GigantiCo endorses Howard Bloom for the board of Humanity+.
In the interim board elections of Humanity+, taking place this month, I have nominated Howard Bloom to one of the open board seats. Last week he accepted the nomination. Voting will ocur in a Humanity+ Yahoo! Group accessible by members, set up for this purpose.
At The Humanity+ Summit held at Harvard in June, Robert Tercek presented, “What Geeks Can Learn from Gurus,” that struck a chord and I would argue, became the central takeaway for most members from the Summit — Something quietly acknowledged but rarely addressed — Transhumanism has a Public Relations problem.
This is where Howard comes in.
For those who may not be familiar, let me give a brief account of Howard’s backstory.
Many may know Howard as a writer (Humanity+ board secretary, Joel Pitt, has informed me that Howard’s Global Brain was a “great inspiration” to him when he was studying at University.). His books include:
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History “Readers will be mesmerized by the mirror Bloom holds to the human condition, and dumbfounded by the fusillade of eclectic data that arrives with the swiftness and intensity of a furious tennis volley. His style is effortless, engaging, witty and brisk… He draws on a dozen years of research into a jungle of scholarly fields… and meticulously supports every bit of information.” — Washington Post “Howard Bloom’s book is an epoch-making and culture-defining treatise. It is destined to be the Future Shock of our time.” — Bob Guccione, Jr., SPIN
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century “While cyber-thinkers claim the Internet is bringing us toward some sort of worldwide mind, Bloom believes we’ve had one all along. Drawing on information theory, debates within evolutionary biology, and research psychology (among other disciplines), Bloom understands the development of life on Earth as a series of achievements in collective information processing.” — Publishers Weekly
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism “Capitalism de- and reconstructed—capitalism with a heart—and brain: Howard Bloom’s new book marshals his vast knowledge of history, deep cultural experience and broad scientific understanding to argue for a new way. Ever since I sent away for a marketing book in the eighties whose major advice was how much money you could make marketing marketing books, I was skeptical. But marketing genius Howard Bloom may have written the greatest marketing book ever—one that puts capitalism in its cosmic context.” — Dorion Sagan (American science writer)
Howard has also been published in periodicals including WIRED Magazine, OMNI Magazine, New Ideas in Psychology, EnlightenNext Magazine, The Village Voice and many others.
Howard is the founder of the The Space Development Steering Committee, who’s members include Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 Astronaut; Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut; Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center, among others. He is a member of The New York Academy of Sciences, The National Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Psychological Society, The Academy of Political Science and The Human Behavior and Evolution Society.
His qualifications for a board seat are without question. What sets Howard apart are his years in the private sector — specifically his career in Public Relations.
Howard has lead a colorful and multifaceted career. After youthful success in the music business, in 1976 he founded The Howard Bloom Organization, Ltd. a public relations firm that represented such artists as Prince, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, Simon & Garfunkel, Queen, KISS, Aerosmith, AC/DC, John Mellencamp, Run DMC and on and on and on. At its peak, The Howard Bloom Organization was the largest public relations firm in the recording industry.
Howard did not solicit for this position. When I first approached him about being nominated, his response was sincerely humble. He expressed what an enormous honor it was to be considered for the Humanity+ board.
Howard’s background brings unique talents to the table of precisely the kind that the organization needs to shape its message.
I encourage other members to support his nomination. If you do decide to support his candidacy, please tell others — perhaps consider sharing this article on Twitter or Facebook.
Due to a schedule conflict I was unable to attend the Humanity+ Summit in person. Thankfully it was live streamed. I’ve included Ray Kurzweil’s Keynote here:
Ray, often in the spotlight these days, was even more visible than usual this weekend, with a multi-page story in the New York Times on Friday, as well as a brief bio at #62 in Fast Company’s list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.
While Ray (and fellow Keynote Speakers, Stephen Wolfram & Aubrey de Grey) may have drawn the crowds, it was a talk by Robert Tercek — President, Digital Media, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network — that struck a nerve with me and, I think, many others as well. So I’ve included video of his talk below, as well as the slides from his presentation. While most of the speakers were intelligent and insightful, it was also well trodden ground for those active in this community. Ray is a great lecturer however, in this venue, he was inevitably preaching to the choir (with all the religious baggage that statement carries).
