising them, whose work is just now showing the promise and potential of a great big idea.
Modern computing got a major boost with the invention of semiconductors, and the problems of vacuum tubes were surpassed with the use of silicon. This was a fantastic thing and has led to modern communications, computing, the internet, robotics and more. The problem, however, is that we’ve put most of our computing eggs into the one silicon basket. There are in fact many physical, chemical, and even biological ways of performing computation. There are different types of computational architecture, and it was really the rise of silicon that led to the dominance of what’s known as Von-Neumann architecture.
There are, however, many applications where one would like to do computation, but without the limitations of having to use silicon chips. Manu has developed an entire computational suite in a completely different physical system: air and water. It in fact uses bubbles of air shuttled around in microchannels filled with water or another fluid. The bubbles are the bits, and non-linearities in capillary flow are used to shuffle the bits for purposes of counting, computing, and more.
The potential applications to me are quite fantastic. In chemistry or biology, the ability to programmatically redirect small volumes of fluids around enables entirely new research tools and microfluidic reactors. For distributed sensors where you don’t want batteries and silicon chips this is a new low-computational count option. Perhaps most exciting to me is that this presents a new option in low cost, environmentally benign computation that could be used in everything from solar applications to packaging.
More than anything what I like about Manu, and a few rare other individuals, that in an age of ubiquitous computing, they have realised that we’ve only deeply explored one model of computation, and that there are many others out there that offer utility we don’t currently have or new ways of doing things. One or two bits of computation can do powerful things in the right place, even if it’s just bubbles.
Saul Griffith is the award-winning behind the low-cost prescription lenses, produced by a machine the size of an inkjet printer. Other projects include Howtoons and Instructables (comics that show how to build things and understand things), "smart" rope that can tell how much it’s carrying, and a house-sized kite for towing boats.
Diego Rodriguez on everyone who is turning green into red
What I find most dazzling these days are people working to change environmentally-focused products from being merely "green" to being what I like to call "red" as well.
Too many green products, such as the Prius hybrid, are the modern-day equivalent of a hairshirt. While undoubtedly morally and ethically rewarding to own, they lack a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to providing the kind of visceral delights which bring pleasure to our monkey brains. Something red, on the other hand, feels more like a Ferrari, overflowing with wonderful sounds, scents and physical sensations which forge the kind of emotional connections that keep you coming back for more.
I see exciting signs of red being added to green everywhere, at every scale of enterprise. Brian Witlin, an entrepreneur who teaches with me at Stanford, has developed a prototype of a machine which creates beautiful fabrics out of discarded plastic bags. The texture of the fabric is wonderful; it looks and feels like something an heirloom kimono would be sewn from. Patagonia, a Californian clothing company, is marketing an innovative wetsuit which uses organic Merino wool to keep surfers warmer than standard petroleum-based alternatives, but without their bulk. Wearing one makes you feel like a frisky dolphin instead of a mellow manatee. Even Toyota, manufacturer of the dowdy Prius, is trying to go very red as it goes ever more green, teaming with Giugiaro to create the Alessandro Volta, a hybrid sports car which accelerates like a 911 Turbo but sips petrol like a Fiat Panda. And yes, it’s painted red.
Red is about passion and delight, and we need more of it in our green products if they’re going to pull people away from existing, non-green solutions. Emotional connections will be, and always have been, worth millions.
Diego Rodriguez is part of the team at IDEO, where he helps organizations grow organically via innovation. He is also an Associate Consulting Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.
Jan Chipchase on the first time mobile user
Every day over a million new cellular connections are made, a million new people using mobile phones. The challenge if like me, you want to design for this space is that the mobile phone was originally created for consumers in places like New York or Geneva, whereas the vast majority of growth is coming from places like India, China and Africa, with people and places very different from what we already know. This is where my team in Nokia comes in - to travel the world to document what, why and how people do the things they do, and try to figure out ways that might help them do it better, or cheaper, or more enjoyably. And what we’ve learned has surprised us.
