Making Digital Work

As part of the Digital R&D for the Arts funding stream overseen by Nesta, they put together a programme of presentations as a final showcase. I was asked by their new Director for Digital, Tim Plyming, to make a contribution to the final session of the day, looking at future directions. It was a really fun panel with Freya Murray, Director, Stamp House; Anthony Lilley OBE, Interim CEO and Creative Director, The Space and CEO, Magic Lantern Productions; David Watson, Head of Digital, Hull UK City of Culture 2017.

Personal health technologies

As part of my involvement with the amazing 2020 Health project, I was asked to take part in a Conservative Party fringe event, exmaining how digital technologies can transform the health care system. It was a pretty far reaching discussion and my central concern was around data ownership, mobility, and expansion. More to come on that.

Chaired by: Dame Helena Shovelton DBE, Chair, 2020health 

With guest speakers: 
Nicola Blackwood MP, Chair, Science & Technology Select Committee (Invited) 
Paul Burstow, Independent Health Consultant
Dr David Lee, Medical Director, Computer Sciences Corporation    
Professor Andy Miah, Chair in Science Communication & Future Media, University of Salford

Should you get a smart watch? #MobTechEdu

Talk today for Salford University CPD conference.

Social Media and the PhD @LSENews

The second of three social media talks in a week, this one at the London School of Economics, focused on the early career researcher and how they can use social media to get their ideas out there quicker and make social media part of their research discovery process. When I was a PhD student, all we had to think about in terms of software was which bibliographic package we use.

Now, there are endless applications and key places where academics need to be, so that their work is discovered. Some of the key ones are ResearchGate, Google Scholar, Academia.edu, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but there are many more tools available that can help make our work more efficient, more accessible, and more engaging.

One of my key messages is that ignoring social media is like ignoring email in the 1990s. The question is not whether we do it, but how we do it well.

Social Media for Research Impact

This week, I gave a talk at Kent Business School focused on the use of social media to generate research impact. It was a staggering sell out event with around 1/4 of the total academic staff of University of Kent in attendance.

One of the key things I covered in my talk was the range of socil media platforms that are out there, evidenced by my A to Z of social media for academia, which was first published in 2012. It has since been shared in countless places and the list keeps growing.

The platform I like most at the moment is Journal Map, makes me wish I was an environmental scientist. Maybe in a few years ;) Here are my slides from the talk...

City to City Forum #SAC2015

Yesterday, I took part in a panel debate about what cities will look like in the future, what they need to do to deliver effective and compelling sports events, and how new forms of technological culture are changing audience expectations of urban life. My contribution focused on the Internet of Things, the role of Big Data, and the opportunities to nurture cultural change through technology.

Having been to 9 Olympic Games, I have seen a lot of change around how cities operate and yet there is still so much that can be done to use mega events as a catalyst for developing more digitally engaged legacies. I have yet to see a city that does this effectively and I think it has partly to do with the limited capacity of a city's people to own their digital legacy.

Consequently, my advocacy on this topic focuses on the need to create opportunities for data to empower people, rather than subject them to commercial exploitation. Sports have a key role to play given the growing economic impact around mobile health experiences.

Photo by Ksusha Kompan Photography

Our digital future?

My latest piece published in The Conversation takes a look at the Manifesto pledges from a digital point of view.

The future of universities

Article published in Zocalo, picked up by TIME:  

Students will be in the driver’s seat — Andy Miah

Technology will force universities to re-define their role within 21stcentury life, and this has a lot to do with the DIY generation, who figure out what they need to know via Google and Wikipedia. These platforms are the equivalent of the single-celled organisms that gave birth to humanity’s evolution.

In a world where learning experiences are ubiquitous and we rely less and less on institutions to deliver them, technology forces universities to re-think what they offer in the 21st century. Universities are no longer the gatekeepers of new knowledge, even less so with the rise of citizen science experiments, where non-experts can gather important data, and alternative qualification options, such as Mozilla Open Badges.

Students of tomorrow will want flexible, mobile-enabled learning experiences that are as compelling as film or theatre. The success of TED talks is indicative of the changing demands on teachers today and the changing attention economy of the new generation. Universities need to think carefully about how to curate learning experiences, making each lecture truly memorable and life-changing. The classroom now has to empower students to set the agenda and drive their own learning.

