The illusion of productivity

Posted on 2010-10-27 by Jon Leirdal

Have you ever considered how easy it is to manipulate people with technology? How we, without reflecting upon the issue, regard everything like “this is the way it is”. Consider this article on Placebo buttons. The author describes how a lot of buttons we have around us do not have any functionality. Typical examples is the door closing button in an elevator, or the wait button to get a green light while waiting to cross the road. The buttons lights up, but often do not have any other functionality. All it does is to give us an illusion that something is happening.
You have got almost the same thing using software. While opening a program we get the spinning wheel or time glass. It tells us that something is happening, and we are relaxed. But is something really happening? And how productive are we while we wait?

Posted from Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

A web world

Posted on 2009-05-13 by Jon Leirdal

It’s kind of interesting to see the turn among most companies out there concerning the use of different software tools for different tasks. For years we have had a mentality that either you create your own monster of a solution or you customize one product from some big vendor. But since the appearance of internet and the web our world has gotten a lot more fragmented.

(All links in this post opens in new windows)

Lately the consumer market has created a feel for sites and products on the net that is not only OK to use, but “necessary” to use. I am of course talking about web based applications and social software. In other words, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, instant messaging products and other similar tools. Several companies have their own Wikis, blogs, forums and instant messaging products. Micro-blogging tools like Twitter and Yammer is also being used more and more these days.

For years we have had Open Source Software (OSS), and except for Linux and Apache not all of them have been accepted by big business. And the only reason that Linux and Apache got accepted was due to their track record and the support from some pretty large vendors, among else IBM.

Lately I have got the feeling that a lot of corporations have accepted the risk of using products with a smaller support organisation than what these corporations are used to. The acceptance of small vendors and OSS products into the suite of software used by corporations have given me as a professional both benefits and challenges.

The biggest challenge is the same as it has been for years now, integration. We need information and functionality integrated on several layers and in infinite ways. So what the big vendors do and have done for years is to create tools for us to help integrate our fragmenting world.

The increasingly complex world of tools and services always make me think of the second law of thermodynamics. Luckily we do not have a closed system; we have the opportunity to impose change and to establish ways to solve our complexity.

So, the next time you use a wiki for documenting your experiences, the next time you rate some other users post on the web, the next time you chat with a colleague or the next time you write a blog post, consider this – how do you use such information from other products and sites within your company. Are you able to use the information? Should you be able to use it? Do you want to be able to use it? And finally, if the answer is yes on any of those questions, how do you integrate your tools?

I have deliberately not mentioned search, archiving and all the other corporate necessities like reviewability, reusability, accountability and so on. Neither do I want to mention the words service oriented architecture (SOA), web services or integration platform. What I want is a world where this information is seamlessly available to me, stored indefinitely and persistently at no cost. As a professional I do not trust this, so I need to gather knowledge I have produced in such a way that it is still available to me even though the service I originally used to create this information no longer exists.

How do you do that?

Mediasone kiosks displayed

Posted on 2008-12-01 by Jon Leirdal

The new "Mediasone" kiosk to be installed at Deichmanske Library in Oslo

I work at a Company called Computas. We have been developing a new search interface for a multimedia kiosk called “Mediasone” (=Media zone) this autumn. The development is not finished, but the hardware of the kiosks was publicly displayed on Friday.

It looks like this might be a great hit if my feelings have any votes on this. These kiosks are going to be used as user interfaces for a multimedia search feature that the Deichmanske Library is releasing soon. You will be able to search all kind of multi-media content available in the Library, including sources like NRK, movie companies and a lot of music. Everything trough a touch sensitive screen and on software running on Mac OSX.

The kiosks have been designed by students at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

More news to come at a later date.

Posted from Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

The future, 2.0

Posted on 2008-11-01 by Jon Leirdal

As a follow up to my earlier fantasy of new possibilities regarding a documented generation I would like to blow out some steam regarding social software as well.

One of the problems we see today is that there are only a few people producing the information that is consumed by all the rest. Those reading are participating with tagging, bookmarking and rating of the content, but even this should be easier. The production of the content could also be easier.

