Aggregation of Senses

I like Nostradamizing the future of telecommunications. So, if you're in the mood for some etherspeak; read on...

One major hypothesis I have is that user interfaces will be neural in nature.

Here's another one: Services in the future will be about aggregation of senses.

Just look around- Blogs are an aggregation of personal journals. Social Networking is about aggregation of weak-relationships. Advertisement is about aggregation of perceived demand. Cloud Computing aggregates processing power. Malls and Shopping Centers aggregate sales. Indices aggregate performance. Cities aggregate people. Banks aggregate liabilities and assets, Cosmopolitanism aggregates outlooks. The list is varied and colorful. (Btw, a list aggregates items ;))

I think we intuitively like to see things bundled together.

So, what does aggregation do?
It:
-Hides complexities
-Introduces redundancy
-Eliminates single points of failures
-Massively empowers
-Still maintains individual identity
-Assumes positive outcomes for decisions made on/by scale ('all' cannot be wrong)

Heres what I mean by aggregation of senses.
In the far future, thanks to neural inter-networks, decisions, opinions and actions could be based on collective sensory experiences.

• It will no longer matter if a friend is visually impaired, because vision would already have been aggregated, he could easily see through the eyes of his willing friends or even his cellphone camera. Maybe, even the cellphone would no longer need a camera!

• When you drive (your futurecar), if you've subscribed to drive aggregation on the road, you'll be able to easily speak on the cell phone while you drive at 300 mph, because when you do, the necessary inputs and processing for avoiding mishaps will come from various people in your proximity and even electronic sensors within the vehicle and on the road

• Virtual people will have 'real' implications. Virtual worlds will exist seamlessly with the real world.

By the time these things come to pass, the human brain would also have evolved sufficiently to handle such large volumes of data. Information density per person in 2009 is definitely magnitudes larger than what it was in 1909 and the only way it is heading is north, unless the human race decides one fine morning to completely shun technology.

This is the kind of stuff, that I think the Googles of the future will be busy provisioning, the people of the future subscribing to and the payment companies of the future banking on.

Snap, snap... back to reality.

B2BC again. Hello, this is your phone speaking

Well, another news that reinforces my projection that the ultimate mobile interfaces will be neural in nature. Do check out my previous posts on what I think the future of communications will be. I call it B2BC.

Textually.org reports Brain Controlled Cell Phones. This time its a company called 'NeuroSky'.

Here's how it works (image courtesy: NeuroSky):

Whats really interesting about NeuroSky is the fact that they seem to offer Developer APIs and Kits. That's one helluva right move which could unleash unlimited creativity. I mean, if they had closed up the tech wishing to make all the applications by themselves, there would have been only as much as they could do (how many maverick employees can they have? A hundred odd perhaps? How many enthusiast mavericks are out there in the wild on the net? A couple a hundred thousand perhaps!) . Well, we should now be seeing more applications of this technology. I wish I had more time on my hands- I'd have definitely ordered one of those! If you are an electronics or software enthusiast/ student and are looking forward to a 'different' kinda project - you know what you need to do :). Do let me know how you get along, please.

On-screen Telepresence

The Hologram, "...invented in 1947 by Hungarian physicist Dennis Gabor (Hungarian name: Gábor Dénes) (1900–1979),[1] work for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971" - as the wiki says, has come a long way and in many incarnations.

Here's another link which gives an excellent idea on how a hologram works.

Having two eyes (and two ears) separated by a distance between them gives us humans what we call the 'stereo' capability; which when roughly explained means the ability to estimate the location of the 'subject' object / sound in a three dimensional space. However, we've been generally quite satisfied by two dimensional capture and reproduction of photographs (I keep a collection at picasaweb :) ). Thanks to broadband internet, good web-cameras, processors and displays, web-conferencing has become a reality. Add to this the growing cost of travel, fuel, time and our new-found concerns for our fragile ecosystem- now we have a good business case for people to arrange 'meetings' over the web.

Still, even an HDTVish quality web-conference for most business is not as 'good enough' as a face-to-face. I don't know how exactly, but I'd trust my sales friends when they say that it just doesn't cut it!

Anyways, despair not! If the folks at Cisco and a UK based company Musion have their way, you'll soon be able to literally transmit the whole of yourself in all its three dimensional glory to anywhere you'd want to be present - over the net, of course.

Check this demo video out that my colleague Abhinav at Eko shared with me a few days back:
This is an actual demonstration by Cisco at Bangalore!


Going through the Musion site, I was surprised to find this video where they say the Tatas used this at the Nano unveiling at a car-expo at Delhi!


I'd still believe that this will be history soon and B2BC (Brain to Brain Communication) as I had mentioned in a previous post will prevail. Ah, flights of fantasy!

B2BC - the ultimate future of communications.

(Originally published on my w2forum journal on 3rd aug 2006)

This might sound a bit too far fetched, but I have been a firm believer in a concept that the future of communications, mobile communications- to be precise, is going to be device form factor agnostic , ubiquitous and pervasive.

I am amazed by the advances in man-machine interfaces and in the knowledge that we are on the threshold of graduating to a higher form of interface - neural. In the future, we will no longer be using key-pads to dial in numbers or even play games! The screen itself will be redundant - we will 'see' in our mind. I call this B2BC, brain-to-brain communication- almost telepathy.

I am imagining a few typical use-cases:

1. Just think of whom you want to communicate with, close your eyes(?) and you would be able to communicate at the speed of thought. Perhaps, even see through the other person's eyes, and even feel the other person's emotions!


2. Or, say you suddenly fall ill. All you have to do is think of your doctor! And the doctor gets a sense that you are in distress and more importantly - can feel your pain! Diagnosis will be real-time and probably the paramedics would already be on your door-step before you can realize.


3. Immersive MMORPGs. Most youngsters of that time will live most of their lives 'in' a virtual world - Matrix style ;-). The 'gaming' experience would be as close as it gets to reality. Many people would need special therapies to help them differentiate between what is real and what is not.

Check out these links to get a feel of what I was ranting:

1. CNN Money. Surfing the Web with nothing but brainwaves.

money.cnn.com/2006/07/21/technology/googlebra...

2. CNN Money. Google on your brain.

money.cnn.com/2006/07/26/technology/futureoft...

3. BBC News. Brain sensor allows mind-control.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5167938.stm

4. Cyberkinetics neural interface system.

www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/medicalprodu...

5. Cyberkinetics brain-computer 'platform'.

www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/technology/p...

What do you feel about these developments?
What about ethics? Who controls what?
Do you think this is the ultimate future of communications?