Siftables, user interface, digital cells, and evolution.
Over the last few years, user interfaces are showing signs of evolution to brake away from the keyboard, mouse and display. GPS, motion sensing appeared into everyday mobile phones enabling a new range of powerful application.
Siftables are much more aware of their environment than any device before them, they can:
- sense the proximity of other devices,
- know where they are compared to each other
- know their orientation, tilt,
- display and sound their understanding of the world around them
I like to think of these devices as computing cells for which I can 'sense' yet another new range of applications. Adding new senses to these cells opens the door to unforeseen applications that the next generation of startups will build.
Imagine the applications of cells that would have a combination of senses:
- physical pressure applied on them, strain, viscosity,
- electric, magnetic, electromagnetic
- sounds
- temperature, humidity, atmospheric presure, flow,
- chemical
- optical radiation,
- ...
But also, what if these cells had the ability to move either by themselves - e.g. by altering their shape like early organisms - or by communicating with their carrier - e.g. a robot arm, a human being - ?
What if these cells could physically attach to each other, then detach? This could be done using electromagnets, physical hooks, altering their surface, or chemical or electro-chemical structure.
What if these cells could be even smaller, much smaller, each with a single sense, and built cheaply enough that millions of them could interact to form complex systems?
What if these cells could get the energy they need to function directly from their environment or energy-producing surrounding cells?
What if these cell systems could 'build to order' new cells to duplicate themselves, possibly with slight variations, or even random errors?
Do you think current patent laws would allow patenting most of the above in the next few years, or even decades, although this blog is public?
On a philosophical note, I'd like to add that this is evolution in the making. Although our ego likes to believe that us, humans, create these objects, I believe that nature is using us as part of the environment to enable a new step in evolution. Just like early sea organisms created much of the oxygen required for us to breathe, life is currently evolving from analog (biological) to digital by using humans as a catalyst.
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