From Agre:

I still haven't noticed any five-star international conferences
to assess the accuracy of the many predictions for the year 2000.
Have you? I didn't think so. We'll have to carry on by ourselves.
We'll pick up with an article in the 6/5/00 Wall Street Journal:

Twenty years ago, Al Gore, then a 32-year-old Tennessee congressman,
persuaded 200 House subcommittee chairmen to predict what their
panels would focus on by the end of the millennium.

Most of the predictions, as you might imagine, bear no relationship to
reality. Blimps. Force field weapons. The extinction of railroads.
No new discoveries in pharmaceuticals. Teleconferencing replacing
some Congressional hearings. Anti-satellite weapons knocking out
telecommunications systems. Vertical take-off airplanes in commercial
aviation. Electrical power beamed from space. The paperless office.
They overestimated social changes due to technology and underestimated
social changes due to other factors. They missed the fall of the
Soviet Union altogether. They thought that HMO's would be a good
thing, and they especially celebrated the end of interest-rate limits
for savings and loans, which led to catastrophe a few years later.

Some predictions were more accurate, such as challenges to the safety
of genetically engineered products. One big winner in the prediction
contest was Al Gore. He correctly predicted the cloning of cows
and the prominence of global warming. He didn't talk about computer
networks in this document, though he had discussed them elsewhere
around the same time. The section written by the telecommunications
subcommittee did mention the issue in general terms, but it predicted
that France would achieve its goal of world leadership through Minitel.

There you have it.

"POINT OF VIEW" MAP
The "point of view" map is a handheld tool that detects 3-D orientation
to provide different perspectives on location information. When you hold
the tool parallel to the ground, you get a traditional "bird's eye view"
map with streets, buildings, and water as seen from above. When you hold
the tool perpendicular to the ground, you get a "landmark view" - with
photos or video of distinctive landmarks (buildings, statues, etc.) that
you will likely notice at a given location. 
The map tool detects slight movements away or toward the user,
signaling a "zoom" type operation. In the "bird's eye view" mode, a
slight movement upward, toward your face, triggers a zoom-in response; a
move downward triggers a zoom-out response. In "landmark view' mode, a
slight movement toward you requests more information about the specific
landmarks; a slight movement away requests more information about the
area or neighborhood.
The map tool may have additional information that can be displayed,
such as GPS positioning info or "estimated time of arrival" info,
perhaps made available when the map tool is touched to your watch. 
Another extensibility option is an input-mode, associated with flipping
the map over, in either view mode. If you flip the map over when it is
perpendicular to the ground (so the "landmark view" faces away from
you), you can use the tool as a digital camera, taking a photo of
landmarks you find distinctive. If you flip the map over when it is
parallel to the ground (so the "bird's eye view" faces down), you can
make written annotations on the map, marking where you have been,
restaurants you tried, reactions to what you see or do in a given place. 
These records of your travels can be available to you alone or become
part of a community database, providing richer information for people
exploring the city. This might allow users to experience a city from a
new perspective, perhaps by seeing images and notes taken by an
individual who is a member of a different group. What landmarks does a
long-time resident notice and record? What notes about a neighborhood
does an older resident make? (inspired by Lynch's _Image of the City_
and Gavner and Dunne's "Projected Realities")

A few issues related to this idea:
** Is this just one more device? Is it sufficiently useful to warrant
its use as a specialized tool? Will a handheld eventually have
sufficient capability (GPS, accelerometer, larger view screen) to
support this tool?
** Is it natural for a subset of possible movements to have functional
meaning (zoom, view-shift, input-output shift)? Are the mappings between
function and movement natural?
** This tool is targeted at pedestrians who may wish to explore a city,
as well as navigate successfully 
** Can the map tool apply to new contexts? Navigating in a building,
instead of a city; navigating in a system (health care), navigating in
time
** This is probably the most "tangible" of our ideas

Healthy Air / Stairway (Medical)

. Blow fresh air, create a pleasant space (encourages activity)
. Feeling of whisking up/down
. Operable window at top and bottom of stairs - creates air flow
. Well ventilated
. Solar to pull warm air up
. Energy generated from walking up stairs turns fans that pull up air
. Use the space under the stair to put AC unit for clean air purification

Kitchen Area / Visiting Pub (Medical)

. Hear audio (e.g. cheers) from pub as watch a sporting event -- feel part of the community.
. Digital advertisement for ice cream sunday party on door (attract people to home)
. Learn about what to do in the kitchen 
. Virtual window into pub from kitchen to help feel connected
. Mixed use -- more dense development. 
. Kitchen opens into public space for eating events that include community. 
. In apartment complex, how about multiple kitchens that can combine
into one huge kitchen
. Virtual pub environment created digitally
. Virtual cooking
. Make kitchen have pub's social ease - design kitchen for gruops (e.g. booth), allow for face-to-face interaction, table for 2 people
. Allow for spaces that only accomodate 2 people for private conversations (space sends message about inclusion)

