ETech: Open Fabrication and the Environment Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm in "Open Fabrication and the Environment or Taking Spime Apart" given by Tom Igoe. He's talking about how we're making a mess, and as people that are actually making things, we need to help close the loop. If we have left over stuff, it should get reused...

Tom is arguing that energy is a good place to start, purely because it's easy to measure...

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. - Lord Kelvin

Interestingly it turns out that improving the efficiency of out devices actually increases our use of energy on the macro scale, so we need not only energy efficiency, but energy literacy.

But we also need other forms of literacy. Material literacy, what materials are you using? What are they composed of, and how toxic are they? But you need to think about not only what's in your product, but what it takes to produce it.

Production literacy, where is your product produced, how is it produced, who makes it and how far does it get transported? We need to think about whether we need to make a product before we make it.

Beyond that we get into resource literacy. Geeks love systems, and this is a system that's yet to be explored. The USGS has estimated that e-waste with have between 40 and 100 times the amount of gold in it than ore dug out of a gold mine. People are starting to get interested in this...

In order to close the loop with recycling, the people that un-make things need to know how we made them in the first place.

Finally there is 'legacy literacy'. We inherit a lot from industrial design, and its a profession that developed partially in response to American overproduction in the early 20th century. Gillette selling razors at a loss, and selling you a life time supply of razor blades for a healthy profit, is the obvious example.

Reduce, reuse and research. The idea of reusing tools, before building your own. Don't build a distributed sensor network, use cell phones, the network already exists. Just hook your sensors up to the cell network.

ETech: The End of Obsolescence Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm in "The End of Obsolescence " with Lane Beckerand Thor Muller....


Lane Becker and Thor Muller
Companies sell stuff, in order to do so they hire people, they become employees, get paid, and they go off and buy stuff, but they want mores stuff, so they borrow money, banks lend to them, China lends to lenders, shareholders cash in, the media sells ads and the politicians represent their constituents, or cash in?... and that's consumerism. But,

Things getting better precisely because things are getting worse...

During a time when people have less money in their pocket, they taper off their spending, and go out and get things fixed rather than buying new ones. The question is will this continue? There are signs that this time round, perhaps, it might.

They're talking about design patterns for post-consumerism. The world simplifies down into two kinds of people; back to basics and and the progressives. They argue that the back to basics days are behind us, there isn't any way to drag the world back to the days before the plough.

Design Pattern 1 is free. It's gotten a lot of press. This is free as in speech and as in beer. This isn't giving away the razor to sell the razor blades. If we can create an economic and cultural value around free that's more than the economic value again they that's interesting, and open source culture is pointing us in that direction. Obviously capitalism isn't going away, but it is shrinking.

Design Pattern 2 is the repair culture. Things should be built to last, and when they are, oddly enough people actually want them to last. People take care of them. If you build objects that are built to be disposable, people want to do just that. We've shed a lot of the repair culture in our pursuit of innovation. But we can innovate by extending the lifespan of our products.

Design Pattern 3 is reputation scaled. You can argue that reputation is the fertile ground that civilization comes from, but the problem is that this worked best at the level of the village. The transformation event from the village, to the global economy to the global village, where reputation is traded on and important once again is really important.

Design Pattern 4 is the loaner-ship society. The question about whether you can get more use out of something is not just about repairing it when it breaks. Why does everyone have a cheap power drill? They're arguing fewer, better made, repairable power drills, that will actually last is a better thing? This doesn't mean you can't make money, you only have to look at Netflix to see that...

Design Pattern 5 is virtual production. This is where stuff gets made, and stuff gets sold, but it's all digital. Digital goods are replacing physical goods. Our interfaces are getting so good these days that we can replace physical products, you only have to look at virtual spirit level applications for the iPhone.

They've talked about five design patterns here, but there are many more, and they argue that we have to change the incentives that drive continued growth and consumerism in our economy...

...and we're done.

ETech: Real hackers Program DNA Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm in "Real Hackers Program DNA" given by Reshma Shetty and Barry Canton...


They're talking about synthetic biology, and why we don’t we have open source wetware. Why can’t you programme cells as readily as you can programme computers? This is the idea that you can engineer bacteria to fuel your car, or produce an anti-malarial drug...

This is really cool, we're going to actually get to bio-engineer some bacteria, from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, during the talk. We're in a mini-workshop...

Update: Well that was so cool! I've now got some cells warming in my pocket and will be adding them to an agar+amp solution after lunch. Real science getting done at ETech.

