Ubiquity and You
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An animation-free version of my deck from the Smart Cities 2013 and Northern Housing Consortium 'Inventing the Future' events.
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Ubiquity and You
- 1. UBIQUITY AND YOU Smart Cities and Smart People in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing
- 3. Insert picture of LAPTOP with windows 95 and dial-up modem LOCALLY NETWORKED, PORTABLE, OCCASIONALLY CONNECTED
- 4. MEMORY Insert picture of iPhone KNOWLEDGE INFORMATION DATA CAPTURE DISCRETE, PORTABLE, ALWAYS CONNECTED NAVIGATION
- 5. EXPONENTIAL INTERNET • DIGITAL CONTENT • LOW-COST COMPUTING • BIG DATA
- 6. Image of dustbin from Santander
- 9. COLLECT CONNECT PROCESS PRESENT ACTION SENSORS DATABASES WIRED WIRELESS SERVERS SOFTWARE WEB APPS PEOPLE DECISIONS ARDUINO NANOTECH SMART DUST XML JSON IoT 4G FIBRE WHITESPACE BLUETOOTH ZIGBEE THE CLOUD BIG DATA HADOOP DATACENTRE SOCIAL GRAPH UI/UX DESIGN INFOGRAPHICS ? PERSONALISATION
- 13. YOU
- 14. Smart home greyed out with diagram YOU overlaid
- 15. YOU
- 16. “THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE IS TO INVENT IT.” ALAN KAY IMAGE BY CARL GODWIN HTTP://WWW.BOOKOFTHEFUTURE.CO.UK
Editor's Notes
- Hi, my name is Tom Cheesewright and I have the entirely made-up but also entirely real job title of applied futurist. I help people and organisations to see, share and respond to a coherent vision of the future.Today I’d like to talk a bit about the world that you and I inhabit, at home and at work, and how I believe it is going to be transformed over the next twenty years.About some of the terrifying visions of what this technology might mean for our freedom and privacy. But more about a positive view of how this technology could help to enhance our lives.Let me start from the beginning.
- This is what computers looked like when I first started playing with them. At the time this was the most amazing thing in the world. That a few squeals on an audio tape could represent information – information that would turn into a game like R-Type or Halloween.Looking back though, it was pretty limited.It wasn’t very portable. It was just a single device and the only way to share data was by copying it onto a cassette tape and giving it to your friend.
- I was lucky enough that my dad was a bit of a proto-geek, so we had a number of different computers as I was growing up.Then when I entered the world of work this is what I got.This device was a bit more sociable than my first computer. It could network with the other PCs in the office. But it was a little agoraphobic: it only occasionally ventured into the wider world of the internet when you plugged it into a phone line.
- Today we are used to having a high powered computer in our pockets at all times. And it is always connected.What impact does this have? We are all bionic now.The world’s knowledge is at our finger - Memory - Knowledge devalued - Service access 24 hrs - Media/NewsWe are all bionic now.Highlighted the screen because what’s important here is not just the hardware, it’s the user interface. Thirty years ago we had to speak the machines’ language. Now they speak ours.
- It doesn’t stop here.The three pictures I have shown you represent snapshots in a continuous period of exponential change in technology that can be traced back to the 1960s and beyond. For the last fifty years, and perhaps the last five hundred, nothing has changed as fast or as consistently as technology. That process isn’t slowing down. In fact if anything, the pace of change is accelerating. That’s why I focus on technology-driven change and that’s why I believe we need to be looking to what’s next.So what’s the natural evolution from our current position?
- Technology has not only been getting more powerful and more connected in the last fifty years. It has been getting cheaper.In 1965 Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel noted that the number of transistors it was cost-effective to put on a silicon chip was doubling every two years. Back then the number of transistors was a pretty good proxy for computing power. In that spirit this law remains true today.Technology is cheap. And when something’s cheap, you can put it everywhere, including in bins.This bin is in Santander. In a few weeks time it will have a computer in it. This computer will have a sensor attached that will measure how much rubbish is in the bin. When, and only when it is full, will it ask to be emptied.I went to visit Santander a few weeks ago and met the mayor. He expects to save about 25% of his fuel costs for waste collection trucks by only emptying bins when they are full.
