Target_is_New - Issue #190

Hi all! Thanks for reading. Last week I had a short time to dive into events and reads and did a high-level overview. This week it is back to the usual routine.

So last week I discussed LaaS concepts and several forms of AI and ways to move into the next era of digital reality; the era of protocols. It can be the focus I have myself or it is really starting to become more of a thing indeed. It slowly is getting out of the realm of investment strategies and becomes a real structural part of developing new services.

At the same time, I started reading the new book of Bridle (finally), on new ways of being, new types of intelligence. His starting premise is that as we are now decoupling intelligence from humans with AI there should be an opening for other forms of nonhuman intelligence. Just started but already interesting. I watched this interview with James that dived further into it.

I also finally visited the exhibition Private_Eye_Butler_Spy. It is a nice overview of the impact of digital tech.

And new developments in the Twitter saga; Musk is close by taking over. So many things have been said. As argued earlier by Zuboff it would be better to treat it like a public place not owned by one person. Maybe Musk is surprising us with a DAO-like construct, but his past use of the medium to manipulate his own earnings and image does not promise the best. The Convivial Story overview of thoughts is worth reading. A great outcome would be if Twitter is going back to its roots and redesigning the mechanisms towards a tool that facilitates conversations within your own selected communities combined with serendipity, without the algorithmic amplifying mechanisms that favor the negative and dark. Disconnecting the messaging core engine from the client tooling would be a good start. But it will be a hell of a job to design this well in our current times that are so different from social media 15 years ago… It is interesting to see a slight rise of interest in Mastodon. It has problems too though, especially in scaling.

We announced the first session and talks for ThingsCon Summer Edition (9 & 10 June). Very happy to have Justyna talking about her experiences at Teenage Engineering. The OB-4 is a very nice example of the Physical Twin, finding the value in physical touchpoints of our digital (music) consumption. Next to that, I am very curious to hear more about the concrete implementation of citizen science with Telraam. The workshops and sessions are already diverse in both topics and formats. Well, have a look, and expect more soon!

Some nice events this week.

IoT London does an in-person event again, for those who are in that vibrant city tonite.

One of my favorite in-depth sessions is the General Seminars. I attended Metalabels two weeks ago at midnight due to time differences, this Wednesday it is on a more appropriate time for Europe. The topic is Autonomous. I am afraid it will be sold out if you read this.

Waag is hosting a workshop organized by Tomo Kihara on Thursday evening; how will the city look in 2070?

With robotics and autonomous companions in all kinds of forms and roles. And how an art piece is telling us more about the redefinition of personal space in a digital era. And so much more. And big questions on intelligence and agency.

This week a freshly published article looks into a specific concept of interaction as a design strategy for AI and social robots: resonance. The article dives into understanding resonance as a pervasive phenomenon and its role in human interactions. It is an interesting exploration I think. The article develops ten hypotheses and research questions for future (empirical) studies.

The article is also a source for learning about all types of resonance concepts and their role in human interactions. It even unplanned connects to the news with an example of Will Smith for human resonance.

The relation of resonance and getting into a flow state in the human-robot interaction seems to me super interesting.

I did not read the paper front to end yet, browsing through the different hypotheses one came to mind that I wonder if it covered too; is a strategy to use resonance in the interaction of human-robot helping the robot to understand and connect to the human intentions, or vice versa?

Read the article online here.