Abstracts, reverse chronological order:

June 2007:

• Biomedia: Past, Present and Future

  Greg Van Alstyne
  This paper traces a historical thread from the biomechanical insights of early cybernetics and Norbert Weiner's visionary "communication machines," through Marshall McLuhan's little recognized but highly poetic and influential use of cybernetics, to the dawning opportunities for biomimetics in communications media presented by our burgeoning, massively interconnected socio-technical networks. The paper seeks to articulate the case that media theorists and practitioners should recognize “biomimetics” as a twin or mirror of “cybernetics” – hence as a discourse integral to the intellectual heritage of their discipline. It interrogates and broadens the increasingly popular term "biomimicry" to acknowledge historical precedents and parallels including “bionics” and “biomimetics.” Finally, it seeks to reveal an emerging need and opportunity for a new biology of media – or “biomedia” – as a legitimate and promising realm for future communications research and practice that is fundamentally sympathetic with the most advanced contemporary thinking in ecological and social sustainability.
  Accepted for presentation at the 2007 Media Ecology Association Convention, Mexico City, México, at Technólogico de Monterrey, Campus Estado de México, June 6-10, 2007.
  The paper is scheduled as part of a panel, "Defining and Drawing out a Biological Approach to Media Studies," with Bob Logan and Robert MacDougall.

May 2007:

• The Graffiti Writer: Le Confiture: A Jam Jarring Cultural Preserves

  Mathew Lincez
  Lincez’s paper for the MIT Media in Transition conference is a scenario based exploration of future Graffiti practices demonstrated by a technology enabled Graffiti Writer evolving his means and methods in response to a pervasive and chilling legal/DRM infrastructure and networked surveillance society in order to transform his creative desires into meaningful outcomes.

  The scenario follows the “Graffiti Writer” as he establishes and maximizes empowering relationships with people, avatars, media, mediums, and technologies. In doing so the main character demonstrates how new forms of cultural-media literacy and expression might occur within a multi-contextual and transmediated landscape of Duality - where even the subtlest forms of temporary presence and participation can guarantee new forms of permanence, fame, legacy and extension.

  Additionally, this scenario explores how the Graffiti Writer is inspired and motivated by a new cultural logic, sense of purpose and awareness based on a changing performer audience dynamic. This new sense of purpose and awareness is explored from the perspective of multigenerational co-creation extending itself into a new concept of participation and expression.

  Presented at the MIT Media in Transition 2007 Conference on April 27 - 29, 2007 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
• Empowerment and Participation in Remix Cultures

  Mathew Lincez
  Remix culture, as an emerging force, represents a new creative and cultural awareness. Remix has been, and will always be, a constant process weaving itself throughout all cultures and society. Remix is both meaningful action and critical response to the environment. Today, remix culture represents a fundamental shift in human behaviour, signaling an undeniable transition from old to new models of learning, consumption, creation, production and distribution. This inspiring transition has for the most part been enabled by the digital information era within which culture is free, fast flowing, mutable, and perhaps most importantly, self-aware. This report develops a new understanding of Remix culture by exploring what it is, who it is and why it is. We question the means by which people (Remixers) are empowered to participate in their own social, political, cultural, and economic progress. Keeping the Dataspace context in mind, our goal is to understand and clearly define the dynamic relationships emerging between people, places and things, their culture and their content. We develop this understanding by observing and discussing how a future Remix Culture might empower new cultural and socio-economic participation and processes. New perspectives based on these observations help us define what empowerment and participation could mean to future Remix Cultures. Finally, these new perspectives (variables) are developed into meaningful points of departure and scenarios relevant to the latent potentials hidden within Remix Culture and the future context of Dataspace.
  
  Relevant Documents:

  Empowerment & Participation within Remix Culture (S&T August 22, 2006)

April 2007:

• Dataspace – the Real World Web–As Creative Medium

  Catharine Macintosh
  DataSpace, as a creative medium, provides a pool of untapped opportunity. Through conversation we define our desires and ultimately, our desires determine things like market opportunities, political accountability, and social prosperity. Explorations into Dataspace as a creative medium will further our inquiry into new ways of improving the human condition and creating cultural prosperity. It allows us to envision things, people and places not as they are, but as they could become.

