All about science and technology this week--fast swimsuits, augmented ads for pads, implanted cell phones and more:
1) Cavic riffs on Phelps ahead of 100 fly showdown: Yahoo! Sports
During the Beijing Olympics, Speedo reigned supreme with Michael Phelps and its other LZR-suited swimmers routing the competition. How quickly things change. Arena and Jaked have leapfrogged Speedo and now its their swimmers who are dominating the world championships with Speedo forced to allow its swimmers to use competitor suits. Michael Phelps has stayed loyal but may very well lose the 100 fly rematch as a result. UPDATE: he won anyway.
2) The Science of Decision Making: Science Friday
"Why someone would decide on Coke vs. Pepsi could mean millions of dollars in the soda business?" A discussion about the science of decision-making that covers such topics as whether your genes can influence split second decisions and how emotions can influence the way you decide. The discussion reflects the continuing interest in the intersection of psychology, economics and neuroscience.
3) Traffic and the price of anarchy: kottke.org (via Marginal Revolution)
"The collective optimization of individual driving routes by drivers using realtime traffic maps slows everyone down. That is, everyone picking the "fastest" route on the map results in overall slowdowns." If GPS is going to tell everyone which way to go, that's going to jam things up worse than if no-one had a clue.
4) What blood-powered cell phones mean for the future: Thought Gadgets
How about a cell phone that slides under your skin and is powered by blood? What will this and other cyborg-like developments have for marketing?
5) P&G Tries Augmented Reality: Adweek
P&G is testing the use of augmented reality in a new campaign for Always Infinity. If you hold up the ad to a web cam, you can watch a white rabbit pop out of a magician’s hat with the words, “irresistibly soft.” I don't have a web cam so I'm not sure how impressive this is. (Here's an article in Brandweek which asks whether augmented reality is the next big thing.)
6) GE's Augmented Reality demo: doobybrain
Augmented reality in action--GE's Smart Grid demo:
That's it! See you here on the blog or on Twitter (@martinjbishop) for more stories from the world of brand strategy.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
SOTB: Science edition
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3 comments:
The underlying trend seems to be the convergence of the Internet (digital content) with reality (physical content). As augmented reality and cyborg extensions become real, I'll be interested in how it changes humanity.
In some ways, it could change us for the worse. We may not go as far as the fat souls in Wall-e who can no longer stand up, because they need flotation cushions; but you can already see changes. Human memory is going as Google puts information at our fingertips -- why memorize the capitols of the U.S. states when I can pull them up in 0.5 seconds with a search engine? Social media has extended our relationship upper limit, but the communications are becoming more fragmented, brief, and tenuous, potentially damaging true earthly human families or friends. Computers and cell phones have pulled the world to our eyes, but we now see the world in glowing rectangles 18 inches away without looking at the real blue sky.
So the irony is puzzling -- we've extended our minds, our travels, our memories, but we've shut down our view and touchpoints in the physical world around us.
Perhaps this is how robots, stuck inside machines with no real contact in the world at all, begin.
Ben: Now I'm all depressed! Hopefully, we'll have enough influence over our fate that science will help us progress not regress.
Your comment reminds me (although it's not exactly the same point) of this exchange in Nemo:
Marlin: I promised I'd never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That's a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well, you can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo
congrats! keep up the good work/this is a great presentation.
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