As we move into an era of sentient computing, universities need also to see technology not just as a vehicle for communicating ideas or enriching learning, but as a co-collaborator. Computers will become entities onto which students will project learning expectations. The machines will teach us, they will also learn, and they will spend more time with students than a lecturer ever can. If we want humans to remain at the heart of that interaction, we then need to really reconsider what we offer that they can’t.

Andy Miah is a professor and chair in science communication and future media at the University of Salford in Manchester, England. Follow him on Twitter @Andymiah.

OK Glass? The Aspirations and Anxieties of the Google Glass Generation

My first talk for the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, Manchester ;)

One teacher per student

This week, I was in Seoul presenting at the Global Education Dialogue run by the British Council and co-hosted by hte Korean Council for University Education. The conference focused on the role of technology in the race for global talent and my talk developed the idea of 'intelligent learning systems' that can enable universities to get to a point where their staff student ratio is 1 to 1. Here's the @prezi

Are mirrors becoming obsolete?

On Valentines Day, I was quoted in The Times for an article about the replacement of mirrors by screens. Here's a link to the article, but here's the full quotes I gave to Kaya Burgess, the article's author:

"As screens rapidly replace mirrors to occupy the reflective space in our lives, we find ourselves in a novel moment in history where we could, if we choose, actually see ourselves as others see us, rather than see the flipped version that mirrors generate. Yet, so far, we are sticking with the familarity of the reflected image. If selfie culture is realy about vanity and narcissism, then we might be smarter to use the screens to present us with what others see when they gaze in our direction and, if we do, the whole idea of reflection may become redundant. In 50 years, we might look upon our reflected selves with a degree of trepidation and anxiety.

"With the growing attention of the internet of things, the idea of smart mirrors is becoming ever more appealing. You could wake up in the morning and look into your smart mirror, which would quickly analyse your health and tell you if you are coming down with an illness, or whether you need to do a bit more exercise or get more sleep. Of course, these mirrors will not be mirrors at all, they will be ultra high definition screens, capable of providing all kinds of augmented reality content that will, hopefully, enrich our lives rather htan scare us all to death."

mHealth and the Wearable Technology Revolution

Today @SalfordUni, the Business School hosts a symposium on Digital Innovation, focusing on health applications. Here's my @prezi  

Future City 2015

On 10th Feb, I will be the MC for an event run by the @UKTI in Paris looking tagged #FutureCity2015. In relation to this, I  was asked also to make a film that would open the event, focusing discussion around new opportunities and foregrounding a number of technological changes to cities that are imminent.

Here it is:

The event is principally for business and will look like this.

09:30 Welcome by His Excellency Sir Peter Ricketts

British Ambassador to France

09:40 Current opportunities in France

Caroline Maurand, French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy

10:05 Focus on the Grand Paris Project

Serge Dupont, Société du Grand Paris

10:20 Current opportunities in the UK

Dan Byles MP

10:45 Focus on London Regeneration Projects

Sue Vincent, Urban Design London

11:00 Coffee Break and Networking

11:30 Inspiring Case Studies in the UK:

Introduction to the Greenwich Automated Transport Environment (GATEway) project

Pierre Lefèvre, Greenwich GATEway project

Value from the Work of Many Hands

David Roberts, Igloo Regeneration

Paris-London – communicating vessels?

Michel Mossessian, Mossessian & Partners

12:15 Inspiring Case Studies in France:

French Placemaking British style – a collaborative hands-on approach

Kathryn Anderson, Barton Willmore

Grand Lyon

Gilles Vesco , Grand Lyon

The FFR Grand Stade – An urban catalyst

François Clément, Populous UK

13:00 Networking Lunch

14:00 Pre-arranged 20 minutes one to one B2B meetings between

French and British companies until 17:00

The Internet of Things, Big Data, and Future Media - Implications for Education

Today, I am giving a talk at the #BETT2015 Show in London and also participating in a panel on social media in education. It's a huge event and I've never been before, so it will be fun to discover what it's all about. It's still early days for the Internet of Things in education, so there's a lot to talk about and I'll post slides here at the end of the day, summarising my talk and some of the discussions.

Digital Utopias

Tomorrow, I am compèring the Digital Utopias conference, an event curated by @ANDfestival and produced by @GoogleUK @ACE_NAtional @Hull2017 @theSpaceArts and @BritishCouncil It's an extraordinary programme. Here's the brief:

Digital Utopias is a one-day conference which will inspire and incite debate about how new technologies are enabling creativity across the arts. The conference aims to capture topical and diverse approaches to curation, archiving, collecting and creating from a range of art forms, from the visual arts to theatre.