  Project Charter

• Sex, Suicide and Divinity

  Annie Spencer
  Spencer’s submission to the Women in Games 2007 conference focuses on controversial developments and outcomes, both through narrative and experience, in our fractured post-modern environment. There is no doubt that the opportunity for cheaper product focused at niche markets is growing – the questions are why and where is it leading us? With respect to both game content and game technology, how do we respond to the emergence of controversial or subjective interactive content now that new platforms and tools are available to consumer-creators at whim?

  It is true that there has always been controversy with gambling and guns in entertainment, yet many games are founded on shooting and risk-taking principles. But when Doom caused waves and concern in the family household of the nineties, and we questioned how immersive violence in computer games would affect our teenage sons, the controversy settled in the wake of the next big game’s release to astounding commercial success, and everyone’s mother’s fervent tolerance. Though we have broken into smaller audiences, and allow people to create their own worlds, what makes our treatment at the heart of this controversy any different?

  We live in a globalized culture of empowerment that, despite all its controversies, is a milestone worth celebrating in human social rights. In some ways, we may never have been able to guess that this milestone would have been achieved through video games. In other ways, it makes sense that the largest sector of the media industry is open to catering to a broad array of viewpoints – and at that Gaming is the perfect industry to provide this immersive POV expression and experience. We fought for our right to the media. Now we have it folks! This paper explores the controversial elements of the controversy itself.
  Presented at the Women in Games 2007 Conference on April 20, 2007 at the University of Wales, Newport, Wales, UK.

March 2007:

• Spectacular Brands

  Isabelle Rousset
  What is most clear after compiling this list is that all of the brands here in discussion were at one time spectacular brands: they were instrumental in changing a part of the world - peoples' experiences and expectations - life as it was becoming. Each in its own way had a finger on the pulse of what was about to happen and was a shining pioneer and proponent of the American Dream. They had enormous will, fantastic ideas, guts and courage, honour, foresight, insight, hindsight. Name it. It's not hard to imagine sleeves rolled up in workshops, laboratories, and living rooms across America, or to sense the work, intensity, enthusiasm, successes and failures that brought these 'inventions' into being.

  The brands in discussion here revolutionized industry, changed the human experience, became part of the infrastructure, and in the process built empires— empires that fell if not as quickly as they rose, then as obviously. Painful is a word that comes to mind. For such giants to fall with as little elegance as is described below, without a coup de grace or act of god to explain such failure is also an embarrassment. "How could we not have seen this coming?" is possibly the worst question and the most human that we can ask with the 'benefit' of hindsight. It begs the question "must everything that goes up really come down?" and leads to musing about the currently spectacular brands of 2007 - Google, YouTube, Apple et al - is this their fate too? After all history, physics, and everything we can experience says it is and it does. Take Rome.

  The bottom line is that it could simply be hard to change - to see the need and have the will to improve your backhand when at the top of your game. Is it a question of settling and riding a great wave to the shore? Do we get too (stiff) self-assured and serious to play anymore? Get too comfortable with our blue chip status? It could simply be that this is the way that things are and that only truly spectacular exceptions detect and then want to defy the odds. Gravity? Or is it simply lack of foresight and bad management?

  These are questions for discussion, but the brands that stand out as 'brands that were changed by time' play out like tragedy 101: their demise was not inevitable. But apparently, either they didn't see it coming, or were too comfortable to move. As Steve Jobs relayed in his address to the graduating class 2005 at Stanford U: "Stay hungry. Stay Foolish." It's a great quote, unfortunate to quote a source twice in such a short space, but it fits only too well. Apple had a major crises in the 1990's losing ground to DELL and IBM, but were agile or eager enough to come back and do what they did even better. Which is to anticipate the ever evolving discretion, wants and abilities of human beings in an rapidly evolving world and Global Marketplace.

  In scope of this document, it can be amended so: and if you are no longer in a position to do that yourself, direct and manage those who are. Things change and people change, but spectacular brands are not an unreasonable proposition as a long-term ideal. They are after all guided by what people will want (desirability), what could be (possibility), and simply take capability to make it so. Be and become. Repeat.

