“Siri does not represent a foray into the realm of artificial intelligence, but rather a necessary stutter-step in that direction which can be more accurately referred to as Augmented Intelligence. Despite an ability to engage in limited natural language processing, Siri is only capable of augmenting the capabilities of an iPhone in ways that were pre-defined by her programmers. This augmentation will only be improved upon with future iterations of Siri and some day soon, she may become more context aware.

For example, ask Siri to play a game and she’ll trigger on the word “play” and look for a song or playlist that match the remainder of the interpreted words “play a game”. Tell her you really want to get drunk and she’ll offer to call you a cab, not find you a bar. As an augmented intelligence, Siri can be pretty helpful, but here are some ways we expect her to improve in the near-term.
“

Source: Siri – the Augmented Intelligence Agent | TechGrid

Give me a separate “subscribed” news feed - I want to be able to toggle back and forth between people I am subscribed to and people I am friends with in my newsfeed. An integrated view is nice, but sometimes I just want to see my friends and vice versa.

Public Subscribe Button – I already have a button for follow me on Twitter and a button to friend me on Facebook. What we need now is a Subscribe to my public Facebook feed button. It should allow folks to easily subscribe vid Facebook.

Default responses to site discussions via Facebook to “public” – Imagine the community engagement when people bring their subscribers to the discussion via promotion through their public feed.

Stop Auto-generating friend lists – I like the ability to generate custom lists to categorize my friends, but honestly I really only feel the need right now to have two lists. Friends and subscribers. That said, I’m overwhelmed at all the lists Facebook has auto-generated for me. I want to shut that feature off. I don’t need lists for where I live, where I went to school, where I’ve worked. It is almost like getting flogged for having too diverse a social graph.

Search baby, search – Real-time and historic search of my newsfeed and the overall public stream equals absolute killer feature. Facebook will have Twitter (which has never managed search well) and Google trembling.

Integrate subscribe concept into Pages – I’d like a more discreet ability to add page content to my newsfeed. Currently, you can “like” a page and it will show up in your stream, but it also shows up in your profile. It would be nice to have an ability so subscribe to a page without public disclosure or (implied) endorsement of the page.

“In reading the book, it really makes one wonder why we haven’t created better instances of virtual worlds in today’s technology environment. The closest thing to the OASIS of Cline’s novel is Second Life, but it still has a lot of shortcomings. It got me wondering what are some of the minimal requirements that could improve upon the virtual world we already have that would make it more valuable in a social and business context. The goal is to make it the type of environment a virtual worker would be logged into in conducting their daily business (coding, writing blog posts, etc). Here are some ideas…”

Source: Realizing the Metaverse — TechGrid

“One of the things that’s unknowable is how humanity will use any new technology.

No one imagines that we’d wind up with a world that looks like this on the basis of the technology that’s emerged in the last hundred years. Emergent technology is the most powerful single driver of change in the world, and it has been forever. Technology trumps politics. Technology trumps religion. It just does. And that’s why we are where we are now. It seems so self-evident to me that I can never go to that Technology: threat or menace? position. Okay, well, if we don’t do this, what are we going to do? This is not only what we do, it’s literally who we are as a species. We’ve become something other than what our ancestors were. “

(Source: The Vulture Transcript: Sci-Fi Author William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter, Thinks Facebook Is ‘Like a Mall,’ and Much More — Vulture)

I want it to sync with iTunes on my desktop.

It occurs to me that managing my media library on these devices is a huge hinderance. I have a Mac Pro desktop that stores by massive music library and makes it available over my home network to any connected device. However, when I am on the road, none of that content is accessible to my laptop. There are lots of solutions that allow me to sync an entire library, but what if I only want to sync a subset given the storage limitations of a portable device.

I’d love to be able to plug my MacBook Air into my Mac Pro and sync it just like any other device in iTunes, including the ability to move over rented movies. This seems like the optimal solution for managing media across portable systems. It works for my iPhone and my iPad, why not implement in the MacBook Air?

I’m typing this post on my iPad with a paired bluetooth keyboard and it is a great combination with a total weight of less than two pounds and no keyboard in the way when I don’t need it on planes and trains.

Lots of complaints that this is a consumption device and not a creation device. While that argument is reasonable, I think the contrarian pundits aren’t thinking outside the box.

If I could get Coda for iPad I’d be a happy camper….are you listening Panic Software?

Reasons I want one now:

In the past two years, there have been many times that I’ve wanted to travel with just my iPhone, but found the interface just a tad bit too small to handle my on-the-road computing requirements. The larger size of the iPad and support for BlueTooth keyboards means I’ll be able to have the best of both worlds; a larger touch-screen interface with the ability to hook up a keyboard when I need one.

