#Netspeed 2012 Reflections

Having just returned from Netspeed 2012, I feel refreshed in the library profession.  Some great speakers presented, some great ideas exchanged, and superb conversations and connections resulted.  Sponsored by The Alberta Library, a consortium the majority of libraries in the province, Netspeed is considered one of Canada's leading library technology conferences.   I certainly enjoyed my time, despite not knowing what to expect from a local conference.  From the friendly registration table down to the closing keynote from Stephen Abrams, Netspeed 2012 gave me a few epiphanies regarding conferences.  Here are my top 10 recommendations for conference goers:

1.  City - Regardless of the locale, each conference is organized by a group of individuals set on showcasing the city, so make use of the expertise of these organizers and ask questions about places to see, restaurants to try out, and entertainment to check out.  Conferences aren't meant to be holidays - it's work after all.  Rather, they are opportunities to re-energize and enhance the conference experience . . . after the sessions are over.

2.  Make Connections - Make it a habit to converse with as many people as possible, whether it's the hotel concierge, folks on the same elevator, taxi drivers, and of course, conference delegates.  You're job is to learn as much as possible about the conference and also the city.  Why did they choose this city? Find out why.  Try to exchange business cards with at least two conference attendees.  Those connections might be useful in the future.

3.  Take Notes - Document what you're hearing.  Don't just rely on memory.  There's nothing like evidence of your attendance and learning than having it written on paper (or electronic device).  I find that reflecting on my notes and synthesizing what I've heard to what I can apply from these thoughts.

4.  Vendors - I used to find vendors as a supplement to conferences, perhaps as salesmen who support the conference economically in return for floor time.   However, I think that's not quite the approach we should take.  Vendors are full of librarians who speak the lingo, understand the challenges, and have worked with numerous libraries.  Vendors are a great resource for picking up on the latest technology developments in the field, stay abreast of emerging trends, and even create some possible connections for your libraries.  So try to pick up a few brochures and learn about what products and services they offer.  Don't be afraid to strike up a conversation.  Pick up some swag while you're at it.

5.  Prepare Early - Take some effort in preparing to pack for your trip and make sure your luggage has the right clothing for the weather.  There's nothing like a bad conference where you've left your passport or credit card at home on the way to the airport.  Make the conference experience as seamlessly enjoyable as possible by incrementally preparing each day leading up to the big trip and don't leave everything the night before.  Make sure you have your conference session schedule lined up so that you don't have to make the decision on the spot.

6.   Take time for Reflection - There's lots to digest during conferences. Sessions are often empty by midday as attendees are tired out from listening and talking.  Don't fall into the conference burnout trap.  Take time to reflect on what you've been hearing and quietly contemplate on what you can do to apply at your own work.

7.  Don't Rush - There are too many sessions for you to attend, so don't try to do everything at once.  I used to have a habit of session-hopping - spending five minutes here and there - trying to soak up as much as possible, expecting to absorb the conference on my own.  This type of multitasking is not only one version of ADD, it's also detrimentally unproductive.  It goes back to the previous point about preparing ahead of time to really pick the sessions and people you want to see and meet.

8.  Use Social Media - As you can't be everywhere at once, social media is so important in catching up on things you missed.  Don't forget of course share your knowledge and contribute what you've heard or learned to the webosphere.  Blog about it, tweet it using its hashtag, Instagram it.  But don't overdo it, like tweeting every five seconds during a session.

9.  Elevator Speech - Try to rehearse for a one-liner that best represents your work.  Your position will change from time to time as your workflow and projects shift and change.  Very rarely will our work fall static.   Think of a few things you can say in response to the oft-famous question "So what do you do now?"

10.  Share, Exchange, Present! - There's nothing like listening to an uplifting presentation and then enhancing it with your own knowledge through an insightful comment or personal anecdote.  While you're at a particularly great session, start to plant a seed in your own mind in building on it with your own future conference presentation.  Imagination breeds creativity and success.  That's why I think personal attendance at conferences can never be truly replaced by the online experience.  Conferences are meant for ideas to germinate and exchange between real people and human conversations.  So while you're at it, enjoy!

Happy Thanks Giving, Google

Happy thanksgiving, everyone, from Canada.   Even though it's weeks away from Thanksgiving in the US, it's always important to give thanks to life.   Kudos to Google for coming out with its Dear Sophie.   It's been a year, and it's still as good as when it first came out.

The Clash of Applegoo

It's really amazing to see the all out war between once former friends.  It's always sad to see how allies can disintegrate into enemies.  That's business, I suppose.  Just before Apple founder Steve Job's passing in 2011, he had realized the impending penetration of the mobile market by his once trusted friends at Google. The once deposed giant of mobiles Apple is now being dethroned by the new rivals Google, and the war is just heating up with the onslaught of lawsuits thrown at competitors by Apple. And vice-versa.

What's incredible is that Apple's victory lawsuit has produced even more dissatisfaction between the two frenemies.  While Samsung is livid that it had lost the case, Apple feels the compensation is insufficient.  What's the source of all this enmity?  Really it stems back to Apple's oligopolistic needs to squeeze out Google (partners of Samsung).  Where Apple once focused on building sleekly designed, Web-enabled devices, Google the benevolent search engine specialized indexed and delivered the Web’s billions of pages to users. The lines are now blurred -- Google (Android) is moving increasingly into the information communications industry and Apple (iPhone) is doing the same in moving into the realms of operating systems. It's hard to differentiate the two -- it will only continue to get fuzzier.   Until the digital world aligns itself, the lawsuits will continue.    In any profession, duplication usually means change is to come.   In the meantime, iPhone 5 has been released.  But looking at the two companies, there seems to be not much differentiation between the two.  Here's a look:

App Store vs. Google Play

Apple’s Siri vs. Google Now

Apple Maps vs. Google Map

Apple Passbook vs. Google Wallet

iCloud vs. Google Drive

Can GLAM's be the Future of Cultural Institutions?

In 2008, the Cultural Heritage Information Professionals (CHIPs) made a proverbial dent in the world of information professionals.  A jointly sponsored event hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Florida State University, and the Ringling Museum of Art, library, archives, and museum experts explored the information needs of cultural heritage organizations with a purpose to transcend the traditional boundaries between galleries, libraries, archives, and museums that would better serve the information age.

'Digital convergence’ has been a key theme of libraries, archives, and museums and has had a track record of previous research.  It finally reached a tipping point in 2009 when three influential publications from different professions -- Library Quarterly, Archival Science, and Museum Management and Curatorship --collaborated on special issues examining the areas of convergence for educators and professionals working to meet user needs in libraries, archives, and museums.

