11.4.10

Envisioning Your Future in 2020

Envisioning Your Future in 2020





At the end of last year, Forbes magazine asked frog to help them envision the future in 2020. In December, we held a workshop in San Francisco that brought designers, futurists and journalists together to think about the current state of computing, how we might experience it 10 years from now and, perhaps most importantly, how we might make the transition into these possible futures.


The day-long event led to an extensive online feature: “Your Life in 2020,” a collection of illustrated concepts and videos that envision the future of ubiquitous computing. In that future,  your computer is not only incorporated into every aspect of your life but is a part of you. With this in mind, we imagined how future technology would influence the key areas of Social, Travel, Commerce, Healthcare, and Media. Here's what we came up with.



Our Second Brain or "ThingBook"

In the future nearly every visible thing will be cataloged and indexed, ready to be instantly identified and described to us. Want to go shopping? In the future we won't need big retail stores with aisles of objects on display. We'll be able to shop out in the world (see image, above). Do you like that new car you saw drive by? Or those cool shoes on the woman sitting across the room? All you’ll have to do is look at it and your mobile handset or AR-equipped eyeglasses will identify the object and look up the best price and retailer.


Bodynet

Like Google for our bodies, future technologies will allow us to monitor our body's vital conditions and compute the outcome of our actions on-the-fly. So you'll know right away what it's going to take to work off that Burger and Coke.




Curious about the future of social networking? Whuffie is a conceptual social Metric based on what others think of you. In the future this Metric might actually be usable as real money. Why not? Celebrities are used to getting things for free based on their popularity. This is the same idea taken to its democratic extreme. Socializing will take on completely new dimensions when we can see everything public about a person right as we are talking with them. Think dating is difficult today? Imagine the hoops we'll have to jump through when everyone in the bar can see your complete dating history the minute you walk into the room.


Shape Shifting: Emily Guthrie

Electrorheological fluid
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-6/p14.html
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/32254/the-shape-shifting-future-materials
photorheological fluid
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070320130532.htm
Nitinol Wire
http://www.imagesco.com/articles/nitinol/01.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7jjqXh7bB4

8.4.10

philips design-Yanko Design

Cooking Up The Eco Greens

The Green Cuisine takes inspiration from the Japanese Teppanyaki steakhouse style of cooking and serving. Hosts and guest get comfy in the cooking area where preparation and consumption form the part of the eco-routine. Food is cooked in appliances like the Healthy Steamer, Smart Kettle & Cups, and Cooking Modules, that work together on an interactive Kitchen Table. The integrated performance indicator monitors and displays energy consumption, giving you a fair idea of how Green you have been!

The bottom line: with this futuristic kitchen you can reduce energy consumption and optimize waste management. Philips will dish out the details on questions like “How will this work?”, much later!

Designer: Philips Design

Green Cuisine – Kitchen & Appliances Concept by Philips Design









vision 2010-early 2000

motorola concept design

Motorola concept design-around 2005

Optical illusion

Magic mirror

Doraemon

Here are some of his tools:
Takekoputa: small propellers
When people put them on their heads, they can fly freely. It seems that the structure of the propeller is very simple, but is not well known. Using a propeller, you can fly 600 kikometers at 80 kilometers per hour, like flying from Tokyo to Osaka in seven and a half hours.

Taimu-mashin: the time machine
Doraemon and his friends can use the door to go into the future or the past. They can even decide when and where they will go. However, they don't always end up where they planned. The entrance and exit to the time machine is in Nobita's desk.

Dokodemo-doa: everywhere door
If they open this door and say the name of the place they wish to go, they will go there as they pass through it. But the door looks like an old weak wooden door , once it was even thrown out with the trash. But it is so convenient, I am sure modern businessmen/women would love to have one.
Small Light
It looks like a flashlight. They flash the light at someone or something to make them small. Usually the light is used to defeat enemies. The light has limited range so it is not always useful.
Taimu-furoshiki: Time wrapping cloth
It looks like an ordinary wrapping cloth, but has great power. It has two sides, but its effect depends on which side you touch things with. On one side any item you touch the cloth to will become newer, and the other side will make an object older. If you put the wrapping cloth on persons, they will become younger or older only in their appearance.
Sewayaki-roupu: the helping rope
It can change itself to anything. It may stroke Nobita's head, pay newpaper bills, be a horse, fly in the sky as an airplane or be an umbrella when it's rainy. The only thing that it can't do is speak. It communicates its with sign language.
Moshimo-bokkus: The "if" box
It just looks like a telephone box (booth). If they say "***** world, please" to the receiver and exit the box, the world changes to what they said. The world ends when they say "Please go back" to the box. So they can't go back when the box is broken.
Mad Watch
If they use the watch, only they can move while time stops for everything/everyone else.

Here are some tools in Doraemon's pocket that are not as useful as those shown above:
Sasuto-amegafuru-kasa: raining umbrella
If they open the umbrella, it rains only under the umbrella. This can be useful when you need it to rain.
Kenka-tebukuro: the fight gloves
They are similar to boxing gloves. If you wear them, you begin to strike your own face and fight wth yourself.

6.4.10

BITE MY SHINY METAL!...links to futuristic materials


10 Interesting futuristic materials - Accelerating Future.com

16 Wild materials and technologies - Popular Mechanics.com

There are so many materials on this website that you'll forget all about your obsession with Velour oven mitts
- Transmaterial.net

- d.hadley -

Printable Sensors for Cell Phones and Other Devices?


ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2010) — The cellphone is switched off but immediately springs into action at the point of a finger. It is not necessary to touch the display. This touchless control is made possible by a polymer sensor affixed to the cellphone which, like human skin, reacts to the tiniest fluctuations in temperature and differences in pressure and recognizes the finger as it approaches.
The sensor recognizes the finger's heat signal without being touched. (Credit: Copyright image/Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH)

(Submitted by Alex Ross)

Plastic Electronics Could Slash the Cost of Solar Panels

A new technique developed by Princeton University engineers for producing electricity-conducting plastics could dramatically lower the cost of manufacturing solar panels.
(Submitted by Alex Ross)

Chemists Create Self-assembling Conductive Rubber

Polymer chemists have created a flexible, indestructible material, called metal rubber, that can be heated, frozen, washed or doused with jet fuel, and still retain its electricity-conducting properties. To make metal rubber, chemists and engineers use a process called self-assembly. The material is repeatedly dipped into positively charged and negatively charged solutions. The positive and negative charges bond, forming layers that conduct electricity. Uses of metal rubber include bendy, electrically charged aircraft wings, artificial muscles and wearable computers.
(Submitted by Alex Ross)

moldable, adhesive, self curing silicon.

This is a mold-able silicon developed by an art student to repair and customize existing products.
(Submitted by Alex Ross)

Mini Generators Make Energy from Random Ambient Vibrations

Tiny generators developed at the University of Michigan could produce enough electricity from random, ambient vibrations to power a wristwatch, pacemaker or wireless sensor.
(submitted by Alex Ross)

Making Car fuel and Plastic from carbon dioxide

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2010) — Researchers from the South West are working on a £1.4 million project that could take carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into car fuel.

The project aims to develop porous materials that can absorb the gas that causes global warming and convert it into chemicals that can be used to make car fuel or plastics in a process powered by renewable solar energy.

The researchers hope that in the future the porous materials could be used to line factory chimneys to take carbon dioxide pollutants from the air, reducing the effects of climate change.

(Submitted by Alex Ross)