My thoughts: To get traction, respect and most importantly goodwill beyond the inner-circle, the transhumanist/singulatarian community needs not only to put thought into these things, but action behind them. Renaming the organization Humanity+ (previously The World Transhumanist Association) was a big step in the right direction. But this is only superficial if it is not backed up with action. I have had some recent dialog with our Executive Director, Alex Lightman, regarding this matter. There is some intellectual discomfort by some in the movement with the fact that much of the research done in Transhumanist studies (nano-bio-info-cog) has been financed by the U.S. military. Patrick Lin’s lecture at the summit addressed some of these issues. But not all of this research has been focused on waging war. In recent years, a great deal of research financed by the U.S. Military has funded next-generation robotic prosthetics, artificial eyes, and other medical applications related to body/machine and brain/machine interfaces. This is due to the large number of disabled veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — While battlefield casualties have dropped astoundingly since the days of World War II and even Vietnam, this is largely due to medical advances that have allowed more soldiers to survive wounds that in prior conflicts would have been fatal. The number of returning disabled veterans has risen at a rate near proportional to that which war related deaths have declined. This has left us with a very large number of disabled veterans from the past decade’s military conflicts. Consequently, the military has been investing heavily in human/machine interface technologies to improve the mobility and overall quality of life of these veterans. I have been espousing the position that Humanity+ should be looking for opportunities to get involved in veterans affairs. Whatever one’s position on any given conflict may be, we are the benefactors of this research, and these veterans have paid a very heavy price in order to be the guinea pigs for this research. Today’s American veterans are indeed humanity’s first true cyborgs. What form this involvement should take has not yet taken shape, but I have been in some informal dialog with Doug Thompson of Remedy Communications, to see if there isn’t a place for Humanity+ to either be involved in their efforts, or at least to advise us on where our community’s strengths could best be leveraged in assisting veterans. If Humanity+ is to be an organization that lives up to its name, this would be a very noble start.
There were many other excellent speakers including Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari; Andrew Hessel, Co-Chair of Singularity University; and noted futurists like Natasha Vita-More, Ben Goertzel and John Smart… and one of my personal favorites, Patrick Hopkins, the spoiler, on why mind “uploading” will not work as life extension.
An announcement worth noting: during Hank Hyena’s excellent talk, Alex interjected to inform everyone that H+ Magazine, which had previously been sold to Better Humans and was recently put back up for sale, has now been reacquired by Humanity+ where it will be put immediately back into publication. Many readers may have never known it was shut down, save for a recent letter posted to the editor’s blog. The website was kept live, but as a contributing writer (1|2), R.U. has kept myself and other contributors in the loop on things going on behind the scenes to try and secure a new buyer. I am very pleased to know that H+ Magazine has survived the ordeal.
Thanks to David Orban, Chairman; and Alex Lightman, Executive Director of Humanity+ for making this event happen. Also a special thanks to Kevin Jain whom I am told was instrumental at securing Harvard as the venue for the event.
Presented by the WTN Imagined Worlds Film Series, in association with TIME Magazine. Advanced ticket sales are available online for $35, or $55 at the door. Time & Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue) between West 50th & West 51st Streets. See Map.
Disclosure: I am both a dues-paying member of Humanity+ and a contributing writer to h+ Magazine.
Juan Enriquez is a businessman/philosopher who works as a genetics & biotechnology venture capitalist. His thinking could be broadly described as libertarian transhumanist — a sort of wet-tech Ray Kurzweil, sans the pseudo-spiritual trappings. I feel that he is one of the great minds of our day.
Juan is the former CEO of Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation. He served in the Mexican government as Coordinator General of Economic Policy and also as Chief of Staff to Mexico’s Secretary of State. When in Mexican politics, he helped negotiate the cease-fire in Chiapas’ Zapatista rebellion. Today he lives in Boston where he was the Founding Director of Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project, and is now both CEO of Biotechonomy and Managing Director of Excel Medical Ventures.
Below I have collected a set of videos from a miscellaneous of speaking engagements by Mr. Enriquez.
Many of the links in this article are for video demos. Rather than having a string of 30+ videos cluttering and breaking up the article, I’ve chosen to set up a separate video page. When you click a video link, it will open a second window. You can view the related video as well as navigate all of the other videos from this window. If your monitor is large enough to permit, I would even suggest leaving the second window open for the videos to cue each video when needed, as you read through the article. To differentiate the video links from other links, links to videos are each followed by a “¤”. To open the window now, click here ¤.