Update: My medium has now been transfered to an agar solution and I'm culturing it overnight, hopefully by tomorrow I'll have some red coloured cells. I'll report tomorrow to tell how it got on...

Update (+1 day): No obvious red tinge on the petri dish that would show my culture is growing, but I've not really been keeping it warm enough, so it might take another day os so...

Update (+3 days): Success! It lives...


Definitely red...

ETech: Your Energy Identity, and Why You Should Care Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm in "Your Energy Identity and Why You Should Care" given by Gavin Starks...


For a 2.5kg Mac laptop, you have a 460kg CO₂e.
He's started off talking at the macro level and talking about peak oil, peak finance, peak water, peak uranium and peak copper...

The medium surface warming in 2091 to 2010 is 5.1C compared to 2.4C in the 2003 study - MIT

Moving on to possible future scenarios, the most optimistic is efficiency + technology where we have rapid innovation in energy efficiency technology to create a consumerist, low carbon world. here society is increasingly dependent on technology and is delicately balanced. Next is the service transformation, here high-carbon prices mean business sell services, not products. The next is redefining progress, people have to rethink what a fulfilling life means. Meaningful jobs are valued and stronger links with local communities are cultivated. The next step is slightly darker, we've left it too late, this is the environmental war economy. Governments are forced to rationalize whole sectors and take control of citizen's lives. Environmental refugees must find countries willing to accommodate them. Finally, where we actually just end up in a projectionist world. Countries wage war over resources.

The cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90%. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less - Lovelock

If we burn all the coal, we might kick in a runaway greenhouse effect... if we burn all the tar shale wan tar sands we definitely will, leading to a Venus Syndrome - Hansen, NASA

He's arguing that we need to move to a post-capitalist society. The so called triple bottom line economy...

Gavin is discussing the EU policy stack and the carbon reduction commitment; including 30 minute monitoring and mandatory offsetting, and how it's coming to the US...

We're moving to an economic age where we need to start obeying the first law of thermodynamics

The 20 largest cities in the world use 75% of the world's energy, and 500 million more people are predicted to move into cities over the next five years. The current prediction is that the future population is going to be concentrated in many, but smaller, cities.

We need I/O models of everything at the device level. If we're going down the route of micro-generation we're going to have a new sense of democratization of energy, it's a fundamental shift, much like the early days of the web was a democratization of information. Measurement is the key to your energy identity. He seems to be arguing that if you can't measure something, you can't control it. As a physicist I can certainly sympathise with that...

But the amount of data you're going to generate from the new generation of smart meters about you at the device level; the make, the model, the time you switch it on, the time you switch it off is going to tell people a lot about both you and your life style. How do we protect this? We're struggling with you digital identity, what about your energy identity? Whole owns your data? The utilities themselves, you? Everyone else assumes they own your data...

ETech: Tuesday morning keynotes Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm back in the main room for the Tuesday morning keynotes. We've got Alex Steffen talking about Sustaining the American Family, Sameer Padania talking about WITENESS: Capturing Crisis and Mary Lou Jepsen talking about Low-cost, Low-power Computing.


...and here's Brady Forrest and a $20 computer
Brady kicks us off , and this morning we're going to be talking about sustainability. Right now we're moving away from a period of abundance into a period of constrains...


Alex Steffen talking about sustainability
First up is Alex Steffen talking about the developing world and the potential to see peak population in our lifetime, along with our historic carbon. He's arguing our current lifestyle is a massive inter-generational ponzi scheme.

The poor's job is to get rich. Our job is to reinvent what rich means...

If poor people follow our, the western world's, route to wealth we will ruin the world.

We're the brittle rich...

We're utterly depending on the rest of the world doing the right thing for us to continue to enjoy any sort of lifestyle. We need for them to agree to make changes, and for that to happen they have to see us make changes. We're going to have change an awful lot of things...


Energy meters reduce energy usage
That's an interesting statistic, apparently studies have shown that bringing an energy meter into the house reduced energy usage by between 10 and 15%, without doing anything else, just by showing people the energy they are using...

He's arguing that one day you won't be able to throw things away, because there won't be anywhere to throw it. We're moving towards closed loops are reuse. The more you take the long view, the more it's obvious we're all in this together. If we're only concerned about our own prosperity, we're going to loose that prosperity.


Sameer Padania talking about capturing crisis
Next up is Sameer Padania from WITNESS, a human rights organization, who is talking about one of their projects called The Hub a social media project, and the affect of technology on how complicated it is to get footage and reports of human rights violations out of crisis zones and out to the world.

However although activists are using these new technology to capture abuses, the perpetrators are starting to use the same technologies to distribute videos and pictures of abuses to intimidate the local communities.