It’s a killer entertainment device. Listen to music, watch movies, or read books and magazines in a great form factor with a 10 hour battery life. Right now I carry an iPod Touch and a Kindle, and with the iPad Apple has unified them into one device. One of my greatest frustrations with my Kindle is the requirement for external lighting, so I’m pleased to have an e-reader I can use in the dark.

I love gaming on my iPhone and don’t use a DS or PSP on the road any more. I’m sure the mobile gaming on the iPad will exceed the iPhone platform. Fun.

Support for content creation via the iWork platform means this device can be used for productivity as well as consumption. I just hope the applications can open and work with Office documents (see below).

A touch interface. Longtime readers of this blog will know that I’ve been a fan of touch interfaces for years and used a Fingerworks touch keyboard as my primary input device at work and in my home office. With this device, we are finally realizing the promise of Apple’s Fingerworks acquisition and the Fingerwork’s stuff was truly innovative.

Support for iTunes University. This is a really good thing and with the iBook support the iPad becomes a great educational device. As a professor and father, this excites me.

It only weighs 1.5 pounds and will fit in every bag I own. That means this device is easy to take on the road on a trip or to the coffee shop.

There are a few features I hope are supported, but haven’t been confirmed yet.

Ability to load iWork, but more importantly Microsoft Office, documents for editing and saving on the device. I’d like to get a Word document via email, open it in Pages, save it in a Word compatible format, and email it back to someone. If I can’t do this on the iPad it will greatly diminish its value as a road warrior device.

Play iTunes in the background. The lack of background apps is a bummer, but I’m really banking on the fact that since this is based on the iPhone OS that I’ll be able to listen to my music and podcasts in the background.

Support video out for my MyVu classes. There are times when I really don’t want to subject the 80 year old Jordanian woman sitting next to me in business class to the latest episode of Dexter. I’m really hoping I’ll be able to use my MyVu glasses with this device as well.

Push notifications: I’m hoping that the devices with the SIM option support the push notifications. This takes the sting out of the lack of background apps, but only a little bit.

Here are some things I’m disappointed with that I hope will be added in future generations of the device:

A web cam. I don’t need a high resolution camera, but I want to iChat/Skype with colleagues and family.

Background applications. There reaches a point when there are no longer any viable excuses for why background applications aren’t allowed on this device and the iPhone. We are at that point now.

Voice input. The combination of touchscreen and verbal commands are the future of mobile interfaces, so the iPad is only half way there.

An always on desktop dock. I want to drop this in a dock at the office and have it cycle through my pictures and my calendar (think a Chumby on steroids).

Integrated mesh networking. If there are other folks on my plane with an iPad I want to be able to play chess against them via some sort of bonjour network discovery mode.

GPS. I’d settle for a bluetooth connection to my iPhone GPS, but I’d love to be able to view GPS enabled maps on the iPad.

[Update - According to this video, Steve Jobs directly confirms that you can write a document in Pages, save it to Word and the then email it. Perfect!]

When I first started working national security issues, 2010 was one of the decades we always forecasted towards for planning and wargaming purposes. It was far enough in the future to put our futurists caps on, but still close enough to be tangible. It was the future. As we enter into 2010, I can’t shake this feeling that we all live in the future now.

Here’s why…

Devost’s law of exponential change

Massive change becomes twice as easy every 36 months. The fuse of societal, technological, and scientific change will become increasingly shorter over time. Although change might occur more quickly (e.g easier) over time, that is not to say that some change won’t be devastatingly hard, even when occurring on a compressed time-frame.

Change will be accelerated by factors of globalization, including increased connectivity and the spread of global memes. More significantly though, by almost an evolutionary adaption that makes us more accepting of massive change. It feels like we are increasingly wired this way. Market meltdowns, mass casualty terrorism, pandemics, and rapid-paced technology adoption prepare us for living in a world where change happens on massive scales and fast.

Therefore, the more things change, the more they will change (vice the more they stay the same). Change on steroids also means that our ability to alienate is also exponentially enhanced, if not intentionally, then certainly as a result of massive change that is not universally adopted.

Technology Issues

The past decade has brought us some incredible technology as well, and the next decade will build upon advances heralded in over the past few years.

Our lives at our fingertips

I’ve got the whole world in my hand. With the introduction of the iPhone 3GS last year, I’m able to cover about 95% of my computing needs for short periods of time (several days) using a device I keep in my pocket. In fact, 2009 marked the first time I’ve traveled without a laptop since they were introduced and I certainly didn’t miss the last 5%. The iPhone, which is a relatively new technology, was certainly a game changer and our advancements in that area will benefit from Moore’s law in the coming decade. Having purchased all three iterations of the phone, I’ve got them scattered throughout my house like tissue boxes.

