Category Archives: Futurism

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Science fiction serves as a key inspiration for the man whose job it is envisage Intel's future and, to a large degree, the future of computing itself

By Larry Greenemeier | May 8, 2012|

NO FEAR: "Very few innovations have come out of being fearful," Johnson says. Image: Courtesy of Intel

In 2010 Brian David Johnson became Intel Corp.'s first futurist, a time-honored title bestowed on prognosticating technology mavens dating back to the likes of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Equal parts seer and evangelist, Johnson helps map out the future of technology and then guides his company toward that destination, whether it is five years or even a decade away.

Johnson draws inspiration from science fiction but tries to ground his vision of the future in reality through speaking engagements in front of audiences most likely to be affected by Intel's technology, such as attendees of the pop culture convention Comic-Con. For an in-depth Q&A with Johnson about the future of computing and his role at Intel, read "Professional Seer" in the May issue of Scientific American. Below is a collection of questions and answers from our conversation with Johnson not included in that article.

Which science fiction authors have inspired you the most? Johnson: So there's what inspired me as a kidthe Asimov, the Bradbury, the Heinleinthat forms the core of science fiction. As I got a little older and a little more sophisticated, it was people like Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, and even more recently people like Vernor Vinge and Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross, those types of guys. Now most of the stuff I'm inspired by is the near future that is very much based on science fact.

How does a future futurist spend his time as a kid? Growing up, my dad was a radar-tracking engineer and my mom was a specialist [in information technology]. My pop used to come home with electrical schematics of the radar and tell me the story of how it worked. A few weeks later he would come home with an actual piece of the radar and say, "Take it apart." And then he would actually show me how to take it apart. I think about when this happened and I realize that it was around the time I was learning to read. I was learning to read schematics the same time I was learning to read, so I grew up immersed in technology.

How does one become a futurist? Can you go to school and get a degree in futurism? No, but you can go to the college where they first taught futurism, which Alvin Toffler does at the New School [for Social Research] in New York City.

The New School is known for social research. What does a future futurist study there? That's the lovely thing about the New School when I went, which was the late '80s, early '90s. You could take whatever you wanted. I studied a lot of computer science, but when I went to the New School it was this great mix where I could study sociology, I could study economics, I could study film, and I could go down to [New York University] and take classes. As a futurist I need the technical chops to understand what we're talking about. But I also need the research chops to be able to go out and pull this all together and then have the ability to express it.

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Intel Futurist Discusses Data's Secret Life, the Ghost of Computing and How We Should Attack Fear

Science fiction serves as a inspiration for the man whose job it is envisage Intel's future and, to a large degree, the future of computing itself.

In 2010 Brian David Johnson became Intel Corp.'s first futurist, a time-honored title bestowed on prognosticating technology mavens dating back to the likes of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Equal parts seer and evangelist, Johnson helps map out the future of technology and then guides his company toward that destination, whether it is five years or even a decade away.

Johnson draws inspiration from science fiction but tries to ground his vision of the future in reality through speaking engagements in front of audiences most likely to be affected by Intel's technology, such as attendees of the pop culture convention Comic-Con. For an in-depth Q&A with Johnson about the future of computing and his role at Intel, read "Professional Seer" in the May issue of Scientific American. Below is a collection of questions and answers from our conversation with Johnson not included in that article.

Q: Which science fiction authors have inspired you the most? Johnson: So there's what inspired me as a kid -- the Asimov, the Bradbury, the Heinlein -- that forms the core of science fiction. As I got a little older and a little more sophisticated, it was people like Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, and even more recently people like Vernor Vinge and Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross, those types of guys. Now most of the stuff I'm inspired by is the near future that is very much based on science fact.

How does a future futurist spend his time as a kid? Johnson: Growing up, my dad was a radar-tracking engineer and my mom was a specialist [in information technology]. My pop used to come home with electrical schematics of the radar and tell me the story of how it worked. A few weeks later he would come home with an actual piece of the radar and say, "Take it apart." And then he would actually show me how to take it apart. I think about when this happened and I realize that it was around the time I was learning to read. I was learning to read schematics the same time I was learning to read, so I grew up immersed in technology.

