Lately I’ve been thinking about a concept I’m calling High Definition Information Transfer (which is, admittedly, a crappy name. Definitely a placeholder for now). HDIT seeks methods to account for mind:mind lossiness. Think of it as a set of tools that sits atop communication theory. I’m really keen to dive into this, and look forward to hosting discussions and workshops to help build our collective ability to communicate with higher fidelity. A few of the areas I’m looking into include

• Analogy and metaphor
• Story
• Video and motion graphics
• Vocal pitch and modulation
• Melody and rhythm

I hope you’ll join in and collaborate with me. I’ll be attending Overlap in June, and look forward to flogging this with a bunch of you there. I hope to find another couple of joints to pick this apart before then, so if you know any gatherings of curious people around Toronto, please let me know.

Note, this is cross-posted from the Klick Health blog. I’m posting it here for archival reasons.

South by Southwest is an annual festival of interactive tech, film, and music that started back in 1992 in Austin, Texas. I’ve been coming every year since 2005, and have seen the interactive part of the festival grow from roughly 3000 nerds to nearly 30,000 marketing, culture, agency, government and startup people. There are over 5000 events, talks, and panel discussions this year. With the massive growth has come both diversification and specificity. There are now specific conference tracks for politics, social causes, developers, designers, and for the first time, health care. I’ve been following that track closely, and am going to share a couple of broad trends and observations I gleaned.

Health vs Healthcare

There is a distinct lack of agreement on what we’re talking about when we say “healthcare”. To some, the phrase means “treatment”. To others, it means “wellness”.  In other words: does “healthcare” include preventative actions, stretching from education to urban planning to food policy?

Sensors, sensors, everywhere! “Mobile” is not another word for “smartphone”

Sensors will soon be everywhere. From our phones to our shoes to embedded in our bodies, we will be collecting personal data through everyday activity. Imagine a tooth implant that analyzes the nutritional value of your meal as you chew. Or a watch that measures your stress level. There are huge privacy issues to consider, but the potential for positive behaviour changes that emerge make the effort worthwhile

Successful behaviour changes when we can make informed decisions in the moment. Craving can be mitigated with up to the minute data. The smaller we can make the feedback loop, the more motivating force it presents.

There will be huge technical and design opportunities emerging in this space. In very short order, our definition of “mobile” will need to expand to include devices like Nike’s new Fuel bracelet and Google’s soon to be released head’s up display.

Gaming and health

This is a biggie. Nearly every health related panel included a nod to gaming in one way or another. Why? Engagement. Games tap into something hard wired in our neurology. They hold our attention like few other experiences. I could (and may) write a book on the subject, and can’t possibly do justice to the topic in this overview. Suffice it to say that between sensor driven real world activities (the human joystick) to virtual worlds designed to keep seniors socially engaged, there are a multitude of ways games and game mechanics are becoming integrated into healthcare. Watch this space for future posts on the subject.

Disruptive Stress

Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize, used the phrase “disruptive stress” in his talk on abundance. He was referring to the gap between our human, linear experience and the exponential rate of change presented by information technology. Ray Kurzweil, in his keynote, extended the idea. This is a deep, complex problem, and one worth wrapping our head’s around. I’ll try to summarize it like this:

We humans are very bad at predicting the future, because we look from the present into the past, note the changes, and predict those same changes forward. We are terrible at remembering how things really were, and tend to wildly over attribute present day conditions to past situations. We tend to experience the world in a very linear way, even while the changes around us are happening at a greater rate.

Combine our innate difficulty in prediction with the exponential nature of technology, and we’re simply not naturally equipped to understand what the world of 2022 will look like. Note that I used the phrase “naturally equipped”. It’s not that we can’t predict the future, just that it we have to learn how to do it.

A few examples of exponential technology that will cause disruptive stress?  Biology is now an information technology. Gene therapies are coming online today, and in 10 years will dramatically change the healthcare landscape. Moore’s law (cost and size of microprocessors halve every 18 months) and nanotech will allow us to create devices that live in our bloodstream, actively boosting our natural defences in 20 years. Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics will change the way healthcare and patient support is delivered. Technologies like Siri, from Apple, hint at the very near future.

The digital revolution is coming

The same forces that changed the entertainment industry are marshalling at the base of healthcare. It’s early days, and the healthcare world has plenty of reason to move cautiously. But the move will come, and it will be driven by patients. The points I made above do not exist in isolation; sensors + gaming + disruptive stress = a change in the fundamental ways individuals will engage in and consume healthcare and health services. Health care providers and funders need to get out in front of this change, and quickly. Think about how Apple toppled RIM, Microsoft, and IBM by creating consumer desire. The same thing has started in healthcare, and the rate of change will not be linear.

I’ve struggled for a long time over how to describe what I do. Art director? Strategist? Front-end developer? Speaker? Consultant? Full-time employee (hint, hint)? In semi-frustration I decided on “Interactive. Booyah!”. My intention is simply to create enough interest that a potential employer (hint, hint) might look a bit deeper into who I am and what I do. Is this a good strategy? I’ll let you know.

This presentation is a bit different from the previous version. It’s been tweaked to appeal to a broader audience, and generally refined. I think it reads a bit better, and makes more sense as a stand alone piece.

The slides are available as a PDF for download (20.6MB), or you can view them in slideshare format below – note that slideshare changed the font used on the slides, which messes up the layout slightly. For best experience, download the PDF.

The goal of the week is to create opportunities for people in these two different groups to learn and work together. We’ve got some crazy ideas brewing, and plan on having a lot of fun.

We’ve temporarily called the week “Social Tech for Social Change”, but we all feel that the name is too cumbersome. Rather than deciding what to call this thing in a vacuum, I figured we’d put it out to the intended audience to see which name resonates best with you.

Please have a look at the names below – note these aren’t logos, I’ve just made the names pretty ’cause that’s the way I roll. At the bottom of the post is a poll. You can make multiple selections. Go! Go! Go!

A few months ago, my friend Sean Howard and I got very drunk on expensive white wine and strong Quebec beer (oy, the hangover!). We discovered that we share a passion for, um, passion. Over the following weeks, we met a couple of times to explore models of how passion affects people’s decisions, what passion means, how it’s measured, and to drink more wine.

I was very honored when Sean asked me to contribute the design for an e-book he was putting together specifically on passion and it’s role in the economy. Some seriously big-brained people. You may want to check the authors out on Twitter:

• Matthew Milan
• Charles Edward Frith
• Peter Flaschner
• Alan Wolk
• Katie Chatifeld
• Mike Arauz

• Mack Collier
• Mike Wagner
• Gavin Heaton
• Ellen Di Resta
• Scott Suthren
• Sean Howard

The Passion Economy pdf is released under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license. You are welcome to download, re-upload, distribute and do with as you see fit. I hope you enjoy it. Download at will.

• The desire to better show off my work
• Put some ideas to test
• Better pull together my various online activities

Here are a few shots from my initial brainstorming notes: