Scan Monthly No. 014April 2004 |
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Signals of Change
Disabled by Design
SoC049
Our mass-market and mass-production society caters to the crowd in the middle: the consumer of average height, weight, intelligence, eyesight, and so forth. Folks on the fringe have to fend for themselves—some even receiving the label disabled. Frequently, our mass-production designs are more responsible for creating disabling situations than are people's physical limitations. A lack of furniture designs appropriate for the growing number of obese people in industrialized society is just one example. As the Boomer generation hits retirement age, conditions that people once regarded as disabling—including those involving sight, hearing, mobility, and strength—will inspire the redesign of a whole raft of products and services, as well as the development of new ones.
Machines That Sense
SoC050
Products that can approximate a variety of human senses—including smell, touch, and physical orientation (tilt)—are turning up in the marketplace. Individually, they represent incremental advances in allowing humans to augment or automate their sensory capabilities. But in combination, these machine-enabled senses will create the ability for a computer system to develop an awareness of what we humans call context.
The Bio-Silicon Interface
SoC051
Cyberkinetics reports receiving U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to enter human trials with its implantable medical sensors, the BrainGate system. The approval is a milestone in the continuing development of interfaces between the organic world of biology and the digital world of silicon. Current research efforts include not only efforts to control digital devices with transmissions from the brain but also efforts to provide sensory input from machines as input back into the brain.
Elderly Assumptions
SoC052
Everyone knows that tomorrow's seniors are going to be healthier and wealthier (and wiser?) than yesterday's. But that knowledge hasn't put to rest many of the convenient but misleading assumptions that companies continue to harbor concerning products and services for people older than 65 years.
Insights
| Neuroimaging, Neuroeconomics, and Neuromarketing | View summary |
| D04-2466 | Download this Insight |
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This study examines recent developments in brain-imaging technology and their implications for enterprises and consumers. Neuroimaging technology is revolutionizing the fields of psychology and behavioral science, promising to improve our understanding of human thought processes and behavior. New neuroimaging tools such as functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI) have revitalized the moribund field of biofeedback (now neurofeedback) and opened the door to newer applications of neuroimaging such as neuroeconomics and neuromarketing. New neurofeedback video games are helping children overcome attention deficit disorder and are also helping athletes and entertainers achieve optimal performance. In the realm of neuroeconomics, brain imaging with fMRI is helping researchers understand economic decision making, including what makes consumers respond to products. Even with these advances, researchers recognize that the brain is an extraordinarily complex and poorly understood organ. As a result, current neuroimaging technology provides only crude glimpses of the human brain at work, and scientists have a long way to go to interpret the results of brain scans accurately. Obvious ethical issues also arise that will require forethought by neuroimaging developers and users alike. Author: Thomas M. McKenna. 9 pages. |
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| Advanced Drug-Delivery Systems | View summary |
| D04-2467 | Download this Insight |
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The development of alternatives to conventional methods of drug delivery is a major focus of technological innovation, corporate strategy, and business opportunity. Players in the drug-delivery industry see opportunities to reformulate existing drugs, develop more effective and targeted delivery mechanisms, and introduce properties that enhance drugs' efficacy and safety. Among the alternative delivery mechanisms under development are transdermal routes with the aid of ultrasound, heat-activated release from hydrogels, photoreactive nanoporous materials, microfabricated delivery systems, and aerosol inhalation. Such alternative technologies will be key in bringing many new therapeutics from biotechnology to market. Technologies that improve the delivery and targeting of drugs—with improved solubility and reduced toxicity effects, for example—will find significant unmet market demand. Emerging therapeutic categories are seeking targeted delivery mechanisms, whereas applications for managing chronic diseases are seeking "smart" systems that are implantable and offer more integrated functionality. The development of new therapeutic biomolecules through genomics will only increase demand for the development of improved drug-delivery systems. Author: Andrew Broderick. 15 pages. |
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| Nanotechnology Basics | View summary |
| D04-2468 | Download this Insight |
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Nanotechnology is an umbrella term for a wide range of technologies and processes that can manipulate or exploit materials with an organized structure at the nanometer scale (1 nanometer is 10-9 meter). Most scientists trace the beginning of nanotechnology to a 1959 presentation by visionary physicist Richard Feynman in which he talked about a future in which researchers would create superior mechanical, electronic, and biological systems by manipulating materials at the atomic and the molecular scale. Feynman had identified the seeds of a powerful development in science that during the next 40 years helped bring about radical changes in the fields of electronics, computing, communications, genetics, and biotechnology. Nanotechnology has not just burst onto the scene: The quantum-well lasers that for more than 20 years have been part of telecommunications networks and optical-storage devices were some of the first examples of practical devices using nanotechnology. But interest in this science has been growing substantially in recent years. Many everyday objects that we now take for granted, particularly in computing and consumer electronics, result from improving control of materials at the microscale. This study discusses the background to nanotechnology, the key issues and implications, and some potential next steps. Author: David J. Roughley. 11 pages. |
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| Metadata Extraction for Interface Technologies: Potential and Risks | View summary |
| D04-2469 | Download this Insight |
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Interfaces between humans and machines have advanced dramatically in the past decade. Today, system designers are looking to metadata—information that users do not explicitly enter into computer systems but that provides hints of their context, emotional state, and intent—to help them develop the next generation of interfaces. The ability to infer a user's context, emotion, and intention from his or her interactions with a computer system opens new development paths and presents opportunities to improve customer service, strengthen security, introduce new marketing techniques, and enhance investigative tools. But technologies for extracting metadata carry some risks as well. In speech technology, for example, companies run the risk of relying too heavily on technology and removing valuable personal contact in specific situations that still require the human element. Failure to create natural interfaces is another possible pitfall, and potential exists to invade people's privacy. Companies will need to strike a balance, finding ways to capitalize on the rich information in metadata while avoiding overconfidence in interpreting and using it. Author: Martin Schwirn. 12 pages. |
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Calendar
Scan™ Briefings
The biannual Scan™ Briefings in which Scan staff present Scan analysis and findings in Menlo Park, California, will take place on:
- 20 May 2004 at 8:00 am
- 21 October 2004 at 8:00 am
Scan™ Abstract Meetings
Scan abstract meetings (in which SRIC-BI [now SBI] staff participate in a free-form discussion of current Scan abstracts) are open for client observation/participation on:
- 19 May 2004 at 1:30 pm
- 21 July 2004 at 9:00 am
- 22 September 2004 at 9:00 am
- 20 October 2004 at 1:30 pm
- 26 January 2005 at 9:00 am
- 23 March 2005 at 9:00 am.
Watch List
The Scan program's scanning and research processes identify areas on the periphery of your organizations's focus that constitute potential opportunities or threats. The areas that we decide bear watching go on Scan's watch list of defining forces that are transforming the business environment. Current watch-list topics include:
