Stories by Taylor Lehman on Medium

Why is Facebook Interested in Oculus? Facebook+Oculus seems like an awkward marriage at first…

Taylor Lehman — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 05:20:40 GMT

Why is Facebook Interested in Oculus?
Facebook+Oculus seems like an awkward marriage at first glance, but the deal highlights how much Facebook sees itself as a platform company. Oculus has a lot going for it in the race to be the VR platform of choice, but is early enough in that journey that Facebook can add a lot of value through the hard lessons they’ve learned in developer relations as they stood up their social and ad platforms. Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is that Facebook will be is so much more than just a social network, and Oculus will play a key role in that vision. With the deal officially closed, only time and energy stand between Facebook and that vision.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/21/facebooks-acquisition-of-oculus-closes-now-official/

Why is 3D Printing so Interesting?
It’s not hard to imagine a world where instead of going to the store, many small items (both consumable and non-consumable) will be bought via an online store (possibly first previewed in 3D via Oculus Rift) and printed at home on a 3D printer. For consumers, this saves time, money, reduces congestion on the roads. For businesses, this is great because it eliminates many of the main barriers to purchase, in addition to cutting down on many of the infrastructure costs that makes the retail business so tricky. I predict we’ll soon see Amazon produce their own 3D printer to make it even easier for their loyal customers to purchase from them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/business/hasbro-selling-my-little-pony-fan-art.html?_r=1

Why are Computer Companies Building Self Driving Cars?
So it turns out that the same artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques that are used to power online search and personal assistants can be used to make smarter cars, and the automobile industry is conveniently a trillion-dollar-per-year industry that is just begging to be disrupted (see: Tesla). Sounds like a match made in heaven, and while there are certainly a myriad of social and moral issues involved in autonomous vehicles, it generally is. The most interesting thing about Baidu getting involved in the game to me is their realization that building a fully autonomous vehicle for the less-than-law-abiding drivers in China and India poses many challenges that the less-creative drivers on North American and European roads do not have to face.

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/07/25/chinas-baidu-follows-in-googles-footsteps-as-it-reveals-its-working-on-partial-self-drive-cars/

The Future Is Now Round Up for 7/13 — 7/19

Taylor Lehman — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 04:30:20 GMT

Every Sunday I post a list of the links from the previous week that I don’t have time to write at length about, but are worth knowing about.

Who will buy SmartThings?
The IoT has not yet had it’s platform moment. Which means, the infrastructure to bring forth the promise of the IoT is not yet in place. Whoever controls this infrastructure will wield a considerable amount of power over how the next billion devices get connected to the internet, so everyone wants a piece of it. Samsung was burnt by their reliance on Google in the mobile wars, and a play for SmartThings (if it goes through) would seem to be an attempt to ensure they have more control over their fate in the IoT war. I predict though that Google, et al, won’t let Samsung go to SmartThings without a competition.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/15/samsung-to-scoop-up-smartthings-for-around-200-million/

What is Amazon up to?
The Amazon Fire phone, specifically Firefly, is proof that Amazon understands that the way that people interact with the analog world via their digital devices is changing. And this change equates to reducing the barriers between Amazon and their customers. Hiring Babak Parviz is a savy move that instantly makes them a threat in the wearables race. What ARE they working on?

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/14/google-glass-creator-heads-to-amazon/

The Future Is Outside of the Square Screen and Beyond the Mouse and Keyboard

Taylor Lehman — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 19:18:04 GMT

For the last 30 years, the technology industry has fought a long battle to convince consumers that the future is experienced through consuming content on a flat, square screen and interacting with a mouse and keyboard (or, more recently, touch). Every device in your life — PCs, tablets, TVs, and smartphones — is subjected to this constraint. And while the square screen and tranditional input mechanisms have certainly taken us a long way, the next thirty years are going to be dominated by devices without displays, or with non-traditional displays that are controlled via advanced sensors or natural user interaction.

I think this is interesting in many ways, but two specific aspects of this trend are worth note.

First, this is interesting because of the exponential growth we’ll see in intelligent computing scenarios. Everyone is trying to deliver these experiences right now (Google Now being a stand-out example), but no one has the data to really deliver on the promise of artificial intelligence. As a result, technology that is design to be helpful, just ends up getting in the way or disappointing. But when everything in your house is connected, no, everything in your LIFE is connected, the scenarios that can be enabled are endless. When services know what is in your refrigerator, where you are, and how your body is functioning, your technology can be an intelligent assistant to your life, rather than an unwelcomed house guest.

All of these scenarios are based on the new data that services can learn about their users from the connected devices in their lives. Which sheds light on why companies like Google are investing in automobiles, wearables, and smart home devices. It’s because of the data these devices generate. On one hand this helps build incredible new user scenarios, but the like any good business, Google wouldn’t be doing this if there wasn’t a fortune to be made from your data.

And this is good for users because the better data a company has about you, the less obtrusive their monetization attempts (read: advertisements) will feel. Now some of you are probably saying “Danger, Will Robinson” (which is an important enough topic to devote an entire other post to), but I would argue that less obtrusive monetization attempts equates to more palatable experiences. Enabling companies to monetize their technology allows them to offer low-cost devices and services with intelligence that far exceeds the current state of the art without polluting their experiences. The future, is exciting.

The second aspect of this trend that I find worth writing about is how unprepared the average computer engineer is for this change. Currently there are a whole generation of engineers who make a living writing simple apps or websites that are basically translation layers between the forms that users interact with on a daily basis and the databases that hold their data. Some of these systems are more complex than others, but at the end of the day, the majority of engineering work being done right now fits this pattern.

The skills needed to compete in the next 30 years are an order of magnitude more advanced than the skillset required to compete in the current job market. Intelligently processing analog sensor input or positioning user experience elements on non-traditional displays will challenge the skills of the current workforce. Even the best developers haven’t been exposed to the advanced mathematics and computer science required to take advantage of this trend.

Computer vision, machine learning, statistics, power engineering and advanced courses in signal processing and computer graphics need to become part of the undergraduate curriculum in order to prepare the engineers of tomorrow for the upcoming trends in computing. But for most engineers, it’s too late to formally acquire this training. Transitioning the skills of the current engineering workforce will be on the same scale as the transition that accompanied the growth of the PC and the internet. It wasn’t easy then, and it won’t be easy now. The future, is scary.

The future is exciting. The future is scary. The future is now.