A couple of interesting articles appeared on nytimes.com today about the future of human.

Although, insights and important discoveries have been made, Nicholas Wade reports in “A Decade Later, Genetic Map Yields Few New Cures,” that ten years after completing the first mapping of the human genome, the nytimes.com reports that scientists have not made nearly as much progress in finding cures for cancer or Alzheimer’s as they expected. The main thing I take away from the article is that the human body is really complicated and can surprise us how little we really know about it functions.

On the hand other, we also learned from Ashlee Vance in “Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday”, the Singularity University was recently held and attended by tech luminaries like the Google founders and Raymond Kurzweil, who predict that people will soon access a technology-aided evolution to become superhumans with infinite intelligence and lifespans measured in centuries. The Singularity will be some combination of  tapping into the collective knowledge of networks like the Internet as well as medical advances like organ regeneration and cybernetics.

So, anyway, in some ways, I’m actually glad that we are finding out that the body is far more complex system that we want to believe. A slower rate of innovation might be a good thing.  While it would obviously would be great to find cures for diseases, my hope is we actually have a chance to figure out all the ethical implications of the meaning of this work. Actually, it’s not even figuring out, but I want people to just start asking the questions.

On a related note, I just finished You Are Not a Gadget, by Jaron Lanier. The book is a great critique of how we overvalue technology, undervalue the products of people’s creativity, and as a result, undervalue humanity itself.

Update: 2010/06/19: This month’s Wired magazine cover story by Thomas Goetz is “Sergey’s Search.” (Not online yet.) Apparently, he has a 50% change of getting Parkinson’s, which reframes (at least) his interest in the Singularity University, and has put in US$50 million into researching Parkinson’s disease. Again, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be pursuing this research. Rather, where is the critical discussion on where is it leading us, who benefits, and who is left behind.

Another great entry by xkcd, this time on research and innovation. With the all the trends of 2010 lists floating about, it’s nice to keep the obsession with the new in check.

(composite image via Flickr and Pandora.com)

I know that Spotify is all the rage, but it doesn’t have a public release in the US yet, and invites are still a bit rare States side. So, I’ve been finally playing around with Pandora at work, and came to the realize that there is real intelligence and even, fortune telling in Pandora’s recommendation engine.

When Paula asked me a question about what project she should work on next, Pandora voluntarily kicked out Anyway You Want It by Journey, which made us stop in our tracks (so to speak.) It only took me a moment to realize the potential wisdom that Pandora imparts. Ask it a question, wait for the next song, and get an answer.

It’s like magic or visiting a psychic, only better because it’s free and you can hum or sing along. The answers are also much more interesting than the static answers from the standard Magic 8 ball. Plus it gives you something to do while Gmail is down.

Here is an actual record of our questions and Pandora’s answers.

Paula: What will my roommate be like?
Enjoy the Silence, Depeche Mode

(We’re not sure if this good or bad?)

Me: How am I going to like my apartment?

This Must Be The Place I Waited Years to Leave, Pet Shop Boys

(Honest!)

Susan: What am I going to have for dinner?
Toxic, Britney Spears

Paula: What am I going to be when I grow up?
Man Eater, Nelly Furato

Susan: What am I going to do for Labor Day?
Drive, The Cars

Ray: How is my project going?
Calabria 2008, Enur… you know that song, which was played in every retail store for the past two years, and finally made it to that “dance battle” Target commercial. Not sure how that applies to my current work project. Oh Pandora, just when we think we understand you, you uphold your mysterious ways.

Try it out, and let me know how it goes!

I love magazines. Although the industry as a whole model is busted, as titles are folding, advertising revenue is plummeting, and wholesalers are in lawsuits, while they are going out of business. Even before the recession hit, unsold copies (which are the majority of them) end up getting destroyed. On the bright side of things, Cunning and teamed up with HSBC to give travelers in Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 1 customized magazines. Passers-by had the ability to select content from 32 commissioned articles, get them bound, and take their personally curated magazine onto their flight with them.  Of course, the next step is to have the printing done by something like Espresso Book Machine.

Via the fine folks at PSFK.

Image source: Amazon Windowshop

Am I the only person who missed this? This month Amazon launch Windowshop Beta, a CoverFlow-ish interface for shopping. This flash based interface allows you to search new selections, which are added each Tuesday. Browsing is controlled with the space bar to zoom in and the arrow keys to navigate, giving it the user experience of an 80s PC video game (that’s not a bad thing.) However, the categories of “Best selling,” or “New releases” have limited appeal to me.

I’m not a user of CoverFlow, mostly because most of songs don’t have images attached to them, so the UX is pretty lame for me.  But I think that some of the Silverlight interfaces and visual search engines like SearchMe and Riya are showing promise. Clearly, Amazon is trying to emulate the browsing experience of the brick and mortar store.  However, just like I only browse certain sections of a book store, it would be great to have that kind of granular control in Windowshop.  If you could combine some search, and narrow the selections down to topics or areas of interest, and then browse through 100 or so titles, we would *really* have something to write up in here.

My friend Alex sent me this link to this recent JC de Castelbajac video, which reconsiders his recent runway show as LEGOs.  JCDC is known for incorporating popular culture imagary into his couture, but this is taking the concept into new levels. The Anna Wintour as a plastic toy is just too good. Below are screen grabs, a still from the animated show, the actual Spring/Summer 2009 show, as well as, Ms. Wintour. I’ve let you go to the site watch the entire video (which I highly encourage) and find Kanye West in the first row. In the confusing time of economic uncertainty and post-election optimism. The show itself leans toward the hopeful, with rainbow colors and plastic hats. Obama’s portrait even makes a showing.  Amidst the gloom of two wars, the shrinking global economy, and pummelled stock market, is this the perfect time for play and reinvention?