In many of these emerging markets the role of the mobile phone is more than just voice calls and text messaging - for many it is the internet connection, the way to document life experiences, their media hub, and in a world of mass urban migration it is for many their primary form of identity with the outside world. It’s in these places that we’re seeing the strongest innovations literally borne from the streets.
What do you do when your phone breaks? In cities like Delhi informal street repair services can be found in most communities that can fix pretty much any fault using little more than a small flat surface, a screwdriver, a toothbrush (for cleaning electrical contacts) and above all knowledge. This rich repair ecosystem makes it easier to afford a used phone, and extends the life of products that might otherwise end up in landfill.
Some phone operators support the sending of air time from one phone to another – you simply buy a prepaid card and send the scratch off number to the recipient for them to use. During our research in Uganda we came across an informal version of this called Sente. (the world Sente means money or the sending of money as airtime in Uganda). It works like this… Joe living in Kampala wants to send cash to Elizabeth living in a remote rural village. He buys a pre-paid card, and instead of topping up his own phone calls the phone kiosk operator in her village and uses the credit to top up his phone. The operator takes a commission of between 10 or 20% and passes the rest onto Elizabeth in cash. It essentially brings rudimentary banking services to communities that can be a day’s travel away from the nearest banking infrastructure and in essence brings rudimentary banking services to remote communities.
Sente and informal repair cultures are examples of street innovation borne through necessity, leveraging the strong social networks and making the most of very limited local resources.
The next big thing? Take your pick from the million new voices that today became part of the global conversation.
Jan Chipchase is a human behavioural researcher working in Nokia’s Tokyo design studio. He writes about the collision of people, culture and technology at www.janchipchase.com.
Luca Turin on Peter Wilde
A colleague once said to me: “you must meet Peter Wilde, you two would get on”. Soon after, Wilde came to demonstrate his invention, a method to extract the smell of just about anything (he claimed to be able to bottle the smell of rusty keys) without hurting it. Like a magician, he took some fresh flowers, put them in a pressure bottle, let in a colorless liquid, filtered it out, released the pressure, whereupon most of it boiled off, leaving a deposit of the most wonderfully fragrant, buttery freesia absolute at the bottom. It all happened so quickly I had barely time to see what was going on.
Only later did I understand that Peter Wilde had developed the first universal room-temperature method for total extraction of fragrances and flavors from natural sources. His life, like that of most independent inventors, has been an epic struggle to retain control of his invention while raising enough cash to make it happen. The aura around him is that of an unafraid 18th century sea captain. He once sang a nautical song to my baby daughter where every verse ended with “as the ship went down” as he dropped her gently, laughing, from his knee to the floor. I only recently found out what motivated him to start this twenty-year search for the perfect fragrance. He once planted one hundred thousand roses in Yorkshire. I asked why there, and why roses. His answer was: I live there, and roses are the love of my life.
Luca Turin is CTO of Flexitral. He is the author of the book The Secret of Scent (2006), which details the history and science of his theory of olfaction, and an acclaimed critical guide on perfume, Parfums : Le guide. He is also the subject of the 2003 book The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr. Since 2003, Turin has written a regular column on perfume, "Duftnote," for NZZ Folio. The column is also published in English on the magazine’s website.
Régine Debatty on Alice Wang
Three years ago, i was sharing an office space with the lovely Valentina. We had both just met a new partner. Mine was particularly demonstrative, he would text me SMS every hour or so to remind me of his passion. My colleague’s boyfriend started to do the same and our mobile phone’s beeps became the soundtrack of the office. She later confessed that, jealous of the constant messages i was getting, she had asked another of her friends to send her several SMS per day, just to "compete." That’s peer pressure for you and me and it drives us to do very silly things. Now what if the most innocent-looking objects could give us a hand and help us to effortlessly impress our peers? Alice Wang, student at the Royal College of Art in London, has designed Peer Pressure, a set of electronic devices that do just that.