January 2007:

• Design for Emergence & Innovation: Redesigning Design

  Greg van Alsytne & Robert K. Logan
  “Designing for Emergence and Innovation: Redesigning Design” reveals the surprising and counterintuitive truth that the design process is not always at the forefront of innovation. Design is shown to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the success of new products and services. We propose that design must harness emergence; for it is only through the bottom-up and massively iterative, unfolding process of emergence that new and improved products and services are successfully refined, introduced and diffused into the marketplace.

  We interrogate the relationships among design, emergence and innovation, and address key questions including:

  • What can designers learn from nature about emergence and evolution that will impact the design process?
  • What roles do design and emergence play in innovation?
  • How can innovative organizations incorporate emergence into their design process?

  After demarcating the boundary between invention and innovation, we articulate the similarities and differences of design and emergence. The argument is developed through the following hypotheses:

  • An innovative design is an emergent design
  • A homeostatic relationship between design and emergence is a required condition for innovation
  • Since design is a cultural activity and culture is an emergent phenomenon, it follows that design leading to innovation also entails emergence.

  We provide a number of examples of how design and emergence have worked together and led to innovation, from pre-history to the present day. Examples include the tool making of early man; the evolutionary chain of the six "languages": speech, writing, math, science, computing and the Internet; Gutenberg's printing press, and techniques of collaborative filtering that drive the meteoric growth of today's largest Web-based services, including Google and Amazon.com.

  In closing we describe the relationship between human and naturally "designed" systems, and finally, we note that a critical trait held in common by every successful design and every living organism is its telos or purpose.
  Peer reviewed and published in The Interaction of Practice and Theory themed issue of Artifact, an international peer-reviewed academic journal targeted to researchers, practicing designers, and manufacturers.

  To be presented at the Integrated Digital Media Institute (IDMI) Hyperpolis 3.0 Conference and forum, October 10-20, 2007 in New York.

December 2006:

• Remix - Media Redux

  Mark Outhwaite
  Remix culture is examined in terms of the applied use of novel technologies which, beyond stimulating the growth of remix culture, may eventually alter our understanding of the effects of digital media on the human body and mind. 'Media Redux' examines the implications of emerging biometric emulation techniques (reperformance, sub-vocal speech rendering) in the creation of novels forms of user-generated content. This line of inquiry is in response to Zenph Studios "reperformance" technology, and is intended to act as a critique of technologies that act as biometric emulators of an original creator's digitized performance characteristics.

  A futher aim is to develop novel definitions for the impetus and process of signature; the assigning of individual or group identity to the creation of a particular body of content, as a means of supplanting the maladaptive strictures of DRM and copyright, while maintaining the necessity that human agents be able to declare themselves as being the originators of said content.

• Media in Transition

  Sady Ducros
  The whole environment including the built landscape mediates our interactions, to the extent that we cannot function without them. Against increasing interest in the changing landscape of media ecology, defining and determining those aspects of media and communication that will continue to stay relevant requires a focused inquiry. In consideration of the many facets of communication this research report will follow three trajectories.

  The first will explore natural communication systems, titled – The Natural Media – as a way to gain insights into how nature communicates and allocates attention efficiently and by looking at the evolution of natural communication systems in order to gain a deeper understanding about the mechanisms that place and register meaning and continue to be relevant.

  The second trajectory narrows the focus to the built landscape – The Constructed Media – viewing each and every object as the subject of media; as things that mediate our interactions and contributes to the construction and the diffusion of social and cultural production. As a result of this perspective, media and the built landscape take on a temporal quality, the subject of the third trajectory – Media in Transition.

  It is the combinatorial sequences that are enacted and the resultant meanings of all these elements together that register the true nature of media, as an empowering source for human conviviality, participation and cultural production.

  The concluding section – How is this media for me? – synthesizes the important facets of the above inquiry and asks a set of generative questions to prompt further contemplation

• Remix Redux

  Content
• The Imagination Challenge – Abstract

  Content

November 2006:

• SOCIALPEDIA: CONNECTIVITY IN THE FUTURE OF MEDIA

  Mark Outhwaite
  The purpose of the following paper is to append the Future of Media
  report with social media-related findings and insights, as explicated by
  Priscilla Li in the course of the Beal Institute project Socialpedia:
  Visions, Ideas and Opportunities. The ‘Future of Media’ project
  considers a range of techno-social developments occurring in
  contemporary social media, and the related technologies by which
  their uptake is effected.
  Li’s Socialpedia provides an exhaustive survey of mainly web-based
  social networking applications. For this reason, the insights, which
  extend from Socialpedia should comprise no small part of the issues of
  concern regarding research undertaken to pin down anything
  approaching a definitive or prescient understanding of how the ‘future
  of media’ will resolve itself.