It has been interesting to contrast this immediate access to information during my father’s recent holiday visit. My father, who designed chip cooling systems for IBM in the late 60′s before returning to the family logging business does not use computers. Questions like “I wonder how old Dick Clark is?”, “What year did Bobby Orr retire?” are all answerable in seconds. He was amazed at the absence of a outside thermometer at our house. The elementary school next door has a complex weather station I can tap into from my iPhone, so why bother when temp, wind speed, etc. are all immediately accessible. You can read about the 23 devices my iPhone has replaced.

I think smart-phones will further become phone-computers and we’ll have better storage and bandwidth that will make them essential equipment. The biggest improvements will be at the interface level with the introduction of motion-based gesturing, advanced voice recognition, and advanced voice response systems. There is no reason to be fumbling with multi-touch in two years and we’ll be talking to our phones (as well as on them) as our primary interaction mechanism. With the introduction of the Apple tablet in early 2010, a generation of technologist will be able to experiment with an entirely new form factor and groundbreaking interface components, so 2010 will start off with a technological bang.

Ubiquitous bandwidth

Telecommunication carriers be damned, I think we are moving towards and environment of ubiquitous high speed internet access that will be delivered over fiber and wireless. When I moved into my house 6 years ago, I had to put an antenna on my roof to try and catch a wireless signal several miles up the road. Later, I invested in a T1 line with gave me 1.5mbps for $400.00/ month. Today, I’ve got fiber to the house and bandwidth of 50mbps available for $150.00/month. I often get T1 speeds over cellular networks as well.

With ubiquitous bandwidth, the lines that define where we work, play, and learn indistinguishably blend together for better or for worse. We’ll get more, pay less and that will drive innovation across lots of different platforms. I didn’t start using the term cloud computing until a few years ago and now it defines my digital existence. Most of what I care about digitally is accessible via the cloud whether it be my music collection or an essay I wrote a decade ago. With additional bandwidth our dependence on the cloud will not only increase, but we’ll all become part of the mobile cloud as well. Want to know how traffic is on the toll road? My phone should be able to tell the cloud and we’ll all be gridlinked in our gridlock.

Virtual worlds

Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve been watching the development of virtual worlds like Second Life very closely. Virtual worlds have become places of employment, enjoyment, and societal petri dishes for a wide-range of cultural experiments. In seeing Avatar last week I was struck by the narrative in which the main character Jake describes how he couldn’t tell which world was real and which was a dream and that his avatar world seemed like the real-world to him. Three years ago I met several people in Second Life who expressed the same feelings about the virtual world created by Linden Labs. Immersion in virtual worlds will accelerate as the worlds become more complex. The implications of this immersion are much more complex than most are willing to acknowledge and we’ll just start to touch upon them in the coming decade as they serve for the precursor to complex cultural and religious debates we will encounter should we ever achieve some sort of singularity.

I also think virtual worlds pose some interesting financial questions as well. How much is virtual property worth? For example, someone just paid $330,000.00 USD for space station in a virtual game. That is more than most real-world houses cost. What happens if the server crashes, or worse, if the company that operates the game folds? With gaming companies have to start setting up endowments to allow for continued virtual world operation considering the extensive financial investments users are making?

Artificial Intelligence

I don’t think we’ll see true artificial intelligence in the next decade, but there is no reason why we won’t see significantly augmented intelligence software bots in the next five years. The first components of these augmented intelligence systems will be to help us organize, manage, retrieve and interact with our digital lives. While enhanced user interfaces will help us deal with information and communication overload, they’ll only get us so far. Why should I manually check into FourSquare when I arrive at a local bar?   I’m also ready for the day when my phone automatically dials my wife when I get in the car to head home at night (or at least asks me if I would like to call her). These will be the little steps that will drive the augintel (go ahead, the domain is available) space and we’ll soon two camps; the augs and the nonaugs walking down the street.

Geo everything

Location, location, location. There are hundreds of blog posts talking about the importance of location data in the next decade, so I won’t re-invent the wheel here. I’ll only acknowledge that I agree this is a critical area/capability and also highlight that space-time travel data is analytic super-food!

Display technologies

I’m less interested in the next 65″ LED display and more interested in where MyVu is in 10 years. I expect that in 10 years we’ll be talking about the personalization of display technologies as screens get embedded in eyeglasses and other head’s up displays. The MyVu glasses changed the way I travel and give me a big entertainment screen in half a pound of portable plastic and silicon. In the next decade, I do expect to wear my computer most of the time.

Security and Emerging Threats

Two primary areas of my professional expertise, terrorism and cybersecurity, will have continued prominence over the next decade.

Adversaries will be able to engage in attacks of disproportionate impact for the foreseeable future and we’ll face a multitude of complex threats for which we are not currently adequately prepared.

Mass casualty terrorism attacks will continue to be a reality in the coming decade and despite the fact that bin Laden will be captured or killed, we’ll continue to see attacks against Western targets by AQ linked adversaries. It is highly likely one of those attacks will include a weapon of mass destruction.

