1

THEPHYSICAL

CLOUD

FMP

TIM JANES

32

Briefing

“We were set a brief by Design Interaction agency BERG. The key theme to the brief was to take Cloud based media and create something Physical”

Can the physical world and the cloud interact and work together?

How can we turn our ‘cloud belongings’ into something tangible and touchable?

How can we bring stuff created online back into the physical world as something we can keep and play with?

54

What’s out there already?

“I broke down the cloud into 3 kinds of media. I found there is crossover cloud services that offer social aspects to storage or data feeds.”

Social MediaData FeedsStorage Services

76

Our own Cloud

“My first port of call was to set up our own “cloud” for the project. This proved very usefull and interesting.”

Our cloud based sharing system worked out very well. Everybody contributed research for the project. I provided me with lots of inspiration for ideas.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aDcntxhzU12UbhAY9lmiO0hg6I3cUb3odjM1QvEpt94/edit?hl=en&authkey=CM2x5osL#

See cloud for links to most things I have referenced

98

Information Feeds

“There are endless of sources of information online. The cloud has lead to user submitted information being available to everyone”

Pachube allows anybody to create a sensor and upload data from that sensor, These can range from temperature sensors to noise sensors. The Idea is to create a network of sensors so you can have a 100% accurate reading of conditions at any given point at any given time.

1110

Social Media

“Social media only lasts so long. 5 years is a long time in cyberspace. Twitter and Facebook are living on borrowed time.”

Friendster Launch: March 22, 2002Death: ?Lifespan:

Myspace Launch: August 2003Death: April 2008, facebook overtakes myspace as most popular site in usa.Lifespan: 5 years

Facebook Launch: February 4, 2004Death: ?Lifespan: 7 years

Twitter Launch: July 15, 2006Death: ImminentLifespan: 5 years

The Next Big Thing Quora - ask questions and receive answersPlurk - one large communityBright Kite - unlimited group messagingFriend FeedIdenti.caJaiku

1312

Storage Soloutions

“Storage is an example of a great use for cloud computing. It allows us access to our data anywhere and everywhere. But what happens if we abuse this?”

1514

ProblemsWith Social Media

“Social media isnt without its problems. It has become a platform for people to present taseless information to the world. With no curating it is as though every person in the world is running their own news paper and fighting for fame.”

“Posting is not an act of broadcasting or self-promotion, but sharing a moment with someone who really knows you.”Steven Levy | Wired Magazine | An article about social media

Steven sums up nicely in this sentance how social media has become about broadcasting yourself to other people. The ideal situation for social media is as a sharing platform but instead it has become a place for people to unleash their innner attention seaker.

1716

ProblemsWith Data Storage

“A Key problem we have currently is alot of social services are also acting as storage services. This means people are interacting with them for self promotion but leaving the data online which accumules in huge volumes.”

1918

or...125000000000 8gb Iphones

90,000,000 tweets = 9gb a day

Not including tweeted images

125mb / user

20,000 VHS tapes / daily

A Tweet is 140 Characters meaning it is roughly 140 bytes of data. So 10 tweets is roughly 1KB

Dropbox’s server uses over 1 Petebyte of data.

1,000.000,000 mb

69120 hours a day

1 Zettabyte = 1000000000000000000 kb

The internet is now measured in Zetta bytes, soon to be yammabytes

90,000,000 Tweets a day.

Dropbox has 4 million users

48 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute.

How big is the Internet

2120

3 Key Issues

“There are 3 key issues which I think are effecting social media in a negative way:

The huge ammounts of data being uploaded

The Length of time data stays online

Peoples carelessness when uploading

If these issues can be resolved the social cloud would be a much more rewarding experience”

Path is a new social networking platform that aims to tackle some of the issues by restricting the ammount of friend you have to 50.“There are too many services, especially in the mobile photo-sharing space right now, that are basically doing the exact same things. Path isn’t”

“You usually have about five people whom you trust most, 20 whom you consider your BFFs that you hang out with all the time and about 50 or so who are your personal network,” said Morin, co-founder and chief executive of Path. “Path is built for that.”

“The idea here is that you always control who you’re sharing with and you can tell the story of your life to your closest friends and family.”

22 23

My Idea

“I propose a device which attaches physical attributes to the data you upload. This device would serve to provide a restriction to the ammount of data you can upload”

Restricting space

“Restricting space is a concept which I think works however I would like to tackle the ammount of data uploaded rather than the connections we make. I think connections are good but only if the data they are linking is valuable in some way or form”

This device would print a physical “block” for every set ammount of data you upload. If the device is destroyed or removed from the home then your data would be destroyed along with it. Therefore you can only store as much data online as you can fit in your house.

24 25

My IdeaWhy a Physical restriction?

“I propose that by creating a physical restriction the device would also make use of “Continuous partial awareness” and “The internet of things” two theories related to cloud computing.”

Continuous Partial AttentionCPA is a term which refers to devices which alert you to something in a subtle way. For example a tone gradually increasing in volume to alert you of emails.

The physical Internet blocks I propose would give the user an idea of how much data they were uploading and hopefully work as a discouragement without physically telling them the numbers.

The Internet of thingsRefers to physical devices which are connected to the web. A key goal when creating a device like this is for it to sit in the “sweet spot”, It recieves data from online whilst also monitoring its environment and creating new data to go online.

These “Blocks” would be connected to the online world and know if they have been disgarded or destroyed. This would create an easy way for the user to delete old data and replace it with current, upto date information.

2726

The Device

The device would be a “Pod” which uses 3d printing technology and rfid tags to print a cube for every set ammout of data you upload”

“By having a constantly visable representation of your data you can easily dispose of old data. For example if a cube containing tweets has been sitting around along time and looks old and battered its safe to say you can shred it ready to be made back into new ‘blocks’. ”

General files such as images, audio files and video files.

Text based data such as contact details and personal information

Tweets, Status updates and other long lasting text based opions, thoughts and feelings.

These files are the main culprit for using up internet data. However they are also rich in entainment and information. This sort of data would print a block for every 10MB you upload

This sort of data is resposible for flling our lives with annoying non relevant information about otherpeoples lives. This would print a block for every 1/2 mb uploaded,

This kind of data is long lasting. It would come in the form of a block which you exchange when you update your personal information but which should have minimal change in size.

28

Branding

“The outcome of this project is a propsal for a research experiment using the device. The device would be called PIP for Physical Internet Project”

I decided to build a website as a means to explain what the device and project are about. I figured a website is an easy way to present information and images to an audience and inform them about what I was doing.The website provides information about my aims and the results I expect to see from people using the device.