The event will provide an opportunity to discuss new tools and emergent practice, whilst delegates will connect with international arts organisations and specialists in the field to unpick the creative and critical challenges facing organisations today.

and here's the programme:

Morning Sessions

Sessions in the main theatre will be compèred by Prof Andy Miah.

10:00-10:20

Welcome from Sir Peter Bazalgette, Chair, Arts Council England and James Davis, Programme Manager, Director, Google Cultural Institute

Main Theatre

10:30-12:00

Debate: After the future

Main theatre

After the future examines how art is changing in the digital age and how new behaviours and systems are emerging in the creation, exhibition, interpretation and dissemination of art. Through sharing recent and historical examples, the panel will examine the challenges of classifying a growing and chaotic field. Asking questions such as; What are the practical challenges and values, which should inform the future? And how can our media art history inform the sector?

Chair: Sarah Cook, Morgan Quaintance, Ruth Mackenzie (The Space) and Jon Thomson (Thomson and Craighead)

Or choose from the following sessions:

10:30-12:00

Clinic: What to do with your data?  

Rehearsal space

Puzzled by Open data, big data and meta data? You are not alone!  Led by CEO Gavin Starks and Art Associate Julie Freeman, this Open Data Institute session demonstrates what art organisations can do with their data and the small steps you can make right away.

Led by CEO of ODI Gavin Starks and Julie Freeman.

10:30-11:30

Showcase: Presentation and talk by James Davis, Programme Manager at the Google Cultural Institute 

Studio theatre

Google Creative Lab UK will talk about their chrome web experiments, games and prototypes.

12:00-13:00

Lunch  lower and upper foyer

Afternoon Sessions

13:00-14:30

Debate: Disruptive Innovation

Main theatre

This panel will unpick alternative models of “innovation” through examining production models and their cultural value. Interdisciplinary artistic practice can create new platforms, resources and art forms,  but what are the benefits to artistic practice and how can cultural appropriation be avoided?

Led by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Curator and writer) Memo Akten (Artist), Lynn Scarff (Programme Director of The Science Gallery) and Jose Luis de Vicente (curator and researcher).

Or choose from the following sessions:

13:00-13:45

Showcase: Designing Performance (Performance & Interactivity)

Studio theatre

From sensory performances to projection mapping technologies, we invite The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Sarah Ellis, artists Marshmallow Laser Feast and theatre company Extant to discuss how performance is being enhanced by new technologies and the challenges of live performance in the flesh and online.

13:00-14:30

Clinic: Archiving & preserving in the Digital age

Rehearsal space

How do we ensure long-term access to digital information through collecting, archiving and preservation? This session gives hands on tips for museums, curators and collectors on both moving image and social media archiving.

Led by Dragan Espenchied, Rhizome  and Luke Collins from Lux, Scotland.

14:00-14:45

Showcase: Copy and Paste (Literature & Publishing)

Studio theatre

Changes in technology have played pivotal roles in literature (from Gutenberg to GoogleDocs) and we invite showcases from writers, publishers and software developers who are looking at everything from generative writing, books as code and alternative distribution models.

Led by Jim Hinks, Comma Press and Joanna Ellis from the Writing Platform.

Afternoon break – 15 mins

Choose from:

14:45-16:15

Debate: Activate the Public Space

Main theatre

The public space is augmented with information, networks, forces, bodies, buildings and technology. How do we define the public space? How do we create work for a time where the distinction between being offline and online is harder distinguish. We hear from a range of organisations, who have opened up new social spaces, data and communities through gaming, networked objects and growing DIY communities.

Led by Ruth Catlow (Furtherfield) Prof Jennifer Gabrys (artist), MolMol (Yes Yes No) and Iain Simons (GameCity).

15:00-15:45

Showcase: Curating Networks

Studio theatre

Curating Networks showcases projects that rethink ideas of authenticity, ownership and authorship in relation to archives, collections and traditional formats and gallery spaces.

Led by Katrina Sluis (Photographers Gallery), and Irini Papadimitriou (V&A) and Hullcraft (Joel Mills and Hannah Rice) University of Hull.

16:15

Closing remarks

Main theatre

16:45-17:30

Showcase: Crafting Code (Art and Science)

Studio theatre

Crafting Code explores the role of new materials in art production and how data can be materialised, examining the interchangeable role of artists, engineers and makers. We invite presentations on the ‘algorithmic’ opportunities this expanding field is developing, from design, digital sculpture and science to 3D modelling & wearable technology.

