Forty years after Joni Mitchell wrote these lyrics, the crude swill lapping against shorelines of the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and now up the banks of the Mississippi (Tar Balls Reported on Mississippi Mainland), is paving a broader swath of paradise than we could have ever imagined.

From sea to shining sea, waters glisten with poisonous plumes of oil. Whatever its name — Black tide. Tar balls. Sludge. Mud Monster — the greasy, grimy goo threatens to kill off ecosystems and economies “across the land.” It’s like some kind of creepy B-movie horror flick.  Unfortunately, this horror is all too real.

Harvesting Oil for Profit

Might there a silver lining in this profusely polluting oil slick? Perhaps, for wherever there’s need, there’s opportunity.

The most urgent need is to remove the oil. No, not dispersing the oil (a technique that compounds the matter by adding highly toxic chemicals to the mix), but collecting it. Tar balls and skimmed slicks could yield still-usable crude for further refining. Workable solutions have the potential to stimulate economic opportunities for coastline communities: oil-capture technologies would need to be manufactured at scale and provide fishing fleets with a different kind of harvest. Sadly, the recent failure of the Deepwater Horizon won’t be the last time oil will contaminate our oceans and, we (companies, government, communities) should invest in oil remediation and recycling strategies.

Scientists at BP and other oil companies, inventors, government agencies, and entrepreneurs are working on it. Here’s where it stands:

Current methods for purifying oil that has been mixed with water and other debris are fairly stringent as to what is salvageable and what is not. Depending on how long the oil has been out in the elements, how thoroughly mixed  it is with water and other debris, and what exactly that debris is composed of – the oil may or may not useful as raw fuel. Of everything, oil harvested from the sea has the best chance of separation since it will likely be composed of only oil and salt water.

Current separation methods aside, with so much thought being poured into the question of oil separation, it’s possible that the solution for more advanced filtering and reclamation is just around the corner. Perhaps something lying in BP’s rejection box, cast aside because it seemed a poor prospect … or maybe something that has not yet been fully ideated yet, but whose realization is just around the corner.

BP doesn’t own the oil spilling into the ocean, simply the means to get it out – for now. What’s stopping a few of these innovators, inventors and businessmen from creating small-scale operations, collecting spilled oil, purifying or adapting it and then selling it back to BP or the highest bidder. Are there laws against this? Perhaps, but things change. Plus, laws never stopped some people anyway.

With tragedy comes the opportunity to innovate. With innovation comes opportunity to capitalize. Are we on the cusp of an oil rush in the Gulf? Maybe not quite, but who can say?

(image via Reuters / Colin Hackley)

This, then, is an overview of that new Wolfram|Alpha.

Like any search engine W|A wants to help you find what you’re looking for, though you won’t find any advertisements for used car dealerships in our area or new flavors of cat food.

Rather, W|A serves as more of a smart encyclopedia – more akin to Wikipedia than Google. It collects objective data, such as rainfall patterns in Brazil, the amount of calories in a banana and the population of your hometown. Not only can it return information on the rainfall patterns in places like La Crosse, WI and  Gavaudun, Lot-et-Garonne, France – it can compare these blocks of information.

You are also given options for expansion on your search. For example, would you like rainfall data for one week or two?

As stated on the site, the goal with Wolfram|Alpha is to:

make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.

Not only will W|A be able to use such “models, methods and algorithms” to return increasingly complex data sets, it will also be able to break these very functions down – hopefully in such a way that anyone can both understand the logic behind the data we’ve requested and benefit from it.

Obviously, the research implications are huge, but even for someone who just wants to count calories or find the weekend’s weather, W|A provides a valuable database.

Another key part of W|A’s unique business proposal is the way in which it presents information. For example, a search for “10 feet” yields:

• the measurement’s equivalent in yards, inches and meters
• its equivalent in average human height (about 1.8 stacked humans)
• its electromagnetic frequency range (VHF, which is primarily used for broadcasting)

Essentially, no matter what you were thinking when you typed “10 feet” into W|A, the search engine wants to make sure that you find what you were looking for.

