John Robb’s recent post on local manufacturing and the comments it has spawned provide some good insights into the current state of the market for what I’ve called Manufacturing 3.0. See also here on the MJ:
Archive for TVIR
Moon Mesh
This past Thursday, July 16th was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 which journeyed to the moon enabling humans to set foot there for the first time. Although few people get to go, many benefit from the spinoffs. Regardless of one’s philosophic or political perspective, landing on the moon was quite a unique accomplishment in human history - only 12 people have ever walked on the moon. This is a very tiny fraction of a tenth of 1 percent of the people living today and an imperceptible slice of the 10′s of billions of humans who have ever lived on Earth.
Many people have already seen the commercials with excerpts from the “We choose to go to the moon” speech by President Kennedy (video here) or news accounts. If you haven’t done so already, you may enjoy an interesting cybertrip over to We Choose The Moon(best seen over a really high speed connection) where there’s a real-time simulation of the Apollo 11 mission. At the We Choose The Moon site you can follow precisely the activities of the Apollo 11 mission. When you go there you will see a continuously updated map of the flight path and a 3-D simulation of the actual spacecraft. At the same time you will hear the actual conversation between the astronauts and mission control. When I first looked, the mission was half-way through Stage 6 – nearly 115,000 miles from Earth and I could hear Buzz Aldrin singing and talking to folks from mission control. Today as I write, Apollo 11 is approaching Stage 7, over 200,000 miles away and there’s only static in the background although a transcript of conversation shows that the flight crew just went to sleep.
Although I’m talking about the Apollo 11 being in orbit today that’s obviously not true - we know where Apollo 11 is. The command module is at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. – not 200,000 miles from Earth. And we know the crew is not on board. The rest of Apollo 11 has just recently been photographed on the moon. Still, people all over the world are experiencing Apollo 11 all over again – as though they’ve travelled back in time. Or perhaps as though folks from 1969 had travelled forward in time. Now it’s just a simulation but previously discussed here on the MJ, detailed simulations can be very persuasive – even to the point of becoming indistinguishable from reality. If that seems a bit far-fetched consider how much detail will be captured for the next moon landing a decade from now. Quite a bit of data, audio and video will be streamed live over the interplanetary internet just recently deployed on the International Space Station. What isn’t streamed live will be digitized and accessible for future browsing and use. By 2050, people observing a 40-year anniversary will likely have radically advanced, bionic interfaces which allow for compelling ways to relive the experience. That’s a very long way from the simple “lunar lander” simulations we ran on calculators when I was an engineering student or even the more sophisticated orbital lander programs we ran when I was an engineer at Hughes Space and Communications. However, with Second Life and an HP41-C X running on my iPhone, it’s not quite as far from where we are today 
Print A House(fast & affordable homes for all)
While the 3D printing services offered by Philips incubated Shapeways are helping to usher in the coming boom, they produce small objects that fit in one’s hand. Using concrete instead of plastic, Contour Crafting aims to build a house in 24 hours at 1/5th the cost. The worlds largest construction equipment manufacturer, Caterpillar has invested in the technology which comes out of research at USC I’ve been following for some years. You can see the current state of Contour Crafting for yourself
more videos and media coverage are available on the Contour Crafting media page. And yes, as long-time MJ readers and true funkateers surely know, this is filed under TVIR
Related MJ Links
Sensing The Coming Boom
John Robb of Global Guerrillas has put his finger on the power of the emerging sensor cloud as well as the powerful evolving trends in personal fabrication but he doesn’t tie them together via their Chinese connection. Here on the MJ, these all converge in the coming boom and Second Life. Yes, we can say location, location, location. There are some excellent videos of Sense Networks CitySense location based service on O’Reilly. The underlying platform Macrosense
… is the world’s first platform capable of collecting and analyzing massive amounts of anonymous, aggregate location data in real-time.
At the heart of Macrosense are powerful machine learning algorithms that process time-stamped location data and metadata streams from heterogeneous sources – GPS, WiFi positioning, cell tower triangulation, RFID and other sensors – and empower companies and investors to better understand and predict human behavior on a macro scale.
This is very powerful technology so the potential is high for both abuse and empowerment. However, the bottle has been uncorked and there’s no putting it back. See also on the MJ Power to the Prosumer and Location Oriented Software
Mitch Kapor: Minority Report Interfaces On The Way
As reported last year on the MJ in Getting Inside the Simulation, 3D camera driven interfaces are already available. What Kapor is talking about is widespread adoption
“Look at Minority Report,” Kapor said. “I’m here to say that (technology is) going to be real in the next (few) years.”In fact, he said, he predicted that 3D cameras, which would be built into computers much like regular 2D cameras are today, will be available in as little as 12 months.
Basically, 3D cameras would allow the virtual world software to interpret how users are moving in the real-world and to translate that movement into the software. That could mean, then, that if the user raises his or her hand, so too does their avatar.
Kapor said he wasn’t clear on what the interface would be like, but he suggested it could be based on something like that of the Segway, in which users move their body forward and the Segway goes forward, backward to go backward, and so forth.
“So, if I look to the left in the real world, I just want my avatar to look to the left,” Kapor said. “If I smile, I just want my avatar to smile. The cameras should be good enough to pick that up. I think we’re going to see an amazing jump in the sense of presence.”
