Instead of following a path of hyperlinks meta-information is available anywhere at any time about everything!
Pattie Maes from the MIT presents in her talk a device they consider as a kind of Sixth Sense. It is a wearable device with a projection screen that paves the way for profound, data-rich interaction with our environment. As she explains to us this device still under construction should help us to make decisions in a world submerging in data, should give us more certainty – decisiveness is probably the better choice of a word – in our decision-making processes.
It is by no means a thrilling thing that her group is developping but I am hesitant whether it will have the effect of a relief on us who live in a flood of stimuli every day. Could an apparatus like this potentially accelerate the imminent alienation process with our environment? But please, don’t get me wrong I don’t want to be cynical.
Pattie Maes was the key architect behind what was once called “collaborative filtering” and has become a key to Web 2.0: the immense engine of recommendations (things like this) fueled by other users. In the 1990s, Maes’ Software Agents program at MIT created Firefly, a technology that let users choose songs they liked, and find similar songs they’d never heard of, by taking cues from others with similar taste.
