We use Boxing and Judo to compare between different planning techniques. Boxing represents the traditional approach, based on precise predictions of specific events, and Judo represents Scenario Planning, where it is more important to outline a number of potential futures and prepare for them. This way, specific events become less relevant as the effects they might produce. It makes sense, because lots of different events may cause the same effect over a given system. Preparing for this effect is a lot better strategy than the nearly impossible task of trying to predict each one of these events.

Last weekend, @paseusted invited me to take part as a speaker in a new technology event called Gira Telmexhub. The first round of conferences took place in the city of Puebla, where I joined an interesting group of people to exchange ideas about technology, creativity, and all kinds of social issues. A couple of projects that called my attention were basetrack.org presented by @terukugayama, and publiclaboratory.org presented by @321adam.

I used my time on stage to tell the story about my days in the MIT Media Lab, how I got there (thank you G), who I worked with, what I learned and achieved, and how this experience helped me reshape my ideas about art and technology. Some time later, I uploaded a PDF of my slides, following a request to share them I got from a member of the audience on twitter.

This is an update to a previous note on some video work I recently finished for the Center for Transportation and Logistics at MIT. The videos are now available in the FutureFreightFlows YouTube channel. I chose Millions of Markets to be featured in this post because it offers an interesting vision at the gateway of the Technological Singularity. Regardless of the questionable veracity of its claims, the so called Technological Singularity is a fun thing to fantasize about. I really can’t wait to be synthesized, augmented, cloned, and uploaded.

Here is the official explanation of the project, as found in the FutureFreightFlows YouTube channel:

This video is one of four fictional newscasts to be aired on 2 November 2037. They are all part of the Future Freight Flows project run at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) for the National Academies. Four separate future scenarios were developed over the course of a year through a series of focused expert panel sessions, practitioner acid testing, and industry wide surveys. The key driving forces and critical uncertainties were identified and formed the basis of the underlying scenarios. While originally designed to be used for freight transportation planning, they can be employed for a wide variety of different planning purposes. To find out more, visit FutureFreightFlows at MITCTL or send email to future[at]mit[dot]edu.

Finally, here is a flickr group with photos from the shoot.

The character featured in the picture combines features from Disney’s Stitch and the little green aliens from the Toy Story series.

I am not sure if a version of this technique will ever become an industry standard. It all depends on how much smarter computers will become in the future, but it’s a good reminder that the creation of new digital tools is an open door to new forms of expression, even within the constraints of traditional forms like cartoon animation.

After graduating from the Media Lab in 2008, I worked for a year with Jhonatan Rotberg in the Next Billion Network that is featured in the Health section of the show. Along with some time full of wonderful experiences, working with Jhonatan got me inside the opening event of the National Design Triennial as a featured exhibitor last Thursday.

I believe the exhibition itself is the most eloquent answer to the question posed by its own title.

Cartoons sit halfway between realism and typography, still kind of faithful to some aspects of realism, but conceding a lot to symbolic representation. It’s not that cartoons can’t represent things faithfully, cartoons choose not to do so in order to communicate things better.

Cartoon shapes and environments can’t be fully defined in terms of geometric systems and mathematical modeling, forcing the intervention of the human component that is the essence of many deep cognitive questions. Cartoons are Gestalt at its best, and they are also fun as hell.

Thank you WordPress and Arras Theme for the engine and the template.

Featured illustration: Who’s there by eomsco.

The reciprocal influence between politics and media during the performance of democratic elections is a spectacle that has always fascinated me. It is clear that Internet and social networking technologies like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are becoming key protagonists in this performance, changing the rules of the game for good. The NYTimes has reported yesterday that the US State Department considers Twitter an important player during the current state of the Iranian electoral crisis. Could Twitter have prevented the destruction of Chilean democratically elected Popular Unity government in 1973, or the Mexican massacre of students in 1968? Probably not, but the combined communication resources provided by the web and mobile phones can help bring transparency and civic agency against the monolithic institutions of traditional media, hopefully contributing towards making a difference some day.

However, to make this kind of communication systems ever work at all without becoming new tools to manipulate public opinion like other media, something needs to be done about the digital divide, because today most people everywhere have no access or representation in the digital communication sphere.

So yeah, on one side, internet can help communities organize and express themselves against an imposed establishment. On the other side, it can facilitate new resources to interventionist strategies. This problem is of particular importance in a world where global notions of sovereignty are ill-defined and always biased.

Based on a Kenyan OpenSource mobile monitoring web engine called Ushahidi ["testimony" in Swahili], a group of friends from MIT and beyond [including me] has put together an application called cuidemos el voto to help report irregularities during the upcoming Mexican Federal Elections [July 5, 2009] using mobile phones and a web application.

I was in charge of creating a concept and designing the graphic image of the project. The biggest challenge was to find a fun way to represent the main idea without compromising the seriousness of the matter. “Cuidemos el voto” means “let’s protect the vote together”, and it occurred to me that there is no better symbol to protect the mexican vote than the anonymous masked mexican wrestler.

Mexico is a nation with a history of fraudulent elections. For many of us, it’s very hard to believe that voting can have a positive effect on how we live, or change anything at all. Experimentation with systems that help foster civic participation in a politically lethargic society sounds like a good idea. It even makes ME sound like less of a cynic ;P.