How does one become a futurist? Can you go to school and get a degree in futurism? Johnson: No, but you can go to the college where they first taught futurism, which Alvin Toffler does at the New School [for Social Research] in New York City.

The New School is known for social research. What does a future futurist study there? Johnson: That's the lovely thing about the New School when I went, which was the late '80s, early '90s. You could take whatever you wanted. I studied a lot of computer science, but when I went to the New School it was this great mix where I could study sociology, I could study economics, I could study film, and I could go down to [New York University] and take classes. As a futurist I need the technical chops to understand what we're talking about. But I also need the research chops to be able to go out and pull this all together and then have the ability to express it.

What are some of the most important issues that you're talking to people about now when you're out on the road for Intel? Johnson: There are three main themes -- one is called the secret life of data, the second is the ghost of computing, and the third is the future of fear.

Those sound like book titles. How can data have a secret life? Johnson: The secret life of data is thinking about what it will be like to live in a world of big data. What will that feel like when we're creating so much data about ourselves through sensors and other technology that data begins to take on a life of its own? It's already starting to happen, and it's only going to get bigger. You have algorithms talking to algorithms, machines talking to machines. What does it feel like to be in that world -- No. 1? And No. 2, how do we make sure that when that data comes back to us that it's meaningful? It's not just synthesizing massive amounts of financial data and spitting me out some credit ratings. We've moved beyond that.

What do you mean when you talk about the "ghost of computing"? Johnson: Look at the microprocessor, it keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller -- it's crazy how small it gets. If it keeps getting smaller what happens when that unit of compute gets so small that it disappears? We've been talking about that world for a while but as you get out 10 or 15 years we're getting closer and closer to it. What happens when computing is in the walls or in a table? So that's one side of it. What does the world look like when we're surrounded by intelligence?

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Intel futurist discusses data's secret life, 'ghost of computing'

With the London Olympics fast approaching, its high time the art community gears up for another celebration of all things artistic. Or, at least, that was the case a century ago.

Its hard now to imagine arts place at the Olympic games, especially considering the Wolff Olins 2012 logo that has outraged many, given seizures to some and has even been seen as racist by the Iranian government. Yet, a hundred years ago, art was actually a competitive event at the 1912 Stockholm games.

Pierre de Coubertin, the innovator and posthumously criticized founder of the International Olympic Committee, believed that the games needed a synthesis of athletic and intellectual pursuits to round out the competition. He drew this viewpoint from his interpretation of the Greek games where sport and culture seemed interwoven and from his personal educational philosophy which sought to create a more complete individual through learning and sport.

So a system was designed in which art, or rather artists techniques, would be split into five judged categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. Within each category, the judges would award honors of gold, silver and bronze medals just as they would in any other Olympic competition. This format was followed in the Olympic games for the next 40 years, until it was decided by the IOC that artists were professionals and the competition was discretely dropped after the Helsinki summer games in 1952.

The competition did draw some unusual artists to the Olympics, such as American Walter W. Winans, who won the gold medal for his bronze sculpture, An American Trotter, in 1912. Interestingly, this was not Winans first Olympic medal, but his third. He also received the gold for his shooting skills in rifling during the 1908 London games and the silver in 1912.

That same year, Pierre de Coubertin won the gold medal for literature with his poem Ode to Sport. Perhaps Coubertins victory reflects his own ego and desire to reside amid the Olympiads, but maybe it was an outcome of necessity, since no other artist rose to challenge him in the event. In fact, across all five events of the Stockholm games, just six artists participated, making it a competition in name only. The sole silver medalist that year, French sculptor Georges Dubois, is unfortunately all but lost to history now.

Yet the year 1912 was far from lacking in artistic flair. Cubism had thrown the art world into the avant-garde of modernism, and futurism emerged, heralding the triumphs of modernity. However, neither movement, nor their peripheral impersonators and reactionaries, were in Sweden that summer. The pieces winning the Gold were traditional, formulaic and as with winner Giovanni Pellegrinis gold medal painting genuinely cartoonish. Clearly, something was institutionally wrong.

