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Target_is_New - Issue #141

Target_is_New - Issue #141
By Iskander Smit • Issue #141 • View online
Welcome to another weekly update. If you happen to have landed here from a link or search, consider subscribing and receive this as an email weekly…
Last week’s work consists of the usual mix of work on the Delft Design Lab Cities of Things with supervising the five graduation students. Jim has had his greenlight on Thursday, so he has now entered his last phase in designing “an AI assistant supporting balance between work and personal activities to increase wellbeing in the home office”. Peicheng had a successful midterm meeting (“Towards an active predictive relation by hacking study of vacuum robot”).
Not much time to attend events last week. Primavera De Filippi did an interesting talk on “Self-sovereign identity in a globalized world.” The aspect of having credential-based identity systems as a driver for economic inclusion was nicely illustrated with Kiva. A great case of how different asset and money systems are combined.

And she explained the UBI tokens benefits (see Proofofhumanity.id);
I have no conclusions here; if you find this interesting be sure to follow the NGI Forward salons dealing on SSI.
Speaking on trust, we (as in ThingsCon) will have our second online workshop with Eindhoven Internet of Things this Thursday, diving into trust by design exploring some cases. We had some interesting conversations last time on Codes of Trust. It is totally fine to join btw if you missed that one.
Another event I might join this week is the postponed Obfuscation Workshop, which was planned last year before. I am not sure what to expect, the website brings back memories from Mediamatic conceptual website from other times… Don’t forget to check out the workshop for MAB20 on Subversive citizen manual, entries to participate until 14 May. I might also have a look myself at Primer21 cfp.
The coming week Uroboros is starting; I mentioned that one last week, I still need to check what that is about tbh. If you like to plan ahead, these potentially interesting events are happening in June: STRP and CogX. Totally different from each other, which I like.
Ok, enough on the event planning. What did the news bring us last week? Discontinued robot-dogs, robot-gizmos, and robots making sense. And more.
Farming robotics
Farming Robot Kills 100,000 Weeds per Hour With Lasers
More farm-robotics… “Carbon Robotics’ Autonomous Weeder is a smart farming robot that identifies weeds and then kills them using high-power lasers.”
www.freethink.com  •  Share
Meet Tom: Agri-tech firm hits 'world-first milestone' with farm robot
This week the robot theme seems about agriculture… “Small Robot Company (SRC) announced its first commercial robot, ‘Tom’, earlier this week.”
www.agriland.ie  •  Share
Apple-Picking Robot Stems From Labor Shortage
A mesmerising robot in action I would say…
hackaday.com  •  Share
M.I. is engine of the soft robotic hand
Not agri-related per se, expect for the example case sketched in the picture…
“Back to basics. This is the successful approach of an Italian robot builder. Mechalogical is the code word.”
innovationorigins.com  •  Share
And more related robotics...
The World’s First Robotics Venture Factory Is On ‘Robot Island’ In Denmark
TBH, I did not know of this ‘silicon valley of robotics as an island in Denmark’…
There are more than 10,000 robot companies in China. Reportedly, less than 5% of them are doing well. But what if they didn’t all have to reinvent the wheel?
www.forbes.com  •  Share
Google’s Plan for the Future of Work: Privacy Robots and Balloon Walls
The office space is not only changing face to prevent possible infections, the new normal is about hybrid working for a substantial part of office work. Google envisions the future office space…
“The company that helped popularize open office plans and lavish employee perks is trying to reinvent office spaces to cope with workplace sensibilities changed by the pandemic.”
www.nytimes.com  •  Share
The NYPD is sending its controversial robot dog back to the pound
“The New York Police Department has canceled a contract with Boston Dynamics, leasing the company’s robot dog Spot. The machine, nicknamed Digidog by the NYPD, had become the subject of controversy.”
www.theverge.com  •  Share
Something to wonder about; is this realistic real-world understanding layer necessary for robotic-partnerships to succeed?
“The environment is built on top of the ThreeDWorld platform, which the authors describe as “a general-purpose virtual world simulation platform supporting both near-photo realistic image rendering, physically-based sound rendering, and realistic physical interactions between objects and agents.”
thenextweb.com  •  Share
Deepfake satellite imagery poses a not-so-distant threat, warn geographers
Ubiquitous deepfake that is our near future. We need not start to understand how to deal with our vision to be skilled in understanding these fakes…
“Deepfakes are usually associated with imagery of AI-generated people, but what about fake satellite imagery? Geographers say such deepfakes could be used to spread misinformation and even mislead the military.”
www.theverge.com  •  Share
And also...
What cities need now
Agree on these, combined with the notion of the intelligent city as a partner in crime and not as a tool: “Realizing that future will demand three things. First, creators of smart city technology must draw on specialized knowledge of the local context. Second, we need a framework for data governance: agreements on how data is collected, shared, and used. And finally, public participation is essential. Simply put, the way forward is to respond to the needs of the community, not the motives of industry. ”
www.technologyreview.com  •  Share
In the Dutch Twitter-sphere, some people were complaining that this is a kind of techno-driven solutionism that will now solve any of the more systemic problems with building new houses in the Netherlands (environmental regulations etc). This might be valid reasoning, more zoomed out it is a nice experiment next to earlier initiatives to print house components changing our look towards houses and homes. Next to tiny houses and of course vanlife… :)
“New home in the shape of the boulder is first legally habitable property with load-bearing walls made using 3D-printing technology”
www.theguardian.com  •  Share
Not sure if you are interested… A sign of these times in multiple senses…
www.platformer.news  •  Share
Is it just me or is the FOMO as big as ever, or even more, now that we are forced to visit exhibitions online and have no excuse to skip them anymore. A collab of IMPAKT with Egyptian artist on digital technologies; no idea if that delivers interesting work… But you can check out yourself!
wearedata.impakt.nl  •  Share
That was it for this week. Enjoy the week!
PS: I will publish the new monthly update reflection on the cities of things newsletter soon, you can still subscribe to not miss that one!
Did you enjoy this issue?
Iskander Smit

I am working @Infonl as a research director, and chair Cities of Things, blogger Target_is_New, co-organizing @ThingsCon.
Visiting researcher at TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering.

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