My last post on dematerialization dealt with developments suitable for experienced engineers, but Bug Labs wants to broaden that to include consumers:

Because everything we’re doing is open source, you are free to make it perfect yourself. You want to change something? Go right ahead. And when you do, we’re hoping you share your improvement with everyone else so we all benefit. It’s why we call our work community electronics instead of simply consumer electronics. We, Bug Labs, don’t own the keys to your satisfaction, you do. And this, in our humble opinion, is how it should be.

Bug Blogger: Worth a Thousand Words

via Futurismic and TechCrunch

… another step along the way to a desktop manufacturing revolution

Software used in today’s conventional milling machines is helping nanotech researchers make progress in nanomanufacturing:

The new technique suggests that the nanotechnology factories of the future might not operate so differently from existing manufacturing plants.

“If you can take prototyping and nanomanufacturing to a level that leverages what engineers know how to do, then you are ahead of the game,” Clark said. “Most engineers with conventional training don’t think about nanoscale manipulation. But if you want to leverage a workforce that’s already in place, how do you set up the future of manufacturing in a language that engineers already use to communicate? That’s what we’re focused on doing here.”

Duke News: Automation of Nanotech Manufacturing May Be Ahead

This should prove to be very helpful because there’s no getting around the strange and often counter-intuitive aspects of the nanoscale realm where thermal and quantum fluctuations make moving molecules from place to place like walking in a hurricane. Similar to the proven patterns used in software virtual machines, the Duke researchers are abstracting out the unfamiliar/counter-intuitive and substituting the more familiar. This is yet another sign of dematerialization and virtualization so I expect it will bear fruit.

More evidence that hardware is returning to its roots:

“We have the view that we have to become a software company,”

Cisco CEO John Chambers at the Networkers Conference via PC World

Filed under “why we need the paradigm of Rhythmeering” and “hardware is software crystallized” …

Con Ed said some components of the system are examined about every six weeks, but steam mains underground are generally not inspected because doing so often requires digging up the street.That is something that should change immediately, Agrawal said. Robotic probes can detect corrosion or damage to steam pipes from within, without having to dig them up, he said.

“They have to start looking at the entire system,” he said. “Imagine something like this exploding under Grand Central? Or under Broadway?”
N.Y. blast raises questions about aging infrastructure - CNN.com

Today we have many pressing infrastructure needs some of which have really high stakes:

If we look at today’s global environment we see a relatively high performance system driven by real-time global markets and rapid technological progress. Its performance explains why it is spreading so quickly. However, it is also moderately unstable. In our drive towards higher levels of performance we pursued a path of rampant global interconnectivity that has quickly outpaced our ability to dampen excess. The old dampening functions of borders, distance, government, etc are quickly fading. The result is a system vulnerable to rogue feedback. Even a small amount of it can cause global reverberations. Worse, there are people actively working on ways to introduce this rogue feedback. Iraq is a great demonstration of our inability to dampen excess in the face of active opposition (notice how our goals have drifted from building an allied democracy to stopping civil war).

The long-term solution is to build more stability into the system. The best approach I can think of is a highly interconnected but fundamentally decentralized system (most of the benefits of interconnectivity but with lots of local control). Unfortunately, we are far from realizing that goal, since our current view of the world is based on old models.

Big Bangs

The new paradigm which Rhythmeering represents isn’t anchored in the notion of fixed assets but rather recognizes that

Infrastructures are dynamic. There are flows of information, power, and substances constantly coursing through them.

Cascading System Failure

and expands the notion of the network as computer, to realize that the meshverse is the computer which is in essence software.

