Everything around you can become a computer | Ivan Poupyrev

133,791 views ・ 2019-05-08

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:12
Computers have become truly incredible.
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We are walking around with supercomputers in our pocket.
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How amazing is that?
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So it is disappointing
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that the way we use computers, the way we interact with them,
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hasn't really changed in the last 50 years.
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We still use a mouse and keyboards. We're clicking on screens and buttons.
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Mobile phones are the same.
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We're just using fingers instead of a mouse.
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So is that it?
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Is that what the future looks like?
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We're going to be stuck in the screens
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with our faces not seeing the world around us?
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That's not the future I imagine, or the future I'm attracted to.
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What I've been always interested in is things,
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physical things we use every day, like things on this table
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that the family doesn't pay attention to.
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Things tell our story. They tell who we are.
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They tell a lot about us.
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Let me give you an example.
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These are photographs of things a person touched during 24 hours.
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What can you tell about him?
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He loves his motorcycle. Right?
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The biggest thing in his picture.
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What can you tell about this girl?
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She spends all her time on the beach.
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There's a surfboard.
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She lives by the sea.
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What can you tell about this guy?
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He's a chef.
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Look at all the ingredients he touched during the day,
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while he was preparing the food,
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and the computer is a tiny part of his life,
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this sad thing in the corner.
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So if we are using things all the time,
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and this is a big part of our lives,
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can things become the way for us to interact with our digital life?
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Can the world become your interface?
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That was my idea.
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I've been working for 20 years on it.
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My idea is that in order to interact in digital life,
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you don't need to have screens and keyboards and mouses.
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You can interact with your digital life
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just by using the things you use every day.
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And to realize this idea, I need to solve three big challenges.
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Let me tell you about them.
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The first one, obviously: Is it even possible?
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How can you take an everyday thing you use every day
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and turn it into a computer interface?
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Now I was inspired by the book "Hackers."
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I read it when I was a teenager,
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and one of the essential ideas of this book
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is that you can change the purpose of things
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by inventing new technology and then hacking into things
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and changing them.
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So I've been thinking what kind of technology I can invent
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so that I can hack into things you use every day
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and make them interactive.
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So when I was working on this thing, I invented this sensor
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which injects structured electric fields into objects
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and turns them into gesture interfaces.
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So this doorknob, unmodified, can become a gesture sensor.
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It can know how you're touching it. It can feel how you're touching it.
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It makes a circle, or can I grasp.
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And this doorknob isn't modified.
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There's nothing special about doorknobs.
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Anything can become interactive.
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What about plants?
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So plants are interesting, because with plants,
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they can know where you're touching.
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You can see the line moving up and down on the image.
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And that can turn into a musical interface.
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(Musical tones)
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Now, we do have also practical applications:
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a calendar plant for those who are obsessed about practicality.
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(Laughter)
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We can give things a personality.
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(Low notes changing in pitch)
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So in this particular example,
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the orchid can communicate to you
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through images and sounds.
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It doesn't like to be touched, so it's created these electric images
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that are hissing at you.
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This plant, for example,
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is more robust, it's a snake plant,
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and it likes playing with you. It engages you.
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So every thing can be different,
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and every thing can represent what it feels.
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So everything can be hacked, all the things, including your body.
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In this example, we hacked your body
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so you can measure how you're folding your hands
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and then using your hand gestures to control something else,
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so if you don't want to listen to some music thousands of times,
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you simply can cover your ears to turn it off.
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So everything can be hacked, and research is important,
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but the second challenge we have
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is how can we go from R and D, and prototypes, to real products?
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How can we make real things that are also interfaces?
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And you may ask yourself, who would do this?
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Silicon Valley?
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Is it through Shenzhen?
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Now the challenge there is that the world of things is huge.
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Every year, the apparel industry produces 150 billion garments.
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In comparison, the technology industry only makes 1.4 billion phones.
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The world of things is much bigger than the world of technology.
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The technology world cannot change the world of things.
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Instead, we need to create technology which changes makers of things,
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people who make your chairs and clothes and everything else,
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into makers of smart things,
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enable them to do that.
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So to test this challenge, we came up with a very simple idea and challenge:
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Can a tailor make a wearable?
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Now we don't want to take a tailor
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and turn the tailor into an electrical engineer.
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We still want to have some tailors around.
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But what we would like to do is create technology
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which looks, feels and behaves like a raw material used by the tailor
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to make their clothes.
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For example, a touch panel made for a tailor would look like this,
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made out of textiles, so you can cut it with scissors and sew it in.
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At the same time, it has to retain the performance.
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The way to make this textile touch panel
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also requires a very different approach than for making consumer electronics.
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In our case, we have to go to the mountains of Tokyo
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to a small factory which was making kimono garments for generations.