3D is a universal language that will impact all aspects of computing and communications. Just in time for the coming boom
Related Links
Manufacturing 3.0
This is yet another reason ignorance doesn’t mesh
As we move towards the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, we’re going to hear more and more about the loss of manufacturing jobs. This is important – folk have to be able to eat. However, what the politicians aren’t talking about is the fundamental transformation going on in manufacturing and how that will impact citizens.
Why they don’t talk about it is a mixed bag – some are just ignorant or don’t care enough, others are being deceptive because they have other priorities or arrogantly believe that people are not able to deal with the subject. The next time the subject of manufacturing jobs comes up, ask people what those jobs will be like just 10 short years from now. We can’t wait until then to start dealing with the realities of Manufacturing 3.0.
China and the Coming Boom in Virtual Property
Reading reBang’s When Retail Goes Virtual post about “the impact virtual worlds will almost certainly have on real world commerce.”, I was reminded of some links I hadn’t gotten around to posting yet:
American government officials and economists from Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson to Senator Chuck Shumer to Paul Kruger have focused on balance of trade issues with China, the RMB-USD exchange rate, and China’s huge foreign reserves. But few mainstream economists or Government officials have looked at new forms of currency emerging in China that already is beginning to greatly affect China’s underlying economy – virtual currency.
Investors should not fail to look at this sector. Xinhua News has reported that the volume of virtual currency has reached several hundred million USD a year in China. My firm estimates the size to grow 30% in 2007.
reBang references an article from the Guardian which quotes Robert Lai, chief scientist of the Beijing Cyber Recreation District talking about virtual worlds capable of supporting billions of avatars(). The Chinese are VERY serious about the meshverse. The Guardian article goes on to say:
… this is a bold attempt to repeat what China has done in manufacturing (ie, conquering the world) in services. Be warned.
… At the moment, Britain and other western economies benefit from cheap Chinese manufactured goods and the low inflation they bring while also benefiting from huge wholesale, retail and distribution markups on the same goods. If they too migrate to China, what will there be left for us to do? That is a very serious question.
Others have raised this very serious question:
- Whether or not such e-commerce is even feasible may be a moot point. I feel it speaks volumes as to where the country is, culturally. Now, technology futurists are in a sense saying, “You will be able to point, click, and buy anything, just how you want it, directly from any factory in the world”—so much for “Buy American.” The Beijing Cyber Recreation District is being billed as a so-called “online counterpart” to Beijing’s China Recreation District, a physical, real-world endeavor that will boast entertainment and shopping; the center is set to open in time for the 2008 Olympics, according to the AP. And where will this new entertainment center be built? In an abandoned Chinese steel plant. Can’t you just feel the irony?
- Need a new refrigerator or a pair of pants? Go window shopping (that is, in your Explorer window) online in a virtual world and then buy it directly from the factory in rural Asia where the item is made. That’s what the Chinese government is proposing. According to an Associated Press report (“China Plans Virtual World for Commerce,” October 15, 2007), China’s central government is methodically constructing a vast virtual world, dubbed the Beijing Cyber Recreation District.
“Some supply-chain experts say the project is impossibly grandiose in its goal to provide direct links between tens of thousands of Chinese manufacturers and millions of individual customers around the world,” AP wrote. But if this turns out to be the surprise hit that no one has foreseen, PLM vendors may need to refashion their sourcing and supply-chain management features.
CADalyst: CADfidential
The west is going to have to come up with some serious innovation to cope with this but the trends I’ve covered here such as Desktop Manufacturing and DIY Gone Wild indicate that this innovation is already underway. The above-mentioned reBang post is even more expansive.
China may have low cost labor but western desktop design & manufacturing entrepreneurs can ship from down the street and do meet-ups with both creative trend setters(music, fashion, sports) and customers. This competition will play a key role in driving demand for virtual property. The coming boom in virtual property will be more far reaching than the US/USSR space race.
CNN iReport In Second Life: Community Matters
It’s not unlike Facebook, MySpace or any other online community. … CNN instead of going into that[virtual world] and trying to report on it, we’re sort of asking the community, the people who know it best – “you tell us what’s news”
See also, CNN iReport In Second Life: It’s All About Telling Your Story
The Virtual Is Real – Just Watch Some Neurons or Roaches
For those who can’t seem to follow the music, money or physics, the key may be neurons or roaches:
Reeves: The human brian is not specialized to differentiate between virtual and real. Same neurons fire when an avatar smiles at you as when a real person smiles at you. Seriosity is looking at what happens when you create an opportunity to do serious things with virtual currency attached, such as sending email messages with virtual currency attached. The result? You open the email faster when currency is attached. Virtual money changes real behavior.
3pointD.com » Blog Archive » Virtual Goods Summit: Why Virtual Goods Matter
Roaches it seems, behave like neurons:
“It turns out,” he says, “that roaches aren’t very discriminating” — they’ll accept anything of roughly the right size and smell. In the end, the engineers came up with little wheeled robots shaped like matchboxes and perfumed with eau de roach. They were programmed to have the same likes and dislikes as roaches — that is, to prefer crowds and darkness. When introduced to the real roaches, the robots fit right in — the gathering behavior of the horde was pretty much unchanged. Researchers then reprogrammed the robots to prefer a less-dark hiding place — unnatural for a roach. The insects and the infiltrators were put back into the enclosure, except this time one of their hiding places was more lightly tinted than the other: It was brighter inside. Again, all the roaches scurried around randomly for a while, but the robots eventually settled under the lighter, less shadowy disk — and the real cockroaches followed.
As always, remember there is a cure for the Syndrome!
