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Today’s children (and youth in general) as the key users of IT technology of the future, was said too often during this edition of WCIT. In many speeches kids have been portrayed as ‘the only hope’ that will help us to cope with the increasing complexity of the technologies in the future, since they are ‘naturally smart’, and ‘learn new things quickly’. There is a lot of truth here, but there is also a great degree of naiveness too. Childhood is socially and culturally constructed as a period of learning in our contemporary culture, and in the same manner adulthood is often deprived from these learning opportunities. In my view the future lies not in betting unconditionally on kids, but creating the conditions for all to get similar learning opportunities. I also often say that the main issue with the adults is that they often should un-learn before start learning again. Have you ever seen Unlearning University?

Some of the presented IT tools were designed and developed specially for children, for example, the new school laptops by Intel. The new product was presented during the opening speech by Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel

In addition to this very nice, but also robust and ‘child-proof’ device, the company demonstrated a few software applications helping kids to explore serious subjects such as physics, but in a non-traditional, more playful, and apparently more efficient way.

The Surface tables from Microsoft were omnipresent at the WCIT; I counted more than 20 teams using them, either as an integral part of the projects or as presentation vehicles. They are still seen as new and edgy gadgets (do we say ‘gadgets’ to describe table-size devices?), and they still evoke a great deal of interest among the visitors (especially if there is something more on a table than mere image shuffling app). Games are the top attractors, even if people have no clue how to play. ‘Did I just win? or lose? No idea!’ was literally saying this man.

Funny enough, one very analogue table with a very old game on it was making quite a sizable competition to all the digital interactive Surfaces; this chess table was hardly ever empty!

At the WCIT I picked up an interesting publication, “ICT 2020: Four Scenarios Stories”. It is produced by Daniel Erasmus & Co (the team is called DTN), for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. The report is a very good piece, concise but informative and nicely illustrated. In many respects this can be seen a classical case of the scenario approach – starting with the expert interviews, followed by the brainstorms and scenario development, expressed as the interesting narratives. This small book can work almost like a manual, the ‘how to’ of the future scenario development.

There is also quite an elaborate website affiliated with this team/report (Future of IT), that combines a wiki about scenario development (comprehensive, but looking a bit abandoned, as far as I noticed) and a very informative video with the interviews of about ten well-known gurus in the field of “New Technologies”.

At some point these scenarios (called Efficient ICT, Big is Beautiful, Internet Islands, and New Frontiers) are presented as a tree with the forking pathways (itself a great improvement compared to the usual ‘Four Quadrants’ formats, but still causing some questions about how these scenarios were generated).

Unfortunately, this forking tree metaphor is not reflected on the cover of the report (see the first picture). As is, it represents a mix of a ‘crystal ball gazing’ and ‘looking forward’, widespread cliches of the folk futurology. But metaphor aside, the report itself is very good, informative and inspiring. The key problem it is still a very much inside-out thinking, a summary of the ideas by the IT professionals themselves only. There is a very little ‘craziness’, if you will, in all these scenarios; they are all developed from the same voice/mindset, the same I-position, if to use the language of the Multiple Self approach. As a result, it often remains on the level of litany (following the categorization by Sohail Inayatullah), despite all the claims of the authors to ‘challenge assumptions’ and ‘assume nothing’.

I would nevertheless recommend to anybody who is interested in the matters (of either IT or future studies) to fetch a copy of the report – apparently you can order it at the Ministry of Economic Affairs website.

Brainport, a regional development body of the Eindhoven Plus area, presented a range of interesting solutions at the WCIT that they themselves described as e_Health [as a side note, I question the use of e- these days; everything is e- now, by default; but at the WCIT this (pr)e-fix was used ubiquitously, itself a sign of a serious lag from reality, if you ask me).

TOCO Patch from Nemo Healthcare promises a patient friendly pregnancy monitoring (there’s not much on their site, as the team “is busy developing the next generation of fetal monitoring technology”).

Somewhat close to this domain is ROLA (Rhythm of Life Aid), an integrated sensor system for supporting medical stuff during cardiopulmonary resuscitation of the newborns (developed by the TU/e, Technical University in Eindhoven).

I personally liked QIKI, an intelligent pillow that can help people in “structuring their day and keeping them active”. It is meant for people with autism, Alzheimer’s or other forms of mental illnesses, but I guess it can be also used for a much wider audiences (in fact, for all of us – who doesn’t want a helping hand in ‘structuring the day’ and ‘keeping active’?). It’s amazing, in fact, how dumb our pillows, and beds in general, today. These are the ‘devices’ we spent 1/3rds of our lives with! Surely there should be a room for making them more intelligent and useful (and playful), beyond a merely physical, body supporting functions they provide now.

There was another concept directly working with ‘playfulness’: interactive Soundstep tiles, developed by NYOYN (apparently, you should hear “enjoy’ng” in the name). It was quite nice and amusing (especially when the visitors stepped on the tiles first time without knowing the consequences). But it claims to be more than just ‘nice’: the idea is that it will stimulate children’s imagination and social interaction. If yes, they again why stop on the children only?

