Multitouch and the Future of the Book.

Here;s another post about MT technology by Kim White at if:book to quote Kim:

It's going to be three-pronged: screen technology, networked content, and 3D visualization. And it's going to be very, very cool.

I think it's worth it to read the full text of Kim's remarks here:
if:book: the sea change is coming...

The convergence of the concept of the Networked Book and the MT technology IS very,very cool.

The Future of Media - updated

Click on this image to get a bigger view of the diagram prepared for the Future of Media Summit in July 2006. The post is updated from my original in July 2006.

The podcast by Art Kleiner is a gem -

VIOSTREAM - powered by Viocorp - Communicating Better: "

as is the research report you can get by clicking below:

::..Future of Media Summit 2006 - Research ..::
"

/and here is more from if:book: blogging restructures consciousness?: "'My hunch,' she says, 'is that things are going two ways: writers as orchestrators of mass creativity, or writers as wielders of a new rhetoric.' "

Both views appear to be valid - but the Networked Book is clearly moving in the realm of writers as orchestrators.

Another view of the MultiTouch Screen

You can click play here and get immediate "graphic gratification". Try it:

Each of these posts contains a different video - and I think it's worth watching both to get the full impact.

New power at your fingertips!

A new interactive space that brings a powerful enabling interface to visual computing. Watch the whole video (3:32 minutes) to get the picture. This is similar technology to that used in the iPhone touch screen. You may need to play the video more than once to really "get" how this technology will change the way we communicate and understand.

Thanks to Michael Kaufman of InnovationLabs for the link.

Ignore the "snakes" commercial from MSFT in the first 15 seconds.

You have to click the link below to get to the video - I can't embed it here, just yet. See my next post for a playable video on the same subject - not as good, but you don't have to listen to the MSFT snake commerial. Tell me which one you like best.

FastTV on fastcompany.com

A Visual Resume - from a TI commentor

Karen Storer is a visual thinker and practitioner who also teaches windsurfing from her base in Maui. You can find out a lot about Karen by looking at her visual resume shown above. Click on the image to see a larger size.

I found Karen through a comment she made to my post :Thoughts Illustrated: DIAGRAM :: Adelheid Mers.

I have Karen's permission to use the visual shown above to make my ongoing point about the power of visuals to communicate a lot of information is a small amount of time - thus rewarding your attention with a crisp, informative and comprehensive picture of (in this case) Karen's CV.

Not surprisingly her blog and website are entitled:picture it solved and Picture It Solved - a visual approach to thinking.

I look forward to working with Karen and other talented visualizers to create personal tools everyone can use to address the dilemma of information overload and scarcity of attention - the condition Richard Saul Wurman describes as Amazon.com: Information Anxiety 2: Books: Richard Saul Wurman,David Sume,Loring Leifer

iPhone redux - Ubiquitous computing or a Fashion Statement?

In a prior post Thoughts Illustrated: The Apple iPhone - Steve Jobs does it again at MacWorld I concluded my remarks about the iPhone by saying: " I want one".

After reading this more complete review of the iPhone: Between Doubt And Enthusiasm - Tech News - Playfuls.com - Science & Technology, I'm not so sure.

I hark back to the The Plenitude (unpublished) by Rich Gold in which he describes his experiences designing Ubiquitous Computing Devices at PARC.
This cartoon is from a slide show that Rich presented frequently, and it includes the following caption:

" In Silicon Valley...there is religion of sorts called "convergence" . It is a belief that all media including TV viewing, movies, web surfing, telephoning, photos and reading will all collapse on to a small device that one can hold in one's hand and even go to bed with. That device would consitute all the media you would ever need and there would only be one media."

Sound familiar? It could pass as the design specs for the iPhone.


Rich's design experience at PARC led him to the conclusion that the religion of convergence was a false religion.. Here's Rich again in the caption that follows this cartoon:

" when the Palm Pilot arrived in the marketplace the biggest change was the physical design which spoke loudly FASHION ACCESSORY.

"To say that something is a fashion accessory is to say an object(or its creators)are concerned about the entire social infrastructure of the society. That they care about how people visually judge each other, the accoutrements that they w ear and the social hierarchies that they represent. Fashion is"tribal" , it is part of our mammalian, simian brains that devveloped when we hunted in packs, need to defend our territory and chose our alpha member to lead us. Engineering Ramifies into the issues of fashion and design imediately, so put it into the spec."

I think that Steve Job's put fashion statement into spec for the iPhone - and I agree with Rich Gold that cramming all the ubiquitous computing features into the iPhone, may be too big a bite of the Apple.

So, I have tempered my initial enthusiasm for the iPhone - and will wait and see if it is more than a fashion accessory that I don't need.

Elephants Dream - from DIY/Howard Rheingold

Elephants Dream � background


Thanks to Howard Rheingold for this link.DIY Media Weblog: Open source....cinema?

amaznode: absolutely ADDICTIVE!

Search with amaznode: 0691113572amaznode: amazon related product search
Link from Manuel Lima's expanding visualization resources atvisualcomplexity.com | VC 1st Anniversary

absolutely fascinating - enter any book or author into Amaznode and see a constellation of related books - written in flash by Takayuki Fukatsu (fladdict.net)

DIAGRAM :: Adelheid Mers

Here is Adelheid Mers description of the purpose of diagramming the book Moral Politics by George Lakoff.
ABOUT MAKING DIAGRAMS Mers says: I diagram essays and books because this is how I make sense of the texts I read. I read these texts to help make sense of what I experience. I have all kinds of questions and seem to have a knack for finding answers in print. As a visual artist, I am intrigued by the richness of imagery that is contained in all language, popular or academic, spoken or printed. Text is never dry, it is always brimming with figures of thought, some obvious, some subtle and waiting to be extricated. I make pictures from texts. As important as the content of the diagrams is to me personally, and as excited as I am if someone shares my interests, in the end I am involved in a formal endeavor. I think that "making sense" is one of the central human activities, and that we "make sense" by comparing stories. We frequently seem to need a fresh vehicle to tell our stories through, to stay alert and engaged, and I am working out what I hope is one contemporary way of "making sense".