These journals are definitely worth a read.  But I think what is critical here is a paved road for cultural institutions.  Daily cuts to budgets everywhere have forced cultural institutions to shut down.  Is it too much to ask that 'digital convergence' has blurred traditional distinctions between galleries, libraries, archives, and museums?   Could the future see art galleries, libraries, archives, and museums can collaborate and combine forces to better serve their users?

The answer is a must and a yes -- for the future of libraries, archives, and museums.   The digital world has collapsed the cultural institutions industries.  I urge you to take a closer look at how these collaborative networks crosses those boundaries in the same way these authors’ projects collapse the boundaries between these journals.   

Gesture Based Libraries

I've profiled some developments of gesture-based computing in previous postings.  Now I want to take a closer look at one library's experience.  It's clear that this is no fad - Apple is currently in productions to roll out gesture-based technology soon. Founded in 1558, the Bavarian State Library is an early adopter of mobile applications.  With a collections comprising 9.7 million books, 57,500 current journal subscriptions, 93,600 manuscripts, the Bavarian State Library is one of the richest worldwide.   Its Munich Digitisation Centre (MDZ) is one of Germany's leading institution of digitization of written cultural material. Currently the Bavarian State Library can already offer 520,000 digitised books from its collections for free use.  Almost 90% of the digital books contributed by German institutions to the European cultural and scientific portal "Europeana" are from the Bavarian State Library.

Gesture-based computing will soon be a critical technology and has been profiled as an emerging trend in the Horizon Report 2012.   With gesture-based computing, just your hands and fingers are sufficient in directly interact with the screen - replacing mouse and keyboards altogether.

As far back as 2008, the Bavarian State Library had already installed purely gesture-controlled presentation system that personalizes virtual experience of digitized manuscripts, blending in history with cutting edge technology.   The BSB Explorer is a selection of 3D digital copies of the most valuable works of the Bavarian State Library, consisting of a large display and a sensor control unit - allowing for a purely gesture-based, completely contactless manipulation of the 3D animated digital copies on the display. Without the mouse or the touch screen as intermediate elements, the digitized 3D books can be paged through, turned and zoomed by mere movements of the hand.

Imagine being able to scan through collections of historical works through the swipe of your hands.  Imagine re-sizing the image through the waving of your fingers.   Observer how libraries, museums, and galleries are increasingly sharing their digital experiences.  Is this a sign of the times?   Observe how in this video gesture-based technology is used.  

Dean Koontz's Odd Apocalypse Leaves the Page

As a librarian, technology plays a critical role in my work.  Whether it is social media, mobiles, or cloud computing, I need to be aware of what's new, what's going on, especially the tools that students and patrons are using next.    The book publishing industry is making a leap of faith into the latest of cutting-edge technology, using augmented reality as a way to enhance its stories beyond the physical page.   Layar has already been working with its European magazine counterparts in blending in digital 2D objects to the physical pages to produce a sensational experience.   

Dean Koontz is one of my favourite authors, and his Odd Thomas Series is a well-received series of books about Thomas, twenty-year-old man who is able to see the spirits of the dead.  Bantam books is one of the first to use augmented reality is salvaging a lagging book industry.  What does this mean for libraries?  Could this mean the end of bar codes?   Could this mean that librarians will be able to use image recognition on their mobiles to conduct online reference?  Let's wait some more.  In the meantime, try out Odd Apocalypse -- you can see it come to life using your mobile phone or computer webcam.   Try it out.  

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For iPhone and iPad users:

1. Download the free Dean Koontz iPhone/iPad app at iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dean-koontz/id409292571?mt=8. If you already have the Dean Koontz app, check your “Updates” button for your iPhone/iPad to make sure you have the latest version of the Dean Koontz app.
2. Once you start the app, look for the button that says “AR” on the homepage and click it, bringing you to the augmented reality viewer in Dean’s app.
3. Position the hardcover book on a flat surface like in the picture below. Point your iPhone or iPad at the front book cover in a way that the entire book cover is seen within the viewer and watch the cover come to life. It may take a few seconds to load.

For Android users:

1. Download the free Dean Koontz Android app in the Google Play app store at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobileroadie.app_929or download the standalone augmented reality Android App for Odd Apocalypse at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zerofractal.dean.koontz. 
2. If you’re using the Dean Koontz app, look for the button that says “AR” on the homepage and click it, bringing you to the augmented reality viewer in Dean’s app.
3. Position the hardcover book on a flat surface like in the picture below. Point your iPhone or iPad at the front book cover in a way that the entire book cover is seen within the viewer and watch the cover come to life. It may take a few seconds to load.

For webcam users:

1. Visit the augmented reality viewer page on DeanKoontz.com by clicking here.
2. Make sure your webcam is plugged in and turned on.
3. If you see a message requesting access to your camera such as the one below, hit “Allow.”
4. Hold your hardcover book up in front of your webcam. Be sure to take care not to obscure the book cover with your fingers, and position the book cover in a way that the entire book cover is seen on screen and watch the cover come to life.

Interactive Print in Augmented Reality - The Future of the Web

Layar has been one of the most innovative and progressive web start-ups I've seen in a while.  It's taking the technology world by storm, and just today, it's come out with something I truly think will lead to a revolution in how we interact on the web.  Layar has been working on this for over a year, and I believe it's hit critical mass, with the numerous developments happening concurrently with augmented reality programs across the world.

Layar has been collaborating with European magazine and newspaper publishers to help enhance the static pages of their publications with digital content, and in particular, offering publishers the tools to simply create the interaction themselves.  As Layar reveals, the last two issues of LINDA. Magazine, including the L’HOMO issue, are all embedded with buttons. The vtwonen magalogue with all of its “Buy” buttons.  The latest Eppo comic from Senefelder, the VPRO Gids.   Introducing: Layar Creator.

Will this mean the end of QR codes?  Seems like it. Layar Creator's emergence feels a lot like when the first services like Geocities provided easy access to creating websites, interacting with other users, and paving the way for the Web 2.0 era.  Layar Creator is almost like a WYSIWYG application for activating print pages with digital AR content. Anyone with a computer can upload images or PDFs, drag-and-drop any of a number of digital buttons onto the pages and publish them on the Layar platform. Layar Creator requires no software to install.  No fancy code work needed, no developers.  Whereas it took months of web programming to put together -- can now be done in mere moments.  

Layar uses image recognition technology, as it recognizes existing images from the pages of magazines and newspapers without the need for special markers like QR codes.   It's a path where I think we're truly leading to the so-called, much hyped but little-understood Web 3.0.    This early premonition of how "digital tagging" can be applied to physical objects are, in my opinion, the foreshadowing of the Web of Things and information shadow that will be a distinctive feature of Web 3.0.  