By being smart in interpreting what we are asking for, and being generous in what it returns, W|A was and remains a unique step in the field of semantic search. Rather than returning a list of potential sites that might answer your question, W|A pulls on concrete data to give you the answers you are searching for – without leaving the search results page.

Wolfram|Alpha is also making a push for mass-acceptance, with applications available on the iPhone and iPad, as well dashboard widgets and browser plug-ins.

BBC Reporter Rory Cellan-Jones – “So we’ve got a future where we could all become some sort of great big, walking computer, infected with a virus?”

Dr. Mark Gasson – “That’s very possible.”

Dr. Mark Gasson, senior research fellow at the University of Reading, made history last week as the first human to be infected with a computer virus. It was less a case of the sniffles than it was a case of a corrupted computer chip, specifically the one embedded in his hand.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips have been embedded in animals for a while now, and are used to identify and track them. For the most part, these chips only feed outward, like a beacon which can be interpreted, but can not actively engage with its environment.

The chip embedded in Gasson’s hand could be used to access secure areas, engage with his mobile phone by identifying him as the proper user … and transfer computer viruses.

In the University of Reading’s press release “Could humans be infected by computer viruses,” Gasson is quoted:

“Our research shows that implantable technology has developed to the point where implants are capable of communicating, storing and manipulating data,” he said. “They are essentially mini computers. This means that, like mainstream computers, they can be infected by viruses and the technology will need to keep pace with this so that implants, including medical devices, can be safely used in the future.”

In Michael Crichton’s book The Terminal Man, a cerebral pacemaker of sorts is implanted into an unstable patient’s head to combat seizures that tend to induce violent behavior. Obviously, the project goes awry and the patient escapes after learning how to manipulate the electrical stimulation, using it for his own ends.

What Dr. Gasson is talking about is so far behind Crichton’s vision that it barely warrants the reference, save for the notion of fusing man and machine and confronting what problems may come from this matrimony.

The scariest part? After being infected with a computer virus, Dr. Gasson was able to infect other computers. Ostensibly, assuming other humans were walking around with similar chips, they too could be infected. Hence Cellan-Jones’ question regarding a walking computer with an infection.

Consider the implications for medical devices, say, a mental pacemaker that delivers shocks in the event of a seizure. If such a device, or “mini computer,” could be infected by an outside source, the consequences could be dire. It’s not hard to imagine such bio-computer viruses being developed in some sort of high stakes trolling.

Such chips could also, potentially, be used to increase memory. Imagine a human hard drive upgrade, an inserted computer chip connected to your brain and sensory inputs, recording information and serving as a mental reserve. We discussed this a bit in our post on wearable computers, but this certainly goes above and beyond even that scientific frontier.

If  these mental hard drives were hacked, could we lose memories and be force fed new ones? Could someone be forced to play the role of a high-tech Manchurian Candidate?

By retrieving emotional messages in online text, the device triggers a matching sensation in the vest that the individual is wearing. For example, if I told someone online – who was wearing the iFeel_IM – that I love them, the device would give them a gentle hug. The iFeel_IM can simulate a heartbeat, generate warmth, the tickling sensation of butterflies in the stomach and a spine tingling chill of fear, among others. Imagine trying to ask someone out on a date online (whoo, 21st century!) and having your nervousness magnified tenfold by a vest giving you literal chills of fear and butterflies in your stomach.

The setup resembles the straps of a backpack which contains sensors, motors and speakers. Like I said earlier, the device retrieves emotions from written text and responds accordingly. Professor Dzmitry Tsetserukou, the inventor, says the iFeel_IM can distinguish joy, fear, anger and sadness with 90 percent accuracy, and can parse nine emotions — including shame, guilt, disgust, interest and surprise — nearly four out of five times. It was tested in Second Life, the online 3D virtual world, where the inventor’s predicted accuracy rates rang true.

Presented at the first Augmented Human International Conference in France, Tsetserukou compared the system to the film Avatar, and especially the film Surrogates, set in a future when humans stay at home plugged into a cocoon while their healthier, more handsome doppelgangers venture forth into the real world.

“In a few years, this could be a mobile system integrated into a suit or jacket,” he said. “It’s not that far away.”

