Creativity and technology: Things

The Internet of Things

Look at

websites to see the range of ideas for connecting ‘things’ and informationthat people have had to date

Can we find ways of supporting creativity and innovation in this ‘new world’?

How might new developments with ‘things’ support teaching and learning?

Think about

The Internet of Things

Look at

websites to see the range of ideas for connecting ‘things’ and informationthat people have had to date

www.kickstarter.com

PebbleSmartThingsMakey MakeyTwine

www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Projects/

In Korea, a project named U.Life allows the current 60,000 residents of New Songdo City to use their smartphones, tablets and other touchscreen devices to control their homes' heating, lighting and air-con, with TelePrescence devices throughout the city allow free video calling. Cars talk to roads, which talk to streetlights, while rubbish is sucked away via an underground network of pipes, without the need for dustbin lorries.The aim is a low energy, incredibly efficient city.

Is a city's free rent-a-bike scheme being used? Stick a RFID chip on the handlebars and someone can plot exactly where those bikes go, when, and who with.

At night streetlights could switch on only when a car approaches – thus saving electricity – but more impressively, data could be collected to map urban travel patterns. Cue intelligent traffic lights working with the flow of traffic.

“The Internet of Things is at its best when predicting human

behaviour”Carter, J. 4th July, 2012: The internet of

Things: How it’ll revolutionize your devices. www.techradar.com

Visions of the Future

http://fuckyeahinternetfridge.tumblr.com/Why doesn't my fridge have the internet yet?

http://www.playfulinternet.co.uk/

What is the Internet of Things people really want?

Does everyone share that vision?

http://worrydream.com/

A critique of the ‘smart’ world and the way we interact with itby designer Brett Victor

• Personal and ecosystem resources to meet psychosocial demands of creative processes (adapted from Harrington 1990)

Personal Resources• Strong motivation• Courage• Curiosity and willingness to Curiosity and willingness to

exploreexplore• Confidence in own abilities• Awareness that creativity often creativity often

involves substantial periods of involves substantial periods of discouraging and fumbling workdiscouraging and fumbling work

• Willingness to take risks and persevere

• Tolerance of ambiguity

Ecosystem Resources

• High ambient levels of creative activity

• Norms and rewards for task engagement and for ‘hands-onhands-on’’ work with project materialswork with project materials

• Norms that encourage ‘‘playing playing aroundaround’’ with ideas and materials with ideas and materials

• Quick and easy access to materials, space and time

• Explicit or implicit expressions of confidence in the creative abilities of those within the environment

• ‘loose’ assignment to projects and deadlines

• prevalence of accurate information about creative processes and episodes

• sufficient environmental wealth to permit slow and risky work

• rewards for successful creative activityAre Hands important

in Creative Processes?

• Bubblewrap • Touchable Holography

A new world of feelable, touchable technologies?

DIY kits to build web-connected things

http://www.readiymate.com/

Using your Hands

Making Things

www.modrobotics.comhttp://littlebits.cc

Kits for kids to build robots and other electronic things

Digital Making

ww

w.nesta.org.uk

Digital Making

Find an everyday object, e.g. Try to SCAMPER with these objects: plastic cup, sticky tape reel, paperclip, CDRom, A lipstick:

• Substitute something for it. For example: A PEN - use a nail and some paint.

• Combine: what could you combine with your object to make something useful?For example: attach a spoon to your pen so you can eat breakfast while doing the crossword puzzle.

• Alter or Adapt and Aspect: How could you change your object to make something new?For example: The ink would glow in the dark for night reading.

• Magnify or Minify an aspect: What aspect could you "blow up" or shrink to make something new?Put some part of it to other use.For example: use a ballpoint pen without the ink cartridge for a straw.

• Eliminate some part of it.•

Reverse or Replace some part of it.For example: put an eraser instead of the ink in the tube.

• Acknowledgement to Kevin Byron & The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, 1999

SCAMPER! A TECHNIQUE FOR GENERATING IDEAS

The Internet of Things

Can we find ways of supporting creativity and innovation in this ‘new world’?

How might new developments with ‘things’ support teaching and learning?

Think about