From Card Catalogues to Gesture-Based Computing

There have been a wave of new touch screen, mobile, and cloud-based emergent technologies out in the past few years.  One of them is 'SixthSense', a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information. Currently a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab, Pranav Mistry is the inventor of SixthSense.  This game-changing technology is actually a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world – just like the movie. He has also invented an invisible mouse called Mouseless, which is controlled by an infrared laser beam and an infrared camera, both of which are embedded in the computer itself.   The current prototype system costs approximately $350 to build.   Pranav is already a celebrity with some of his innovative inventions, yet in the library world, there's still some questions as to what exactly gesture-based computing or augmented reality can provide or benefit to libraries.  Does the gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projecting an analog watch make for a practical application?

As I was listening in to discussions in my Digital Humanities Summer Institute session, I became more appreciative of the future of such technologies.  It's not so much the technology -- rather, it's the social, political, and business end of things which must be evaluated and researched well in order for a technology to function and thrive.    I liken the card catalog as analogous to gesture-based computing.  With the card catalogue, a stationery flip card is just a piece of card board; however, with text and a collocation element, it becomes something much more.   It becomes an essential tool of libraries, cataloguing, and classification.   Despite its disappearance from libraries, its associations with the library are so heavily embedded that it's almost impossible to remove it entirely from the library lexicon.   Library websites are often still referred to loosely as the library catalogue. So what can we learn about emerging technologies?   Could we envision a future where library patrons can easily flip through entire shelves of books by just a wave of their arms?   Can we envision a library where patrons don't even need to leave their couches, but can view entire shelves of books in the comfort of their homes?   Some libraries are already thinking ahead it seems. 

Layar For A Run

Layar is my technology company of choice to examine. A trio of tech experts in 2007 Raimo van der Klein, Maarten Lens-FitzGerald and Claire Boonstra founded Mobile Monday in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. They did this during their free time as a hobby in order to connect people who shared their enthusiasm for mobile technological innovation. This is a strong cast of leaders with expertise in the entrepreneurial world of emerging technologies, particularly in the mobile smartphone market. 

Mobile Monday Amsterdam flourished and in 2008 Raimo, Maarten and Claire set up in business together. This trio also began exploring the possibilities offered by content layered on top of reality. This eventually became Layar. What is important to note is that within hours of launching on June 16th 2009, it had already been picked up on by most of the media in their world. This is a seasoned, dedicated team of entrepreneurs, and for that reason, I sense this is a blue chip product and company to invest in.

Claire Boonstra has been named one of the Top 10 Most Influential Women in Technology by FastCompany and Laptop Magazine. Since earning her degree in Civil Engineering in 2001, Claire has worked in Mobile, Marketing and New Media. Previous employers include KPN Mobile (introducing i-mode to the European market), Unilever (European Brand Manager) and Talpa Digital (new online-media ventures). Together with her co-founders Maarten Lens-FitzGerald and Raimo van der Klein, Claire started Mobile Monday Amsterdam and SPRXmobile before launching Layar in 2009. Claire is primarily responsible for facilitating the third-party brand, agency and developer ecosystem of Layar.

Maarten Lens-FitzGerald (General Manager of Layar) has been an Internet professional since 1993, developing Web 2.0 strategies and campaign concepts. In 2007 he brought his expertise to the mobile industry, co-founding Mobile Monday Amsterdam and later SPRXmobile with Raimo van der Klein and Claire Boonstra. In 2008 Maarten was diagnosed with cancer and became known as Patient 2.0, sharing all his experiences through the social Web and via his blog Maartens Journey.com.

Raimo van der Klein (Chief Executive Officer) was co-founder and partner at SPRXmobile – a mobile agency focusing on strategy and concept development with clients like Vodafone and Rabobank following a successful career in Sales & Marketing at Nokia and as Principal Innovation Manager at KPN Mobile.

As the Horizon Report 2010 and 2011 have indicated, augmented reality will be an emerging force in the educational technology world. Layar has been one of the early adopters using AR technology, especially as it uses both the Android and iPhone applications. Not only do Layar’s mobile application features content layers that may include ratings, reviews, advertising, or other such information to assist consumers on location in shopping or dining areas, it also allows users to create their own place-of-interest (POI) and adding their own content to this application. In my opinion, Layar is the new blue chip company to watch for now in the emerging educational technology and commercial sector.

World Confederation of Institutes and Libraries in Chinese Overseas Studies 2012 Presentation at UBC

“Chinese Canadian Stories: Uncommon Histories from a Common Past” is community engagement and digitization initiative that contributes to the reconstruction of the identities of Chinese Canadians. Focusing on UBC Library’s role as nexus for university-community engagement, this presentation outlines interactions with the local Chinese communities and their roles in shaping the identities of Chinese Canadians across the Pacific. As a case study of one Canadian academic library’s drive in the recovery, creation, organization, promotion and research of Chinese Canadian historical materials in both English and Chinese, this project showcases the complex links and dynamics between institutional efforts to preserve archival materials for learning and research and the preservation of family history in the community for posterity that can be studied on a number of levels.

 Whereas academic libraries have traditionally concentrated on building collections, providing research support to students and faculty, and offering information literacy instruction, they have always been integrated into the broader aspirations of the university. As the academic library can be natural focal point for this interaction and exchange between academia and community, Chinese Canadian Stories (www.chinesecanadian.ubc.ca) helps position UBC Library as a gathering place for community outreach and community-based research.

 Through this project, it can be said that UBC Library is making a difference in innovatively creating a different approach to the preservation of the Chinese Canadian history and correcting the past’s erasures in Canada’s national memory, by working with academics, libraries and archives as well as the diverse communities of Canada. In all, UBC collaborated with twentyeight communities across Canada – from Victoria, BC to St. John’s, Newfoundland – to document the history of Chinese families in the twentieth century. This paper presents the project of “Chinese Canadian Stories” as a model for how an academic library can successfully collaborate with an ethnic community to preserve their culture and history and brought a new awareness of their social identity. The benefits and challenges of such collaboration are discussed in the context of a real-world application. And recommendations for future applications are presented.

Augmented Reality In Glasses?

Google's latest foray in augmented reality has really impressed me.  It's already done well with Google Goggles.  It's pushing boundaries of augmented reality with its latest innovation in the form of wearable glasses.   Educational experts are pointing to augmented reality as the next wave of technology to transform the way instructors teach and students learn.

Augmented reality provides a powerful constructivist experience for exploration and discovery of the connected nature of information in the physical world. It also aligns with situated learning in that it that permits experimentation and exploration to take place in the same context in which the activity occurs.  Augmented reality has much potential for serious gaming applications, as it adds an element of game simulation in the application.