While I love that the technology behind this vest exists, the idea in general somewhat depresses me. I don’t think the Internet is inhumane enough that it drains individuals of the ability to experience feelings by themselves, without a digital prompter. (Ok, when this word is said, you’re supposed to feel happy!) Wearing your heart on your virtual sleeve is a little too robot-like for my liking.

But, at the very least, the iFeel_IM could cut down on the overabundance of emoticons littering the Web.

A video demonstrating the iFeel in action:

The wearable he developed, named “Duo,” had the ability to learn from sensory input – achieved via human guidance. The basic idea is this – a wearable ride’s along with a human guide, taking in that individual’s actions and learning from them. A camera mounted on the wearer’s head provides visual input, while sensors on the body learn certain movements, positions and actions.

It would be kind of like guiding another person’s hands through the motions of a certain task, whereby that person would then learn how to complete the task.

From Charlie’s website:

“Systems that better perceive and understand everyday human activity will be more capable of assisting people, coordinating with people, learning from people, and emulating human activity.”

If you’re looking for a more in depth look at wearables, I suggest reading Charlie’s article “Wearables and Robots: A Shared View” from the publication Pervasive Computing. The image to the left is from that article.

Charlie’s work with Duo went on to inform the visual system for Domo, a helper robot that also has the ability to learn from human example – in addition to bearing a striking resemblance to Johnny 5, from “Short Circuit.”

Let’s Talk About Assisted Mental Fidelity

What really grabbed me about Charlie’s work was the idea of a wearable system, maybe even a compact robot, that would learn from you, your actions, and your environment. Imagine such a robot and then imagine that, after learning enough from you, it would be able to ‘learn’ on its own.

Suppose you were getting directions from someone at a gas station and are 99 percent sure that you were supposed to take a left at that church on the corner. Human memory is fallible, and I have the wrong left turns to prove it, but a robotic memory … it could be almost like an external hard drive for your mind, but instead of simply storing the information it collects – it feeds it back to you, as needed, in real-time.

Remembering the Things You Forget, Learning from Your Mistakes

I’m also terrible at remembering things like phone numbers, names, to-do lists, etc. Oh, if only I had a helper to remember those things for me, and to keep me on track if I start to drift away from the things I need to be doing.

My robot helper would have learned my tendencies by now and, thus, be able to tell when I am drifting off track. This thought chain doesn’t follow directly from Charlie Kemp’s work above and, to avoid the misapplication of purpose to someone else’s work, I’ll just note that this is my own pondering.

Still, if a robot can learn from visual, physical input – why not mental input? Last week, we talked about mind-controlled robots being developed in Japan. Given time, it seems entirely possible that mental connections could move from simple commands to actual experience and thought absorption.

The Mental Yak Bak, or, Nothing but the Truth

Being able to retrieve dusty old memories can come in handy every now and then – say, when you’re trying to remember how to say “Where is the bathroom?” in Spanish.

Plus, such a system could help ensure that you stay honest. That 10-inch fish you caught last weekend was really more like six inches, and the giant grizzly bear that stole it from you was actually a petite cub. And that party last night? I don’t remember a thing, but my robotic companion can tell me everything.

Then again, the best objective memory may be one that comes with an “Erase” function.

According to sources cited in Popular Science, these thought-controlled robots would use the brain’s electrical signals and blood-flow to interpret thoughts. As any diligent science fiction aficionado would imagine, users are expected to employ  a sensor-loaded headset, probably looking like something out of  X-men, to control devices.

It shouldn’t be too hard to think of potential problems with robots or electronic devices that react to your thoughts. Hot for teacher? Leave the helper robot at home.

Of course, there are more practical – and acceptable – uses for such technology. Helper robots for the elderly or disabled, for example, could be a huge boon to families that need help caring for relatives.

And at any rate, errant thoughts shouldn’t be a problem – at least initially. The fact that such robots and devices will likely be controlled using a helmet should keep most from unintentionally causing trouble.

Still, in 15-20 years? It’s not hard to imagine such robotics being controlled via chip implant. Late last year, Popular Science covered HP‘s plan to do just that. By 2020, the same year Japan’s mind-controlled robots are supposed to roll off the assembly line and into homes, HP hopes to be marketing chip implants that allow users to control electronics via thought.

