Tomorrow Was Yesterday

Mastering the Future of Content Creation

Noz Urbina Mekon Ltd @nozurbina http://lessworkmoreflow.blogspot.com

(First delivered at the LavaCon Conference, Portland, OR)

Me
Content strategist Consultant/trainer Congility Events Chair Author Futurist

@nozurbina #lavacon

Me

@nozurbina #lavacon

We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope.

Hence the apparent enormities of the present.

Victor Hugo
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Our natural inclination is to see time as a spectrum, with the beginning on one end and ourselves on the other.

Begin

Whenever now is, its easy to see that as the most advanced point in time.

-6,000 to 13 billion Years*

* Depending on your point of view...

Especially in tough economic times, we prefer to focus on the next year, or even next quarter. It can even be frustrating or unnerving to think more than 5 years ahead.

Now

But thats not reality.

Begin

-6,000 to 13 billion Years

* Depending on your point of view...

In this session were going to try to get over ourselves and remember that were always just at one point on a continuum, with as much time and change ahead of us as behind.

Now

Lets do the Time Warp Again

Inspirations for this session

Milestone

Ive reached an age where young people look ridiculous.

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Milestone

And I used to look like this...

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Colossus programmable computer

1944
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Super computers in our pockets

1976 Now Smartphones 1ghz Tablets 2ghz i.e. 13-26 x faster 1/15,000th the price (unadjusted)

Cray 1 Supercomputer 80mhz Sold over 80 units $5-8 million

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Super computers in our pockets

1976 Now Cray's 2011 Jaguar, $104 million 224,256 processors Quantum computing should
allow history to repeat Big hopes for next 5-10 years

310 BCE

1632

Ionian Greeks begin nonMythological interpretations of natural phenomenon Widely accepted for a few centuries Aristarchus of Miletus calculates that the Sun is far larger than the Earth Posits that the Earth revolves around the sun and that stars are just other distant suns

Galileo given life Pope apologizes under house arrest

Thought: Scientists are always doing stuff behind the scenes that is totally beyond what the everyday person can conceive

1992

Aristotle, the Catholic Church and invading Persia bury it for nearly 2000 years

Casa de Pilatos Sevilla, Spain (16th century)

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Casa Pilatos is 500 years old in Spain. The fireplace is French, the antiques are from Greece, the vases from China. Globalisation isnt new; its just new for poor people.

Casa de Pilatos Sevilla, Spain (16th century)

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To win the contract for the mosaics, the tile makers needed to commit to deliver 2000 tiles a day. Sounds like the demands on modern content teams... To achieve this, they adapted a recent technology from another area: the printing press. By printing tiles with machines, they met the deadline.

Casa de Pilatos Sevilla, Spain (16th century)

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Sevilla gets very, very hot (~110f/~52c), and is very humid. The wall tiles are functional. The stone leeches humidity from the air. More carving means more surface area.
Casa de Pilatos Sevilla, Spain (16th century)
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But the message is: If Im going to have tech in my life, please make it pretty!

Globalisation.

Automation and adaptation of recent technologies and principles from various areas.
Making technology human friendly and pretty.

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Remind you of anything?

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The Future is Here...

...its just not widely distributed

William Gibson, Author of Neuromancer

Other

The Jetsons 1962-63

Friendly Robotics RoboMower, 1998

Roomba, 2002

Looj, 2007

Thunderball, 1965

Jet Pack Intl, 2007

Yves Rossys JetMan, 2010

Food replicator

Today: Were 3D printing food and objects from downloadable models and specs.

Tomorrow: Cakes just like my grandma used to download?

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are already saving lives with 3D printed human organs. They hope to take the process realtime and print flesh over wounds with a stem-cell scanner / printer combination. http://bit.ly/QOZ5gu http://bit.ly/QOZf7C

Total Recall, 1990

Knight Rider, 1982

Goldfinger, 1964

German engineers have developed self-parking cars and autonomous taxis

2012 California, Nevada and Florida have committed their DMVs to developing legislation for autonomous cars

But more importantly

If you bought it, a truck brought it

69% of commercial freight in the USA Over 80% of all USA communities rely exclusively on trucks to deliver their: Fuel Clothing Medicine Consumer goods

The trucking industry employs 10 million people in the USA. But for how much longer?

Terminator, 1984 Data overlay vision

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Maps are only as good as their data overlays

BMW Augmented Reality mechanics glasses

Text to Speech

Google Glass
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Aliens, 1986
Activelink Loader
(Allows its operator to lift up to 220 lbs)

Iron Man, 1963 (Movie 2008)

Cyberdyne Systems HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb)

Available for domestic rental now in Japan!

Life imitates art imitating life

Content consumption

The first patent for an electronic writing tablet was in 1888

Star Trek, 1970s The iPad launched April, 2010 (30 months ago)

Apple Newton, 1993

Star Trek NG, 1990s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tablet_computers

We had a lot of warning that the iPad was coming. Still, many organisations struggled to react when Apple found the right combination of functionality, maturity and price.

In 12-24 months our industry was transformed.

Definitely not for the last time.

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Minority Report, 2002

Minority Report, 2002

MIT, 1995
Here we see an MIT urban planning tool that allows positioning of buildings on a landscape. It mixes projection with physical models on a table top.

[Video]

http://bit.ly/QNIATy

You have an interface that has no interface. You operate the world as you operate the real world (with your hands). John Underkoffler, MIT

The designers can rotate the sun using the clock tool and add material reflections to judge both glare and shadows.
In 2002, after seeing this work, the Minority Report production lead solicited MITs help with the movies UI design concepts. He said: Design it like an R&D effort (as if it were going to production).