Low-fat diet / Outside gate (Medical)

. Digital image on gate that shows to community displays image of my healthy garden (encourages neighbors to eat healthy ... subtle peer pressure)
. Outside the gate use PDA to get a log of food eaten
. Home helps make low-fat meal
. Pull up recipes at the gate
. Gate a reminder - gate tells daily food to get a local store
. PDA at restaurant tells calorie tradeoffs
. PDA uses barcodes on menus to get calorie/fat information about desert (reports as how much longer it will mean need to use stairmaster / real-world trade-offs)
. Gate tells where to go to get health food

Dining Area / Checking the Time (Medical)

. Clock(s) show time relative to major events in life instead of just as normal time (e.g. time till next visit with grandchildren) (health via expectation) (e.g. Chinese think about time differently)
. Time on table shows time to wait until next bite ... eat more slowly
. Leisurely meal - shows wrong time
. How much stairmaster it takes to work off the ice cream
. Fridge downloads reminders (locks at certain times)
. Use sunlight to create sundial counting device(s). If no sun, use colored artificial light. 
. When in dining room, check time on food cooking in kitchen. Figure out when it is ready without breaking the social interaction of conversation.

Healthy Air / Recycling Trash (Medical)
. Estimate when recycling will smell bad so house tells you to take it out before it smells bad (which reduces enthusiasm about recycling) 
. Burn trash locally and get energy
. Compost - take to garden
. Auto wash and sort trash for recycling
. Link taking out trash with taking a walk for good exercise
. Create a transition space where trash can be left in cold areas and when it gets hot so house doesn't smell and require going outside to recycle
. Get paid back for recycling paper, which is used as insulation
. A where is this smell coming from detector - where's the stink?

Low-Cholesterol Diet / Study Bedroom (Medical)

. Relative comes to visit with known problem so display fruit/healthy food on digital art surfaces
. In the study area be able to get informationa bout diets
. Moving the wall tells you to exercise
. When you go online in the study, monitor your vitals with a finger stick via computer -- what are my levels
. Put finger monitor in the trackpoint
. Hide natilus gym in wall component in study - hook stairmaster to time online so need to use it to "power" inernet access (great for kids)
. Generate your own electricity on bike
. Virtual biking game
. In the study get info on the food that is currently in the fridge. Cumulative fat/cholesteral/sugar meter/montor
. Have a veggie/spice/herb garden so smells make you crave better foods (plant ideas in head to avoid other bad ideas (e.g. candy bars)) 
. Use artificial flavoring smells in materials that evoke healthy eating (reverse of Fast Food Nation)
. Desktop gardening

Rearrange the Furniture / Self-Awareness of Health (Medical)

. Allow grandkids to go online and "redesign" your furniture layout. Encourages you to move it to show them results of work. 
. House encourages small changes in location of furniture occasionally to keep physical/mental acuity. 
. Get feedback about benefits of moving furniture
. "Chairmaster" - smart chair
. House w/ furniture that can be "cleared out"
. People don't realize taking care of furniture is important and for cleaning
. Virtual display to show what room will be like if furniture moved
. Concern: rearringing the furniture can be confusing since change gets harder with age
. House drill seargent orders to move furniture

2nd Floor Bath / Dusting (Learning)

. Words are displayed on undusted surfaces that disappear when dusted - they piece together an interesting story and make dusting fun. 
. Home knows if too much dust and recommends dusting (maybe uses patterns of where people/things have been)
. Learn about what is too much dust
. Learn about flaking of skin 
. Project a history of where dust has traveled (learn about air flow and chaos theory!?)
. Regular cleaning increases awareness of personal heigene
. Filter exist to keep dust down 

Dining Area / Part-Time Job / Sending Email (Learning)

. Learn about healthy diet in dining room as eat
. When snacks exceed some amount of calories, environment sends you email 
. Records what eaten in dining room and emails at part time job
. Part-time students in high school spend afternoons helping people plan healthy diets in their kitchens 
. Use email to comment to isolated people in community as part-time job

Garage / Visiting Pub (Learning)

. People at the pub can help someone with a fix-it project in the garage -- bring pub people into garage virtually to learn, help, and discuss
. Garage gives info about what to do instead of going to the pub
. Garage can interface with house and knows if you've been drinking
. When you get in the car, find out who's at the pub
. Car tells you when to walk to the pub instead of driving
. When you get back from the pub, garage contains a breathalizer to help you learn when you have been over the limit
. Garage becomes a virtual pub for people confined to home 