While social media in general, and Facebook and Twitter specifically, have been monopolizing mainstream media’s coverage of online trends, augmented reality is getting a lot of inside-the-industry exposure, mostly for its undeniable wow factor. But that wow factor is a double edged sword, and advertising has a way of turning trends into fads, just before they move on to the next brand new thing. So for this article I wish to focus on practical applications and augmented reality with clear end user benefits. I’ve deliberately chosen not to address entertainment and gaming related executions as it is beyond the scope of this article and frankly merits dedicated attention all its own. And perhaps I’ll do just that in a future article.
Can it Save the Car? The automotive industry was an early adopter. Due to the manufacturing process, the CAD models already exist and the technology is very well adaptive to showing off an automobile from a god’s eye view. Mini ¤ may have been first off the pole position, with Toyota ¤, Nissan ¤ and BMW ¤ tailgating close behind. Some implementation of AR will soon replace (or augment) the “car customizer” feature that is in some form standard on all automobile websites.
The kind of augmentation that is so applicable to automotive is also readily adaptable to many other forms of retail. Lego ¤ is experimenting with in store kiosks that feature the assembled kit when the respective box is held before the camera. Because legos are a “kit” the technology is very applicable in-store, however I find the eCommerce opportunities much more compelling. Ray-Ban ¤ has developed a “virtual mirror” that lets you try on virtual sunglasses from their website. Holition ¤ is marketing a similar implementation for jewelry and watches. HairArt is a virtual hairstyle simulator developed for FHI Heat ¤, maker of hair-care products and hairstyling tools. While demonstrating potential, some attempts are less successful ¤ than others (edit: I just learned of a better execution of an AR Dressing Room by Fraunhofer Institut). One of the most practical, useful implementations I’ve seen is for the US Post Office ¤— A flat rate shipping box simulator (best seen). These kind of demonstration and customization applications will soon be pervasive in the eCommerce space and in retail environments. TOK&STOK ¤, a major Brazilian furniture retailer, is using in-store kiosks to view furniture arrangements, though I personally find theirs to be a poor implementation. A better method would be to use the same symbol tags to place the AR objects right into your home, from the camera connected to your PC. And that’s just what one student creative team has proposed as an IKEA ¤ entry for their Future Lions submission at this years Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. A quite sophisticated version of this same concept has also been developed by Seac02 ¤ of Italy.
To Tag, or not to Tag? A couple of years ago I wrote here about QR codes. A couple of weeks ago, while attending the Creativity and Technology Expo, I was given a private demo of Nokia’s Point & Find ¤. This is basically the same technology as QR codes, but uses a more advanced image recognition that doesn’t require the code. Candidly I wasn’t terribly impressed. The interface is poor and the implementation is so focused on selling to advertisers that they seemed oblivious to how people will actually want to use it, straightjacketing what could be a cool technology. Hopefully future versions will improve. Most implementations of augmented reality rely on one of two techniques— either a high degree of place-awareness, or some form of object recognition. Symbols similar to QR codes are most often used when the device is not place-aware, though some like Nokia’s Point & Find don’t require a symbol tag. Personally, even if the technology no longer requires it, I feel the symbol or tag-code is a better implementation when used for marketing. We are still far from a point where everything is tagged, so people won’t know to inspect if a tag-code is not present. Furthermore, the codes place around on posters and printed material help build awareness for the technology itself. Everything covered here thus far has been recognition based augmented reality.