People are risking their lives to film the content, but with the growing amount of content, how do we aggregate and analysis the content so that important information isn't lost and it's the material is properly put into context in real time?


Mary Lou Jepsen talking about low-cost computing
The final talk of the keynote is by Mary Lou Jepsen who is talking about low-cost, low-power computing and giving computing to the other five billion people on the planet. Today, 97% of adolescents alive today live in the developing world, if you want to change the world the future is there.

Mary is talking about the one laptop per child project which she co-founded, and she's pointing out that despite the controversy surround the project there is now a million kids in the developing world that have laptops that wouldn't otherwise.

But that's not the only affect, the entire small inexpensive laptop market has grown out of this project. Not just in the developing world, but also first world, where the netbook form factor has taken off. The landscape is changing in the laptop industry, last year more than double the number of netbook units shipped than was initially predicted. Next year, it'll be more again...

People are starting to innovate at the bottom of the technical pyramid, high-end, high-tech research is all about trickle down economics. Why not work at the bottom of the pyramid and people get access to the new technology now?

...and we're done.

ETech: Ignite ETech Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

After a quick break we're back for Ignite ETech.

If you had 5 minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

Brady is back and introducing Ignite. We've got nine speakers, and at least one t-shirt that's going to be fired from a cannon. Ignite talks are 20 slides for 15 seconds a slide for a five minute.


Jan McGonigal
The first speaker is Jane McGonigal who is speaking about Free Space, a new forecasting game to be played this week at ETech.

The year is 2019. Personal satellites are cheap and accessible at $100. What would you use yours for?

Tom Gomez
Next up is Tom Gomez, deputy editor of wired, who is talking about a writing his book, the Decision Tree. Medicine as an algorithm...


Molly Steenson
Next up is Molly Steenson, who is talking about the history of pneumatic tubes for sending messages and packages in the 19th century. Interesting, Ted Stevens was right, just 100 years late.


Niall Kennedy
The next speaker Niall Kennedy is talking about measuring cloud efficiency.


Rose White
A change of pace, Rose White talking about knitting, and knitting as graffiti...

It's not your grandmother's knitting!

Knitting was once proprietary, reserved for the nobility, and was reverse engineered and made available to everyone.


Tom Igoe
An Arduino interlude by Tom Igoe and what's going on with the Arduino today. Most of what has been going on has been incremental improvements. There are not enough pins, memory, or serial ports.


The new Arduino MEGA
He's announcing the release of the Arduino MEGA, with a lot more capability. It should be available sometime next week.


Tariq Korula
Our next speaker is Tariq Korula, talking about the Ybike - the solar powered, Flickr uploading, geo-tagging photo bike. That's 20 bikes, 11 cites, 5 continents, 63,718+ photos. Search for the ybike tag on Flickr. Ghosts in the machine, or a million monkeys?


Brad Templeton
Our penultimate speaker is Brad Templeton from the EFF, talking on evil. We started with time sharing, moved to personal computers, and now we're back to time sharing. Your data is our of your hands, again. Ease of use can be a bug, if you make it easy to do, people will do it more.


Bill Gurstelle
Our final speaker of the evening was Bill Gurstelle who talked about the art of living dangerously. It's not a good thing to blow up things, but you should live dangerously...


Bill Gurstelle and his t-shirt cannon
...and we're done!

ETech: Monday evening keynote Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

After a very quick dinner I'm sitting in the Monday evening keynote waiting for Tim O'Reilly's to give his annual O'Reilly Radar...


Brady Forrest introducing Tim O'Reilly
Brady Forrest opened the show and introduced Tim, who is here to talk about the pilosophy that drives O'Reilly and stuff that matters...


Tim O'Reilly and stuff that matters...

These are pretty tough times... some things are being preserved, while some things are falling into ruin...

But what are our best and brightest doing? Throwing sheep on Facebook. Last year at the Web 2.0 conference Tim told people to work on stuff that matters,

Alot of people thought I was saying to work on non-profits, or maybe social ventures... I'm actually sauing that the world's great challenges is also the world's greatest opportunities.

But he's pointing to Better Place who are attempting the pioneer an new business model for electric cars,

Some of the things we think are so important today, are actually getting in our way...

He's talking about other power and energy companies like his son-in-law's company that's just come out of stealth, Makani Power working on high-altitude wind power systems. We have to get rid of about 8 terrawatts of fossil fuel energy and replace with renewables. Just because it's worthwhile, doesn't mean it isn't going to make money.