Visiting Friends / Doing Food Inventory for Meal Planning (Learning)

. Have Friday potlucks for community to simplify everyone's meal planning
. Discuss diet with friends and plan meals together
. When you go to visit friends, make it easy to get recipe if like it
. Allow friends to query home to be informed of allergies/food aversions in advance (based on what's in fridge or typically purchase?)
. Allow friends to automatically find all their recipes that use ingredients tht you have at home right now so you can reproduce meal if you like it
. When cooking with friends, home helps you know what you need to bring to supplement what they don't have

Kitchen Area / Walking the Dog (Learning)

. Design a pet toilet for the kitchen so you don't need to walk the dog
. Get a signal when a friend with a dog is walking dog nearby so you can join and talk
. Based on your dogs diet, get information about the best time to walk the dog
. Walking dog is a floor game int he kitchen
. Learn how many calories you burned (and dog burned) walking dog
. Kitche keeps dog out of kitchen
. House automatically trains dog (using speakers and your voice)
. Kitchen keeps dog from entering the kitchen space
. Educational information is displayed based on where the dog walks around the house
. When you walk dog, analyze for healthy dog 
. Home controls dog door in kitchen and lets dog out for walks in dog run at right times

Stairway / Contact with Loved Ones (Learning)

. Stairway shows "powers-of-ten"-like scales of information - how tall people are, how long doing something, ancestor timeline
. Family can exercise wherever they are
. Stair of guilt - staircase shows pictures of people you haven't talked with
. Exert energy and get reminders from loved ones
. Get family messages piece-by-piece display as walk up stairs
. Stairs represent life - every step shows loved one
. Monitor the gait of parents - track changes and report back
. Metastair - if get heartrate to Dr. specified amount, dials grandkids

Picking out Wardrobe / Independent Travel (Learning)

. Kid's game: Learn where you clothes were made - what countries and where are they? 
. Pixels everywhere in closet : touch clothes and get educational pictures
. Tell home where you are going and get brought clothes you need
. Wardrobe consultant for a trip
. Learn about what you should wear based upon tradition/culture in paticular countries
. Country-based dress-up game for kids using approximations based on clothes in closet (learn about culture)
. Tell me the weight of things as I pack (and offer substitutes/tips) - remind about what was packed extra last time
. Virtual wardrobe - look at different places and get tips - learn culture

Recycling Trash / Long-Distance Shopping (Learning)

. Graphical display devices shows where parts of object came from and where parts of object will end up
. House helps organize community protests based on above
. Find out about what extra refuse was created by supplier 
. Mail orders get recycling information stamped on them so you know what to do when they arrive to facilitate recycling
. Use trach papers to insulate garage
. Online shop - get information on the cost to disose of packaging and products
. Community network is formed for people to share clothes and pool resources as buyers 

_______________________________________________
Ideas that would use Auto-IDs:

IDENTIFYING WITH A CLASS OF BUYERS

At the Amazon.com web site (along with other sites like IMDB and Movie
Lens), you can find books or products that are linked to a given item by
a common consumer group ("people who bought this book, also bought these
books:"). You can identify with a class of book buyers who are like you
in some way. Sometimes, it is easier to find the books you want this
way, than through traditional search methods.
Wouldn't it be neat if you could do this at a library - pick up
a book and then while you are carrying it, books would briefly glow on
the shelf as you passed by - books that were read by people who read the
book you are carrying. This way, you might find out that people who read
Harry Potter, also read The Prydain Chronicles... which may lead you to
check those books out too. 
We could also be apply this idea to a shopping market; you identify
yourself with a group of people, for example, people who are eating
"heart healthy," and as you pick up products that are on your list,
product that were also bought by people in your group are somehow
pointed out to you. This helps you identify products that will go with
what you are already buying and that will match your dietary needs. 
It also has kind of an exploratory-aspect... this is not for the
fifteen-minute shopper. It encourages experimentation, in the same way
that Amazon.com does. It also provides shoppers who are facing a
difficult task, that of meeting a dietary requirement, with a sense of
"community support" from people who are making the same types of
decisions. It would be interesting to know if people find this process
as valuable in a real context (3D physical) as they do on the web (2D
digital).
We are thinking of this project in terms of using Auto-IDs to identify
products and store associations. We're still thinking through how
information would be conveyed - issues include shopper privacy,
interference from multiple shoppers, and placement of ID scanners. Does
the shelf containing the product light up? Or does a handheld device
direct you to the product? Due to the nature of the project, we want to
make sure interaction with the information is sufficiently physical.