Through the Looking Glass Location-aware augmented reality usually refers to some form of navigational tool. This is particularly noteworthy with new applications coming to market for smartphones. As BlackBerry hits back at the iPhone, Android’s list of licensees grows and the Palm brings a genuine contender back to the table with the new Palm Pre, there is huge momentum in the smartphone market that not even the recession can slow down. I personally think the name “smartphone” is misleading as these devices are far beyond being a mere ‘phone’. Even a very smart one. They are full-on computers that, among many other features, happen to include a phone. In my prior article on augmented reality I focused on the iPhone’s addition of a magnetometer (digital compass). This gave the iPhone the final piece of spacial self-awareness needed to develop AR applications like those coming fast and furious to the Android platform. Think of it like this— The GPS makes the phone aware of its own longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates on the earth, the compass tells it which direction it is facing, and the accelerometer (digital level-meter) determines the phone’s degree from perpendicular to the ground (this is what lets the phone’s browser know whether to be in portrait or landscape mode). Through this combination of measures the device can determine precisely where in the world it is looking. There is already a fierce race to market in this highly competitive space. Applications like Mobilizy’s Wikitude ¤ (Android), Layar ¤ (Android) and other proof of concepts seeking funding like Enkin ¤ (Android) and SekaiCamera ¤ (iPhone) are jockeying for the mindshare of early adopters. Others have developed proprietary AR navigational apps such as IBM’s Seer ¤ (Android) for the 2009 Wimbledon games. Two months ago when Nine Inch Nails released their NIN Access ¤ iPhone app, there was no iPhone on the market with a built-in compass, so the capability for this level of augmentation was not yet available, but a look at the application’s “nearby” feature gives a hint at the kind of utility and community that could be built around a band or a brand using this kind of AR. View a demo of Loopt ¤, and only a little imagination is needed to see how social networking can be enhanced by place awareness, now add person-specific augmentation tied to a profile and the creepy stalker potential is brought to full fruition, depending on your perspective. And there are other well established players in the automotive navigation space that have a high potential for crossover. The addition of a compass to the iPhone paved the way for an app version of TomTom ¤. Not to be outdone, a Navigon ¤ press release has announced that they too have an iPhone app in development. How long before location-aware automotive navigation developers choose to enter the pedestrian navigation space?
Some Assembly Required It seems everyone wants some AR business from IKEA. Another spec project by a student at the University of Singapore proposes an assembly instruction manual for IKEA ¤ furniture. In a more sophisticated application on the same line of thought, BMW ¤ is experimenting with augmented reality automotive maintenance and repair technology. Note in that video that he is not doing this in front of his laptop camera, nor is he holding his smartphone in front of his face. He’s wearing special AR eyewear. The potential for hands-free instruction and tutorial is as obvious as it is unlimited. Consider any product you purchase that comes with instructions (You do read the instructions, right?). A municipal construction crew repairing a broken water pipe could effectively have X-Ray vision, seeing where all the pipes are under the road, based on schematics supplied to their eyewear from city records.
Seeing is Believing When it comes to Virtual Reality, I’ve had a mantra that none of this will really take off until we’re in there versus looking at there. I believe augmented reality will be the catalyst that pushes digital eyewear into the marketplace. Virtual World applications are, by their nature, not location dependent. In many ways that’s the point— you can be anywhere. And sitting at your computer or game console and looking at a screen is a well established all-purpose interface. Place-aware augmented reality, on the other hand, is location dependent— Walking down the street holding your smartphone in front of your face is not a long-term solution. In only a short couple of years, a bluetooth earpiece ¤ has gone from being the goofy guy walking down the street who looks like he’s talking to himself, to a common everyday accessory, even fashionable. What works for your ears is now coming to your eyes— a hands-free visual interface in the form of eyewear. Some variation of this concept has been around for a long time ¤. Slow to improve, even most contemporary models are less fashionable than a Geordi LaForge’s visor, but slowly they are improving.
The Vuzix Wrap 920AV (at left), prototype premiered at the 2009 CES in Las Vegas, are the newest consumer class digital eyewear marketed for augmented reality applications. WIRED Magazine’s Gadget Lab feels their most significant feature, “comes from the fact that the company finally hired a designer aware of current aesthetic tastes.” Significant to the 920AV’s is that: A. They boast ‘see-thru’ video lens that readily lend themselves to augmented reality applications, and B. They are stereoscopic (meaning they have a separate video channel for each eye, required for 3D). They are meant to hit the market in the Fall, and are being pushed as an iPhone compatible device. If they are smart, they will do a bundled play with a “killer app” such as SekaiCamera or similar product. They have the potential to be the ‘must have’ gift for the 2009 holiday season. Not to oversell them, I have not personally demoed them yet so I don’t know if they will deliver on the hype, but they look as though they will be first to market, and their product will be the leading contender in the immediate future. Here is a demonstration of a prior Vuzix model ¤ (behold the fashion statement). Using symbol-tag based augmented reality, this man places a yacht in his living room.
