Serendipity: The Hope and the Myth
Serendipity is a catch term, there is a lot of hop placed in how we can better show relevance in an abundance of information, There is also a lot of myths about what a serendipitous system can do and should do.
By examining the different areas serendipity can be applied from; search results, what is around me (location based suggestions) and suggesting things which aren’t being looked for, this talk looks at the positive aspects of creating relevance in a world of information overload but also the pitfalls and problems that come with recommendations and serendipity.

• Discovery and not drowning with an abundance of information
• The difference between searching and discovering
• Offering relevant suggestions beyond basic recommendations
• How serendipity and location services can work together
• The sources of serendipity; algorithms, authorities, friends, social, and more

Where at the UXLX conference I presented a talk entitled ‘Magic (Hurt feelings & Forgiveness)‘, which I described as:

We live in modern times, witchcraft has been replaced by technologically magical products and service whose appearance is as alluring as our expectations of how we can use them. The more utopian the products and services we use become, the less we need to understand how they work. Which is fine, until something goes wrong and you need to get it working again.

It is a topic I have been pondering and having many conversations about (more than a few of them with Ben Bashford) over the last couple of years. Once I had been accepted to do the talk I spent a large amount of time researching all the different facets of it in detail. As a result I have much more I could write or say on the topics covered, which I hope to release in due course.

I have compressed this wealth of knowledge of which I am very passionate about into a concise 20 minute speaking slot. You can see the talk on slideshare with a full transcript (including some of the things I had to skip over due to the 20 mins of the talk).

You can view all the images from the work shop on the flickr group, here is what a couple of people said about it:

I had time to make one myself:


End update /

We (Lynda Lorraine and Myself) will be holding a workshop / stall at Interesting 2011 on the 18th of June:

Creature Creation & Cutification
We have a plump plasticine Queen who awaits your presence for the birthing of her 200 offspring. The place: Interesting 2011! But she needs your help. There are several birthing stations at the ready for the delivery of each and every one. There is just one favour she needs you to perform; her baby monsters and robots need cutifying. You can sculpt & mould your creature anyway you want to make them as cute as can be.

Not sure what interesting is? Read about it here: Interesting 2011 – the rough plan

Also it has sold out! I hope you have a ticket already?

Every day for 365 days, a different person will write an entry about their experiences that day. The key is that each post somehow relates to what’s happening in the world that day and how it relates to them. – from the 3six5 project

You can read my day on their site, I’ve also posted it here:

Britain is in a state of flux. By Britain I do of course mean myself. The English have been enjoying our second double bank holiday weekend. Last week there was a total of only 3 working days Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the rest of the week has been national holidays. It is a rare event to have two long weekends of national holidays back to back, which has been made even better by some fine sunshine.

As I left my apartment in Shoreditch this morning, the evidence of yesterday’s and last night’s Royal wedding celebrations was still evident as the discarded remains of the street parties wait pensively for the street sweepers to get to them.

It’s a Saturday morning. I ventured to Borough market, formerly a foodies market but more recently has become overrun with tourists which make any actual food shopping quite unfeasible. Still, if you get there early enough it’s not too bad.

With some supplies purchased I jump onto a Boris bike. Continuing my research into collaborative consumption, I find I’m having to do a lot weaving in and out avoiding the tourists which are spread thick along the riverside this morning. There are more then usual which is another indication of the human wake left from yesterdays Royal wedding, I head towards my goal: a cafe in Soho.

I’ve found that cafes are a productive place for me to write and think, and while coffee is the drink of choice for most, I am much fonder of a good cup of tea. How English. The café in question I’m heading for is one that hosts a wide selection of teas; black teas, red teas and green teas, some of the teas taste of fruit, some flowers and some taste like bonfires. I’m slowly working my way though all the flavors they have to offer.

As the day moves with each passing cup I bury my head in to the writing which has brought me here, only popping my head up occasionally to observe the other customers which come and go. I count the time in words written and flavors of tea I have consumed.

A Windy Day in Suffolk, England from OliShaw on Vimeo.

Presented at Pecha Kucha as part of Brighton Science Festival 2011, the theme for the night is ‘Stranger than fiction’.

The talk is available on SlideShare with speaker notes (and downloadable), or there is a version below with links to all the relevant articles.

Hi I’m Oli Shaw.

I’m not a food scientist, I’m more of a culture explorer employing techniques from anthropology and sociology to see how we live day to day and the things we do and what we use.

Which brings me on to food, one of the 3 basic survival necessities; Food, Shelter, Warmth.

I’ve always been a fan of science fiction getting glimpses in to possible futures, and one of the things that fascinated me most in sc-fi is the food.