So let us play with the idea of a documented world. On our way forward we have a few stops on the way. Some of them we are experiencing right now, among else by using Facebook, Linked-In, Plaxo or other social networking applications. By blogging and micro-blogging what we do and what interests us we are giving the world knowledge and information that can be used by other applications as what we often call value-added content.

Consider this, you are watching a video or listening to a podcast on the net regarding some information. The video or audio is tagged in such a way that as you play the content, different meta-information rolls by in tandem with the content, and the media player might then display related information based on automated searches as you watch. We are talking hypermedia that intelligently can give you information that you need or want. You will be able to decide where the information is gathered from.

In the next generation of social software I expect us to be able to increase the value for each other in even better and easier ways than today. And as always, the enabler of these features will always be technology.

So in the future, expect great things. Probably not some of the small ideas I present to you here. What we will see will probably be better.

And you will be a part of it. By easily producing content, and adding meta-information and grading what you see. The world will give you more of what you want and of what interests you.

Whether it is semantic technology or intelligent search engines, I bid welcome to interesting and feature rich social networks, in a documented world where you can have an even more enhanced life experience.

Soon, in a life near you!

Are you documented?

Posted on 2008-10-31 by Jon Leirdal

In the future: You will be able to rewind your whole life. Everything you have ever done, ever said, ever seen and ever heard will be reviewable, analysable, searchable and last, but not least, available.

We are getting closer to something a lot of people are calling the documented generation. Even today most of what we do is documented in some way or other. I myself have used my archive of digital images gathered over several years to remember when and where I visited some place. I’ve tagged all my images to simplify finding and searching, but I welcome the day this is an automatic process.

Most of your financial transactions are documented and traceable today when you use a debit or credit card for paying. Often you even use a membership card to get other benefits as well.

Most of your movements are traceable today, whether you use a car with an Autopass chip to pass trough highway toll boots, or you pass traffic cameras that watch the traffic. If you fill gas at a gas station you pay using a credit or debit card. When you go by train you use an electronic train ticket containing an RFID chip. When you go by plane you pay by card and you have to show a picture ID before boarding the plane.

Actually you are filmed by surveillance cameras almost everywhere, and most of what you do at work is logged on your computer.

All of your life is already stored on a plethora of computers all over the world and the internet.

These are known issues and something we have seen emerging over several years. Science Fiction authors have suggested this for years and the last decade these issues have been and are discussed in mainstream literature and media as well. And this is only the beginning.

What this will have to say for us personally, for our security against ID-theft and against the misuse of personal information is probably something a lot of people already have felt.
As long as our information is as available as it is, id-theft and misuse of information will become more and more common. The only way to prevent this is to change the routines and the systems available for those that need to verify our identity. They need a more secure way to verify that we are who we say we are, and they need to increase their efforts for protecting our data.

The way technology improves and evolves makes the possibilities for tracking and storing all kinds of information better each day. A new generation of people where everything they do is documented, from the day they are born until the day they die, is not that far away. The documented generation!

I would venture the guess that very soon we will see solutions in the consumer market that enables us to document events while they happen in new and exciting ways. Things like video-goggles that store everything you see, hear and say while attending a meeting or conference. The information might be stored on small, flexible, secure and large storage devices or directly on network storages units. This information may even be integrated with GPS-data and other environment information like weather or temperature, or with auto tagging features that adds other automatic metadata to the different parts of the recording. Face-, object and speech recognition will be automated and stored together with video and sound. And maybe not that much further in the future, this might be available in a 3D video with better than HD-quality.

The benefits that come with this kind of easily available information will of course be both a curse and a boon for us users. I often wonder where I met some people for the first time or what some customer said about some technical problem. Together with the stored information and multimedia we will probably be able to cross-reference our ”life-stream” with all other kind of information. With automated image and speech recognition everything we do, experience and say will be searchable and analysable.

What do you think? How soon will this be available? In 15 years? In 10 or 20 years? Will it be possible to rewind you whole life?

And as a small idea: When will we see the possibility for creating alternate experiences that makes it look like you have led a more exciting life than you really have? Will we see jamming equipment for jamming people from recording you on their life-streams? If you have an idea, please add a comment below.

PS: Yes I am aware of this little thing from the US, but I am saying that people are willingly going to do this just because they can.