If the quality of the user experience fails to live up to expectations, Vuzix has many pretenders to the crown. Fast followers like Lumus (at left) and others are trying to get products to market as well. Then there are MyVu, Carl Zeiss, i-O Display Systems and others who have video eyewear products and are likely candidates to come forward with AR offerings. Add to that a technical patent awarded to Apple last year for an AR eyewear solution of their own and it is clear this could quickly become a crowded and competitive product category. This video titled Future of Education ¤, while speculative, is a splendidly produced and rather accurate projection of where the technology is going.
Where to From Here? We’re moving in this direction at exponential speed, the pace of progress is only going to keep moving faster. As we see the convergence of augmented reality with mobile and mobile with ear and eyewear, there are another set of convergences just over the horizon. We’re on the threshold of realtime language translation ¤. This is an ingredient technology and, like a spell-checker, will soon be baked in to all communications devices, first of which will be our phones. The Nintendo Wii brought motion capture into our homes, and technologies like Microsoft’s Project Natal ¤ are converging motion capture with three dimensional optical recognition, so no device is needed. And everything, both real and virtual, will soon be integrated into the semantic web. Intelligent agents will assist us with many tasks. While most of this intelligence will occur behind the curtain, as humans we like to personify our technology. It won’t be long before our personal digital assistant could be given the human touch. How human?
NOTE: In the references below, I’ve included a list of firms that have created some of the pieces shown here or the technologies used.
I promised readers here they would be first to know, should anything come of my talks with H+ Magazine. Well, for issue #3 I received my first assignment. I’ve actually been a little tardy with my update— it’s been out for several weeks (I have been very busy).
I was asked to contribute an “Art” article. After considering various artists, and presenting Ken with some options, I eventually interviewed Christopher Conte (whose work some may recall I covered here once before at GigantiCo). We met over dinner at Yaffa, and at a later date I had the unique pleasure of photographing a couple of Mr. Conte’s pieces. A really swell guy too, I might add. I was given four pages to layout to my liking (only some minor font changes were made for the final edition, to better integrate my layout with the rest of the magazine).
Ken Goffman (aka. R.U. Sirius) has pulled together a great team and the whole process was a really good experience. I’m now discussing further assignments from H+ and hope to be an ongoing contributor.
Oh, and did I mention? They used one of my photos of a Christopher Conte sculpture for the cover.
In October Ken Goffman (aka. R.U. Sirius) launched a new venture. The cyberculture icon of Mondo 2000 fame has a new transhumanist magazine, H+. You won’t find this one on your newsstand yet, issue #1 of this quarterly publication has been released as a PDF only. You can download it here (and you should).
Transhumanism is a philosophy that explores/embraces the increasing integration of technology with the human race. In the words of the World Transhumanist Association — “The ethical use of technology to extend human capabilities.” H+ covers these issues technologically, biologically and philosophically — concerned with both the possible, and its implications for humanity.
I had held off covering this on GigantiCo, because I’ve been discussing with Ken a possible role for myself with the publication, and thus far none has precipitated. I had intended to cover the launch of the magazine in a more timely manner, with an announcement of my involvement. So far we are just talking. That’s not a bad thing, I hope the dialog will lead to something more. If it does, readers here will be first to know. Until then, keep an eye on H+.
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 1:06AM 
In the interim board elections of Humanity+, taking place this month, I have nominated Howard Bloom to one of the open board seats. Last week he accepted the nomination. Voting will ocur in a Humanity+ Yahoo! Group accessible by members, set up for this purpose.
At The Humanity+ Summit held at Harvard in June, Robert Tercek presented, “What Geeks Can Learn from Gurus,” that struck a chord and I would argue, became the central takeaway for most members from the Summit — Something quietly acknowledged but rarely addressed — Transhumanism has a Public Relations problem.
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism
An announcement worth noting: during Hank Hyena’s excellent talk, Alex interjected to inform everyone that H+ Magazine, which had previously been sold to 
Ray Kurzweil, June 24, NYC
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and 
. I have also included his lectures on each book in the videos below.
The 
If the quality of the user experience fails to live up to expectations, Vuzix has many pretenders to the crown. Fast followers like 
(aka. R.U. Sirius) launched a new venture. The cyberculture icon of 