The problem may come from the amateur status that the competition required, since most serious artists then and now dedicate themselves to their work, not competition see if you get very far calling Christo and Jeanne-Claude or Murakami an amateur. Even still, the labels of amateur and professional are more slippery in regards to art than in sports. So, if we just sidestep that issue, can we find an intersection between the Olympic games, competition and the art world?

Some say no, suggesting that art and competition is like water and oil, but such a notion is misguided when looking at the increasingly competitive art world. Perhaps now art is even more competitive than the sports world when you consider the percentage of highly paid artists to highly paid athletes or the critical reception they receive Nobel Prizes in literature, poet laureates and so on. Art exhibitions are now corporate sponsored and museums are more and more preoccupied with admission.

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Carving a place for artistic influence in the modern Olympic games

If a rebellion ever comes, someone had better give Santigold the microphone. Her messages, even at their most sloganeering, are coded for the dance floor, and the global approach of her compositions lends them a communal sense of urgency. Were the keepers, Santigold sings near the end of the album, and as the brightly textured keyboards rise to meet the singalong vibe, she drops the bomb: While we sleep in America our house is burning down.

Thats as close as Santigold gets to any sort of current-events statement on Master of My Make-Believe, her second album and first in four years. Its a sleek effort, with 11 songs that come in at under 40 minutes, and it opens with a bracing call to arms in Go! With help from Yeah Yeah Yeahs members Karen O and Nick Zinner, and production from Q-Tip and Switch, the song is techno-futurism mixed with African beats, and its images of fast food and winter palaces hint at class warfare.

We know that we want more, Santigold sings on the more hopeful Disparate Youth, in which Zinner crashes her worldly dance party with intermittent guitar strikes. All the while, Santigold dips in and out of genres as if shes sporting musical camouflage, including the big-beat hip-hop of Freak Like Me, the touching balladry of The Riots Gone and the tribal electronics of Big Mouth. Throughout, Santigold never stops playing spin-the-globe, and she also never loses sight of her mission to keep listeners moving.

Santigold Master of My Make-Believe Downtown/Atlantic Three and a half stars (Out of four)

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-- Todd Martens

Image: Santigold at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2012. Credit:Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times

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Album review: Santigold's 'Master of My Make-Believe'

Summary: Finally a thoughtful, hype free book worth reading about digital marketing, the relationships we have with vendors and a vision for a better future where we have greater control of our personal data

I read Doc Searls excellent book The Intention Economy while traveling last week. Searls was one of the authors in 1999 of the highly influential Cluetrain Manifesto, collaborating with Rick Levine, Christopher Locke and David Weinberger at the height of the dot com boom. The Cluetrains 95 visionary theses focused on the gestalt of the new digital era.

In essence,

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarterand getting smarter faster than most companies.

Cluetrain captured the best ideas of the boom era and through the painful dot com crash helped people sort out the value from all the bum info floated by the pump and dumpers before the 2000 collapse of the economy. Fast forward twelve years and were in a remarkably similar situation: while the digital economy fundamentals are much more stable than the last crash there has been a tsunami of noisy nonsense around social media (enabled ironically by mediums being the message) which will peak this year with Facebooks ipo (a single point of failure by Searls reckoning).

I normally steer clear of utopian futurism, which Searls freely admits he is practicing in The Intention Manifesto, but given the track record and respect Cluetrain has, along with my familiarity with Searls and colleagues great work around Vendor Relationship Management over the last five years this book deserves to be taken seriously.

Cluetrain author Chris Locke commented on my The Groundswell of Social Media Backlash post here in May of 2009, which lamented the quality of clumsy social media marketing

I wrote a goodly chunk of The Cluetrain Manifesto and I hate seeing it invoked to hawk the same old crap the same old way.