This attitude has started to bubble up form small companies to larger companies and agencies, like Google, and the NASA-Cisco climate project to flash the "planetary skin'. IBM has made it a center point of their new advertising campaign, a smarter planet, and instrumented, interconnected planet.

The idea of tackling big challenges, and bringing people along with us is what we have to do...

Talking about "big hairy audacious goals" Tim is now talking about public access to government data and has announced a new conference called the gov2.0 Summit which will be in Washington DC in September.

If you're not paying attention to what's happening to open government data, we have an opportunity that is unprecedented. We have a great challenge, but also a great opportunity. We have about 2 years to make a difference in the current administration...

He's talking about long term goals and the Long Now Foundation and scenarios for future planning, and the idea that there can be discontinuities, and we're in the middle of one just now. Both a financial one, and an environmental one.

The core of scenario planning is to develop a strategy that will be robust against any of the extreme strategy. Tim is urging us to think that way, think about what are the extremes in our lives, our business and figure out what are things that will be worth doing in the face of any of those extremes.

We're entering an era of choose your own adventure...

We're being told to find a place where you can make a difference, but make it count, like the $100 house...

Work on something that matters to you more than money. That's in the realm of things that matter.

Like deliberately unsustainable business models. If you're thinking about startups, stop thinking about whether it's going to succeed or not, and start thinking about what you're going to do instead. You need to create more value than you capture.

You guys are inventing the future, and what we want to do is help you spread the world, take on those giant challenges and eventually change the world.

Be minimal, leave places for other people to do things, and be friendly to people that extend you.

Update: Slides from Tim's keynote talk are now up on slideshare.net.

View more presentations from Tim O’reilly.

ETech: Hands-on RFID for Makers Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

My afternoon tutorial is Hands-on RFID for Makers given by Tom Igoe and Brian Jepson. We've been given, well purchased, but you know what I mean, an Arduino mini pro, a bread board and a SonMicro SM-130 module to allow us to read and write to the Mifare RFID tags that O'Reilly are using here at ETech.



The finished tag readers
We kicked off by accessing the card reader directly from our laptops using Processing and Tom's SonMicro library, first to just read from the card and then to write to it...

Once we got that working we moved to an Arduino-based reader that reads Mifare tags and stores them. From there we moved on to the hooking our RFID readers up to the to web and the O'Reilly conference database, with Processing providing a GUI interface to the Arduino code.


Long time readers of this blog will know that I have some, lets call it philosophical problems, with some of the proposed uses of RFID technology. But that said, there are some really interesting things you can do with tags, and while I approached this tutorial in a "know your enemy" frame of mind it was really fun, and I'm probably going to try and play with tags some more when I get back home. For instance, I can see some uses for the technology in the distributed sensors stuff I'm working on these days...

...of course that was all probably helped by the fact that Tom ran one of the clearest, well documented, hands-on tutorials I've seen. If you've got the opportunity to take a course with him, do it, you'll enjoy yourself.

Update: Pat was also blogging this one...

ETech: The LilyPad Sweatshop Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm sitting in Leah Buechley's Lilypad Electronic Fashion tutorial. Where we'll be playing with Lilypad Arduino kits, a collection of sewable electronic pieces that lets you build soft electronic devices. Essentially it's a specially packaged Arduino, a sewable computer.

The materials are strange and hard to work with... - Leah Buechley

Hacking (and sewing) electronics

The aim for the workshop was to produce a "soundie", a garment which produes a sound when touched in a certain place, or different sounds when touched in different ways. Issued with a SparkFun LilyPad Pro Kit, some conductive thread, conductive material for the touch sensors, and of course a needle, we set to work. Well after the obligatory jokes about how this was going to look on our expense reports obviously...


The LilyPad t-shirt
Despite my awful stitching I actually managed to get my garment working, and if you see me around ETech wearing my conference t-shirt, slap me on the shoulder. The t-shirt will scream for me, so I don't have to...

ETech: Unevenly distributing the future again Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm currently in San Jose for the 2009 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and much like last year we're unevenly distributing the future yet again. We'll be talking about synthetic biology, sensors and smart content, urban homesteading, making art with lasers and high tech chocolate.

...there are somewhere between six and ten billion people. At any given time, most of them are making mud bricks or field-stripping their AK-47s. - Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash p.26

Suffice to say that we're not going to be in the majority, unless things go very wrong there won't be a mud brick or an AK-47 to be seen all week.

ETech is one of those rare conferences where you get to hole up in a nice hotel and sit down and think about things for a week. Day-to-day you very rarely get time to do that, I'm going to try and not waste the opportunity...