October 2006:

• Desform: A New Dialogue

  Richard Thomas
  The central concerns of Thomas’s paper focus on addressing the cultural meanings attributable to form, and initiate a discursive dialogue with respect to the inherency of meanings, which potentially reside within forms themselves.

  The meaning of form is a human production, as it is both malleable and undefined. As a cultural construct, it has the potential to consecrate meaning as well as confound it. New definitions of form semantics can be revealed through the examination of the intersection of human behaviour and emerging technological discourse in the present social climes.
  Presented at the 2006 European Workshop on Design & Semantics
  of Form & Movement on October 26, 2006 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
  Peer reviewed and published in the official DeSForM 2006 Design and semantics of form and movement publication by Loe Feijs, Steven Kyffin and Bob Young

• Socialpedia

  Priscilla Li
  Socialpedia is a thought-experiment based on the Duality and Dataspace project at the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity. It aims to present an extended lens into the possible future of social networking and latent user-generated content by understanding the underlying and manifested behaviors, tools and technology of our generation with the possibilities, desire-abilities, and capabilities of the human species.

  The key theme revolves around the creation of a forum which allows its users to reconstruct and re-examine McLuhan’s vision of the Global Village, a universal social network not limited by physical boundaries, that evolves based the journey of creating new relationships by discovering ideas. The objective is to analyze how ideas respond to other ideas and to address how they function as an ecological system, actively connecting people through behaviors, passions, and imagination, not demographics or interests. What does it mean to me that I have an idea? What can I do with it? What does it mean to the people that stumble across it?

  Individually, information networks and social communities have existed and flourished independent of each other, but by bringing both together, humankind will move from an individualistic culture to a collective identity with a uniting force through a new language – Eros.

September 2006:

• Avatar

  Mark Poon
  As we move toward an Internet of things, objects and spaces will gain the capability to communicate digitally with our devices. It is foreseeable that these communicating elements of the physical world as well as its inhabitants will require a sensory representation in virtual space. As digital platforms become distributed and connected, the capabilities of these avatars become increasingly significant.

  Avatar in Dataspace is the exploration of our ability to manifest virtual selves and create relevant virtual environments. It is about all of us, becoming less of what we are and more of who we can be. In this paradigm, the challenge is to address the definition of what is an Avatar, seeing it as a message, as information, as a reflection, as a choice and as space. We will look at what senses will develop alongside this amplified capability and how it will fundamentally change values, judgments and in turn, how that will benefit society.

  This report explores the possibility of self-image revising the idea of self, not only in the digital realm but its effects physical and mentally as well. This paper will investigate and re-examine the notion of Avatar in order to enhance the understanding of the world and us.

• Human Behaviours

  Content

August 2006:

• Beal Perspectives: A Comparative Focus

  Terry Woods, Karen King
  Changes in socially normative technologies emerge the latent behaviors of groups and individuals. These signals alter the landscape in every sector, continuously defining and reflecting the world in a constant state of transition. When new signals emerge, and are subsequently interpreted, they impact our societies, cultures on multiple levels. Some are concealed and quiet, having a subtle affect on commerce and culture, while others are profound and discernible.

  The Beal Institute is currently studying the Internet of Things, Social Networking, and Remix Culture as technological and behavioral issues that will dramatically transform commerce, work, play, and the way we live our day-to-day lives. These issues have an effect on the ways we absorb, produce and exchange information, knowledge and culture, guiding our participation with, and perception of, the world.

  Microsoft Research, Deloitte, Accenture, Forrester, Gartner and the Institute for the Future are leading authorities, which research, report and forecast in the context of various markets. Each body brings a unique, specified perspective to its analysis of these three themes through a long history of interaction and participation within its area of expertise. This report will identify the published findings, conclusions and opinions of these leading groups.