[Kinect] will feel like Minority Report," promises Pete Thompson, Microsoft, 2007
http://bit.ly/PhOD4f

Leap Motion, Estimated Launch Feb 2013

200 times the resolution of the Kinect System. Costs $70

[Video]

http://bit.ly/QNIATy

John Underkoffler, MIT, 2010

Full circle: from MIT to Minority Report, to Kinect and Leap Motion and finally, Underkofller shows MITs new Minority Report-like UI prototype:

Content can move fluidly between machines on a network.

This is content sharing as it should be.

90% of participants

http://bit.ly/ggl-multin

In short: dont cry sci-fi.

Big things are (always) coming: theyre in the works, or theyre already here, just not widely distributed.

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Perspective Shift

All media work us over completely... they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. Marshal McLuhan, Media is the Massage, 1960
(coined the term global village)

Don Yang, 950s

Raphael ,1510

Until 1000 years ago, as a species, our minds couldnt translate 3D onto

Picasso adds the 3rd and 4th dimensions to the 2D canvas.

His cubist period (1909-1912) was an effort to show the passage of time, and various three-dimensional perspectives, simultaneously, in a static 2D image. In parallel, Albert Einstein was working on his theories of relativity of space and time (1907-1915).

Picasso adds the 3rd and 4th dimensions to the 2D canvas.

Cubism was not only a revolution in pictorial space, but a revolution in our understanding of pictorial space. This was in all probability linked to the fact that physics was simultaneously destroying our three-dimensional space-time perception. Pierre Daix, writer and friend of Picasso

Content strategists and physicists must look at seemingly infinite complexity, and discover the sensible even simple systems, rules and patterns.

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For all of human history, our brains conceived of content in 2D. Thats all weve

Today we are on the cusp of another fundamental, global shift in how humans perceive content. Instead of being flat, we must be able to drill down, transform, and re-structure atomic units of content for different users, contexts and formats. Our sense of content in space and time is changing.
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Authored

Source Code Repository

Database Extract?

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Regardless of how it was created, all modern content must work like a database.

We need a new, fundamental theory of content dynamics. If we envision content in 3D, even 4D*, doing our jobs, and explaining the nature and importance of our jobs, can become easier. All our major buzzwords and ambitions can be explained in reference to thinking of content in multiple dimensions. @nozurbina
#lavacon * The 4th dimension is time.

Responsive Design Mashups

Embedded UA Adaptive Content

Filtering & Conditions Reuse (Dynamic ) Personalisation Search Progressive Disclosure Dynamic Delivery TaxonomyDriven Navigation

Curation
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Aggregation

Todays children (tomorrows consumers) are growing up with multidimensional content.

Its normal to them.

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The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write; they will be those who cannot learn, unlearn, and

relearn. Alvin Toffler

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Weird Mark-up
People dont like XML. Its ugly and foreign.

Can you pull it apart, and rebuild it?

Original
New FlowScenario New Audience New Platform

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Does your content have the necessary agility?

Simple Slashes

Weird Mark-up (West)

Simple and intuitive doesnt 88 @nozurbinascale. Natural doesnt always #lavacon mean good.

Weird Mark-up (East)

Contained angles

. .
1

.. . .
2

... ...
3

.. . .

.. . ..

Clearly, a convoluted system with no future...?

. .. ..
5

.. ..
4

@nozurbina It only feels #lavacon

weird until it doesnt.

A modern content experience is not authored. It is designed.

Tweetable

(like a product) (with a product)

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Kindle Fire HD

Allows cross-device continuous reading.

Learns your reading speed. X-ray interfaces with IMDB for interactive data overlays in movies.

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You need 2.1 people to sustain population. The average in 44 leading industrialised nations is 1.6. Second-tier is 2.9 and falling. To maintain profits, corporations will need those that fill the gap to be content-enabled.
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AndyVision is an autonomous retail assistant that works at Carnegie Mellon University shop. He knows whats in stock, on sale, and on the shelves. He lets staff know when customers move items out of place. You can interact with his touch-screen at the door. Are you and your content ready for Andy and his screen?
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A New Hope

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Winston Churchill

Who is going to maintain and repair all this stuff? Or evaluate it technically and commercially? Or design it in the first place? Or be involved in manufacturing it? Or teach them how to do all the above?

Nozs Inverse Constant of Knowledge: The more you know about something the less effective you are at communicating it to new people.

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Our business is the transfer of knowledge.

I believe communications is the most important industry in the world. We are not being commoditized, we are becoming more vital than ever. We are the horizontal that bind together organisations and facilitate industry collaboration, technical development and commerce. The miracles of modern technology are made by fraternities of companies all exchanging content around the world.
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Full circle
The Apple iPad is assembled by Foxconn Teardown reports indicate parts and suppliers include:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Apple A4, A5 and A5X SoC: Samsung (based on ARM processors) NAND flash RAM chips: Toshiba and Samsung Touch-screen chips: Broadcom IPS Display (1st & 2nd Gen): LG Display IPS Display (3rd Gen) : Samsung Touch panels: Wintek Case: Catcher Technologies LCD drivers: Novatek Microelectronics Batteries: 60% are made in Taiwan by Simplo Technology, 40% by Dynapack International Accelerometer: STMicroelectronics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad#Manufacture

But much more importantly

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1974

6 million dollar man (bionic restoration)

2012

THANK YOU!
The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now. James A. Baldwin
noz.urbina@mekon.com @nozurbina http://lessworkmoreflow.blogspot.com
@nozurbina #lavacon