iPhone and citizen science

Alexis Madrigal throws a link to the X2 Project in his post on the addition of GPS in the iPhone:

With Steve Jobs' announcement that the iPhone 3G will have geolocation built-in, plenty of people are excited about finding good restaurants near them or worried about the privacy implications....

Read more >

Yet more praise

William Gunn at Synthesis describes X2 as "surprisingly interesting and engaging:"

When I read about it, it sounded interesting, but coming from futurists, I rather expected it to be all style and no substance. I was pleasantly surprised to find a substantial amount of interesting content on the site.

High praise!

Science Cheerleader and citizen scientists

I'm interviewed on Darlene Cavalier's Science Cheerleader blog.

One of the dangers of doing history of science or science studies (both of which I studied when I was in grad school, and taught before becoming a futurist) is that you end up spending time talking to your subjects. Generally, when you're an anthropologist, the people you write about don't closely read what you write about them: monographs on highland tribal manhood rituals or the semiotics of grain exchanges are hard to get through, even if you practice those things. Scientists, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of tracking down your work, and in my experience aren't shy about telling you what they think is wrong with your work.

X2 in Europe

One of the Institute for the Future's most powerful research tools is the expert workshop-- events in which a cross-section of experts spend a day brainstorming, creating maps of the future, and developing scenarios that look in depth at possible futures and our responses to them. The Institute has been organizing workshops for years, and has built up a tremendous store of both practical and tacit knowledge around them; and in addition to their being useful research tools, they're a great excuse to spend time with very interesting people.

The X2 project has been organizing workshops in Asia this spring-- I was just in Malaysia and Singapore, and we're going to Korea, China, India, and other places later this year. Now we're setting our sights on Europe.