• Return of Advertising

  Terry Woods
  Advertising as a concept manifests itself in nature as a method of emitting an awareness of change, an integral messenger of the environment. In addition, human beings adopted a form of advertising. An embedded behaviour, it evolved into method in which individuals could breed awareness through knowledge of things that otherwise would have remained elusive, a method for connecting latent need with available things.

  With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, advertising evolved into an organized method. In the competitive landscape of Western economies creative advertising became a sought-after skill; a method employed to connect products and services with consumers through tempting experiences and ideas. These non-personal experiences were cleverly packaged to initiate a one-way dialogue of ideas between seemingly distant bodies.

  Traditionally, advertising strategies have been based on an asymmetrical information advantage. Details could be held or revealed strategically, over time, as it best benefited the marketer, sponsor and brand. The early part of the 2000’s however, represents a paradigm shift in which behavioral phenomenon are being characterized as initiating revolutions in all social, cultural and economic forums. These changes, coupled with the technological advancement of the Embedded Landscape are empowering individuals with ever-increasing access to and control of information.

  Consequentially, the competition for the attention of an audience has become increasingly fierce. In order to attract attention, advertising strategies are using more and more new platforms. The Embedded Landscape provides a challenge and opportunity for companies who wish to attract attention to their message. This necessitates a reevaluation of purpose, capability and future of advertising strategy.

  The Emerging Landscape essentially represents an opportunity for companies to explore new ways of sustaining themselves. Thus, anew form of advertising will establish itself as a relevant source of cultural/environmental awareness through information. The Return of Advertising will manifest itself in the enabled people, objects and places of the Emerging Landscape, this report attempts to establish how this will occur.

July 2006:

• Design Frameworks For A Harmonious Existence

  PROPOSAL - Alexander Manu, Catharine MacIntosh, Michele
  Perras, Karen King in collaboration with the Japan Institute of Design
  Human life revolves around the tangibles that we have created as well as the one we have inherited; in this life we are creators. At the same time, we manifest our presence as creatures in the environment we call Earth. The tangibles of our manifest presence form the culture of our civilizations; they are both a burden and a purpose, as humans are destined to create and to maintain civilizations in order to survive as humans. In the course of our history we (designers) have created Tools, Shells and Networks, each of them as a reflection of the technological accomplishments of the times in which they were created, as well as of the dreams of the people that created them. All summed up in the Settlements that contain our organized and purposeful social groups.

  In this context: We define tools as all implements designed for the purpose of easing or making possible the activity in which humans transform matters for the purpose of improving and nurturing the wellbeing of their society. We define shells as all housing, clothing, community structures, shops and markets, civic and business facilities,
  transportation centres, large and small storage structures; We define networks as all physical layouts, communication systems, sewage and drainage, transportation systems, food chains.

  In the interaction between these tools, shells, networks and the
  Settlements, a state of tension is deemed to be necessary as it maintains a Balance between our creations and the needs, wants and behaviours of the people using them. Because it is us, humans, who create the tension line in between: There are no Tools, Shells, Networks and Settlements without us, and we are nothing without them. It is this balance that maintains the harmony necessary for individual or group growth; too much of one thing and society, the individual, the organization, the group, is thrown out of equilibrium into a state of disharmony.

  We believe that the role of design is that of Equilibrium Integrator: reestablishing the equilibrium between a corporation and its markets, between the individual and his group in the face of everyday change and technological disruption. It is only when a new technology becomes harmoniously incorporated in daily life that it moves from being disruptive to being useful. Design is ideally positioned to reestablish the harmony between these elements by first recognizing the disruptive nature of all change and creating the means toward a new equilibrium.

  Project Document

• From Network to Net-Worth

  Alexander Manu, Michelle Desgroseilliers, Matthew Jones, Mathew Lincez, Michele Perras, Richard Thomas
  In the next decade enabling technologies will be implemented in a broad spectrum and every object, every place and every person will have the capacity to receive, generate, transmit and store data. This is DataSpace. The presence of People in a DataSpace is more than a physical presence, it is a communication presence expressed by the nature of the data they bring to the space. Thus a DataSpace Social Network is formed.