In this talk I’m exploring the imagined food of science fiction and the reality of the foods that are available and we eat today.

The talk will contain some film spoilers, sorry about that. I also I hope you have strong stomachs.

In the 1973 Film Sleepers there is a scene where when scavenging for food Woody Allen finds a future farm with oversized fruit and vegetables…

Oh and there’s also a giant chicken…

The technology to genetically modify animals and vegetables has been around for some time, there is a lot of caution around using it on animals, such as the Salmon eggs which was in the news last summer, there are lesser qualms about modifying fruit and vegetables.

In China they sent a load of seeds into space and when they returned grew them into giant ‘space veg’, they needed’t have gone to all that trouble, UK allotment owners have been doing that for their village fetes for years.

In the 1995 film Waterworld the sea’s have risen and drinkable water is a rare commodity and a valued currency, as a result its possible to use an osmosis machine to convert urine into drinking water.

They don’t really explain why you cant just convert the sea water, but we can only assume that drinking converted pee makes for a better film.

So on the topic of drinking urine, the US military have developed the technology to have meal re-hydrated by using urine, the rational is that water accounts for a large amount of the weight in a back pack, by reducing he water content solider can carry less.

They don’t say its only pee that will do it, its designed so any kind of water, muddy or otherwise will be purified enough to rehydrate food. Also the same technology is being tested for aid supplies to disaster sites where the same problem of the weight of distributing drinkable water is an issue.

And in India cow urine is a healthy alternative to cola…apparently

In the 1989 film: Back to the Future 2 we see a glimpse into the year 2015 where Black an Decker have made a Food re-hydrator / microwave.

A fantastical device where you put in a foil sealed pizza and in just a few seconds out comes a pizza as fresh and hot as from any pizzeria.

Despite all the advances by the Space programs of the world, re-hydration on this scale hasn’t yet been achieved, yet in other areas that have surpassed this concept.

But we do have things like Shake & Bake pancakes, Smash mash potatoes and meal replacement shakes such as slim fast which just need water adding to them.

In the 2003 film Matrix: reloaded there is a scene where inside the world of the Matrix the Merovingian character reprograms the DNA of a cheesecake to induce an orgasm in an unsuspecting diner.

A cake that takes delicious & tasty to a new level…

While we don’t yet have food to create an orgasm, sprinkling viagra on a cake wouldn’t quite create the same effect, we do have the ability to make things tastier.

There is a chocolate currently only in Japan called GABA which uses hormones to create anti-stress.

And Nestlé are apparently researching into chemicals which can make you salivate more making things taste more refreshing and juicer.

For the moment we will have to live with the holy trinity of Salt / Sugar / Fried for our orgasmic food sensations, Krispy Kreame anyone..?

In 2000 film The 6th Day it heavily features the topic of cloning, from pets to the outlawed humans, which is a large topic when considering the future of food, bigger then I could cover in tonights talk.

But there is a very ‘throw away’ scene in the film where Arnold Schwarzenegger is offer a choice of 2 bananas ‘Nacho flavour or original’

Flavours and colours have long been around our foods from home baking dyes to mass manufacture flavorings.

Much like the horseradish and carrot jelly beans from the Harry Potter film merchandise,

Heinz tried to make tomato ketchup more interesting by making it green and purple

Kit-kat have tried a few flavors from apple and carrot to sports drink flavors

Meat water, is an exclusive meal flavored water drink, so exclusive its probably a hoax

Cheetos flavoured lip balm…

In the 1973 film Soylent Green the population has grown beyond the food supplies,

Most of the world’s population survives on processed rations, including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as “high-energy vegetable concentrates.” The newest product is Soylent Green – which is advertised as being produced from “high-energy plankton.”

Green is the tastiest of the three but in short supply…as it turns out it’s not plankton, “Soylent green is people”

So…eating people…

Forgetting the incidents when an unfortunate worker get’s dismembered and it ends up on our plate.

And the taboo of eating the placenta…and brought back into the main stream discussion by Tom Cruise.

We now have rice with human genes in, which contains 2 hormones found in breast milk, the rice is to be used in creating babies milk

and Human hair is used to extract a food additive called L-cysteine (L-cys for short) which is often used to give bagels, pizza dough, and a range of ready meals to make the softer and or fresher.

Oh and more recently breast milk ice cream

All this talk about enhancing the food, we haven’t touched on the other side of this relationship, why not modify humans…

In the 1992 film Fortress, the prison warden is a modified human who only need to ‘eat’ once a month, when he receives a combination of proteins and amino acids to keep himself fuelled.

We have had things like SlimFast for some time now, where you replace 2 of your daily meals with a shake and only need to eat one meal per day.