Speakers include Karen Gaskill (Crafts Council), Gretchen Andrew and Matthew Plummer-Fernandez.

16:45-18:00 Clinic: R&D as serious play

Rehearsal space

This session will bring together representatives from a selection of recent R&D projects to discuss how to design and manage a process that is playful and serious at the same time. Facilitated by a representative from the Digital R&D Fund, each representative will share their experience, before moving into a panel discussion and workshopping ideas with the audience. Creative technology projects are not just about delivering an end product - managing a R&D process which is creative, useful and rewarding for all parties is where the magic happens.

17:00-18:00 Networking Drinks

Foyer

18:00-18:30

Performance: The Measures Taken

Main theatre

The day will finish with an immersive digital art work. ‘The Measures Taken’ is a collaboration between Marshmallow Laser Feast and Alexander Whitley Dance Company. Both a dialogue, and a duet between human movement and the digital world, this performance promises to be visually striking and kinetically charged.

- See more at: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/jobs-and-conferences/conferences/digital-utopias/programme/#sthash.ymmObLsu.dpuf

Credit: Karl Andre Photography

RIP Google Glass?

GoogleGlassGoodbye

Today, I received an email from Google Glass, telling me that it's over! Here's what they had to say:

and I am also posting the 'memories' file they sent us - 'Volume 001 as they put it (how many volumes are expected?!). I will write a piece about this over the next few days, but what I find most fascinating is the sense in which this may be seen as a failure by critics. Certainly, we expect anything new to stick around for a while - even though we change our iPhones every couple of years hmm. Ok, well, maybe Google Glass for 2 years isn't so bad - but it's only been 6 months or so in the UK. That's a bit too brief.

It will still work of course, just no further development. But, so what? Does that matter? IT does enough as it is is and I can't imagine needing much support. Although, my first Glass did break due to overheating and the reflective foil of the projector bubbling up and rendering it unusable. The did send another one though, quickly. hmm, I don't know how to feel. Abandoned? Let down? Disappointed. Or, the owner of what will become a cult object - the first wearable camera, kind of.

Truth be told, I have had nothing but fun with this device, and the people who have tried it out have loved it. Here's the video I made from the IAAF World Junior Championships last year. This was typical.

So, I think I will stick with Glass for a while, but then RideOn just contacted me about these. Next..

International Drones for Research Network

This week, I've launched the 'International Drones for Research Network', an initiative that emerges from my thoughts around Project Daedalus, but also from the many conversations I have had with colleagues over the year about the utilization of drones for a whole range of research projects. Personally, I am curious to learn about new projects and want to share experiences and knowledge about how drones are developing and how they might be used. The network starts of as an email group, we will see where it goes from there.

The Secret Life of Passwords

This week, the New York Times published an article written by Ian Urbina, titled 'The Secret Life of Passwords'. I have been talking with Ian about this article for a few months now and a lot of research on his part has gone into this extensive, fascinating investigation. I am quoted in the piece a couple of times, but I thought it might be worthwhile publishing my entire responses to Ian, as a supplement. So, here they are, pulled out of emails, slightly edited for clarity.  

Dear Ian, what a very interesting line of inquiry. 

You are right, this is not something I have focused on specifically in my published work, but I have given some thought to this in the course of my research. In particular, I have two comments to make, one around the prevalence of data mining for passwords and the other related to the future of verification. Here are some thoughts which may or may not be useful. Feel free to quote anything or seek clarification, if useful/interesting.

I agree that passwords are a very interesting gateway to personal life stories and what we has been meaningful in our lives. I think we could quite reasonably say that the passwords we choose relate very closely to the things that matter in our lives. They are our secret autobiographies.

Unfortunately, mattering is a problem vis a vis security. This is because what matters to us, increasingly, is also embedded within our extended digital lives. Consider an anniversary, the date of which could be tagged in Facebook. Previously, someone might have used an anniversary as their password - perhaps their mother's birthday - but these dates are much more public now and so these meaningful passwords are much less desirable. In fact, if you look at the most secure systems, randomized, temporal, unique codes are the preference. The best passwords, it would seem, are those which are devoid of any meaning and impossible to guess.