The Intention Economy gets perspectives back on track with a credible vision of a world where you are in complete control of your digital persona and grant permission for vendors to access it on your terms and pitch bids for products or services you are interested in buying - essentially you publish a Request For Proposal (RFP) for what you are looking for. Digital agents applications work for you to signal your needs which vendors then respond to, scrabbling to compete for your business.

Its a vision which is heavily weighted towards individual rights and quality of service - an area the rapidly growing and mutating Customer Relationship Management (CRM) marketcurrently serves and which isvalued at eighteen billion dollars in 2012. Where CRM often seeks to lock in and own you, flipping over to a VRM model would empower you and give you greater control over your relationships and choices. Caveat venditor - let the seller beware says the book blurb.

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The Intention Economy

He could have easily chosen a different path: a more successful one or, perhaps we should say, a more commercial one. But that has never been the style or the character of multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee. His saint-like humility reflects a gentle and wise creative spirit; his music and poetry are a mirror into the human condition. He has never catered to the shortsighted vision of industry trends, and he expresses himself with a language that is in tune within his innermost spiritual beauty.

To imagine an artist that could create from aspects of romanticism, abstraction, impressionism, modernism, realism, futurism or surrealism is to have a better understanding of McPhee's sound landscape. The most creative music lies between the known and the unknown, yet McPhee always pushes towards the spheres of the unknown; his music always begins from a set of values, along with an unorthodox attitude that intensely penetrates from ground zero, every single time. He paints and expresses sound in real time, and the complexity of his art form makes it unlikely to gain many listeners from the shallow depths of revenue-driven pop culturefar from it.

Artists like McPhee are not motivated by money because it doesn't exist here; they create because there is no choice if art is going to survive. It is a passion and it is a sacrifice, and there are no compromises...at any level.McPhee's Nation Time (CJR, 1970), Underground Railroad (CJR, 1969), Pieces of Light (CJR, 1974) and Trinity (CJR, 1971) define a period of time, and will forever stand as monuments in the era of civil rights. These are pieces of music with critical artistic values that represent what it is to express freely, while in the shadows of oppression. It is art expressed in all its glory and greatness, and McPhee is its prophet.

All About Jazz: Let go back to your roots.

Joe Mcphee: My father was born in the Bahamas, on the island called Exuma, and he came from a very British background. He ended up working for a Greek sponge fisherman who taught him how to speak Greek but also taught him how to run a business, how to keep the books, et cetera. He was really amazing.

But my father left Exuma in 1927, at the age of 25, because he wanted to become an American citizen. He had hoped to join an Army band in Arizona, but at that time, the military was segregated. When he finally did arrive in the United States, the band had already disbanded, so he was stuck in Florida. But it's also where he met my mother, who was from Nassau.

I had the opportunity to take him back to Exuma in 1970, and that was his first time back home since 1927. And at that time, the Bahamas were just about to get their independence, and he couldn't quite understand the concept of not having a king and queen.

My mother's maiden name was Cooper, and her uncle was Alfonso Cooper, who was the leader of the Savoy Sultans. Grachan Moncur who was a bassist in The Sultans was also the father of Grachan Moncur III, the trombonist. He and Alfonso were half brothers and had the nickname "brother," and Al [Alfonso] Cooper, the clarinetist and alto player, was the leader of the band. They were a jump band and the house band at the Savoy Ballroom in New York, and they were also the band that everybody had to go through. If you were a player and came to New York, you had to go through the Sultans. They played between 1937 and 1946, and they were really something.

I had the opportunity to interview Alfonso in 1970 and was hoping to have it published in Cadence Magazine. As a result, I took along a tape recorder to capture the conversation, but became so caught up in the stories of what it was like traveling the "Chitlin Circuit" that I forgot to turn on the tape recorder. Their food was placed on trays, outside on doorsteps, while [they were] being treated like dogs.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long later that Alfonso died. But I was reading an interview with Grachan Moncur in Cadence Magazine a few years ago, and he, too, had an interview with Alfonso and also forgot to turn on his tape recorder. [Laughs.]

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Joe McPhee: Artistic Sacrifice from a Musical Prophet