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We worked with my collaborators,
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who were not engineers.
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It was an artisan who knows how to make things
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and an artist who knows how to make things beautiful.
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Working with them, we created one of the best yarns in the world,
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which consists of thin metallic alloys
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wrapped around with polyester fibers and cotton fibers.
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These yarns were made in the same machines
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which were making yarns for kimonos for generations.
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We then took these yarns and gave them to the factory,
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which is making textiles,
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and we wove our smart textile using regular machines
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in a variety of colors and materials,
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and we gave those textiles to a tailor
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in Savile Row in London.
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So tailors are traditionalists, particularly in Savile Row.
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They don't use computers.
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They don't use machines.
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They use hands and they cut.
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They fit their products on the human body,
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not on 3-D avatars.
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Technology is not a part of their vocabulary,
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but they are modern people.
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They know how to use technology.
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So if technology can be formed and shaped
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like a button, like a textile, like something they can use,
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they absolutely can make a wearable,
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a garment which can place a phone call.
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(Phone rings)
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So now we've proven that you can actually make a wearable,
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not by an electronic company, but by a tailor.
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We worked and collaborated with Levi's,
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our partners and our neighbors,
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to make a real product,
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and this product is this jacket I'm wearing right now.
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You can buy it. It's on sale.
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It was made in the same factories which make all their products,
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and you have noticed
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I've been controlling my presentation from the sleeve of the jacket.
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I go like this, it goes forward. Like this, it goes backward.
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And of course, I can do more things.
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It's not just to control a presentation.
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I can now control my navigation, control my music,
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but most importantly, it stays a jacket, it stays a thing,
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which makes me look great.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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And that's the most important thing.
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(Laughter)
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So OK, we proved we can turn things into interfaces.
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We proved that these things can be made by makers of things
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and not by technology companies.
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I look awesome. Are we done?
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(Laughter)
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Not yet.
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The third challenge:
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How can we scale?
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How can we go from one product to many products?
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And that's what we're working on right now.
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Let me tell you how we're going to do this.
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First of all, I want to make myself clear --
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I am not talking about the Internet of Things.
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I'm not talking about creating another gadget
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you get bored with and throw in the back of your drawer
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and forget about.
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I am talking about the foundational, important principle which guides my work:
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"Technology has to make existing things better."
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It makes them better by connecting them to your digital life
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and adds new usefulness and new functionality
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while remaining the same original purpose,
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not changing it.
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This jacket I am wearing can control my mobile phone and presentation,
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but it still remains a jacket.
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That means that once we start making all things interactive and connected,
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every thing would have its own set of actuators, displays and sensors
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specific for those things.
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A pair of running shoes does not need to have a touch sensor.
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Why would it have one?
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If you have a sensor,
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it should measure your running performance
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or knee impact,
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while remaining a great pair of shoes.
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Makers of things will have to start thinking
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what kind of digital functionality they have to offer to their consumers.
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They will have to become service providers,
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or they may become irrelevant.
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We will have to provide and create a service ecosystem
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just like we've done for mobile phones,
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where you have apps and services and everything else,
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and sometimes, you're still making a phone call.
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Now to make this ecosystem possible, we have to avoid fragmentation.
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We have to avoid different interfaces for different people for different things.
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We have to create uniform user experience
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and, for that reason, we have to create a single computing platform
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which powers all those things.
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What is the platform going to be?
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And I think the answer is obvious:
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it's a cloud, cloud computing.
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Now you cannot connect things directly to the cloud, obviously.
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So you have to develop a small device which can be plugged into all the things
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and make them connected to the cloud
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to unlock their potential and add new functionality.
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So let me show, for the first time, the real device which we've built.
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We are showing this for the first time.
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That's what it looks like,
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and it's a small device
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which will be connected to things we want to make smart
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and connected and interactive.
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How is it going to work?
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So on the back, you have a few electrodes.
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So when you plug them into different things,
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like here,
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the device will recognize where you're plugging them
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and then reconfigure itself to enable specific functionality
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for this particular thing.
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We would like to give this device to makers of things,
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the people who make your clothing and furniture,
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so they can use it just like they use a button or a zipper.
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And what they're going to make with them is up to them.
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We don't want to dictate the use cases.
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We would like to let people who make those things --
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artists and designers, brands and craftsmen --
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to imagine and create this new world
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where things are connected
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and have all this new, exciting digital functionality.
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We don't need keyboards and screens and mouses to interact with your computer.
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So I've been working on this idea for 20 years,
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and now it's taking shape,
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and as it's taking shape, what we are realizing
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is that I always thought I was working on computer interfaces,
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I always thought of myself as an interaction designer,
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but I'm realizing that I'm not building interfaces.
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What I realized is that me and my team,
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we're building a new kind of computer,
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an ambient computer.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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