Sure, the ability to produce isn’t always equal to the public’s willingness to purchase, but the simple fact that this technology is becoming a reality … it’s not science fiction anymore and Kansas is miles away, fading fast.

Think about how many times you’ve ordered a product online in blind faith, only to grumble when you have to pay shipping fees to return it. Think about how many times you’ve stood awkwardly in the makeup aisle at Target trying to hold cheap makeup, still in its package, next to your face to find the shade that’s just right for you, only to look like a clown when you finally put it on your actual face. (Ok, maybe that’s just me, makeup extraordinaire.) Think about how many terrible tattoos you’ve seen that made you wonder if that’s actually what they wanted their back to look like for the rest of their life. Incredibly useful applications of augmented reality are now making it possible to avoid situations like these through virtual dressing rooms.

Tobi.com recently debuted its Augmented Reality Dressing Room, a fitting room experience that is completely integrated into their online store. After watching a quick tutorial, customers print a ‘marker’ which they hold up to their webcam in order to activate the application’s sensors.

Following suit, Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company, has started inserting augmented reality makeup mirrors into its stores. You sit down in front of the mirror, it scans a picture of your face and … voila! You’re free to digitally try on makeup to see what colors are right for your face.

Polyvore.com is a fashion website that is “redefining how people around the world experience, create and shop for fashion on the Internet.” Their site features a virtual styling tool that lets people mix and match products from any online store to create their own outfits. You can then call upon the other members of the Polyvore community to rate and critique your ensembles.

TatMash lets users see what a real tattoo would look like on them before they really get it done. (Shouldn’t this have been dreamed up a long time ago? Here’s looking at you, old volleyball teammate with the foot-tall Tinkerbell tattoo on your back.) To see what one would look like on them, users simply upload a photo of themselves and can either upload their own tattoo image or use one of the pre-made designs on the site. They can then drag the tattoo’s image to the spot on their body where they’d like to have it done. This seems like such an obvious idea that I’m glad it was finally created.

The whole idea of tryvertising in general – a cross between advertising, product promotion and marketing communication – seems just as obvious. Integrating convenient product experiences like these into the online world – a space most consumers already inhabit – seems like a natural fit for most companies. If shoppers have the opportunity to digitally try on purchases, they will probably spend more, buy more and return far fewer items, which would result in higher sales, reduced shipping and handling costs, and happier customers. Win, win and win.

With the advent of some of these digital technologies, it seems likely that in the near future, consumers will just have a lifelike avatar, enabling them to try out and try on anything on behalf of their real world alter-egos. Expanding from that, there could also be 3D versions of spaces, not just people, enabling consumers to try out even more products before they buy them. All speculation, but I’m interested to see what happens in the next few years, and how companies will continue to evolve to better shopping experiences for consumers.

The idea of transmedia storytelling transforms the very function of advertising. In the ‘olden days’, advertising served simply to broadcast a message (i.e. ‘Sale!’) as loudly and broadly as possible. Since the advent of online communities and instant communications, sophisticated advertising has shifted away from the in-your-face style of old, to more of a conversation. And, like a good conversation, the exchange is unique to — and changed by — the participants. It also has a narrative structure and, in the case of transmedia, develops a different aspect of the story (storyline) that is specific to each medium. Here’s how it works:

Say a movie is followed up with a television series, book series, special edition comic books, YouTube mini-stories and Twitter account featuring tweets in character. I would consider the movie to hold the central narrative, while the others constitute story units that pull from the movie and, at the same time, feed back into it – creating a much richer, much deeper experience. The marketing campaign around James Cameron’s Avatar (now the highest grossing movie of all time) illustrates how transmedia engaged the movie’s avid fans.

