What's NOT cool about StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a site that lets you rate pages, choose the type of content you want to see, and then suggests other similar pages for you. You can also use a friend’s StumbleUpon account to surf through their preferences. In a way, it’s TiVo 2.0, helping make the vast stretches of the internet easier to digest by telling you what you like. This method of maintaining pre-established interests is detrimental to personal growth and discovery, since users are continually exposed to the same division of information. This allows the account holder to simply stay in their comfortable “box” of interests and never branch out into new, exciting, potentially enlightening information. If someone wants to spend the whole day reading articles about a political issue, StumbleUpon will provide an endless supply of articles with a similar skew that the reader had previously preferred. There is nothing mentally stimulating or challenging about finding information in this way, seeing as the finder isn’t even doing the finding himself. In turn, the mind cannot create new and creative connections to information, since all the information provided is already intertwined for the reader. 

Easily accessed and connected information like this has a significant consequence: reduced memory. As stated in The Shallows by Nicholas Carr (2010), the internet has taken over as our new memory. There isn’t a need to remember details of an issue, or anything for that matter, when it can easily be retrieved online with negligible effort (pg. 180-184). The mind now forgets much more quickly than in the era before websites like StumbleUpon, which is certainly not a positive side effect.  All in all, this website is simply a tool for laziness and unimaginative discovery. 

Nest - negative

            The Nest Learning Thermostat learns from the adjustments made to it and uses this information to create a personal schedule of temperature changes.  Once a schedule is created, the Nest will change the temperature on its own, according to its schedule, without anyone having to touch it at all.  I, however, am not convinced that this would be very useful for everyone.  Do you really change the temperature so many times during the week that you need a thermostat to make a schedule and change the temperature for you?  For this aspect of the device to be useful, you would not only need to change the temperature a lot, but you would need to change the temperature at consistent times.

            The Nest also has an “Auto-Away” feature, which is designed to sense when the house is empty and make appropriate temperature changes in order to avoid wasting money heating or cooling an empty house.  I am skeptical of its ability to accurately determine when a house is empty or not.  First of all, the Auto-Away sensor detects motion.  This could mean that if there is a long period of inactivity in the room in which it is located, it could think that nobody is home, even if there are people in another room.  Also, thermostats are not always placed in central areas of a house, but instead are often located in out of the way places such as hallways and corners.  And so again, it could potentially think that nobody is home just because nobody passed in front of the sensors.  Finally, the sensors can mistake the presence of pets for the presence of people.

Nest - Positive

The Nest Thermostat is a step that is geared towards a more digital and automated age. With the ability to “sense” physical presence in a room, the temperature, humidity, and light levels, the Nest Thermostat will automatically adjust itself accordingly. It does this through a learning process of the owner’s daily routine and manual adjustments of the thermostat. With this capability, the Nest will save massive amounts of energy, money, and waste as thermostats are estimated to control have of the consumed energy in an average household. There are claims that the utilization of Nest can save up to 20 to 30 percent in energy consumption as it will be able to adjust itself in situations otherwise impossible to with a regular thermostat, such as when nobody is home.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) calculated that if a relatively modest 15 percent of total energy use is saved by every household in the U.S. starting today, by 2020 $46 billion would be saved. This figure says enough on its own as one can imagine all the different areas and uses that all that money could be allocated to. In addition to the monetary savings, energy loss and pollution such as carbon would be significantly reduced as a result.

A feature that has an unlimited of future technological implications is its remote control ability. Being able to adjust the Nest from anywhere, via the built-in Wi-Fi hardware in the thermostat, adds convenience and efficiency into the owner’s life. Instead of having to be physically present to adjust it, owners can control the thermostat from anywhere with the use of 3G of Wi-Fi. Another example of the remote control ability is a system and software that allows users to water their plants remotely. Not only does time not need to be allocated in performing the physical task, but exactly amounts of water and fertilizer can be added precisely through the software. With the Nest, all the data that is sent to and from the thermostat is gathered in a database where further analysis takes place.

With access to this vast amounts data, Nest Labs are able to constantly improve the thermostat and automatically update them through the built-in Wi-Fi. In addition, the information in these databases is accessible to owners of Nest Thermostats to observe their own behavior as well as share the information with others. People are now being connected through the thermostat, sharing their experiences, thoughts, problems, and suggestions. Before this technology, there would have never been such hype or conversation stemming from thermostats. Nilay Patel, an editor for news publication The Verge, summed it up with the phrase “social networking to save the earth.”