Self-organizing cells continue to be an emergence concern (sorry couldn’t resist the pun). While the damage a self-organizing group might be able to cause might be limited, they present an incredible law enforcement and intelligence challenge. To that end, we’ll see the re-emergence of transaction and pattern-based intelligence analysis initiatives as subject-based analysis will continue to face shortcomings in countering self-organizing groups. As big a fan as I am of the human aspect of intelligence analysis, some sort of augmentation is going to be required. The recent failed Christmas attack is probably a great example of why research and development in intelligence software is needed.

We’ll also need new tools to enhance collaboration. To that extent, it was disappointing to see two great experimental platforms shut down in 2009 (ugov and Bridge) as I was a user and supporter of both. What we need is more disruptive test-beds like these, not fewer. To that extent, I’ll continue to fund the GroupIntel Network (www.groupintel.com) which has grown to over 250 intelligence and security professionals conducting some interesting collaborative analysis.

Cybersecurity has finally fully emerged as a legitimate national and economic security concern and will see tremendous growth (both in e-crime exploitation and counter e-crime budgets) in the next several years. We’ve seen economies of scale indicating that hundreds of millions of dollars are being made via electronic fraud activities and the lines are blurring between cybercrime and information warfare in unanticipated ways. In some instances it looks like states are viewing and utilizing cybercrime infrastructures as extensions of state power.

Unfortunately, we haven’t solved the cyber-strategy issues just yet. I look forward to working with folks like the CCSA (www.cyberconflict.org) and Department of Defense to address some of these deficiencies.

A lot of what I said about Cyber last year is still applicable this year, so rather that regurgitate it, I’ll just point you to my post entitled “The Year of Living Cyberdangerously”

Other security issues on my radar screen going into the teens include:

Mexican criminal insurgencies – My friend John Sullivan and I have been promoting some collaborative analysis of this issue for a couple of years now via the GroupIntel Network. However, the potential for increased cross-border criminal insurgency from Mexico into the United States is inevitable at this point.

Convergence – The blending of national, criminal, terrorist and other non-state gray area actors will be an issue of concern in the coming years. My interest in this area was first piqued by research done with my colleagues and friends Walter Purdy and Sebastian Junger on the Tri-border region. As it turns out the TBR is probably a good model for what we will continue to see in the future.

Decline of nation states – Not quite sure where I stand on this one yet as I see two distinct possibilities at opposite ends of the spectrum. While the science fiction fan in me observes indicators that the role of the nation-state will decline, I can also envision the rise of hyper-nationalism as well. I think we’ll observe entities at both ends of the spectrum in the next decade, but not sure which is the pervasive trend. With the significance of shadow economies and the increasing role of corporate interests in international regulation, we’ll all feel like we are living in Bruce Sterling’s world from time to time.

Homeland Security – While our homeland security apparatus continues to focus on serving the bureaucracy at the federal level, I expect that we’ll see a lot of critical homeland security issues solved at the State and Local level. Give me a DARPA style entity focused exclusively on State and Local and I’ll give you 100X better return on your security investment versus what is achieved at the federal DHS level. Several self-organizing initiatives that have suffered budgetary and political pressures (think Terrorism Early Warning Groups) will re-emerge in response to emerging security concerns from future attacks. In the past decade we’ve taught a lot of folks to fish and in the teens we’ll let them get back on the docks.

Science

In the next decade I think the most consequential scientific issues will fall into two simple categories; genetics and space. I’m an expert in neither but fascinated by both. To that end, I hope we really start exploring space again.

My 2010 Wildcard – Gov 2.0

In the past year I’ve been very interested in the Government 2.0 movement.  I sponsored a Gov 2.0 barcamp and attended a major conference on the topic.

You rarely encounter so much passion and capability aligned towards one goal, so I’m optimistic there’s a “there” there. However, I think we going to have to see the conversations go much more granular and grassroots to see any real momentum. Also, with the move towards Gov 2.0 I’m fully cognizant of the fact we’ll likely get Gov Vista Home Professional Edition along the way as well.  It’s an acceptable risk.

I wrote a post summarizing my reaction to the Gov 2.0 Camp last March that is worth taking a look at if you are interested in the topic.

Final thoughts

Someone once told me that every generation uniquely thinks they live in the most interesting and challenging times.  I think they were probably onto something.

To that extent, I certainly feel like that is the case with my generation, but it is hard to contrast with things like the introduction of international aviation or World Wars that saw the loss of millions of lives.  I do feel like we are standing on the precipice in so many interesting and scary domains that we’d better fasten our seatbelts for the next decade.  I’d welcome your thoughts so let me know what you think in the comments below.

I’ve written the VA state attorney to ask them to do the same. I would encourage you to do so as well.

DirecTV thives on Deception