Avatar tells the story of the indigenous people on the planet Pandora and their fight to defend its natural habitat from corporate exploitation. It’s an epic 3D movie, full of fantastical beings and special effects that supplies great fodder for marketing. Developing characters and storylines (i.e. heroes, villains, fantastical creatures, flora, and fauna) across multiple platforms, the story came to life by integrating real world items such as action figures with online games, movies, communities and more.  Through its advertising partnerships the world of Pandora emerged as a full-fledged adventure, both on and off the screen, such that the story lived on well beyond the initial theater experience. It became a two-way flow of information, intersecting storylines, and personalized adventures.

Take the Avatar action figures.

Traditionally, action figures have only been tied to the movies, shows or games they represent by way of the characters. The stories they exist in after they leave the shelves are up to the creative impulses of their new owners.

Avatar “Battle Packs” demolished that one-way stream of input by providing the toys with augmented reality content that can be unlocked using a computer camera. I could explain it, but recommend watching the below video instead.

Yes, put two Battle Packs together and they will interact!

Augmented reality actually showed up a few times in the marketing around Avatar. (e.g. McDonald’s Avatar “thrill cards”) This advanced technology really helped enable the two-way flow of information between the movie and it’s extensions. Instead of having a film that simply fed out into toys and games, the toys and games fed back into the movie, adding dimensions, taking you down different rabbit holes.

All of these elements came together in the Avatar marketing campaign to enrich the movie’s plot, not just providing a homonymous ideal of the film outside of it’s run time, but really continuing to evolve the storyline in homes and online.  While the idea of outside marketing elements is nothing new, the ability to interact with them (to this extent) really is.

This, then, is the true power of transmedia – at least in my opinion.

It’s the idea that we never have to leave the fantasy worlds we enter in the theater, on television or through books. The old one-way-street-model is fast becoming rather staid. We are moving towards a time when each piece of the marketing puzzle feeds into the story, collecting in the center of a network of tributaries, where the actual film or show – even brand – may be the largest, but far from the only stream.

And at the center of this flow of information will be where the story truly lives.

Of course, the increasing popularity of transmedia storytelling is also being motivated in part by the technology available. I would be remiss to go without giving some direct credit to the advent of augmented reality and ever-expanding mobile capabilities. (For a bit of both, read “Real Life, Plus: Metaio Goes Mobile.”) That may be a post for another time, but worth watching in the meantime.

For a great overview of transmedia storytelling, watch this 20-minute presentation by Jeff Gomez, of Starlight Runner Entertainment. It’s a bit long, but extremely interesting and insightful.

(image via MediaLAB Amsterdam)

SENSEable City’s Flyfire project, a collaboration with the Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory (ARES Lab) at MIT, is about to make it possible for any empty space to become a fully interactive display environment. It does this by way of hundreds (maybe thousands) of tiny, “self-organized micro helicopters” – each with an LED light.

Think of these mini-copters as pixels in the sky. From here on, let’s refer to them as the “pixel swarm.” A remote controller is able to designate the desired shape from the ground, or wherever, and the pixel swarm creates the desired shape.

The pixel swarm is self-organizing, which means that they’re smart and can adapt to directed changes in real time. As the team behind Flyfire points out, this allows viewers to experience an animated display – with the pixel swarm moving fluidly from one shape to another.

To better understand what such a demonstration might look like, watch this brief video on Flyfire from the SENSEable City Lab.

Could projects like this spell the end of a fixed interface?

It’s certainly feasible that such technology could be developed to the point where it was possible to watch almost anything using the pixel swarm. Sure, it’s a long way off, but until then, it’s probably more realistic to imagine such technology being used at events to sex-up the user experience.

The potential for advertising is immense – for example, “mobile billboards” or other sponsored messages. Imagine being at a football game and watching an advertisement for an electric, turbo-charged sports car that zooms through the air, much like the Golden Snitch of the Quidditch game played in the Harry Potter stories. Perhaps the ‘Golden Snitch’-like pixel swarm would be a part of the half-time show, or programmed to hover over the seat of someone who just won the car….    the possibilities seem endless.

Pattie Maes’ Sixth Sense, featuring Pranav Mistry

Last year at TED, Pattie Maes premiered a new technology developed by Pranav Mistry in her MIT Fluid Interfaces Group. The physical hardware consisted of little more than a camera and projector, worn around the user’s neck. Functionally, it was a little bit Minority Report and a little bit RoboCop.

