The Quantified Self becomes the Qualified Self and the Exoself

Quotable quotes from the third Quantified Self conference held at Stanford University September 15-16, 2012. 

• Can I query my shirt or am I limited to consuming the querying that comes packaged in my shirt?
• Quantified Self enables the constant creation of this thing called the self
• We think more about our cats/dogs than we do our real pets, our microbiome
• Information conveyance, not dataviz
• Quantified emotion and data sensation (haptics)
• Display of numerical data and graphs are the interface
• Quantifying is the intermediary step...exosenses (haptics, wearable electronic senses) is really what we want
• Perpetual data explosion
• Our mission as Quantified Selves is to discover our mission

Figure 1. Word Cloud Visualization of Agenda Topics at the third Quantified Self Conference.

Sensor Mania! TechCrunch Disrupt Hardware Day!

Taking advantage of Sensor Mania! – the exploding wireless internet of things – TechCrunch Disrupt featured a special Hardware day on September 12, 2012 at its annual conference held in San Francisco, CA. 29 companies in a wide range of areas presented their hardware products, as 26 had at a similarly successful event in New York in May 2012. If underwhelming in ‘new new thing’ innovation, the startups at least appeared commercializable for the most part. Perhaps the biggest similarity in the eclectic mix was the high number of Kickstarter projects (the new alpha customer sales and financing platform).

The biggest interesting category of startups was biosensors, including a consumer EEG company (InteraXon), a sports sensor training program (GolfSense), an integrated biosensor platform for personalized pain management delivering the equivalent of white noise stimulus to nerve endings (Thimble Bioelectronics (integrating the Somaxis muscle sensor)), and a pedometer watch and social gaming fitness app for kids (Sqord).

Another interesting category of startups was internet-of-things companies. Ninja Blocks (‘the API for atoms’) was providing a standard offering of an internet-enabled console block plus five home sensor units (with distance, temperature, motion, camera, etc. sensor capabilities) for $200. Similarly, knut was providing a small, battery powered, Wi-Fi enabled sensor hub for real-time monitoring in the home environment for $80.

Figure 1: Electric Skateboard from Boosted Boards

The other companies were a mix including electric skateboards (Boosted Boards as shown in Figure 1), kitchen products (sous vide cooking (Nomiku) and high-end coffee brewing (Blossom Coffee)), standing desks, flashlights 2.0 (HexBright), rear-view cycling camera unit (Cerevellum), iPad kiosks (Lilitab), and the expected photo, audio (Vers), and gaming-related apps.

Consumer Products go Social: from Shelf-Buy to Ongoing Dialogue

With the modern expectation of a social layer for everything, together with real-time feedback, data infographics, personalized recommendations, and gamification fun and reward, all received ambiently on the Pebble watch (the smartwatch is the new platform), consumer product delivery is being revolutionized.

Just as new media crippled juggernaut industry business models in computing, email, newspapers, TV, and music distribution, an even more fundamental shift is coming to consumer products. The successful game is transitioning from a one-off shelf-buy to an ongoing dialogue with consumers, providing a consumer product service.

One way this could be facilitated is by delivering preventive wellness/peak health enhancement services (“condition-as-a-service”) at the growing number of in-store clinics (à la WalMart Vison Centers) at drugstores (CVS, Walgreens) and high-end food stores (e.g.; Whole Food’s Wellness Club). How soon is the Whole Body and Whole Mind’s Neurofeedback Demo and Service Purchase coming along with Whole Food’s in-store destination edutainment sommelier training?

Microcommunication: high-valence minicontent bursts

Micro is not just for microformats, hardware miniaturization, microexpressions, micropractices, and political microtargeting, it can be a concept and a platform. One use is in the new concept of microcommunications.

Microcommunications are very small communications, possibly carrying a burst of high-valence content, emotional or otherwise. Conceptually, the next node smaller than tweets, microcommunications are ultra-lightweight, where no response is required but could be two-way chatted. One reason that microcommunications are more light-weight is because they are coming from a personified virtual coach as opposed to a real person. An example of microcommunications is in Figure 1, light-weight SMS messages from a Siri-2.0-like personal virtual coach used in the DIYgenomics Social Intelligence Genomics & Empathy-Building study.

Microcommunications from the empathy-building module are displayed. A range of other applications are currently in design, modules for developing and enhancing mindsets of leadership, charisma, motivation, influence, and gratitude.

Figure 1. Empathy-building Microcommunications from your Personal Virtual Coach. (Source: DIYgenomics Social Intelligence Genomics & Empathy-Building Study)

The Infovizzy Social Layer

In the current era of big data, it is increasingly expected that there be some way to visualize data in a readily consumable infographic. Figure 1 shows one such example, for the social networking site, LinkedIn, with the infographic web service provided by LinkedIn Maps. The nodes in the social networking fabric are other individuals.

Figure 1. Infographic of One Person’s LinkedIn Relationships.

Looking at the figure, some of the aspects to notice are that this person is interacting in different kinds of communities. One of the kinds of communities is clusters that have some high degree of central linkage (the pink and green clusters on the right). Another kind of community is those where the connected people are themselves more broadly linked (the majority of the fabric, around the name box). The farther away communities in the infographic are separated by time (graduate school), and distance (different geographical continents).

However, all of this could be misleading, because the algorithms applied to execute the visualization might not be the most accurate mapping of the relationships with this person and these communities in real life. Also the visualization has an inherent relativism that may result in bias. The infographic is indicative of this person’s relationships in those communities, not conclusive information about the communities themselves.