Touch only one or two keys of the Fast Typing Keyboard and it will create the sound of a multitude of letters typed at a high speed that only the most efficient employee could achieve. The Positive Printer filters your email inbox and automatically prints out any invitation to exclusive parties, requests from the press or producers who admire your new projects, etc. When your colleagues pick up their copies from the shared printer, they accidentally get a glimpse of yours and get the “right” impression about you. The Popular Mobile demonstrates how sought-after you are by beeping at regular intervals to pretend you’ve received another SMS. Lastly, the Double Sided Headphone plays the "embarrassing" music you like so much inwards while emitting the beat of a more fashionable tune outwards.
Régine Debatty is a full-time blogger, a new media art curator and she writes about the intersection between art, design and technology on we-make-money-not-art.com.
Russel Davies on www.schulzeandwebb.com
There’s a great word you should know; consilience. It literally means the ’jumping together of knowledge’. Isn’t that a great phrase? It’s most recent meaning is the idea that all things; all sciences, all arts, are underpinned by a few key principles. Or something like that, I’m not 100% sure I understand it.
But what’s immensely powerful is the idea of ’jumping together of knowledge’, the concerted attempt to cross intellectual boundaries and institutional silos, a determined effort to put people with different perspectives and traditions of enquiry in the same room, solving the same problem. Because this is where good ideas come from; the collision of old ideas, cross-fertilisation, cross-breeding, blending. Yet the organisations most of us work in do everything they can to reduce the chances of that happening.
Which is why I love a tiny but perfect consultancy in London called Schulze and Webb. They embody this jumping together of knowledge and the fantastic ideas that emerge. Mr Schulze is a designer, a serial art school attender and a fan of the comic book. Mr Webb is a programmer and expert on the idiosyncrasies of the mind. They’re deep thinkers and deep doers and their combined enthusiasms yield ideas which cross all sorts of categories; and therefore are simple, compelling and novel. The best example is availabot; a little figure, a toy, which normally lies flat on your desk, connected to your computer’s USB port. But when one of your friends comes online, this little fella pops up and indicates that they’re available for IM or whatever. Pushing the digital into the physical. There’s a wealth of possibilities in this simple little thing. It crosses plastics, electronics and software and combines toys, social networking and customisation. It’s going to be big. Learn more at http://www.schulzeandwebb.com.
While at Wieden + Kennedy/London, Russel Davies helped create some of the most brilliant ads. He’s now freelancing, writing and spending more time with his blogs russelldavies.com, eggbaconchipsandbeans.com and a good place for a cup of tea and a think.
Warren Spector on Doug Church
Who or what’s on my watchlist? As always, it’s Doug Church. Secret master of gaming. If you’ve never heard of him, you’re not paying attention. I met him back around 1990 and we’ve collaborated on a bunch of titles since. Doug was a, maybe THE, key guy on Ultima Underworld--his first game... project director on Ultima Underworld 2... project director on System Shock... the guy who conceived of Thief... he’s "helped out" on all sorts of games, from Deus Ex to Guitar Hero. A super-talented programmer, fantastic designer, equally adept at conceptual thinking and execution (a rare combination), which makes him a powerful developer and terrific speaker. It isn’t for me to reveal what he’s working on now over at Electronic Arts--frankly, I don’t know very much and some EA exec would probably have a hit out on me if I revealed what little I DO know. I can tell you he’s working with Stephen Spielberg (so it’s a safe bet it involves story and character). And with Doug’s mad skillz It’s likely to be very cool, certain to break new ground and, if history is any guide, it’ll probably have the rest of the development community slapping their collective hands on their collective foreheads, asking why none of us thought of it! And, again, if history runs true to form, Doug will continue to shun the limelight and fail to get the credit he deserves. But everyone reading THIS will know!...
Warren Spector is president of Junction Point Studios, Inc. He is the creator of Deus Ex, Wing commander et al.
Teilen
Für 94 Franken pro Jahr gibt es NZZ Folio auch im Abonnement. Näheres hier.
Urheberrecht gilt auch im Internet: Verlinken erlaubt, Kopieren verboten.
|
|
|