For the ever-changing technological field, this thermostat is just a small step, hinting of the even greater future products to come. Looking at the interaction created between users, it is exciting to imagine what social benefits more technological advanced products can bring to society. Maryanne Wolf wrote in Proust and the Squid, “The next few decades will witness transformations in our ability to communicate, as we recruit new connections in the brain that will propel our intellectual development in new and different ways... understand[ing] other human beings is especially important today as we make the transition from a reading brain to an increasingly digital one.” It sums up the importance of social connection and getting to know and understand each other as we progress into a digital age. New advanced technologies, such as the Nest Thermostat, certainly do promote social networking and intellectual development.
For more information about Nest, please visit:   http://www.nest.com/

Nest

The Nest Thermostat is a learning thermostat that improves over time by observing changes in its surrounding. There are senses built into the thermostat that detect movement, temperature, humidity, and light. Any manual adjustment made to the thermostat is recorded and eventually the thermostat will begin automatically adjusting itself according to the owner's patterns created through their daily routine. It costs $249.

Smart Fabric--What's Not Cool (Jocelyn)

As Kristina pointed out, BMW's design is both innovative and cool; And what happens when a new product is both of those things? The price is through the roof. I could see car makers using this technology as an excuse to inflate the prices of their products, even in cars that don't look as cool as the concept car presented in Geneva.
As much as I would love to drive around in a "Tron car," I can tell you right now that I won't be able to afford it until the technology is old news.

Stroking the seat or dashboard to change the radio station or turn on the wipers might seem like a really cool trick in theory, but put in practice I could see a lot of problems with it. First, because it eliminates the need for buttons, drivers would have to learn all new controls. If you've ever driven a strange car and been confused for a moment when your hand changed the temperature instead of the volume because the controls were different from what you were used to, just imagine how confusing and distracting it would be to have to fiddle with every upholstered surface of the car to find the control you're looking for. And, of course, there won't be any labels to tell you where to touch. That would look weird. Secondly, Kristina pointed out that the smart fabric technology can be just as durable the fabric it is woven into. However, I've never seen anything woven into leather; and even if BMW did manage to weave these plastic wires into the leather seat, can we call it the same quality as traditional leather seats? People who buy luxury cars with leather seats aren't going to be pleased to know that there are bits of plastic under them.
Lastly, I would like to address other uses for this smart fabric. We read an article about how the fabric could be woven into that of a couch or chair and programmed to work like a remote. Well how lazy is our society getting that not only can we not be bothered to use the the buttons on the TV, but now we're too lazy to even look for the remote.

Smart Fabric Introduction

BMW is investigating a new touch-sensitive fabric for use in their upcoming models. The interactive seats and dashboards would be all touch sensitive with controls for air conditioning, the radio, and more. There have been many recent improvements by a research team led by Professor Maksim Skorobogatiy in Montreal, Canada that have made the fabric more marketable. They showed a concept car at the Geneva motor show.

What's Cool about Smart Fabric? -Kristina

The smart fabric looks quite amazing. That is a large draw of any technology now. The sleek screens of nowadays tablets and phones have made touch items the "hip" thing for our generation.

The newest smart fabric technology is able to be cleaned like normal fabric. This is a significant improvement from its previous prototypes. Most retailers realize that people eat, drink, smoke, etc. in their car and they need fabric that can be cleaned without special care and detailing. Instead of using copper wires, they are trying to use conductive plastic that can be sponged clean so the average person could clean it like in current cars.

It is now as durable as any other fabric used for car seats. When woven into a durable fabric, it is just as functional as leather or polyester. It supposedly doesn't feel any different than the fabric with which the technology is interwoven, so there would still be options of feel and look to car seat material.

This fabric has the potential to eliminate buttons on the dashboard. You wouldn’t have to look at the radio or air conditioner buttons and controls which distract drivers. Also, labels can be confusing. In many cars, the label for turning the air flow up looks like a strip of bacon. In the book, "Proust and the Squid," Wolf speaks of “visual feature analysis” and she says it takes a half second after a word appears to actually see it and then another second to comprehend and take action. That second and a half when driving at 70 mph would correlate to approximately one hundred and fifty-four feet. (70 miles per hour = 102.666667 feet per second.) That distance could easily cause a car accident. By eliminating those visual buttons and replacing them with smart fabric that doesn't need to be seen, smart fabric could eliminate a few distractions for drivers and prevent distracted driving accidents.