  With this expansion, the density of participants increases exponentially and new forms of social capital are revealed. By expanding the notion of social networks to include DataSpace networks, we place in the network actors previously not engaged, namely objects and spaces enabled to store, transmit and receive data. As social objects and social places, these new actors bring with them new sets of relationships; the key to converting this network into net-worth will be the recognition that relationships contain reciprocity, and reciprocity creates value.

  We argue that DataSpace Networks and their density will reveal new forms of social capital; these new forms will retrieve latent behaviours of reciprocity, exponentially increasing the value of the network, therefore creating greater social capital. The reciprocity now possible between people-place-object will be transformed into net-worth once the taxonomy and ontology of DataSpace is undertaken as a strategic business activity; we see this as a mandatory step in the creation of value, which is at the core of the monetization opportunities of any social network.

May 2006:

• DYNAMIC & PARTICIPATORY LEARNING ECOLOGY (DAPLE)

  Richard Thomas
  Within the social networks of individuals and organizations, a multiplicity of relational factors contribute to the way in which links are forged, maintained, and how knowledge manifests and propagates through them. People are comprised of a “multitude of identities" and a plurality of social modalities - folds of self, by their very nature linking to an array of diverse intelligences and knowledge territories. This paper proposes a model how to form and maintain a Dynamic and Participatory Learning Ecology (DAPLE), in addition to creating a Normative Temporary Play Space (NTPS) - a contextually charged mental space that leverages and nourishes the sharing of and exploration of sliver identities, social modes and possibility. This, as a methodology, aims to understand and formalize the generation, retrieval and maximization of Social Capital within networks, while redefining the role and purpose of objects and spaces in this context. The NTPS is to be a shared platform of co creation and exchange for active participants in DAPLE, thus strengthening the voice and chorus of the whole.

  How does the evolution of objects and spaces from passive entities to active participants transform and inform this process? The goal is the sharing of a mental space, and the building of a culture of dialogue, a community of practice and exploration. This may be achieved by providing the environment and context for breaking out of the behavior sets and the editing of self associated with the work environment. It is developed to render an experience that forms and strengthens links between individuals, enabling the production and flow of ideas and to ensure co-prosperity among all participants. A secondary goal is to propose how objects and spaces provide fluid “Contextual Triggers” to memory and experience, re-contextualizing existing knowledge capital, unveiling "Dormant Vantages" to a given topic. Participants will never look at _______ in the same way, thus unfolding dimensions have never been discovered.

  Relevant Documents:

  DAPLE Map

April 2006:

• Dynamic Space Dynamic Identity

  Job Rutgers, Catharine McIntosh, Richard Thomas
  An exploration into the possible applications of ubiquitous image technologies, DSDI looks to create ambient, built environments where devices are integrated into our physical experience. Embedded into the fabric of interactive, 'soft' architectures, the devices are near-invisible and highly intuitive, following the needs and desires of the user. Frames of inquiry focused on the immersive, sensorial stimuli and social dynamics that codify how we interact with space. By creating meaningful and relevant platforms of application for ambient technologies, individuals can develop and contextualize their own unique scripts and experiences upon a given physical stage.

• Duality In Dataspace

  Matthew Jones
  In a Dataspace, every Enabled Person, Place and Object will have more than a physical presence, they will have a digital communication presence which will inform other presences through Data Transfer. It is foreseeable that each element of the physical world will also require a sensory representation or counterpart in virtual space, thus possessing a dual role. The rules that guide the archetypal representation of any object or space (physical or virtual) should aim to express this social role. This investigation explores how the design principles of physical space extend to the cognitive modeling of virtual settings. By examining the relationships of objects, people and spaces under the concept of Duality we hope to expand our understanding of the emerging potential of Dataspace.

January 2006:

• The Beal Theory Of Signals

  Alexander Manu
  We propose an alternative to classic "weak signal" methodologies (Ansoff) by postulating that signals are not at the periphery of present day reality. Signals are in our midst. That signals are not received accurately or precisely is due to both the sender and the receiver not sharing the same behaviour range. Our perceptual and cognitive constructs dynamically frame our experience and expectation, changing and shifting with the integration of new or newly perceived signals. These signals surround us, and are neutral in meaning, value and intensity until we assign it to them.