A growing trend amount some vegan celebrities is to have a regular vitamin b12 injection to top up the food nutrients they are not receiving, which go beyond the supplements we are used to.

With todays fast paced life it might not be long before a slim fast and red bull diet is upgraded to something where we only need to top up once a week with ‘body fuel’

Some other topics I haven’t covered which are important are:
Cloned animals for farming
Cloned meat – skip the animal
The terminator seed (that wont reproduces) as seen in corn
Patenting foods / seeds and controlling what can be grown by who
The rise and rise of salt and sugar in foods
Medicine grown through foods
Food that wont rot, is it really food?

The images show Sally Davies happy meal project, and the US militaries sandwich which lasts for 3 years

They where just a few examples of what the state of food is today.

But, to begin concluding this talk I’ll leave you with 3 closing thoughts

1. Children
Growing up now consists of packets, not produce – The skills needed are in finding the best packet, and knowing how to cook it, usually in under 3 minutes in a microwave.

The knowledge of what food is and where it comes from is rapidly being lost with each generation, from knowing what simple fruit and vegetables are to where cheese comes from.

Which is not surprising when they are packaged for consumption in such a variety of ways before they enter the home.

2. Bliss

From the Matrix in 1999, in the real world they eat:“A single celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins and minerals – everything the body needs” which they affectionately refer to as snot

But its not enough for at least one of them, Cypher, whilst inside the Matrix he says that I “know this steak doesn’t exist, when I put it into my mouth the Matrix is telling my mouth that it is juicy and delicious…and after nine years, what I have realised is that ignorance is bliss”

Which brings me on to the 3rd and final thought…

3. Worse

The next time your watching a science fiction movie and you see some outrageous example of the future food, just think to yourself, the reality of the food around you everyday is probably much worse! :)

Don’t be fooled by the steak of deception, it’s available and offered to you every day…

The image is from the 2006 film Idiocracy, where everyone drinks sports drinks instead of water, including the livestock and crops.

Its a topsy turvy world of food out there, we have meat shaped like sweets, and sweets shaped like animals…

I hope you’ve enjoyed these examples.

Thank you!

Olishaw.com
@olishaw

Why not just keep the single serving biography page that has managed so well for the last 8 years? Well I’ve never wanted to have a ‘professional portfolio site’ (and never needed one), if someone wants to see my professional work I prefer to do it in person and start a discussion. So why have a site now? After a few different role / specialism changes I now have a series of personal projects and need of a space to share them.

The site is a mess but it is functionally working and in the ‘agile design’ sense will be continually updated and tweaked. However I’m much more likely to focus on the content of the site rather then the look of it.

I hope you enjoy my personal explorations and projects as much as I do creating them.

A (lite) study into commuters playing (iPhone) games and some of the design principals that can be extracted from the research, looking at the behaviors and traits that are associated with mobile game players in a commuting scenario.

In late 2009 I changed jobs and so did my commute to work. I began traveling on the London Underground from zones 1 to 5 and back every day. On average this resulted in me sitting on the tube for over two hours for the whole journey there and back. It wasn’t long before I was roaming the tube carriage with my eyes, reading all the adverts and watching who got on and off at each stop. During these observations I began to notice there was a regularity of people sleeping on the tube trains I frequented. At first I ignored them, trying not to look at them as much as I did with other travellers, but I soon became increasingly curious; would they miss their stop? What would happen if they snored? Were they disturbed by the change in passengers sitting next to them from stop to stop? And so on.

This curiosity grew into a fascination. Which in time motivated me to collect and document the observations of the sleepers I saw. It was very casual at first, after all there are only so many sleepers per week, but sure enough I started to amass quite a collection and some patterns already began to emerge. Initially my most prominent observation was that at the particular times I was travelling and the specific carriages I was using out of habit were frequented by ‘regulars’. Which I saw as a bit of a problem for a study, I didn’t want to capture the same people day in day out for an indefinite period of time, I began to yearn for a wide spectrum of sleepers, which lead to me sitting on the Circle Line on a Saturday and varying the route and time of my journey to work as much as possible.

Once twelve months had passed, I began to collate the results to identify the findings and see if there were any deeper insights to be had. I was then fortunate enough to have the opportunity to share the study at the Interesting North 2010 conference. Since doing so I have heard many stories about other peoples experiences sleeping on the tube and in public. And I continue to get sent pictures of sleepers with the question ‘How many points?’, a direct result of the offbeat conclusion of my talk.

Thanks very much to Tom for drawing my attention to Walker Evans who was best know for documenting the great depression, but who was also got some fantastic images of people on the Subway.