I think we went with some very uncontroversial topics this
week, except perhaps the privacy issues behind the Intel ambient computing
interview. On the other hand, they were
all very forward looking in that they have implications for what kinds of
experiences we might be facing in the future.
Without question, our home environments are going to get
smarter and do more monitoring than they are now. This seems to be an inexorable trend. But we have the ability to do this in a
responsible way if designers take control.
I hope we can do this.
We also have an inevitable aging of the population that will
lead to similar questions as are faced by the Kurdish military. What changes do we need to make in our
environments, designs, and practices to accommodate the cognitive and physical abilities
of an aging population?
The post on Google Alerts is a good example of how
communities develop their own terminology and worldview that might not be
shared by the general population. Does
the “filter bubble” of the Internet make this worse? Or better?
The Capital One café would be a good thought experiment
except that it is actually happening. We
got a comment from the UK that these are common over the pond. Not an innovation at all, it seems.
