Seems like a good place to flesh out scenarios and get feedback on uses for the technology.

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Hi, I'm intreguied by this topic not sure how you see it evolving, but wondering if people here are aware of Usman Haque's work on environmentXML ? 

With the low cost sensors out there and dirt simple electronics platfroms like Wiring, we can start outputing the state of things as mundane as the temperature in our offices not particularly interesting on its face, but could be fun to inter-relate with things like We Feel Fine .

Yep, this seems really interesting, but I'd like to know more about how it is practically applied.

Re: Semiot ref:  this Link  to environmentXML works

In a "past life" I was CEO of a firm that I was taking towards complex event processing --

I was interested processing of events from a "cloud" of sensors in manufacturing or commerical applications that would allow humans to be inside the control loop of complex systems rather than just ceding control completely to fully automated systems. 

The aim was to have humans proactively involved in control of complex systems  to avoid the effect, for example, of an autopilot working fine at keeping a plane or ship undercontrol all the while as systems one by one deteriorated or got to the point of criticality before yelling to a sleeping pilot "Over to you John -- there's nothing more that I can do!"  -- and of course the pilot, having a critical warning dumped on him with no context, simply unable to do anything in time to avert disaster.

In terms of connection with "We Feel FIne" -- well I have enough problems with fighting with my spouse over the thermostat setting ---  I can't really imagine collective control of a really complex setting.... but the future will bring things that we can't even begin to imagine now... so maybe it will bring systems where we'll each get a vote to control various aspects of our environment and the 'system' with seek to maximize eudemony.

Thanks for the corrected link Bricoleur, I agree with you in terms of collective control. The two examples I was using might be used more for analysis and longterm action rather than direct manipulation at the moment interaction. In the case of environmentalXML imagine for example
changing the way we understand energy consumption in the home or across a neighborhood. I'm thinking about ambient displays that alter how we think about the number of things that are sucking down power and blowing out heat around us for example....

Good ideas ....sometimes it just helps to visualize things.

I remember reading about a very early visual display thrown together at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) they attached a crepe streamer to a little motor whose speed was determined by the amount of traffic flowing over the lan (this was before networks were everywhere).

A simple check as to whether the paper was flapping wildly or not at all could tell you if delays in messages being delivered were due to heavy network traffic or that the researchers/developers should go looking elsewhere for what was sucking down resources! The flapping crepe paper was much more effective in reminding individual people of their usage of a "commons" and that they were consuming a very limited resource (bandwidth was far from 'free' in those days) than any purely visual display could ever be.

I LOVE that example Bricoleur.

+1

Most of the things I was getting towards with this group was to explore slightly more macro events. Having different data resources using a common reference spec allows economists to begin to examine effects of events primarily in the sociological realm. Now, I know that this goes on in the research arena pretty regularly, but that is still a very long loop to get from academia to the trade papers or a news story then to a consumer who might be associated with one of these fields.

 On the other hand, an information browser that is already in the consumers hands, sharing datasets from person to person or from a central repository, will allow people to come to massively novel conclusions.

In the case of a person who cannot figure out which layers are worth exploration, there should also be a grouping of layers along with the insight that they provided to the user.

 Sorry if this is confusing, but what I'm talking about assumes the backdrop of a 3d planet with the most updated satellite and terrestrial sensor data available. With links to historical information and a means to generate visuals entirely driven by the data itself. Users choose the types of data, color schemes, transparency and methods of producing a display.

 All of these components already exist in minor ways, but it is nothing close to a standard yet, and the globe viewer does not exist -yet. Well, the basis does, but I'm working to produce an extension of this application to do the rest of the features I described. World Wind is the foundation. Data can be of any type, basically. Just a little more tweaking.

Meanwhile IBM is releasing  data tools for everyone. Processing.org has been doing it for a while. And more and more people are finding ways to process data on their own and look at it in Google Earth as a kml layer.

 All of this falls short of being able to play with the data and output imagery on the desktop and benefit from others explorations.

Ironically I see most of the real utility here coming from the developing world, where useful technology is adopted easily (think cell phones in Africa) as soon as it becomes affordable. It is a huge latent market for these things and putting data and oneself into planetary context is an exploding sector waiting to happen.

One bit of good news, we'll be showing something soon for the UN development goals, linking countries to solutions along the seven areas.

As for Environment XML, the temperature wouldn't be determined by a group, but like the PARC example, it could be used to indicate some level of activity. As in, the less electricity sucked by the heating system might be associated with how many humans are inside the building, factored for the outside temperature.

Agricultural applications are pretty obvious, moisture PH and salinity sensors over a large area mixed with high altitude winds could give you optimal planting or watering times down to the hour every day

It could branch out to shools, determining statistically which days are best for teaching intensive subjects and which are better for informal outdoors activities; or motivationally - knowing that other students are working on the same or similar things might get the juices flowing to all be completed at a certain time in order to share results across borders or oceans.

A bit of a progress report.

A standalone app has been completed that will allow the user to take in pretty much any csv text file with the following columns:

Placename (or Lat Long),    Year (or any sequential data), Description (text can include URL for linking to web)

This info is controllable by selecting a color range or defining your own and uploading an icon to represent the data points.

Pressing 'OK' in the widget, produces a layer in World Wind with icons colored to match the data and if there are more than one year, the data is layered into a column. This information can be packaged automatically, emailed to someone, unzipped into the World Wind folder and the layer will show up for them.

It was built originally to select data from the Millenium Development Goals website, download the selection in csv format, convert and show information on the three dimensional zoomable globe.

What it shows is relative progress on whichever goal/criterion was selected by color change over the years. URL's in the description column will make the icon clickable and open the desired web page inside WW and since it is an instance of IE, it can show anything. I'm working towards showing additional information on lessons learned, aid agencies and solution providers for that particular goal. You can essentially see who has made significant progress on a particular MDG goal and click to see who was responsible, how they did it. The idea is for decision makers in the UN to make faster progress on their weak points.

Buckminster Fuller Entry is out and hopefully among the 250 applicants we will have a chance at the 100k award to implement the idea.

Not much activity here and I guess the topic has become arcane, but I'd sure like to see where this technology can go.