His Master's Toys

“All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of” --- William Shakespeare

Category: digital life

Remotely programming a cardiac pacer or defibrillator

It is not important to ask ‘when’ the first heart device will be hacked. As is always with any innovation, universal acceptance happens sooner rather than later, however controversial it might be.A more interesting discussion is — what happens if the heart devices allowing open access. What is it that changes? 

As with every change, the outcome is at the minimum a duality and everything in between. If the at least, the opposite poles can be identified (at any particular instant — this is important), then it allows us to break down the problem into simpler blocks.

As an example — if a hundred cellphones are distributed in a village in Ethiopia — the two possible outcomes could be:a) A hyper-connected village, and a range of services / economic changes that emerge as a consequence.b) the cellphones are never used for productivity at all — they are used a jewelries instead.

The actual outcome would be a combination of the above opposites, of course.In that sense, if I try and analyze the outcome of an innovation such as a heart device with open api —

  •  positive: a range of middle layer services that promote life — such as: heart beat based art creator, romance analyzer (does her heart beat faster when she’s around me?), stress analyzer (during war?), longer life expectancy, music which modifies according to the heart rate (different music during sleep and jogging), better monitoring of food quality…. there is literally no end. 
  • negative: a range of possibilities that destroy life — such as: freaky weapons of mass destruction, employee exhaustion monitoring, mass scale deaths due to machine failures…

By tomorrow morning, I will think of fifty more possibilities. Of course, I am just ranting… early morning coffee induced rant. There is no point to this rant, since both of the above will happen sooner or later. The fact is, we are living a cyberpunk novel… we just don’t see it yet. ;)

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22@ Barcelona – Why Europe May Become The Hub

Sunny weather, exotic landscape, historical architecture, outstanding tourist attractions, incredible quality of life… we all know about these pluses in the major parts of Europe. However, no one ever looked at that place and said, “This can be the next valley”. Well, attempt is made to change that soon.

Check out 22@ Barcelona – El districte de la innovacio

“22@Barcelona Project goal is to transform 22@Barcelona into an international platform of reference in the creation and development of innovative companies that will serve as magnet to young entrepreneurs of all over the world and making of Barcelona an entrepreneur capital.

Due to this reason, 22@Barcelona promotes several initiatives to provide the district with infrastructures and mechanisms of high support to entrepreneurs. Thus, specialized working spaces and services are created, with the participation of the different institutions linked to entrepreneurship, such as the Local Development Agency Barcelona Activa, la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya o El parc d’Innovació de La Salle-URL.”

I keep hearing about a variety of efforts to attract entrepreneurs and the creative thinkers. Also, my opinion of Spanish people is very high in general. So, I am thinking of spending few months checking out the innovation scene in Europe this summer. Let’s see.

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