More on these, and other concepts: www.brainportehealthinnovation.nl

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I was very impressed by the opening speech of Neelie Kroes, VP of the European Commission in charge of ‘Digital Agenda’. Very bright, very critical and – perhaps most importantly – self-critical, she told about current situation with ‘everything digital’ in Europe, and how it should change in the future. According to the recently published report, Europe’s Digital Competitiveness, the region may be doing not so bad in absolute figures (e.g., 94% availability of broadband, with 64% of the households actually using it; two thirds of the population are users of the Internet, with 80 million using it actively (i.e., creating content). But Europe is still lagging behind in many, especially in comparison with the US and some Asian countries in terms of leveraging on the potential of IT for business and society at large. The impact of IT on value creation is comparatively lower, and the game may even widen without “urgent transformation of the infrastructural architecture” complementary to IT. In simple words, organizations and companies don’t change quickly enough in response to the new realities. Management practices are old and often use IT to reinforce the status-quo; same goes for education.

Yet Neelie Kroes was somehow very optimistic about EU’s perspectives. She is betting heavily on the ‘youth’ who is, according to her, is still very active and agile, and creative in somewhat unique way in Europe. The latest remark was later echoed by a few IT industry captains (Intel, IBM and the like), who praised Europe for its critical and innovative mindset. Large fragmentation, one of the key problems of Europe, may actually lead to the key advantage – larger diversity and higher complexity of ideas.

This week was one of WCIT – the World Congress of Information Technology, held in Amsterdam, in its RAI Exhibition center, May 25-27. I wrote that I will be there, but clearly underestimated the scale of the event. It *was* huge, populous, rich, experiential, multi-layered, and simply overwhelming. I took 1,000+ pictures, spoke with dozens of people, listened to very interesting speakers, and gathered a box of papers (h-ha, how many scenarios told us that paper docs will disappear as we all become ‘digital’?)

The opening was quite impressive too, and appropriately hi-tech-ish: On the picture Charles Groenhuijsen, chairman of the event, opens the congress with the help of an interactive mascot, an Orange Tulip, and then the kinds who danced on the scene also used some sort of augmented reality. When they’re showing the boards with the QRCodes…

… their TV image was actually enhanced with some sort of digital creations.

Not hugely impressive, but interesting enough to make the opening ceremony attractive and playful.

More stories will follow, based both on the speeches and presentations, but also about the things presented in more than ten large pavilions. Stay tuned!

Published a small piece on the WCIT Opening on Demotix, an independent news agency I’ve joined recently. They’ve been obviously more focussed on the ‘now’ moments, but I hope that with time I will be able to populate their stream with the ‘future’ moments, or rather with the ‘future in the now’ ones.

I republished my (relatively) old presentation, that was originally aimed at supporting a design research project into ‘atmosphere’ (whatever that may mean). Exactly because it may mean many different things (and did so in the past), I decided to take the Spiral Dynamics approach as a starting point and develop a historic overview of the concept. An initial brief was very broad, and very vague too (perhaps deliberately), ‘atmosphere’ was deconstructed by the team as an interaction of ‘mind’, ‘body’, and ‘soul’ in ‘space’. I therefore added these sub-categories too.

The slides can not be used as an intro to the Spiral Dynamics approach, although I try to provide a minimum information package, so the reader can skip doing googling, at least an extensive one.

I will be attending the WCIT Summit in Amsterdam next week (although most likely only two days, 25 and 27). The (slightly unpronounceable) theme of this year is “Challenges of Change”, and the program is sheer: from Energy and Water, through Security and Mobility, and to Shared Spaces and Creative Industries. Lot of e-Things: e-Government, e-Health, e-Inclusion even, whatever that means. There is a special track on Finance. There is no special tracks on Education, alas.

There is a lot of VIP speakers, but there is also a lot of really interesting ones too: I hope to catch-up up with a few I know, and meet many that I don’t, yet.

During the recent conference in Brussels I bought a few interesting books, including the one by Petra Kemph,
You are the City: Observation, Organization and Transformation of Urban Settings. It’s difficult to call it a true book even, the brochure itself hardly makes 20 pages; but the true treasure (and a pleasure) are the 30+ transparent slides, showing various imaginary ‘layers’ of a complex urban body-machine.

The purpose of the book is not so much to read, but to play, to explore – manually – how various dimensions of the city life intersect and interact with each other. Surely it can be done *better* (i.e., quicker, easier) by using modern GIS packages. But there is something magical in shuffling these transparencies by hands, and seeing how new realties emerge.

I also try to use different kind of paper as a background, and not only a default white one; the transparencies also work amazingly if placed on other images, real maps, for examples. Interesting enough, at this very conference Bas Raijmakers was talking about the use of slides for the development of future scenarios.

“Cities are an everyday invention. They are informed and imagined by many people at a time. A city’s physical form is expressed in a vortex of temporal body relations, mirrored in the activities of a collective body of individuals interacting with one another. Cites are an open sage for complementary and conflicting encounters, and allow for multiple identities to emerge and evaporate. They are backdrops for dreams and desires, a platform for departures and arrivals. An individual pass through, new connections arises while others fade away. By wearing various masks and playing different roles, people change the urban landscape through their encounters.”