From this interview in Wired comes a great quote from Ridley Scott about the influence of the seminal film, Blade Runner
Wired: Blade Runner was prescient in many ways, anticipating globalization, genetic engineering, biometric security. How do you gauge the movie’s influence?
Scott: Enormous. One of the top architects in the world told me he used to run it in his office once a month.
Back in 2005, Technology Review editor Jason Pontin was looking for ideas for his next column. I suggested that he look at mesh networks, which he did.
Now the latest issue of TR has the TR35 – the top innovators under 35 – has a great profile on twenty five year old Sanjit Biswas of Meraki Networks. He is bringing mesh to the masses – and often the poor masses.
Watch as mesh networks slowly but surely make their way into the mainstream.
On a trip to London a while back I had a coffee with Matt Webb. One of the things I mentally bookmarked was a reference he made to a Nintendo game which featured paying off the mortgage. He was referring to Animal Crossing. I’ve finally had the time to do some research on this and it’s fascinating. You start the game by getting a house – and have to pay off the debt before you can move on. It’s set in a cartoon style setting and apparently is very addictive.
There’s a good overview here.
If you look around, financial education ‘games’ are appearing in some interesting places. For example, how about a game on a piggy bank to encourage saving? Look no further than Japan for this little gem :
The Jinsei Ginko is a white cube-shaped bank that accepts only ¥500 coins. It can save up to 200 coins, or ¥100,000 ($830 at ¥120 to the dollar). On the front is a black-and-white LCD screen like that of a handheld game device, which depicts the life of a stick-like character.
I’ve started an experiment to try and measure the speed of a meme. You can read more about it here. And if you want to link to it too, that would be great. Just remember to link to the most recent blog posting the site (and not on this site).
From the BBC comes this fascinating piece about a company that has developed a way for anyone to start their own virtual world in a few minutes. Spearheaded by Ralph Koster, who, if my memory serves me correctly, cut his teeth on developing Star Wars Online, the development is a a classic disruptive innovation.
Rather than needing serious capital to start your own virtual world, anyone can now play – in every sense of the word – in this space.
Quoting Koster, the article says :
Developers, he said, cannot afford to get it wrong when they are juggling multi million pound budgets. He hopes that his free tool will start to solve this.
“We want to see 10,000 virtual worlds so that lots of wild and crazy stuff gets made because that is the only way it will advance as a medium.”
This will certainly pave the way for the development of communities which the corporate world cannot hope to foresee. Expect lots mistakes, but plenty of fringe innovation which leads to bigger things…
Over at NZ Edge, Kevin Roberts (of Saatchi fame) comments on a recent article in Monocle magazine about branding countries. Being a New Zealander it resonated with me – and struck me as innovation at one of the highest levels – that involving a nation.
Fiji.
Past two weeks.
Loved it.