In the Horizon Report, a research report published annually by the education think tank New Media Consortium that charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and creative inquiry, has forecast in their 2010 and 2011 reports that augmented reality as an educational technology will be a be an integral tool in education.  Imagine a student as he waves his mobile device around the room to "uncover" hidden texts and information embedded on a world map on the wall with questions and answers all there for the student to view.   Or imagine a doctoral student completing his American history dissertation scanning his mobile device over certain key hot spots in the in the Jefferson Library in the Library of Congress and being able to not only pick out each title on his device, but also open the digital book and flip through each page.

Whether Google Glasses will take off or not is beside the point: Google Glasses is one example of where "augmented reality" glasses is another step in the direction of the Internet-of-things -- where the virtual world and the real world collide and merge.  This early prototype of the Google Glasses, which is developed from the same individuals that crafted self-driven cars, can snap photos, initiate videochats and display directions at the sound of a user.  While augmented reality has been long in development, particularly by military and private commercial industries, augmented reality hasn't hit full force until just recently.   It's exciting to see where it will go.  How will libraries take full advantage of this?   Time will tell.

The Future of Libraries? Or the Nextflix of the Future?

Although there has been a plethora of articles in the literature about the future of libraries, one recent ones stand out as they purposefully ask librarians to take a step back and caution about the optimistic future that Library 2.0. Steve Coffman's The Decline and Fall of the Library Empire is a particularly sobering look into the state of libraries.   With the decline of video stores, DVD and music sales, and withering of bookstores, one needs to take a closer look at how libraries will fare down the road.   Maybe librarians won't be there when the semantic web arrives; or as e-Books dominate reading experiences.  Perhaps becoming gaming centres and virtual e-Book stores might not be the way to go.  Coffman remarkably synthesizes the challenges with some highlight packaged quotes:

On cataloguing websites: "...remember those heady early days when we thought we were going to catalog the web? OCLC even set up a whole project for this task back around the turn of the century (sounds like a long time ago, doesn’t it?). It was called CORC, or Collaborative Online Resource Catalog. Librarians around the world were supposed to select and catalog “good, librarian-certified” web resources. There was even talk of assigning Dewey numbers to websites — an idea which I’m sure would have brought tears to the eyes of many, especially our patrons. Today, the only evidence you can find of CORC is a few sentences in a list of abandoned research projects on the OCLC website and some links to PowerPoints and articles saluting it — most now more than 10 years old"

On virtual reference: "...although virtual reference is still around — supplemented by “text” and SMS — it is a mere shadow of its former self. Most of the commercial vendors closed up shop. The QuestionPoint 24/7 service stays in the business, probably because it does not have quite the same profit requirement as the commercial services. The Virtual Reference Conference is gone and, while you can still find a few programs on virtual reference at regular library conferences, today it’s far more likely to be a “talk table” than a room jampacked with hundreds of avid librarians, the way it was back in the old days."

On libraries: "....the world is moving on. Each service we’ve provided in the digital arena is being superseded by new technologies or by other organizations better suited to deliver services. When Google is finished scanning it will have no more use for library collections. So after 50 years in the digital market, libraries are back where they started. Our electronic library has been built, but others own and manage it. We are left with the property we began with, physical books and buildings that house them. In reality, those are not inconsiderable assets in a world where it may be uneconomical to have physical bookstores or places where people can get together to listen to stories or discuss books and ideas....Figuring out how to exploit those assets in this new environment will not be easy."

Netflix is a stark reminder of how soluble a seemingly immovable powerhouse like Blockbuster can be driven out of the retail video business within a few short years upon the arrival of a cheaper, more accessible competitor.  Libraries are certainly aware of the challenges of space, information, and literacy.   Coffman questions that had books been inexpensive in the 19th century, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie would've spent his money elsewhere: yet, he chose libraries, for they offered a public good in promoting reading through book collections.  The Gates Foundation supported libraries in the 1990's when libraries became the forefront for providing free internet service at a formative period when service charges were unaffordable for most.  

With social catalogues like Librarything, Goodreads, Google Books, and Amazon, traditional library functions are being challenged from all perspectives.   But like all other professions and services, the future is indeterminate - and whatever happens will be unrecognizable from its current form today.  Will libraries continue to be supported by public funding?  Could we envision a hybrid model of a commercialized-private industry, integrated and rebranded with online bookstores and publishers?  Or could we envision libraries being reformulated for a different mandate altogether?  Could another Andrew Carnegie come along charged with a mission to change the world, using libraries as the engine to engage communities?  Would it be in the form of books?  Or would it be a completely different service?   

Wither the University? Or Simply, the Educational Long Tail

Director of Center for 21st Century Universities and Professor of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Richard Demillo has an intriguingly controversial argument about higher education: it isn't working.  With rising costs of tuition and textbooks, higher education has outpriced too many.  Demillo sees some worrisome trends for the future. While the elite Ivy League and prestigious schools such as Harvard and Yale's are likely to survive any environment, the majority of public institutions of learning are walking towards the path of self-destruction. With enrolments decreasing each year, institutions are still turning away potential students.  In Abelard to Apple, DeMillo traces the history of the university system to its origins in European monasteries, and sees that the centuries-old model of higher education inherited by American institutions are out of tune with the the social, historical, and economic forces at work in today's world.

Online Universities -  If University of Phoenix, Open University, and Athabasca University is showing us, distance education is enormously successful, and is giving campuses of higher education a run for its money.   Students find great value for their tuition fees and the business model is efficient and profitable.  Demillo sees online universities in fact returning to the origins of European universities -as learning institutions that is not restricted by class or economy.  

Industry Drives Education - Regardless of the philosophy of higher education, students enrol at higher education with an intent for employment.  Universities in India and China are at the cutting edge of creating new areas of research that synchronizes with the needs of industry.  Demillo points out institutions such as Zhejiang University's newly opened Department of Ocean Sciences in 2009 which puts theory into practice by fusing engineering with coastal trade being innovative in fusing the practical needs of trade in that area with the latest research in the interdisciplinary sciences.   It's a conundrum: does a liberal arts education actually foster or prevent critical thinking? Demillo seems to believe that universities and colleges theorize to the point that it does its graduates disservice by training them to think as their professors.

A New Way To Be Accredited  - Accreditation hampers education more than anything.  If anything, Apple's iTunes U and MIT's OpenCourseWare has also shown that with the web, learning has not only become accessible, but free.   Massive open online course (MOOC) courses where the participants are distributed and course materials also are dispersed across the web.  Breaking apart the fabric of the current system, Demillo argues that accreditation of a degree should not be at the whim of universities.  Could we imagine a future where students can pick and choose their own degrees? Could they tailor their studies to what they truly want to learn?  Could this be achieved in an open system where universities champion the ecology of courses rather than the rigidity of structure?   Will the future of higher learning be based on this educational long tail work? 

Open Access or Digital Parasites?

