Wearable computing in Japan

"Twenty-five-year-old Mari Taniuchi enters Tokyo's ultra-hip Shibuya district and glances at a tiny computer screen bolted on her jacket sleeve. A map of the area lights up. She sifts through information on places to eat and shop, tapping a key pad woven into her cuff, as music plays from headphones wired through her collar. Her padded white jacket reflects the latest in Japanese streetware -- a hybrid of fashion and technology that has its roots in a concept that has never quite worked: the 'wearable PC....'

A key challenge is to develop a water-proof fabric-like display that can be folded up without losing its functionality.  To that end, Pioneer Corp sees Sone's project as an outlet for 10 years of research on ultra-thin displays that are flexible enough to be embedded in clothing.  It plans to showcase its latest heat-proof organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen at a November 2002 'media fashion' show backed by Gifu prefecture."  [at Reuters, via ia/]

At SLS, we've been waiting for the release of the ElekTex fabric PDA keyboard. Fascinating, this stuff... pervasive computing embedded in your everyday clothing.

Knowledge management: Can information be counterproductive?

"Historically, many societies and economies suffered from a lack of information. Today, information flows at an unprecedented rate. We have thus moved from scarcity to, in some cases, glut. How to deal with too much information is a major challenge for knowledge management.

Knowledge is what we know. Information is the communication of knowledge. In every knowledge exchange, there is a sender and a receiver. The sender does the informing; the communicating. The receiver takes in the information and, hopefully, turns it into knowledge....

Time is the oil of the new economy. Attention is the car. Knowledge is the destination. Information is the map.

It is an increasing challenge to get people into their 'attention cars.' Unfortunately, too many communicators of information are driving people around in the wrong direction, wasting their time and attention.

I'd like you to ask yourself the following question: 'How much of my information is getting to its knowledge destination?' " [via ia/]

An interesting take on information overload that compares our responses to the problem to three different metaphors: a cup, a bottomless pit, and a throat. You should head over and read it, but I'd just like to make one point.

You know when people tell you to "live in the moment?" Well, you are living in the above moment, but it will change. The computer has wrought quite a change on our culture, our economy, and on us. We're just now starting to truly understand this (kind-of-sort-of) and to adapt (kind-of-sort-of). But our kids will grow up adapted. In other words, shifted. It will be interesting to watch what their metaphors will be. In many ways, they will live in their "attention cars" because they will live in information coming to them. Hopefully, we'll create the tools and teach them how to filter it to keep them sane!