On November 5th, I noted an important turning point in my media, among all the celebration of electing Barack Obama.

I didn’t watch any of the TV coverage on election night. I just had a few websites open to track reporting from different areas. I mostly stuck to the New York Times, that had the best interactive map, and the San Francisco Chronicle to get some West Coast reporting on things like Prop 8. I could also easily compare what states the sites were calling (it’s not always the same) and focus the races of course interest, Al Franken’s Senate race in Minnesota, for example.

It was interesting to note how the newspaper sites covered when TV programs called races, as their round about way to report results early without “really” reporting results early. But shortly after 11:00pm, I was alerted that Obama won, just like everything one else who were glued to their television sets.

Before 11:00 pm:

After 11:00 pm:

What did I miss from not having the TV on? Reporters, pundits, and anchors with often little meaningful to say as returns slowly are released. It was refreshing just to get the data. On the other hand, the decision also meant I had wait a whole day to learn about CNN’s Princess Leia Style Hologram.

Image source: cultureby.com

On Saturday, I got to hear Grant McCracken speak at the AIGA GAIN conference in New York.
I documented that I was going to the talk in my usual way of writing a quick note in twitter, which gets dumped into my facebook status.

“At AIGA, just heard Grant McCracken say smart things on design & culture, and the role of the anthropologist”

I got two quick responses from friends of mine who are working on their dissertations in anthropology, who basically asked what is the role of the anthropologist?

Of course, their requests had a bit of tongue and cheek, who am I to tell anthropologist what is their role? And I hope that they understood, that the talk was about the role of the anthropology within the context of design and culture. Nevertheless, the question is worth a response, because it is an interesting one, and perhaps the answer is not so obvious, although it is after hearing the talk.

During his talk, in a conference room mostly full of designers, McCracken refers two kinds of practitioners of anthropology. Anthropologists with an upper case A, and anthropologists with a lower case a. McCracken is an Anthropologist (PhD U Chicago) just as my friends are training to be Anthropologists. As well, there are many anthropologists (I would count myself in that group) who have the opportunity to practice anthropology in their work.  For designers, that practice is decoding culture and explaining it back to the design or marketing client. Although many in the Field (uppercase F) might have a problem with that, McCracken does not, and in fact encourages it. Although, it must be done in a smart way.

Decoding culture is crucial to the designer, because “culture provides infrastructure” to how we understand the world.  McCracken divides culture into the “above” (Malcolm Gladwell, Coolhunters, trendsetters) and the “below” which is all the rest.  Culture below is more hidden, and is made up of the assumptions people make in their construction of their worlds. The culture below is so obvious to the individual that they don’t even realize it exists. It remains in the domain of the unknown, until the anthropologist enters and maps out assumptions that. He cites the example of what makes a Harley more than “just” a motorcycle.

What does this have to do with design?

The designer must consider more than the cultural relevance of her creative output.  She must also consider the people who will see, hear, try, and her designs.  The successful designer will have an intimate knowledge of her end-user/audience/market and the culture surround the products and services that use in their daily lives. She will then use that knowledge to create a relationship with that person.

McCracken began with the question, “who owns culture in the corporation?” His claim is that designs probably don’t, but they should.  And today, the answer is probably nobody, which makes that there is an opportunity for the designer to lay claim to that corporate group.

What does this have to do with the Anthropologist overall or in training? McCracken often talks about the missed opportunities of Anthropologists because, they could provide insight in a post-modern world of flatten hierarchies (high-low, East-West) where known cultural structures are eroding.  In their place is an ad-hoc, but quite real, infrastructure of culture that is ripe for mining. Although they may not be the traditional domain of Anthropology, these cultural norms have a huge influence on the every day lives people in a post-industrial, consumerist culture. There is a great need for these changes to be explained back to the corporations that are creating that culture.  Whether for the corporation or academia, there is an opportunity for both Anthropologists and anthropologists to weigh in on the issues of the bagginess or skinniness of jeans, the identities of our vehicles, or personalities of our beverages.

Perhaps, there are Anthropologists in training who are already tackling these issues. If that is true, that would be great. For those who are designer or marketers who are (aspiring) anthropologists, there are also many opportunities as well. For both parties, McCracken has just created a blog conpendium on how to be an anthropologist for hire.

The last week has been a little hectic. I give this talk last week to some first year Masters of ID students at UArts. The title is “Compuation + Maps.” I’m not sure how much of it will make sense without the spoken part, but the basic ideas should be discernable. I’m looking forward to going back in a couple of weeks to see their projects.

Image source: flickr

1. If you are waiting for a train, and the incoming train cars go, packed, empty, packed… do NOT enter the empty car. The *best* case scenario is that the AC is broken.

2. The subway trains run in the same direction as that cars run on the street above the tracks.

Image source: backspace.com

3. The compass roses that the MTA is placing in front of subway entrances, started out as an intervention by riders, and is what I would call ethical graffiti.

4. The A and D trains run express from 59th Street to 125th Street, which is great if you want get to Harlem, but not so great, if you are trying to visit the American Museum of Natural History.

5. The subways do, in fact, run on a schedule.

6. Google Transit combines subway schedules (see point 5) and Google Maps to provide directions using public transportation in New York, and many other cities around the world.

7. The displays with real time updates of the next train that the MTA have been introducing on the L line has been in other systems, such as DC’s Metro and the London Underground for years and even decades.

Blogs on Subways:

Second Avenue Sagas

Subway Blogger

AMNY Subway Tracker

Going Underground’s Blog