Mozart in training

Robert Levine's Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are destroying the culture business, and how the culture business can fight back offers some fascinating thoughts. Good thing he's not giving it away online in PDF.   Levine makes some interesting points: online users (and customers) love the technology free ride.  Why bother buying CD's and DVD's when they're easily streamed or downloadable?

Media companies on whom the digital industry feeds out of business are going out of business. As Levin points out, "Newspaper stocks have fallen to all-time lows as papers are pressured to give away content, music sales have fallen by more than half since file sharing became common, TV ratings are plum­meting as viewership migrates online, and publishers face off against Amazon over the price of digital books."

It's true: the media industry has lost control.  It's fighting and desperately clawing and hanging its way confusingly to stay afloat.  Part of the problem is that the history of copyright has existed long before the digital world disorder.  The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) was passed in 1998, seven years before YouTube.  Seven years before remixing became the norm.  Legal scholar Lawrence Lessig has merit when he argues that "creative remixing" is healthy within reason.   Yet it appears that the balance has been tipped to the point where it could have harmful effects on the culture industries.  Here are a few points:

Copyright and Originality - Sure, YouTube might produce some unique content, but how original really are they? Much of the viral remixes we view online are based on the original products that had been built on the backs of commercial enterprses.   Could there be Chad Vader without StarWars?    There might have been some unique online stars created overnight, but ultimately these stars still require real agents to promote their originality.  They ultimately require people to buy their originality whatever form that may be.   There are many who don't necessarily require monetary gains; but ultimately most do.  And it isn't through Google Ads.

Content Quality - Yes, it seems print newspapers have also given way to digital content.  Commercial newspapers are giving away their copies for free.  Content is given away as "information wants to be free."   It's an exciting time for open access and open source.  Chris Anderson had long argued that businesses should give it all away for free.   But is this really for the best though?  For one thing, anyone can open a blog and write about the news - it's called grassroots citizen journalism.  But much of it is run on shoe string budgets.  Editorial oversight is thinly disguised.  Much of the news aggregators in fact churn out such news that way.   Look at the Huffington Post.

E-Books & Authorship - Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is one of the first services to allow for any writers to self-publish books on the Amazon Kindle Store.  It's supposed to be the future of publishing.  To cut out the middleman the publisher so that the author can directly publish his work inexpensively and accessibly.  It will democratize the literary world.  It will change the book industry; with e-books, who needs to purchase directly from a publisher when it can be easily created and bought in digital form?  Just hire a designer and a copy editor (or not).  But is that really how it will happen?   Perhaps not.  With publishers no longer involved, who will promote emerging writers?   For decades publishing houses have bought the rights of the author's creativity in return for selling their books.  Without them, will new authors be able to compete with the established stars?   Does the long tail promised by Chris Anderson really work for those artists on the tail who need to survive on next to nothing until they get noticed?

Will artists return to the patronage system as in the days of Mozart?  Levine brings forth a really intriguing and plausible scenario.  Before the days of record companies and career agents, the only way performers, musicians, painters, and sculptors could maintain their art work was through the financial support of the nobility and the wealthy.  With the demise of the commercial industries, will artists revert back to this classical period?  Will cultural producers such as authors and musicians rely only on the rich to support them? 

An Internet of Things in Education

This year’s Horizon Report 2012 identifies mobile apps and tablet computing as technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the first horizon of one year or less.  Of the six technologies highlighted in the Horizon Report, two were also noted in the 2011 edition. Game-based learning remains in the two- to three-year horizon, as does gesture-based computing in the four- to five-year horizon.  For the first time, Internet of Things is introduced and is seen emerging in the third horizon of four to five years.

I'm most intrigued by the report's Internet of Things.  I've noted in the past that the Internet of Things (IOT) will be a driving force in not only web and internet technologies, but will be an ubiquitous part of our lives, seamlessly integrated into our personal lives.  Imagine being able to tag physical objects and being able to connect them to the web.  Ultimately, the IOT extends the way we understand and convey information, thus making objects addressable (and findable) on the Internet is the next step in the evolution of smart objects — interconnected items in which the line between the physical object and digital information about it is blurred.

In the Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku has already pointed this out.  Ubiquitous computing frees the chip from the computer.   Thousands of chips scattered everywhere there is an object, being tagged as it is produced.  Is this exciting or will it just be confusing?  Information specialists will also be important if this technology is to take off.  If the web is one big disorganized mess, what will happen once the physical world expands this messiness?

This has to be an exciting time for libraries.  The Internet of Things is really not so different from what libraries have faced since the card catalogue days: collocating disparate pieces of information from the books to cards.  Eventually it became matching the physical (books) with the digital (OPAC).  Then it evolved to bar codes.  Then RFID with library books.  As a metaphor, the IOT takes this beyond the walls of libraries and extends beyond tagging a book to just about anything that has shape and form.  I encourage you to watch the video above.

Demise of Tradition?

“I’m not interested in selling a bowl. That’s not the business I’m going to be in,” Heather Reisman told the Globe and Mail in November. “I am interested in creating an experience around the table for the customer.” As MacLean's article recently argues, that Indigo Chapters “experience” paradoxically relies on the cultural patina of books—and their ability to provide product adjacencies, especially around cookbooks and children’s books, two categories predicted to defy digitization. As the article asserts,

"The new product mix is wisely skewed to women, the primary book buyers, and exudes comfort, warmth and well-being: teapots, wine decanters, yoga socks, lavender-camomile bubble bath, pretty notepaper and $28 olive oil."

What's happened to the Blockbusters (or Rogers Video, in Canada) is slowly happening to bookstores.   What's happening to Virgin Records and HMV is slowly happening to bookstores.   The method for how one purchases CD's and DVD's has been completely transformed; the way for how consumers borrow a movie is also completely reversed.    Venerable old Yellow Pages which for decades has been the point of destination when it came to finding names and businesses has also lost its market.  People have moved away from the product experience to the "digital experience," and it's really interesting seeing the dramatic change in the way publishing, bookstores, and libraries are transitioning.

In a way, these three businesses - publishing, book selling, and librarianship - have been the last to be revolutionized by the digital world although the tensions are there and the changes are coming swiftly.  With all these changes in business, it is fair to say that it seems libraries and publishing have been the late in the game to be hit with changes.  Two reports indicate more changes to come with print.  The bookstore model has been altered with less demand for books: but how will publishing and libraries fare?

In a recent study released by the Education Advisory Board, Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services, it proposes for wholesale changes to how academic libraries are run: workflow efficiency, relationships with journal publishers, patron-driven acquisitions model, repurposing library spaces, and organizational cultures.   In a report prepared for the Association of Canadian Publishers called The Impact of Digitization on the Book Industry, proposes that Canadian publishers should brace themselves in digital rights management, copyright, and e-books.   Is this the death of the book?   (A popular question nowadays). 