Furthermore, it has become preferable for these passwords to be valid only within a fixed temporal period. The platforms which host our content ask us to change them regularly, sometimes every time we login, as is the case for things like online banking. In this sense, the concept of passwords as being closely tied to what we care about is disappearing, as the number of places where we need to verify who we are expands. Instead, verifying ourselves is becoming a matter of series of having a unique string of zeros and ones - almost like our DNA -  as more and more of our semantic selves is shared online. It seems that the more public we become, the more vulnerable we are.

So, in terms of the future, I think it is very interesting to reflect on present systems of verification, beyond passwords. For example, the Captcha verification system utilizes a kind of primitive Turing test to verify we are human, by requiring us to demonstrate we can understand letters, words and place them alongside each other. Yet, even here, one can envisage improvements that, for instance, take into account our character on a computer - how fast we type on the keys, the pressure we exert on them. This kind system would get closer to something like a unique digital signature.

Did you see that Google just acquired SlickLogin - which verifies id using sound waves? That's a nice example of how I think passwords will become a thing of the past - in your terms - part of our digital memoirs. I think one crucial element of this debate is the fact that passwords have, for a long time, been chosen on the basis of what we are able to remember, so they do, as you suggest, access aspects of our personal psychology in a very intimate way. What we choose is closely tied to our memories of the things that mattered most to us.

This is changing also as verification becomes a matter of biometric measurement. Already, the iPhone 5 uses a fingerprint verification and we have been aware of retina verification as a way of authenticating ourselves for some time now. So, the erosion of memory as a means of verifying who we are is, i think, inevitable. After all, it is a matter of reliability and our memories are more fallible than our biology.

In terms of academic research on this, in my studies, I have come across a great deal that talks about personality and choice over passwords. For instance, some research discusses how, what we choose as our passwords, reflects what sort of people we are. We might choose meaningful people in our lives to whom we have emotional bonds, or we might choose things of which we are fans, for instance, a football player's name. In some cases, these choices may be relatively subconscious, they say something important about ourselves, even if we don't consciously identify them as such. What appears salient to us in terms of memory may just reveal itself to us, without much in-depth thought or consideration.

In my view, we have also to take into account two life courses when thinking about this. The first life course relates to our actual age; where we are and what we've gone through. If you are 13 and starting a facebook account, you are less likely to choose a meaningful anniversary than a favourite popband or sibling birthday perhaps. If you are older, your range of memories from which you can choose will be far greater. The second life course is our journey through technology.

If you have had to renew your work email password every 12 weeks for the last 10 years, you may well have exhausted your most memorable moments, but there again, what an interesting thing it would be to examine all of those passwords over the years and build a picture of somebody's life. I think it would be a wonderful window to their world and their lives.

We also have to take on board how universal passwords are being generated now by logging in with large social media applications, like Twitter or facebook. This again changes how we project our sense of history and identity - in this case we tie those memories increasingly to the lives we have lived within these social media platforms.

I hope some of this may be useful, but happy to dialogue a bit more, if that's useful.

best wishes,

Andy

Some additional quote sent subsequently:

"If passwords do become a thing of the past, there is something that we will lose as a result. Our daily encounters with personal memories, which have no place to be recalled elsewhere in our lives will cease to be present."

"Passwords are a window to what matters to us in a most personal sense. They are not like anniversaries or like significant public landmarks in our lives like weddings or children being born. Instead, they are the things that may matter only to us. And so it is a loss of intimacy with our past that we sacrifice by ceasing to remember."

"While their demise will not change the fact that these things will still happen to us, we may stop thinking about these moments in the same way."

"In some small sense, we will lose part of our selves and, as a result, we will need to renegotiate our personal histories in the process."

Smart Cities, Smart Sports

My talk from the City Events programme in Paris this week. There was a lot of talk on alternative sports events, perhaps cities are tired of multi-sport mega events, which they don't own and can't fully exploit or get behind. Plus a little film I made of the BMX demo.

Project Daedalus

Ok, there are grants, and there are grants. This one is pretty, pretty, pretty, damn cool. We've called it Project Daedalus, after the creative father of Icarus, artist, crafter, mindful of technology's limits. Project Daedalus is an experiment into digital enabled flying technology. Myself, along with the truly amazing Abandon Normal Devices and Marshmallow Laser Feast won funds from the Digital R&D in the Arts programme, funded by Nesta, AHRC, and Arts Council England. Here's the one pager. And here's something MLF made with drones a couple of years ago. Mindblowing..