Making Sense of Sensors

Making sense of sensorsRe-thinking personal computing@twhume

Our mental models for ourselves are dated.Descartes and homunculi have left their mark

The tools we have built to support our minds fit (or are fitted to) these models...

Arithmetic& logic unit

Control unit

Memory(instructions

& data)

Results ofoperations

Instructions& data

I/O

...and the blueprint for our tools hasn’t changed (much)

But this blueprint, and these models, are increasingly irrelevant.Modern computing devices are more about I/O than processing

$32 Sensors/touchscreen/GPS

$27 16GB Flash memory

$25 RF components

$14 4GB DRAM memory

$11 A4 processor

$10 display

There’s no shortage of sensors.

microphone

touch screenGPS

physical keys

Bluetooth

wifi

3G

camera(s)

accelerometer

magnometer

compass

light

proximity

gyroscope

gravity sensor

linear acceleration

rotation vector

NFC

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Their mainstream uses tend to be subtle.Perhaps because we resent the digital intruding upon the physical?

We need them: finger-to-screen we’re out of bandwidth.So must look for other ways to express communicate with our devices

Flickr quinn.anya

Different platforms expose sensors differently.You can see assumptions and philosophies play out

Flickr sycamoremoonstudios

iOS is like Disneyland...Carefully curated and packaged use cases

Jack & Jill Magazine

...a beautiful but gated kingdom.

Android is the chocolate factory...

Warner

Android is the chocolate factory...

... and the web is working on it.PhoneGap is where the action is today, in practice

Sony Pictures

Sensors can help apps mimic nature... Sonar Ruler, working echolocation for the iPhone

...derive meaning from movement...GymFu, a personal training app for iPhone

...observe our environment en masse...NoiseTube: a collaborative mapping project from Sony Paris

...or map it in specialist, meaningful ways.Hills Are Evil: maps that matter for people with restricted mobility

On-device processing is very feasible...Your mileage may vary, terms and conditions apply

On-device processing is very feasible...Your mileage may vary, terms and conditions apply

...but the real world isn’t a sterile lab... It’s full of noise, and packing sensors together doesn’t help

Portal 2 Valve

...components can vary in performance...

...components can vary in performance...

...and you can’t change physics.The ever-present consideration of power consumption

We can look for inspiration from literature...Daemons in the Dark Materials trilogy, envisaged on-stage as puppets

...to artists who give us new ways to look at a familiar world...Animal Superpowers by Kenichi Okada & Chris Woebken

...or to those showing us the unseen all around us.Immaterials: light painting WiFi film by Timo Arnall

Think of image. What symbolises paranoia, the state - Brazil?

Think of image. What symbolises paranoia, the state - Brazil?

Things to keep us awake at night.We’re leaving trails for future technology to pick up

Thank you for not heckling(unless you did)

...and thank you to Trevor May, Dan Williams, Timo Arnall, Jof Arnold, Ellie D’Hondt, Usman Haque, Gabor Paller, Sterling Udell, Martyn Davies, Daniele Pietrobelli, Andy Piper and Jakub Czaplickifor all their help with this presentation.

I have been @twhume

Please tell me what you thought of this,in the bar or at http://bit.ly/twh_fom

futureplatforms.com