How To Build

Srinivas Rao is the author of The Skool of Life and is a blogging expert.  I came across this excellent presentation created by Rao.   How to "Build An Insanely Loyal Tribe."  I am intrigued.  I hope you are to.  

The Affordances of the $100 Laptop

The XO-1, previously known as the $100 Laptop, is an inexpensive computer intentionally to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to allow for access to knowledge, and opportunities to "explore, experiment and express themselves.”   Soon the the third-generation XO-3 will be release in 2012.  By constructivist standards, the One Laptop Per Child program is a dream come true.  It certainly allows for students to construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences.  What better way than to permit a child in the slums of India to use Google to search the world of its wonders?

MIT’s One Laptop per Child Project is indeed a compelling, contemporary design for a learning environment, as it aims to provide each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop.  As MIT’s OLCP asserts, “To this end, we have designed hardware, content and software for collaborative, joyful, and self-empowered learning. With access to this type of tool, children are engaged in their own education, and learn, share, and create together. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.” 

I’d like to take a closer look at the structures of affordances, particularly how Donald Norman believes design is of the utmost priority, particularly the affordances construct where properties of the objects that set up a relationship between those objects, possibilities for action in the design, and users who encounter them.  When does glass become useful for windows; when does it become an eating utensil?   As Norman puts it, “Anything we can interact with is an affordance.”  The same lenses should be gazed upon educational technologies.

As much as a technologist as Steve Jobs was, he certainly prioritized the practicalities of design.  As he puts it, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”  Contextualized as a piece of “educational design,” I wonder then how the pieces of the $100 Laptop puzzle works.  For example, who teaches the digital literacy?  What lessons are planned in advance?  Are students simply allowed to surf aimlessly or are there specific learning resources used?   Will e-Books be provided?    While its website provides multitude of success stories, how are children really instructed?  It is a courageous novelty to provide luxuries to children (of any socioeconomic structure) for education, I just wonder how these digital literacies are being nurtured?

UnLibrary Service Model

Gene Tan is one those rare individuals that is making a difference in the profession of librarians, one innovation at a time. A creator of Ask Stupid Questions, Aspiration PathfinderTM and Bear FruitTM. Ask Stupid Questions is a reference inquiry gameshow that is based on a concoction of brainstorming, gameshow format, relays, music and play. The intention is to have staff get off their comfy seats, break out of their inhibitions and start rattling off "stupid questions" to develop creative ideas for key projects. So successful has the programme been that it caught the eye of the private sector -- Sun Microsystems became the first private sector organisation to include the workshop as part of its drive to generate new marketing ideas for the following year, and several more rounds in the private sector, including companies like SingTel, as well as non-profit bodies such as the Association of Diabetes Educators, and a core training programme for the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC). Ask Stupid Question's popularity has grown almost exponentially, as it has been conducted at more than 50 organisations for over 2,000 participants. 

In addition to the Aspiration Pathfinder, an experience-driven subject discovery programme, experiments with combining the travel experience with library services and Bear Fruit do-good, a creativity programme conducted for the benefit of institutions such as the Institute of Mental Health, Tan also developed programmes, conferences and exhibitions to bring libraries into the mainstream of businesses, institutions and communities in Singapore. Tan also directed Singapore Memory, a national digital project to collect, preserve and access Singapore’s knowledge assets to tell the Singapore Story.

Certainly both pioneering and controversial, Tan calls this unconventional method the "UnLibrary Service." Arguing that the traditional model of library service has been bounded by time, place and transaction, the UnLibrary service model seeks to free library services from these constraints in order to deliver these services on the premise that time, place and transaction are not constrained or pre-determined. Instead, services are treated to a new platform for the delivery of these services: the human experience. Sounds nice, but what are the mechanisms for this? Tan coins this the "three experiences" - Experience by Straying; Experience by Mystery; and Experience by Subversion. Catchy, but does it work everywhere? It'll be interesting to replicate it.

Future of Shift

In 1970, Alvin Toffler's Future Shock altered the world's thinking by arguing that society was facing a "future shock," a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies -- namely that the world had "too much change in too short a period of time."   Toffler popularized new concepts such as "information overload" and the "third wave." His insights resulted in a US president to commission a special report, inspired cultural and artistic creations, and gave a powerful new concept to the social sciences.

Could Lynda Gratton's Shift: The Future Work is Already Here have a similar influence in the way we perceive the world and work?   It's certainly too early to see, but from judging the arguments made and the quality of thought put into the book, there is great potential.

A faculty at the University of London's Business School, Gratton looks at current developments of the world, and predicts what it would look like in 2025. A workbook created is available for download that offers readers an opportunity to think more deeply about how to go about crafting one's working future. Follow the three steps and ten questions to make the Shift yourself - Download The Shift workbook. Free of business jargon or economic models, the book is offers refreshing look at what might be, not what the world should be.  This book is an excellent companion for any librarian and information worker who is truly interested in how information, data, and the web is altering our work and our lives

1.  Force of Technology - Ten pieces of this technological puzzle includes: technological capability increases exponentially; five billion become connected; the Cloud becomes ubiquitous; continuous productivity gains; social participation increases; the world's knowledge becomes digitalized; mega-companies and micro-entrepreneurs emerge; avatars and virtual worlds; the rise of cognitive assistants; technology replaces jobs.

2.  Force of Globalization - Eight storylines that emerge: 24/7 and the global world; the emerging economies; China and India's decades of growth; frugal innovation; the global educational powerhouses; the world becomes urban; continued bubbles and crashes; the regional underclass emerge

3.  Force of Demography and Longevity - Four trends will emerge: the ascendance of Generation Y; increasing longevity; some baby boomers grow old and poor; global migration increases

4.  Force of Society - Seven developments will reshape our way of living: families become re-arranged; the rise of reflexivity; the role of powerful women; the balanced man; growing distrust of institutions; the decline of happiness; passive leisure increases

5.   Force of Energy and Resources - Three emerging trends in energy that will affect the way we work: energy prices increase; environmental catastrophes displace people; a culture of sustainability begins to emerge

The Fall of Faculty?

Benjamin Ginsberg's latest book, The Fall of the Faculty, is a scathing yet insightful analysis into the increasing tensions between university faculty and its administration.    A polarizing book to say the least -- verging on the edges of controversy -- Ginsberg asserts that since the turn of the century, universities have increasingly added layers of administrators and staffers to their payrolls every year even while laying off full-time faculty in increasing numbers -- all in the name of budget cuts.

While many of these non-academic--administrators are merely "career managers" who not only reduce the importance of teaching and research, they also manipulate the legitimate grievances of minority groups and liberal activists to "chess pieces" in a game of power politics. By championing initiatives such as affirmation action, social justice, and gender rights, the administration has gained favor with these groups, while boosting their own powers over the faculty.  Intensely fascinating, heavily cloaked with sarcasm and wit, this work is definitely going to be a polemical force in years to come in the academic world.

