Exercise 08
Exercise08
Computers have become truly 1 incredible .We are walking around with supercomputers in our pocket. How amazing is that?So it is disappointing that the way we use computers,the way we interact with them, hasn't really changed in the last 50 years.We still use a mouse and 2 keyboards
We're clicking on screens and buttons.Mobile phones are the same. We're just using fingers instead of a mouse.So is that it? Is that what the future looks like?We're going to be stuck in the screens with our faces not seeing the world around us?That's not the future I imagine, or the future I'm attracted to.What I've been always interested in is things, physical things we use every day,like things on this table that the family doesn't pay attention to.Things tell our story. They tell who we are. They tell a lot about us. Let me give you an example.These are photographs of things a person touched during 24 hours.What can you tell about him? He loves his motorcycle. Right?The biggest thing in his picture. What can you tell about this girl?She spends all her time on the beach. There's a surfboard. She lives by the sea.What can you tell about this guy? He's a chef.Look at all the ingredients he touched during the day, while he was preparing the food,and the computer is a tiny part of his life, this sad thing in the corner.So if we are using things all the time, and this is a big part of our lives,can things become the way for us to interact with our digital life?Can the world become your interface? That was my idea. I've been working for 20 years on it.My idea is that in order to interact in digital life, you don't need to have
3 screens and keyboards and mouses.You can interact with your digital life just by using the things you use every day.And to realize this idea, I need to solve three big 4 challenges . Let me tell you about them.The first one, obviously: Is it even possible?How can you take an everyday thing you use every day and turn it into a computer 5 interface ? Now I was inspired by the book "Hackers."I read it when I was a teenager, and one of the essential ideas of this book is thatyou can change the purpose of things by inventing new 6 technology and then hacking into things and changing them.So I've been thinking what kind of technology I can invent so that I can hack into things you use every day and make them interactive.So when I was working on this thing,I invented this 7 sensor which injects structured electric fields into objects and turns them into gesture interfaces.So this doorknob, unmodified, can become a gesture sensor.It can know how you're touching it. It can feel how you're touching it.It makes a circle, or can I grasp. And this doorknob isn't modified.There's nothing special about doorknobs. Anything can become interactive. What about plants?So plants are interesting, because with plants, they can know where you're touching.You can see the line moving up and down on the image. And that can turn into a musical interface.Now, we do have also practical 8 applications : a calendar plant for those who are obsessed about practicality.We can give things a personality.So in this particular example, the orchid can communicate to you through images and sounds.It doesn't like to be touched, so it's created these electric images that are hissing at you.This plant, for example, is more robust, it's a snake plant, and it likes playing with you.It engages you. So every thing can be different, and every thing can represent what it feels.So everything can be 9 hacked , all the things, including your body.In this example, we hacked your body so you can measure how you're folding your hands and then using your hand gestures to control something else,so if you don't want to listen to some music thousands of times, you simply can cover your ears to turn it off.So everything can be hacked, and research is important,but the second challenge we have is how can we go from R and D, and prototypes, to real products?How can we make real things that are also interfaces?And you may ask yourself, who would do this? Silicon Valley? Is it through Shenzhen?Now the challenge there is that the world of things is huge.Every year, the apparel industry produces 150 billion garments.In comparison, the technology industry only makes 1.4 billion phones.The world of things is much bigger than the world of technology.The technology world cannot change the world of things.Instead, we need to create technology which changes makers of things,people who make your chairs and clothes and everything else, into makers of smart things, enable them to do that.So to test this challenge, we came up with a very simple idea and challenge: Can a tailor make a 10 wearable ?Now we don't want to take a tailor and turn the tailor into an electrical engineer.We still want to have some tailors around.But what we would like to do is create technologywhich looks, feels and behaves like a raw material used by the tailor to make their clothes.For example, a touch panel made for a tailor would look like this,made out of textiles, so you can cut it with scissors and sew it in.At the same time, it has to retain the performance.The way to make this textile touch panel also requires a very different
approach than for making consumer electronics.In our case, we have to go to the mountains of Tokyo to a small factory which was making kimono garments for generations.We worked with my collaborators, who were not engineers.It was an artisan who knows how to make things and an artist who knows how to make things beautiful.