“I think it’s time for us as industry leaders really to get our hands around how we’re going to evolve that model, because like it not, the current models of building hundreds or thousands of customized business applications simply aren’t sustainable,” Worrall said. … At Sun, the company currently runs about 1,200 business applications. There is no reason these cannot be provided as online services, Worrall said. In Sun’s vision, the company will buy services, then run them in a browser on a device such as a laptop or a thin client. There will be no need to maintain legions of servers. … The market is already moving to this more efficient paradigm, but Sun internally expects to be largely services-based by 2015, although it could be a few years earlier or later than that, said Worrall. With Sun itself a purveyor of server hardware, a widespread move to services-based computing by users at large would mean a radical change for Sun’s business model. Its customer base will shift to being service providers, who need to maintain large datacenters. With this paradigm, Sun’s server sales volumes potentially could increase, even if the customer list itself shrinks. As Sun moves to a services paradigm, the company will need to focus on an ecosystem to accommodate this, because it is not the same as having a traditional ISV strategy
Sun anticipates move to software services
(the entire podcast)

Rhythmeering supports this kind of ecosystem.

An application of the Rhythmeering Simulations factor can be seen in IBM’s effort to improve efficiency through Business Process Management(BPM). IBM is deploying a game to help employess learn BPM:

“To get business and IT people (to understand BPM), you need to look at a simulator or game. It’s the way people learn today–it has to be visual and they want to have fun. And the businesspeople said they like to compete,” Carter said.

IBM simulates business software in 3D game

This game doesn’t appear to be deeply integrated with their BPM offering but that’s clearly the direction we’re heading in.  Csven Johnson provides a glimpse of the possibilities

Imagine if IBM were to show a demo dealing with the process for developing a real, manufacturable product, and then at the end, the player could fab the product at home… or maybe at their local Kinko’s.

Take it a step further and have participants send their real, assembled prototypes in for judging and use either the virtual or the real model (or both) to generate marketing materials (e.g. machinima commercials). The whole package could then be evaluated and maybe the winner has a real product developed from their concept.

… There are so many possibilities almost within reach that when it hits, it’ll be as different to what we know today as cell phones were unthinkable to people in the 70’s.

reBang: Innov8 IBM’s Business Game

“What’s interesting to us is how this works in cycles,” said Leigh. “Advanced graphics/simulation research resulted in today’s gaming technology. A lot of the virtual reality techniques we now take for granted in game systems like Nintendo Wii or immersive environments like Second Life came out of labs like EVL. Now next generation gaming technology is stimulating new applications for advanced graphics/simulation research that can benefit gaming as well as other fields.”

UIC News Release

The following originally appeared in Jazz and The Future of Global E-Commmerce, a paper I published in 2002.

Read the rest of this entry »

Four years ago in the preface of Jazz and the Future of Global E-Commerce, I described how the increasing significance of the role and value of information has been transforming engineering and manufacturing, leading to the need for the new discipline of Rhythmeering. Today, as it becomes more widely recognized that there is real value in virtual objects people are beginning to see that:

“The actual is the new virtual,” Sterling said in an interview with Wired News. “The virtual identities of objects and plans for objects will become more economically important than the actual things.”

Wired

This is, as detailed in the above-mentioned preface because:

The design, construction and operation of light, aerodynamically efficient, high-performance vehicles is an information-intensive process. From composite materials for cars and planes to microchips to nanoscale devices, the amount of material per dollar for products is shrinking.

With the cost of 3D printers dropping into the upper end of consumer pricing($20K), more and more companies like Fabjectory will emerge along with the need for methodologies and tools of Rhythmeering.

GridPoint Systems is selling, among other things a box for homes and businesses that helps reduce energy costs by intelligently managing the flow to and from the power grid using the internet.

“The computers in these boxes are making decisions with regards to energy based on the value of energy at that point in time and the historical consumption of that residence,” Lewis said, adding that part of the company’s management team has a background in software and communications.

Electricity tariffs that change over the course of the day to reflect fluctuations in demand are still not commonplace for U.S. consumers. However, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (click for PDF) calls on state utility regulatory bodies to explore “time-based metering and communications” next year, which would allow customers to participate in “time-based pricing rate schedules and other demand response programs.”

Pumping power onto the grid from your basement

Clearly this adds meaning to the idea of flowing power to the peers