DIAGRAM :: Adelheid Mers

The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

In 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope stared, for a little over 11 days at a rather unremarkable section of sky. The results were humbling on a universal scale.

The Deep Field/Ultra Deep field images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope represent the farthest we've ever seen into the universe. Looking at these images, one cannot help but be humbled by what they mean. At a glance, they show us how tiny humanity is in comparison to the size of the universe

A mind-blowing video from NASA. You can view the whole video here(6min) by clicking on the play button above or get a better view in full screen using the Google video player and downloading the selected video for viewing offline which offers a much better viewing experience. This requires you to download the Google Video Player to your desktop(onetime only). Hubble deep field - Google Video. Choose the full screen mode.

This player provides a °mosaic° of the key frames (segments) by
mousing over the frames and clicking. (illustrated below).

The normal size google video image selector offers 12 key frames, the full screen view offers 42 key frames.

This illustrates the "SoundByte" concept I have been working with this past year, and although the google frames selections appear arbitrary, it seems possible to make these frame selections ("from-to") serve as microformat links to the key frames. In this example, the soundbites are 30 seconds each, the entire video is 6:30 minutes, an attention saving of 84%. For longer video tracks, this key frame approach would significantly reduce the time a viewer needs to access key information and, if desired, he or she can queue the entire video track into a playlist for later viewing.

This process is similar to the movie trailer concept of providing key segments in a short form to "whet the appetite" of the viewer toward watching the entire movie.








Thanks to David Sederquist of NextNow for the original link.

Graphic Planning Guides - from Grove

David Sibbet, founder of Grove and the father of Graphic Facilitation provides a guided video tour of 7 "graphic guides" for use as planning templates. click on one of the tour videos or all if you have time to watch and listen to David explain the Graphic Guides process.

Resources | Videos

WIKINOMICS-another "Networked" book example

Wikinomics, by popular business thought leader Don Tapscott , is another example of the emerging publishing process called the "networked book" see:Thoughts Illustrated: The Pulse Project The Networked Book

As Tapscott writes: " A new art and science of collaboration is emerging—
we call it “wiki-nomics.” We’re not just talking about creating online
encyclopedias and other documents. A wiki is more than just software for
enabling multiple people to edit Web sites.

It is a metaphor for a new era of collaboration
and participation, one that, as Dylan sings, “will soon shake your windows
and rattle your walls.” The times are, in fact, a changin’.

These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world where
knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed than
at any time in our history—a world where value creation will be fast, fluid,
and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected will survive."

"Wikinomics has 11 chapters, but only ten have yet been written. Chapter 11, The Wikinomics Playbook, will be written by you: a community of readers and experts like yourself who will share ideas about how to embed key Wikinomics concepts and principles in 21st century organizations and business enterprises." WIKINOMICS | WIKI:

The Apple iPhone - Steve Jobs does it again at MacWorld

Take a demo listen here: Apple - iPhone - Phone

Here's the latest from MacWorld - the iPhone combining Internet browsing, highres camera and iPhoto- like picture management, integrated google map and search functions,and a whole lot of cool features for voice and email and call management. Bundled exclusively with Cingular service. Comes with 4 and 8 GB versions, retailing at $499 and $599, service plan included.

And look: No Keyboard! - all running on OSX and compatible with most MAC apps. This new generation phone may be to mobile communicating what the iPod was to music and the MAC has been to personal computing.

Significantly Jobs announced that henceforth Apple was dropping "computer" from its corporate name and will now be known simply as Apple Inc. - a consumer electronics company.

I think the iPhone will be as big a hit at the iPod and will dramatically impact the enormous mobile communicating/computing market. Who need as laptop for roadwarrior communicating? I want one!


If you didn't link to the demo above, do it now and be dazzled! Apple - iPhone - Phone

IM continued..

The Green Chameleon link in my previous post led me to this taxonomy of IgnoranceGreen Chameleon � A Taxonomy of Ignorance which is taken from a Dave Pollard post How to Save the World

Green Chameleon is a blog edited by Straits Knowledge - a Singapore-based KM consulting firm. perhaps they might be interested in fleshing out an Ignorance Management contrarain consultancy. The Calvin and Hobbes cartoon is copied from their blog.

When Knowledge Management fails - try Ignorance Management!

In a post to the Prediction Markets (google group) Walter Derzko sparked my interest in a new contrarian business opportunity - similar to the business model of Despair Inc. - see my Thoughts Illustrated: There's PROFIT in going against the grain!

There could be a very large and virtually untapped market for IGNORANCE MANAGEMENT consultants. Below is a detailed post on this concept

Green Chameleon � Ignorance, Fear and Knowledge Management

Designing Interactions

A downloadable book by Bill Moggridge - one of the founders of IDEO, and the original Grid computer. The publishiing process includes DVD's,print and pdf formats.A great example of thoughts illustrated - perhaps the best design, except for the slow downloading from the book's website for the embedded DVD video interviews. Probably works great on Internet2 broadband,but not on my DSL. Try it yourself.

Designing Interactions