OpenSpime » Scenarios

Tagging Reality: scalable semantic understanding of the world

David Orban — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:01:38 +0000

The way we interpret reality uses the tools, and the knowledge available at a given moment, in order to maximize our benefit, and probability of survival. A lot of knowledge, arguably all knowledge is already encoded in reality, but most of the time we are loath carrying out the experiments that are necessary to extract this knowledge, since the downside of the experiment is our elimination from the meme-pool. These days this is an especially relevant thought, with so many popular news outlets wondering if our quest for furthering knowledge is going too far. For the moment it seems that the answer is negative.

There are today so many instances in our daily lives when we trust the world around us, a world that we built, and tested just for the bare minimum necessary. While we can be fairly sure that those parts of the world which have been around for a few billion years keep working well, there is no reason for our continued trust in the parts that have been with us just for a few thousand, or few dozen years. As we evolve our societies to be more humane, and allow their members to strive to reach their full potential, we must not tolerate this ignorance.

There are new synthetic realities, where our semantic knowledge is per definition full and complete: the virtual worlds that are bound to be part of the daily life of many of us. And there are approaches for a bottom up tagging based on human action, which are likely to build a fine-grained map of those parts of the physical reality that interest us up-front, but which leave large swaths of boring, day-to-day, rusting, but necessary infrastructure untouched.

The machine-to-machine communication of the forthcoming Internet of Things will let us make the fundamental leap towards a zillionic level of understanding of our worlds. Where the structural integrity of a bridge is not realized to be failing too late, but monitored hour after hour, and relentlessly correlated, studied, and acted upon. As we tag reality, and increase our knowledge of the world, so will our capacity of sustainably raise the quality of life of everybody living in it.

We recently spoke at the Augmented Reality Panel at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo in Los Angeles about these issues:

The coevolution of open source software and hardware

David Orban — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:27:01 +0000

Open source software has conquered the world in the last decade, and its influence has recently started to spread to how hardware is being developed. Of course hardware IS software, when you take into account that CAD has had a larger and larger role in designing circuits.

The Economist has published an excellent article “Open sesame“in its most recent Technology Quarterly about open source hardware, and how different businesses take advantage of it:

“…an emerging class of electronic devices, for which the specifications have been made public, so that enthusiasts can suggest refinements, write and share software improvements, and even build their own devices from scratch. This is not as daft as it sounds. Even if all the details needed to build something are available, few people will have the tools or the inclination to do so….”

Conversation with Bruce Sterling on spimes

David Orban — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:06:04 +0000

A few days ago we had the pleasure of a long Italian dinner, and of an after dinner on-camera conversation with Bruce Sterling, writer, speaker, futurist, and inventor of the word spime. Posted in parts 1, 2, and 3 online*, the video does not only talk about spimes and their meaning, but also covers other interesting and important elements of our changing technological landscape, and their impact on society.

Bruce is as always very eloquent, passionate, and sometimes controversial in what he says, but always engaging!

*This 10 minute limit on YouTube which does not apply to everybody bothers me. If you know how to tell Google that you only want to publish meaningful videos of your own, without having to chop them up in many pieces, please let me know…

Conversation with Vernor Vinge on spimes

David Orban — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:06:33 +0000

Vernor Vinge is an award winning author, whose latest book Rainbows End is full of what we now call spimes: smart networked sensors, that fill the world with intelligent chatter that the protagonists of the book constantly rely on. (You can also download a full, free electronic version of the book.)

We had the pleasure of a nice conversation with Vernor Vinge in San Diego about spimes, OpenSpime, and what he thought about the impact of the wider diffusion of these technologies on our society:

CO2: average of ppm on Earth

Leandro Agrò — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:22:48 +0000

From 1832 to 2004, the atmospheric CO2 concentration increased from 284 ppmv* to 377 ppmv, or about 33%, with most of the change occurring since 1970. Burning fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum is the leading cause of increased man-made CO2; deforestation is the second major cause. - Wikipedia

Global warming, while not completely understood in its causes and potential effects, is attributed by scientist to human activities, and chiefly to greenhouse gases, and is viewed as a severe threat to humanity’s survival.

*ppmv: parts per million by volume, is a unit of measure used to express the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

What is a spime?

David Orban — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:04:20 +0000

The word spime has been coined by Bruce Sterling from the contraction of the two terms space and time to express the nature of a new class of objects, which are aware of where they are, and when they are on the planet. This awareness is achieved through the universal inclusion of global positioning functionality, coupled with the sensing of some parameter of the environment, and a means of recording and communicating the set of data.

Spimes are the foundation of a new global structure, the Internet of Things, where the value of the network arises from the autonomous communications objects, without the necessity of human intervention.

OpenSpime Inc. is grateful to Bruce for having graciously conceded the permission to use his term for our operations!