Nine trends shaping the future of social interactions

Jan Chipchase is a researcher for Nokia Design. He details the nine trends he thinks will shape the future of social interactions, trends he identified through the extensive field work he and his team are conducting around the world. Jan's work shows how the digital devices are creating new practices and usages by becoming smaller and smaller, opening up a new design space for the mobile industry.

Mobiles and the urban poor

Bruce Sterling, science-fiction and tech journalist - and Lift's "big thinker in residence" - talks about the implications of money digitization. His though-provoking presentation deals with how virtual money systems are the financial services for the new urban poor. "When you are working on cell phones, when you are working on the web, when you are working on electronic money and payment systems, you need to think: What if my user is a North-Korean" How would I do this differently if I knew my user was from Pyongyang, that his regime had collapsed, that his economy had collapsed, he was completely bewildered, and he had never seen a cell phone or a computer in his life, and I intended to make him a productive and happy fellow citizen in ten years, what kind of technology would I give that person, what kind of trading system, economic system?”

17 months and 14'000 km away from technology

Swiss adventurer Sarah Marquis, who travels by foot around Europe, Australia and America, explains what happen when you reconnect with nature and try to be autonomous, finding water, getting some electrical energy, collecting food were some of the topics discussed during her presentation. She spoke during the WattWatt special session on sustainable development.

The long here, the big now

Adam Greenfield, head of design director at Nokia, talks about the emotional aspects of living in a networked city. What happens when the choices of action in the city are not only physical, but also influenced by an invisible overlay of networked information?

The Dan Dubno's gadget show

Commenting on a table full of electronic stuff, five times Emmy Award winner Dan "Mr. Gadget" Dubno gives a quick and funny overview of green devices such as solar powered battery chargers, water purifying pipes, star identifying gazing systems, GPS devices with or without cameras, and so on. He offers a refreshing perspective on gadget curiosity at the WattWatt special session on sustainable development.

Sustainability and mobile phone design

At Lift Asia 08 designer Raphaël Grignani explained how sustainability can be taken into account in the design of mobile phones. How to avoid wasting energy? How to recycle material to create mobile devices? How to encourage people to keep things longer? Raphael discusses these questions and shows the "Homegrown" project Nokia Design conducted recently: new designs to automatically switch off the charger after the phone is charged, creating a culture of "caring" among phone users, and turning material waste into beautiful mobile phones.

Bringing a robot to every home

Speecys robotics' Tomoaki Kasuga, a Japanese inventor who has been working on bringing robots to the living rooms of the world for more than fifteen years, showcases his latest creation: a humanoid-shaped robot connected to the Internet. The SPC-101C is part of a whole new botcasting ecosystem (think iTunes for robots) and shows how the expressiveness of movements and the quality of manufacturing are a very important component of human-robot interactions.

The digital nomads

Mobile phone visionary, Christian Lindholm, now Partner and Director at Fjord, focuses on digital nomads and the lessons we can draw from them. His study of global traveling users indeed reveal the "pain points" of mobile user experience: battery-life as a constant worrying issue, data-roaming cost that restrain demand, the importance of laptop compared to smart phones, etc. His talk also tackle why this is important for designing futures mobile services.

Urban mobile multiplayer gaming

Jury Hahn is the co-founder of MegaPhone, a gaming company based in New York which makes real-time multi-player games on cell phones. Jury explains the potential of mobile gaming, and how phones can allow rich public interactions. She then demos MegaPhone's gaming platform and Lift participants go wild and play against one other :)

Is it a cashless future?

David Birch, director at Consult Hyperion is a specialist of electronic business and banking. In his presentation, he gives his perspective on the future of digital currency by addressing the disadvantage of cash, the raising importance of cell phone services (especially in developing countries) and its benefits.

Best of Lift Asia 08

Here is a recap video of Lift Asia 08 behind the scenes by Frame Inc. See the ambiance Lift portrays at Lift Asia 08 Conference. View a sumary of the event, from the speakers to the conference space, and the experience projects all made possible by the Jeju Government, Daum, WattWatt, Alpict and Art Center NABI.

Interactive Cities

Jeffrey Huang, professor at the Media and Design Lab (Swiss Institute of Technology, Lausanne) addresses the merging of the digital and the physical in the context of near future cities. Through different projects he conducted, he exemplifies how interactive technologies can transform our physical environment to foster better communities.

Upcoming trends in mobile services

Takeshi Natsuno "Upcoming trends in mobile services" (Lift Asia 08 EN) Takeshi Natsuno, the father of the first, functioning, successful, large-scale wireless internet system, Japan's i-Mode described his perspective and trends on mobile services for the near future.

From Political Protest to Social Intervention

Ilpyo Hong from the Hope Institute shows the role of new media in activism in the context of Korea. He starts with a history of the candlelight protest (a recent demonstration against US beef import in Korea) and then moved on to a discussion of Hope Institute and its platform for large-scale social activism. Unfortunately due to technical difficulties, this video was not completely translated in English so be sure to have your Korean dictionaries handy!

Arimaz

At the swiss start-ups pitch presentation, Pierre Bureau form Arimaz shows Mydeskfriend, a small robot that can connect to the Internet, it can read messages and RSS feeds, and be a character in games.

Living City

If your interested in buildings which can "talk" with each others, Yang Soo-In's presentation is spot on. His speech about the "living city" is about the sensors which disappear into the urban fabric and it allows building to communicate information about their local conditions to a network of other buildings. Yang’s work is very interesting as it shows how the city can be seen as a research lab.

From Robota to Homo Robotus

Bruno Bonnell is a legendary french entrepreneur, founder of Infogrames and former CEO of Atari . Today Bruno has launched a new venture in the robotic market: Robopolis. In his speech at Lift Asia 08 "From Robota to Homo Robotus" (with remarkable energy and great performance the morning after a legendary Karaoke Night ;) Bruno revises Asimov's laws of robotic and highlights the differences between the Asian and Western approach to robotics.

Beyond the Browser

After a quick introduction of the event, Lift founder Laurent Haug, joined on stage by Daum's founder Jaewoong Lee gives an overview of the Lift Asia 08 conference. He briefly addresses the topic choice and describe the profile of the speakers.

Robots don't have to look like robots

Frederic Kaplan, a researcher and robot designer from the Swiss Institute of Technology (Lausanne) talks about the future of robots as part of our daily life. He shows different scenarios that exemplify how everyday objects can become robotic and to what extent the next generation of computer interfaces will be influenced by this trend. In this talk Frederic Kaplan also presents how computers, which used to exist in their own world, now live in our daily life.

Key lemon

At the swiss start-ups pitch presentation, Gilles Florey from Key Lemon presented his product: an easy-to-use face- and speech-recognition software that can be used through a normal webcam

The Future of Social World

Nexon CEO Joonmo Kwon describes the evolution of video gaming through examples from his company, which produces some of the world's most popular online multiplayer games. Joonmo shows how the Web and the mobile phone platforms changed playing practices. He also discusses the renewal of business models in this field and the role of game designers to leverage their creativity to come up with original products.

Secu4

At the swiss start-ups pitch presentation, Ralph Rimet from Secu4 showed his product, a protection system for valuables, based on a small bluetooth card, connected with a cell phone.