  However, we are only able to infer meaning upon these signals through the analysis of content, context, and history, and the versatility to synthesize this information. Because we are taught to make the signals make sense with efficiency and reason, we seek out and identify recognizable or familiar signals at the expense of unknown or strange signals, which we may dismiss because of our reticence or inability to redefine the process of expectation, to imagine their possibility. This inability to see beyond the boundaries of rationality is the Imagination Gap.

  The Beal Theory of Signals proposes the creation of a new cognitive space, the Free Play Space, enabling individuals to amplify the scope of their vision by creating a space where possibility can exist. Every disruption, innovation or emerging behaviour is revealed to contain from its inception four types of emerging signals: Precise, Undeniable, Intuitive and Sensed. The capability to map these signals in the earliest stages accelerates the maximization of possibilities leading to opportunities in business, culture and society.

  Related Publication: Emerging Signals

September 2005:

• Total Information Awareness Projects: Opportunities In Dataspace

  Content

August 2005:

• The Expansion Of Cyberspace Into Dataspace

  Robert Logan, Richard Thomas, Alexander Manu
  Dataspace represents the physical expansion of cyberspace by enabling devices/people/spaces with data-rich RFID tags, and requiring the development of a new search protocol – Dataspace Search Protocol -to access that information. We suggest that DS and DSSP form the eighth and ninth languages in the evolutionary sequence of language (Logan, 1995, 2000 & 2005), each emerging as a semantic and syntactical bifurcation of its predecessor in order to negotiate an increasing informatic complexity. Previous languages have been identified as speech, writing, math, science, computing, the Internet and Google.

  We explore possible opportunity within a ubiquitous RFID language, as well as the potentiality in emerging search protocols and behaviours.

• Signal Perspectives

  Matthew Jones
  The reference frame of each observer determines the strength and quality of economic, political and cultural signals. We explore the role that imagination plays in both enhancing and expanding these signals from multiple perspectives. Metaphorical analysis is applied to opportunities inherent in the emerging Dataspace, using the untapped power of the Blogosphere as an entry point, and delivering a concise investigation into new methods for navigating possibility.

• The Book E-Volved

  Robert Logan, Matthew Jones, Joshua Brasse, John Sutherland, David Pollard, Greg Van Alstyne
  An analysis of opportunity using the Beal Opportunity Filter (Sutherland/Pollard 2005), the "Smart Book" knows what the reader wants to read, learn and search by embedding a "smart tag" into a standard printed folio book. The text is tagged in a searchable digital format that can be accessed by a "Smart Book Enabler", highlighting user-specific content and representing a publishing option which reconciles current traditional and digital formats.

• Virtual Economies: Business And Behaviour In Virtual Worlds

  Content

July 2005:

• Elemental Model Development

  Kelly Seagram, Richard Thomas
  An exploration and analysis into the complexities and characteristics of elemental (water, air, fire and earth) systems. Strong correlations between those systems and human behaviours were identified and applied to succinct and intuitive models, developed to detect, amplify and track emerging signals in our cultural environment. This generative model is used as a tool to reveal the current and future opportunities in Sensed, Intuitive, Undeniable and Precise signals.
  
• Emotional Vehicles In Dataspace

  Vanessa Harden
  Emotional and cognitive responses are transmitted through different means dependent upon the sphere from which they emerge. In a multi-sensorial environment, one can receive and respond to such diverse manifestations of behaviour as body language, smell and sound. However, most current technological interfaces lack the capability to present and translate these sensorial stimuli in full, requiring the user to rely on less obvious cues and situational projection to direct cognitive and emotional understanding. Based on this premise, models were developed which explored the full integration of both the transmission and reception of these sensorial behaviours in Dataspace.

• Uima And Webfountain Opportunities For Dataspace

  Kelly Seagram, Richard Thomas
  The objective of this report is to gain an analytic, bird’s eye view of the climates in information management and integration and knowledge creation tools as cognitive amplifiers that enhance human capability. UIMA - Unstructured Information Management Architecture - is an open source component software architecture for the development, discovery, composition, and deployment of multi-modal analytics for the analysis of unstructured information and its integration with search technologies.