LONG BEACH, California — Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen. The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will, then dispel them like smoke when they’re done.

Pattie Maes of the lab’s Fluid Interfaces group said the research is aimed at creating a new digital “sixth sense” for humans.

In the tactile world, we use our five senses to take in information about our environment and respond to it, Maes explained. But a lot of the information that helps us understand and respond to the world doesn’t come from these senses. Instead, it comes from computers and the internet. Maes’ goal is to harness computers to feed us information in an organic fashion, like our existing senses.

The prototype was built from an ordinary webcam and a battery-powered 3M projector, with an attached mirror — all connected to an internet-enabled mobile phone. The setup, which costs less than $350, allows the user to project information from the phone onto any surface — walls, the body of another person or even your hand.

Image source

Because buildings are so expensive to build and modify in the real world, rarely are students and staff able to actively participate in the creation of the physical spaces they use. In a virtual space, however, the tables are turned. Anyone can easily prototype their idea in 3D, walk through it, and share it with others. Given these new opportunities, why not let the students, staff and public community who actually use these classrooms design it for themselves? Who better, in fact, to offer insight to improve a occupied space, than the people that use it on a daily basis?

These are the questions, the Studio Wikitecture group has been asking for some time now. Composed of individuals from various backgrounds and open to anyone, the group has been asking whether new modes of production, as witnessed in the open-source movement, for example, can offer any clues into how we might improve the process of designing our buildings and cities, both real and virtual. In much the same way Wikipedia enables a loose, self-organizing network of contributors to come together to create a surprisingly accurate encyclopedia, the group has been conducting a number of experiments and projects to explore ways by which a disperse group, spread around the world, can come together to share ideas, edit the contributions of others, and vote on the success or failure of an evolving piece of architecture.

GOOD: The Hidden Cost of War

Another example of Microsoft’s inability to understand younger users, comes in what I can only call their software design philosophy, which I can summarize as “Throw in More Features”. Yet, that seems antithetical to those products which are selling most successfully in the market place, especially to young people. Microsoft Office is the clearest example of this. The myriad number of options buried in Word 2008’s ribbons, will rarely be used by most users. And in Excel 2008, some users might need pivot tables, but vast majority of those that use spreadsheets will never ever need to use them, nor will they ever write a macro, or script in Visual Basic. What is clear from the success of Google Docs and Zoho, especially amongst college age students, is that people want tools that are simultaneously powerful and simple to use. And that is why not only are web based office replacements, which focus on ease of use,facilitating collaborative exchange, and being able to publish in digital environments, but also iWork and Star office, are gaining traction.

(links in original)

Hopefully Final Crisis will be as filled with revelations and jaw dropping moments as this piece was. Off the top of my head I related what Vannevar was predicting over 50 years ago to at least five different modern devices of media. For starters, we have the jump drive. While he was describing something most people would attribute as a floppy, that little device has gone the way of the Dodo in recent years. All things circling about his “Memex” concept, the man foresaw modern interactions with computers when the only computer around was a giant room of devices that mimicked what we now call a calculator and even THAT device, I believe, was at least five years down the road.

No matter which department you’re in, Web 2.0 technologies have had an impact. If you’ve been ignoring their prevalence and adoption, you’re at risk of falling behind in your career and your business is at risk of losing ground to its competitors who are tuned into this trend.

What follows is a summary roundup of apps. How does all this connect to a possible field for which you have interest as a student?