This kind of infovizzy display could be extended as a digital anthropology tool for viewing the overlaid networks of whole communities. More complete inferences could then be made regarding the closeness and closedness, expansivity, density, breadth, volume, fluidity, and connectedness of different communities. Time lapse analysis could show how and how fast communities grow and fade, especially assessing which kinds of new elements come into communities to sustain and broaden them. Performance metrics for the quality of output of communities could be developed, where relevant.

Supercomputing: 16 petaflops, schmetaflops?

Supercomputing advances continue to exponentiate – the world’s best machine (IBM’s Sequoia - BlueGene/Q installed in the U.S. at LLNL) currently has 16 petaflops of raw compute capability.

Figure 1. Data Source: Top 500 Supercomputing Sites

As shown in Figure 1, the curve has been popping – up from 2 to 16 petaflops in just two years! However for all its massivity, supercomputing remains a linear endeavor. While the average contemporary supercomputer has much greater than human-level capability in raw compute power, it cannot think, which is to say pattern-match and respond in new situations, and solve general rather than special-purpose problems.

For the future of intelligence and cognitive computing, the three-way horse race continues between enhancing biological human cognition, reverse-engineering and simulating the human brain in software, and hybrids of these two.

The ‘So What’ Interface – a Prescriptive Layer

When we see a calendar, we know what the information means, and readily map this to potential action-taking. This is not as clear with data displayed from the new era of the Health Internet of Things - the increasingly ubiquitous information climate of consumer biophysical monitoring and quantified self-tracking that surrounds us.

So far the main focus has been on Apple-y/iOS-y design and data visualization in health data streams such as 23andMe genomic data, Fitbit data, the Eatery food diary summarization data, or EKG data tracking across a smartphone screen when held up to the chest. However, we are all still scratching our heads as to what to do as a result of seeing the information.

The Prescriptive Interface
A whole new conceptual category of ‘what to do with this data’ needs to be articulated, named, and implemented – an intuitively-apparent prescriptive layer of suggested action-taking as a result of viewing the data. The two biggest challenges are first, these data streams are only nascently available and therefore meaning has not yet been determined in many cases, and second, there is little effort in determining and implementing a core set of principles for behavior influence and ambient suggestioning. Having these challenges solved could help constitute what is missing in the health data streams but not the calendar – knowing what the information means and what action to take as a result.

The Rapid Approach of the Health Internet of Things

The efforts of the eHealth movement have been quietly gathering steam for the last five years and are finally fulminating into what could be a significant transformation in the management of health and health care. The most encouraging sign of change is that it consists of not just the usual shiny new technology solutions, but more importantly, structural changes in the public health system:

The 80% slim-down of the doctor’s office visit…

• Telemedicine reimbursement: As of March 2011, only 12 states offered reimbursement for telemedicine services (e.g.; telephone, email, video consultation), and at lower rates than in-office visits. Now more payers and states are starting to approve telemedicine reimbursement, which could be a huge cost savings for the industry as it is estimated that 70% of physician consultations could be handled by phone.

• Majority of diagnosis is straightforward: It is estimated that in 18/20 cases (per Singularity University FutureMed), diagnosis is straightforward, and could be accomplished via telemedicine.

• Trend to higher deductible plans: many programs are underway to transfer employees to higher-deductible plans which both reduces costs and puts more of an emphasis on preventive medicine.

Significant progress could be made with these structural changes acting in concert with the new generation of healthtech tools in areas such as:

• Health sensors, examples: continuous glucose monitoring patches, EEG sensors, ambient assisted living
  

• Quantified self-tracking devices, examples: Fitbit, Zeo sleep tracking, Body Media, Pebble Watch, Nike Fuel Band, Basis Watch

• mHealth (mobile health) apps, examples: The Eatery, MoodPanda, Map My Run, Cardio Trainer

Refocusing on the customer to improve startup failure rates

Even when startups have a seemingly good idea, high-powered team, funding, and marketing, most fail. Instead of accepting this as normal (a badge of courage and a ‘fail early, fail fast’ mentality), many people have started to question this, and congruently with Silicon Valley’s problem-solving mindset, try to solve the high rate of startup failures.

It is not that startups fail to build products and services, it is that they fail to build products and services that anyone WANTS.

Focusing on the customer and their needs, first, last, and at every step of the way, is suggested as the answer for creating startups that are far less likely to fail. One advent in tools to help develop and stay in the customer-centric mindset is the ‘canvas’ concept. The canvas is a large paper with the quadrants of the business model set forth, and teams populate the quadrants with content written on post-its which can be dynamically updated as ideas change and assumptions are validated. Some examples are the Lean Startup Machine Canvas and Business Model Canvas.

Massive educational reform facilitated by technology

More than any other sector, education is currently poised for significant reform, of an expansionary, inclusionary, complementary nature, with the fingers of change that have long been present being gathered into inexorable industry-shifting waves. The hand of technology is the beneficial enabler.

Distance learning, and digital recording and streaming technologies have been steadily improving which has given way to a new way of connecting large worldwide audiences. What was the initial opening up of courses to online students has now turned into classrooms of huge online audiences in the range of 60,000-70,000 participants. This in turn has brought attention to the need and possibility of innovating educational methods to make material more dynamic. It may be possible to reorganize pedagogy in the new venue of the large-scale online audiences. Some ways are by communicating in real-time for both exercises and feedback loops to instructors, and by participating in dynamic exercises. This could help in making educational content more alive, experiencable, and interactive.