The danger of Ginsberg's arguments -- though cogently displayed -- is that it potentially creates more problems than solutions.   (In fact, Ginsberg offers very few).   Ginsberg's confidence that the university is the nurturer of society's ideas and hotbed of political and industrial movements -- where the Silicon Valley's and the Civil Rights movements had its origins -- has been the discord of many who dispute that the university is out of touch with that very society that Ginsberg's university seeks to salvage.  In somewhat patriarchal fashion, the notion that faculty is the central raison d'etre of the university place perhaps not only distances the university from society, but places its students as almost an afterthought.   While one cannot fault Ginsberg's hesitations about the rise of managerialism and bureaucracy at the expense of efficiency and mandate of teaching and learning so central for higher education, the idea that increasing the leverage of faculty alone can be the solution potentially further deepens the view that the university is sheltered behind the ivory walls of academia.  Is it irony or is it a paradox?   

Great By Choice

Jim Collins' Great by Choice is another classic in the making.  After Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall, Collins' latest book examines what defines greatness in times of turmoil and instability.   10Xers are those that lead organizations to greatness.   Yet these traits and skills are also habits that can be learned and possessed over time.   Through rigorous research into companies, Collins and his research team reveals three concepts which distinguishes performers that excel above the rest.   Collins' findings correlate closely with his earlier research.  Hard work, persistence, low maintenance, and high quality work all pervade heavily in the ingredients to success.

1.  20 Mile March - Requiring great consistency and discipline over a long period of time, delivering high performance in difficult times, and holding back in good times.  Much more than philosophy, the march is about having concrete, clear, intelligent and rigorously pursued performance mechanisms that keeps one on track.  Think of climbing a mountain every day at 20 mile intervals, despite the weather, despite the conditions.  The maxim "never too high, never too low" is concisely the point here.

2.  Fire Bullets, Then Cannon Balls - Success is never a single-step creative breakthrough when in fact, it comes about as a multistep iterative process based more upon empirical validation than visionary genius.  The idea of bullets is to make small ventures -- small steps -- and learn from potential mistakes, before firing the "cannon balls."  

3.  Productive Paranoia - Success is never complacent.   As a result, 10x'ers prepare obsessively ahead of time, all the time, for what they cannot possibly predict.  They assume that a series of bad events can happen at anytime; it's what one does before a storm hits that matters most.  While one cannot predict more than 1% of when a disaster will strike, one can comfortably be assured with 100% certainty that disaster will strike at any time.  Therefore, one must be ready at all times.

Libraries in a Digital Frontier: Preserving Chinese Canadian Cultural Heritage

I'm really pleased to present to you my latest publication.   With my terrific colleague at the University of British Columbia Library, Yu Li and and I, we co-published, Libraries in a Digital Frontier: Preserving Chinese Canadian Cultural Heritage.  As a three-year community-based research project at the University of British Columbia, Chinese Canadian Stories: Uncommon Histories from a Common Past is government grant-funded project by the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP) that brings together the expertise and resources of a wide range of UBC Library units and off-campus partners: from the digitization of archival material of UBC Library’s Rare Books & Special Collections; to the digital storage infrastructure of UBC’s Digital Initiatives; to the community outreach and digital technology of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre; to the Chinese language online resources and community historical preservation expertise of the Asian Library. 

A labour of our love these past three years, Lilly and I presented our project to an audience in Beijing, China at the International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL 2011) "Digital Libraries -- for Culture Heritage, Knowledge Dissemination, and Future Creation" in Beijing, China, Oct 24-27, 2011.  Through this project, a number of partnerships with community and civic institutions nationwide were formed.  This UBC-library led project focuses on three initiatives: a one-stop web portal, a series of community workshops, and digital interactive cultural game using cutting edge technologies. This paper is a progress report of the project.  For more information about this unique project, there are a couple of websites you should visit:

http://chinesecanadian.ubc.ca/ 

http://ccs.library.ubc.ca/

Digital Humanities for Librarianship

Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) has been a rising force in the digital humanities (affectionately known simply as “DH” in the field).  Having been hosted at the University of Victoria campus for more than 10 years now, DHSI has provided an ideal environment for discussing and learning about new computing technologies and how they are influencing teaching, research, dissemination, and preservation in different disciplines.  Every year, faculty, staff, and students from the Arts, Humanities, Library, and Archives communities as well as independent scholars and participants from industry and government sectors participate in the DHSI.    Digital Humanists can no longer be classified as a “fringe group” or sub-discipline; it’s grown to encompass its own set of theories, best practices, industry standards, and scholarly publications.     What is DH and why should we care?   Simply put, it touches on so much, as

an area of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. Sometimes called humanities computing, the field has focused on the digitization and analysis of materials related to the traditional disciplines of the humanities. Digital Humanities currently incorporates both digitized and born-digital materials and combines the methodologies from the traditional humanities disciplines (such as history, philosophy, linguistics, literature, art, archaeology, music, and cultural studies) with tools provided by computing (such as data visualisation, data retrieval, computational analysis) and digital publishing.

One of this year’s themes of DHSI 2011 is Editing Modernism in Canada, or better known as EMiC.    Bridging academia, technology, and industry, EMiC has slowly risen as the hub for training and networking graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, professors, publishers, and technologists.  Where traditional disciplines shun digital technologies, EMiC fills in by providing the resources necessary for researchers to conduct literary projects using cutting edge technologies, be it digitization, text-encoding initiative markups, or social media fluencies.   Although it aims primarily at preserving Canadian modernist literature, it serves as a the gold standard in innovation for the digital humanities field.

It seems an opportune time for academic libraries to take note.  To a certain extent, academic libraries have slowly shifted in that direction, with such positions as Digital Humanities Librarian at Brown University’s Center for Digital Scholarship.    University of Toronto Library has its own digital scholarship librarian, and in the process of creating its own Digital Scholarship Unit.  The University of British Columbia Library forged ahead in creating a brand new division called Digital Initiatives.   It seems quite clear: academic libraries have an important voice in DH.   For humanists, who only recently had been questioned whether it will survive the 21st century, it’s only logical to collaborate with one of academia’s oldest partner: the library.  So let’s move forward.

Teaching Generation M

Teaching Generation M: A Handbook for Librarians and Educators is an important piece of work in the librarian’s toolkit.   In bringing together writings by 26 librarians and educators at colleges and universities across the United States to facilitate thoughtful planning for teaching Generation M in the college library, the book is separated into three sections, the volume begins with chapters defining Generation M and the meaning of the term literacy. The second section defines the culture of Generation M and the technologies it encounters. The final section focuses on best educational practices, theories, and applications to assist the librarian or other educator in serving this new population of “Generation M” students.