- Bins aren’t the only places they have sensors in Santander. 12,000 sensors are distributed across the city. On top of buses and taxis, underneath parking spots, on lampposts and shop fronts, under roads and in buildings.These sensors are built with off-the-shelf hardware for very low cost. The most expensive sensor in the network is around £100.They measure traffic, parking spaces, noise, air quality, temperature, daylight, energy consumption. And they feed it all back to a central hub where operators and managers can make smarter decisions about how they run the city. They can remotely turn off lights that have been left on. They can tweak heating controls to reduce energy bills.More importantly, the data is being fed back to the citizens of Santander as well. They can see via street signs, mobile apps and websites what is going on to really practical effect, like cutting down the time it takes to find a parking space.
- Santander shows how the progression of technology I started with will continue.We started with computers that were discrete, disconnected and low powered. They got smaller and they became more powerful but most importantly they started to talk to each other. Today computers are truly personal because they go with us wherever we go.The natural next step based on the falling price, and the increasing connectivity is simply to have computers everywhere. Because it offers great potential rewards.
- Santander’s smart city project can be described by five actions. These five actions have relevance for everything else I want to talk about today because they are a good means of understanding the change that is occurring.Sensors collect data. They share it via network connections with processing centres where the data is held and cross referenced. Then it is fed through a presentation layer to turn it into useful information that people can digest. Then people take action on that data.
- Santander’s smart city project can be described by five actions. These five actions have relevance for everything else I want to talk about today because they are a good means of understanding the change that is occurring.Sensors collect data. They share it via network connections with processing centres where the data is held and cross referenced. Then it is fed through a presentation layer to turn it into useful information that people can digest. Then people take action on that data.
- You can take a pretty dystopian view of this model.
- Or you can take a more utopian view…Let’s bring thing closer to home. I’m working with a borough council in the UK.Like all borough councils they need to save money, slashing £60m from the budget, which equates to about one fifth of the remaining workforce.Also like most borough councils I’ve come across, the organisation is populated from top to bottom with people who actually care about the work that they do. They are being forced to cut costs but they want to do it with the minimum negative impact on services.In fact, they want to try to improve services. Today the organisation and those around it look something like this. This is of course drastically simplified and missing lots of pieces. But what it shows is this. The organisation is very hierarchichal. It is organised from the top down.The council has peers – other organisations providing services to the end user. And it has suppliers. In many cases it operates services in the same market as its suppliers.There is very little connection between the services the council provides, let alone between those provided by the council’s peers. And customers must interface with each of the different services individually.What happens if you apply our ubiquitous computing model to this system?
- Imagine if all of the services were connected. If all the data that were relevant to me were indexed and processed and presented to me in a way that was meaningful and useful. Perhaps with software that could guide me through decisions?This is the vision we have for the council I’m working with. And the key point about it is that it is not structured around hierarchies, or management, or government. It is structured around the individual. Me, and you.It is technology that makes this possible.
- This model is being replicated at macro and micro levels across the country. Homes will be a micro version.NestCleaning robotsCare monitoringTelehealthHeating
- In fact your own body will be a micro version of this model
- Summing up.If you can put a connected computer in something, you will. To know where it is, what is happening, how much energy it is consuming.If you think our privacy is being invaded today then you may not like this future where everything is tracked and measured.But it does have potential to dramatically enhance our lives too. As individuals we gain a full time sixth sense, overlaying our perception with permanent feed of data from the world around us about our friends, family, and environment.At a time when energy bills are rising at an almost unprecedented rate, we have the chance to make our homes more efficient, as well as more secure.And at the city level we have the opportunity to improve services and cut waste, and to provide better outcomes for those who need societies support. To enable the public and third sector to continue to support people on budgets that have been slashed.If we want the best outcomes from this technology, then the onus is on us to engage with it and make them happen. To educate and inspire the people we work with and for to overcome their fears, learn what they need to learn and begin to take advantage.