Heavyset

Karen made peaches for dessert, and Dave took a photo

Some related thoughts, disparately organized:

The inimitable Dave Coustan (@extraface on Twitter) has been up here in Boston from Atlanta working with us for the last few days. Among the many things I have learned about Dave in that time:

• Dave has a soft spot for really good Pinot
• Dave likes push messaging for his regular FourSquare updates
• Dave likes auditory notifications on Tweetdeck

I’ll come back to Dave and his preferences momentarily…

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Jamais Cascio has a good read this week on FastCompany that poses the following question: Are you ready for your phone, your laptop, your digital environment to be paying attention to everything you do?

Our laptops, mobile phones, and sometimes desktop computers increasingly come with built-in microphones, cameras, accelerometers, and even GPS. For the most part, these sensory technologies only come into play when we call upon them directly by launching a related application (to take a picture, or find something on a map, etc.). The rest of the time, these senses are turned off. Battery life probably plays a role in keeping the senses off, but I suspect a bigger reason is that we’re simply not accustomed to thinking about our tools as always “paying attention.”

…But imagine if you combine the sensory awareness with a more complex Bayesian-style learning system. What if your digital device could learn your habits, and adjust accordingly?

Nothing profoundly new here, although well-organized with great examples – a piece that got me thinking…

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As ‘if’ disappears, and ‘when’ emerges, complex notions of interaction and utility grow ever more-so.

This is terrifying. Watch someone use an airline e-ticketing kiosk to no avail. Our simplest, most one-dimensional interactions are obstacles.

This is empowering. James can find his tent the next time he goes to a festival – and a better-evolved system will soon help you find your car when you leave the show (in fact, it probably already does, but not at my preferred price-point).

This is exciting. I have full confidence that in ten years my running shoes will not only adapt to the surface I am running on (track v. road v. trail), but will also lace themselves to my preferred level of tension (and adapt as my feet swell). I know this because my car already performs these very functions, and Moore’s Law is one of the few things that’s not going anywhere.

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All of which brings me back to Dave, and his preferences.

We both, it turns out, like Pinot Noir. Dave likes push messaging, and so do I. But Dave likes audio notifications, and I do not.

As the utilities at our disposal grow exponentially more micro in scale – consider the increasingly limited scope of the applications on your phone or desktop (this is a good thing, I think) – our need to define preferences grows exponentially more critical.

Consider a rather one-dimensional example: To turn off audio notifications (but leave sound on on my device), I need to adjust my preferences in TweetDeck, Adium, Twhirl, et al individually. Should I decide that ‘hey, I actually would prefer to be pinged out-loud’, I’m compelled to adjust my preferences once-again. Simple enough, I suppose, although I’d love an open application that each of these could tap into in order to adjust a set of configurations for each, en masse.

The same problem applies when I change my primary email address, preferred Twitter stream, etc… which I access across an ever-expanding array of devices.

Consider, also, the ambient awareness of the devices referenced by Jamais. Configuring devices that think for us requires a substantially better-defined set of preferences in order to be truly ‘location-aware’, and behave in a manner that is both intuitive and desirable.

Consider, now, an altogether more complex set of preferences:

• I like my milk cold, and so I keep my refrigerator at 39 degrees (fahrenheit).
• I like to listen to opera in the morning, but prefer hip hop at night.
• I drink iced coffee in the summer, but prefer hot tea in the winter.

Abstract? sure. And these preferences are of little concern, today, in the context of my computer and mobile devices.

Is there any doubt, though, that the day is coming (and soon), when I’ll control the temperature of my refrigerator remotely; when my iPhone and car will be able to serve up the music I like based upon my tastes; when the act of walking into a coffee shop will trigger the pouring of my favorite beverage? You (and I) can be sure of this. It’s already happening (most likely in Korea, where it’s 2026).

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So how is this going to work? Where are we going to store our global set of preferences, and how will they be accessed? I’m not in a position to say with any certainty (although this guy is probably thinking about it). But I might posit the following:

1. Our universal preferences will be stored  in the cloud and updated via our mobile devices. Preference is at the heart of mobility, I think. No great leap of logic here.
2. An open standard for the storing and taxonomy of our personal preferences will necessarily evolve to suit the array of our needs – something like Bonjour meets the Dewey Decimal System.
3. Smarter devices will pair on a standard akin to (but probably not) Bluetooth, and access these preferences to configure themselves. Not sold? Consider the complexity of configuring your shoes or your desk lamp through a built-in interface.
4. As open preference standards evolve to encapsulate even more fragmented and specific preference sets, the ability to incorporate these standards into product firmware will be a big part of time-to-market considerations and feature set standards.

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So who’s going to deliver this set of open preference standards? Hardware manufacturers will try (and fail). Microsoft will try (and fail, I think). Google is working on it, you can be sure (and might succeed). Will there be an open source alternative (one would imagine)?

The answer probably lies in the answer to these questions:

1. Who do you trust to get it right (getting it wrong would be disastrous)?
2. Who do you trust to play well with others?
3. And, most significantly – and this is a question for the Lawrence Lessigs of the world – who do you trust with the value of your preferences (because they may have more value than any personal data we’ve yet considered)?

Related posts:

1. Standard Gauge and Cupcakes
2. Macrotrends 2010-2012: Social Behaviors in Retail Environments
3. DIRECTV is about to get really, really interesting (I think)
4. Great Street Games as a Platform for Urban Exploration
5. Nuisance Machines