Patricia Dawson and Diane Campbell’s Driving Fast to Nowhere on the Information Highway: A Look at Shifting Paradigms of Literacy in the Twenty-First Century examines the history of librarianship and information literacy.   In it, they point out that librarians have been concerned about teaching people how to access and use library collections since the 1800′s.  In fact, library instruction had been taught in universities as far back as the Civil War.  Indeed, academic Lamar Johnson is credited with laying the foundations of bibliographic instruction when he offered tours of the library with instruction in the use of basic reference tools, point-of-use instruction, individualized instruction, and course-related instruction in the mid-20th century.  With online web technologies, bibliographic instruction evolved into “information literacy.”   The advent of the computer in the “information society” shifted from finding information in a physical library to searching for information using virtual online databases.

Yet, despite raving reviews of Generation M’s computer skills and constant connectivity and social networks, there continues to be (perhaps even more so) criticisms by academics and especially by employers that new graduates lack basic writing, communicating, and higher order information skills such as analyzing and evaluating content.    While Generation M might be tech-savvy, and used to 24/7 ubiquitous “anytime, anywhere” technologies, they are not necessarily so sophisticated in using this technology, especially in cases where information literacy skills that require critical evaluation of their found materials.

Digital literacy, in many ways, is the new paradigm of librarianship, perhaps an evolution of information literacy of the necessary for the early Web.  What a librarian was once a specialist in a subject area, be it a bibliographer of reference sources, drawing on his deep knowledge of books and creating finding aids for their patrons in the physical library, new generations of librarians must adapt to social media technologies, electronic books, e-Readers, providing grey materials, forging pathways in open access publishing, synthesizing thoughts into pithy blog entries, connecting with fellow colleagues across the world through social networks, delving into legal topics such as the Google Books court case, not to mention integrating existing cataloguing rules into the new web frontier.   Indeed, the librarian of the 21st century has evolved to the point where the profession is ready to have its voice heard in a new “digital strategy” movement.

Michio Kaku and the Future of the World

Michio Kaku is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York of City University of New York, the co-founder of string field theory, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science. He has written several books on physics and related topics, he has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film, and he writes extensive online blogs and articles.  Kaku's new book is an extension of his previous book, Physics of the Impossible.  Rather than talkin about walking through walls, telekinesis, or time travel, Kaku tackles more salient topics: the future of science and humanity.     In particular, through his interviews with numerous scientists and futurists, Kaku is able to paint a picture of what is in store for us in the next 100 years.

 What really struck me is the end of Moore's Law.  According to the laws of physics, the evolution of technology will eventually come to a halt, thus ending the concept of Moore's Law's exponential growth of computer technologies.  Moore's Law depends on miniaturizing transistors; and at the heart of the revolution is the tiny computer chips, which get cheaper and cheaper with each generation.   At some point, it will be physically impossible to etch transistors smaller than the size of an atom.  Moore's Law will stop when the transistor finally hits the size of individual atoms.  In fact, Kaku predicts Silicon Valley could rust away by 2020 unless a replacement comes along.  Some food for thought -- Physics of the Future is definitely a book worth reading.

The Internet of Things

The basic idea of the IOT is that virtually every physical thing in this world can also become a computer that is connected to the Internet . . .  things do not turn into computers, but they can feature tiny computers. When they do so, they are often called smart things, because they can act smarter than things that have not been tagged.

Imagine a world where cars can "talk" to each other to prevent accidents, or a door that opens based on its recognition of the person in front of it.  Elgar Fleisch is one of the innovators of the future of such technology. His research focuses on the economic impacts and infrastructures of ubiquitous computing.  At the Auto-ID Lab where he and his team develops their work with a global network of universities, an infrastructure for the “Internet of Things” is currently being formulated.   In many ways, there is still a competition between the "internet of things" and the "web of things," and where this is going will be largely determined by experts like Fleish.   In the white paper, The Internet of Things, some important pieces of this vision is already laid out:

1. "Embeddability" - There is a sense that while the internet is based on flashy software, the IOT is invisible.  Whereas the nerve ends of the Internet are fullblown computers that require regular access to the power grid, the nerve ends in the IOT are very small, in many cases even invisible, low-end and low energy consumption computers.  The IOT is about sensing, storing and communicating only a limited amount of information, and often does not even interact directly with human beings.

2.  Networks & Nodes - Although we think we're all "connected," the fact is, we're really not.  While there are about five billion devices such as mobile phones, personal computers, MP3 players, digital cameras, web cams, PDAs, and data servers that serve a world of 6.7 billion people, the reality is that only 1.5 billion are currently using the Internet.   The number of items created each day, consumer products, far exceed anything Internet-related. With an estaimated 84 billion products created each year gives us an indication of just what is not "connected."   With the IOT, think how computer-enabled "things" around us that requires a vastly different and much larger new network infrastructure that is required.

3. Bandwidth - Think the current Internet as a "mile bottleneck" while the IOT as a bandwidth "highway."  Like the early pioneers of the railway, the Internet has been increasing tremendously over recent years with its ability in transporting us on the information highway, with an average household in many countries with a cable-based Internet access with a bandwidth of at least 1 MBit/s.   However, with the IOT, the implementation of emerging technologies such as fiber optics to the home, the bandwidth will soon become as high as 50 - 100 MBit/s.

4. Standards - The academic and industrial communities are currently searching for alternative technologies and standards (e.g. EPC, ucode, IPv6, 6LoWPAN, Handle System, or Internet0) to number and address the "smartening physical world."   There needs to be the identification and addressing of the nerve endings. Because Internet-based identification and addressing schemes require too much capacity to become part of low-end smart things, the IOT's architecture would have to make sure that any tagged object could in principle be accessed by any computer.

5. Machine-centric Universe -  If you think Jeopardy's Watson is a sign of things to come, then IOT would not be far off.  While current Internet-based services are targeted towards human beings as users, (the World Wide Web (WWW), email, file sharing, video, online chat, file transfer, telephony, shopping, or rating), IOT almost completely exclude humans from direct intervention, as the smart things communicate amongst each other and with computers in the Internet in a machine-to-machine way.

6.  Sensing -   Like the economic success story of the Internet, which allowed companies and individuals virtually for the first time to reach out to a global customer base at ridiculously low cost, Web 2.0-based services include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Wikipedia, only made it even richer. The IOT adds another data dimension, as it allows the  physical world, things and places, to generate data automatically -- where the IOT is all about sensing the physical world.  It provides the infrastructure that for the first time enables us to not only measure the world, but to do it in a cost-efficient means of growing a very finely granulated nerve system of nerve endings.  This is hopefully, what the IOT becomes.