Say you’re looking for a book on CSS at Barnes & Noble. Having done this myself, I can safely say that there are about a dozen and, from what I can tell, each looks as good as the next. How do you decide which book is the best one for your needs?

If you have a smartphone, you can just look it up. If you don’t, you can ask one of the bookstore employees and hope they have a design background.

What if you could just pick up the book and have its Amazon rating projected right onto the cover? This would be much more efficient, no?

That’s just a start.

The goal of the Sixth Sense project is to allow any user to access relevant information wherever he or she happens to be. This is similar to augmented reality, save for the fact that it would be accomplished without a cellphone and, therefore, be much more seamless in regards to information gathering.

After consumer devices such as these are developed, our next step is surely embedded discovery tools, we we discussed in our post on augmented reality contact lenses last year.

It’s all terribly exciting, a little terrifying, and very promising. Stay tuned!

The Disney Channel recently announced a brand new movie titled Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars. No longer content with her old-school secret notebook, Harriet is forging boldly into 2010 and competing against the most popular girl in school to become the official blogger of their high school class. Jezebel poked fun of the update by re-naming other classic children’s books for the MySpace generation. Instead of abiding by “the only book I read is Facebook” mindset, they suggested titles such as “margaret 48267: are you there god?”, “Little Blog on the Prairie”, “From the Mixed-Up Tweets of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” and “Wikipedia Brown, Boy E-tective” for the digital generation. Along with making me laugh, these updates to pop culture of yesteryear made me wonder exactly what sort of impact this constant exposure to technology and social media sites is having on children’s brains.

Search results revealed that almost every article on the negative effects of social media on developing brains referred back to an article written by Baroness Susan Greenfield. (No, I didn’t know that baronesses still existed either.) With the straightforward title of “Social Websites Harm Children’s Brains,” Greenfield argues that sites such as Facebook and Twitter shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centered. Backing that up, a different study found out that 30% more college students scored high on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory in 2006 than in 1982. (A fact that could potentially be proven just by looking at the sheer number of tagged photos on Facebook some individuals have of themselves.)

Anyway. The large majority of the baroness’s research seemed to be rather subjective, considering that one of her main points was that social interactions conducted through computer screens are fundamentally different from spoken conversations — which are “far more perilous” than electronic interactions because they “occur in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever or witty responses.” (I hate when that happens!)

On the opposite end of the spectrum are scientists who are studying brain plasticity – how the brain continues to dramatically change its wiring and function long after early development. Scientists are realizing that the brain never stops reorganizing itself in response to the world and that kids today need to learn new digital skills to survive and thrive in our fast-evolving society.

Research on young people shows that use of the sites is associated with a better social life in the real world because they use the services to enhance their existing relationships — just as anyone would do with the telephone. When researchers at the University of Minnesota  asked 16- to 18-year-olds what they learn from using social networking sites, the students listed technology skills as the top lesson, followed by creativity, and being open to new or diverse views and communication skills. Being a technophile, I could rave about the wonders of the Internet all day, but there are a lot of people who are genuinely concerned that this constant exposure to technology and social media sites is having a negative impact on children today.

Every generation is afraid of the effects of brand new technology on the next. An article on Neuroanthroplogy.net sums it up best:

If we search for analogies, we can think of countless previous techno-moral panics that now seem positively quaint: the dangerous effects of rock ‘n’ roll, comic books, music videos, television, the wireless, air conditioning, trains… Mesopotamian parents were probably fearful of the impact of the newfangled chariot, and German parents no doubt fretted about what horrors Gutenberg’s movable type was about to introduce into their homes.

Cecily brought up the point that adults solidify what they know instead of taking new in. (I like what I know and I know what I like.) It’s easier to stay inside comfort zones than it is to reinvent our notions of the world and the way it works. Younger generations, however, don’t have to reinvent their worldview — this much constant access to technology is all they’ve ever known. Youth today reference communicating online with the same terminology and naturalness as real life. They “talk” to each other when they are on online messenger systems. There is no real life or digital life, it’s the same place.

Baroness Greenfield said that “it is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations.”

And maybe, that’s the point.