Adrian David Cheok

Neurons have been found in the human heart.

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:29:10 +0900

In the Ogilvy FUEL conference there was a brilliant talk by Tam Khai Meng called Global Dreams where he showed very creative works in advertising worldwide. What I was amazed is many brilliant works from places I never think of for creativity such as Africa and South America.
At the end of the talk he showed a latest work which showed neurons have been found in the human heart. His point was to follow the human heart. But for me it was exciting further evidence that thinking and mind is a deep connection between brain and mind and that we need to trigger all of our senses for effective creativity and learning.

Mind blowing discussion with brilliant mind Rory Sutherland on creativity and logic

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:36:39 +0900

Today I had the chance to have a deep discussion with Rory Sutherland who is Vice Chairman of Ogilvy about logic and creativity. He gave an excellent talk about behavioural economics at the Ögilvy FUEL event. In his talk he gave many examples of how logic is placed at highest priority in our society but in the real world logic can only answer a small subset of problems and creativity is required to find solutions. As an engineer I wanted to find out what he thought we could solve by logic. Since engineers are taught in logic. After a long discussion it seems that problems that fall under the category of newtonian physics can be solved by logic. But almost all problems in life involve non linearity and humans and therefore we need a combination of creativity and logic. A good example is someone turning the screw on your airplane wheels. We don’t need (or want) creativity in that case because it has a well proven logical solution, and following that logic is required for the system to work (and not crash the plane). But even in this case creativity should be applied at a META level. For example, maybe some other way of turning the screw is more efficient. But for most systems which are non newtonian and involve humans we need creativity. For example the air France crash where a logical control design didn’t take into account an opposite control signal to logical controller and the plane crashed. Or something simple like the problem that a school had that the corridors were too crowded. The logic solution will analyze increase corridor width etc. The creative solution is to stagger class times so all the students are not walking at the same time.
Rory recommended to read the Nobel Prize winning acceptance speech on The limits of information. It is at this link http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html
Rory said actually engineers are very good at understanding the limits of information. Because we have to deal with complex and human systems (although I think a lot of academic engineering ignores this and is in its own unreal world). He said the worst is finance people who want to reduce everything to numbers.
I was deeply impressed with the brilliant mind of Rory Sutherland. It really impacts the way I will look at the world.

Augmented Reality Gurus. I had the pleasure to have dinner with...

Mon, 28 May 2012 10:17:59 +0900

Augmented Reality Gurus. I had the pleasure to have dinner with my good friends and gurus of augmented reality, Mark Billinghurst, Ron Azuma, Steven Feiner, amongst others. What I remembered was a similar dinner about 10 years ago in los Angeles at a SIGGRAPH. I noticed we are all grayer and fatter (of course me included). However one thing was the same. We were all like youngsters with our “geeky” discussions on technology and augmented reality. Steven Feiner showed a new AR glass he is making in the lab. We talked about how the cardboard was etched using a 3D printer. Mark told me about his new app which you can view the heritage buildings in Christchurch. I talked about tasting your food digitally. Yet somehow I felt no technology could ever replace such a real world dinner with old friends.

Ogilvy FUEL in Kyoto

Mon, 28 May 2012 09:11:46 +0900

Ogilvy is one of the world’s largest advertising companies in the world. It is a truly global company. For the first time in seven years they are having an internal conference for their top global executives and it is in Kyoto. About 4 or 5 people have been asked to come to give talks and workshops. I have been asked to give an Innovation workshop. I will give it four times in a row. My plan is to give a short talk on methods to be creative, and then we will do a short workshop in groups. I have set up a workshop which is based on imagining you are a ninja from 17th century transported to 21st century. Using only materials available in 17th century you have to find a creative solution to recovering an ancient scroll from the Kyoto national museum. Then as a group we will story tell our idea and invention. The main message is to be creative use all parts of your senses and brain. Think, sketch, draw, make, communicate, and iterate.

So it is mainly Ogilvy company executives, and it is very interesting to be part of this company event. The conference is very powerful, at the opening, CEO Paul Heath said the aim is for the company staff to be the best in the whole world. That vision is really inspiring and that is the kind of vision I always want to be part of. Ogilvy is all about creativity. They want to be the best storytellers, natural collaborators, and to be effective in delivery. I agree with this. Innovation is about creative ideas. But without collaborating and making a real world output, it is simple an idea. We need to turn creative ideas into reality.

Adrian with Geisha in Kyoto

Mon, 28 May 2012 08:45:23 +0900

Adrian with Geisha in Kyoto

Adrian David Cheok to speak at Seoul Digital Forum 2012 Mixed...

Wed, 23 May 2012 11:27:53 +0900

Adrian David Cheok to speak at Seoul Digital Forum 2012

Mixed Reality: Beyond the Real-Virtual Dichotomy, Expanding Human Potentials 2012-05-23

Visionary : Adrian D. CHEOK [Professor, Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University / Director, Mixed Reality Lab, National University of Singapore], Howard CHARNEY [Senior Vice President, Office of the President, Cisco], Genevieve BELL [Director, Interactions and Experience Research, Intel Labs, INTEL]
Symposiarch : WOO Woontack [Professor, Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST]

The scope and reach of human influence is being extended. The new generation of mixed reality technologies is merging the real and the virtual, making possible simultaneous interactions between the two worlds. With its limitations in interface design and accessibility being mitigated, mixed reality is making tangible contributions to expanding the human potential in an increasing number of practical fields including healthcare, education, training and media by lowering spatiotemporal barriers. With the real and the virtual coming to coexist and be increasingly interfused, what kinds of benefits and obstacles lie in store for us?

Award at CHI 2012 for our paper “Keep in Touch: Channel,...

Mon, 21 May 2012 03:31:08 +0900

Award at CHI 2012 for our paper “Keep in Touch: Channel, Expectation and Experience”. It is the academic paper for the Huggy Pajama project.

Human-Computer Confluence VISIONS Powerpoint presentation download

Sun, 20 May 2012 20:24:00 +0900

Human-Computer Confluence VISIONS Powerpoint presentation download:

I was recently invited to give a talk at a workshop for an EU project called Human-Computer Confluence. It was a small group of about 15 scientists discussing the future of the merging of humans and computers and preparing for a future European Union project. You can download my powerpoint presentation and view if you wish.

Human-Computer Confluence Research Challenges

HCI research over three decades has shaped a wide spanning research area at the boundaries of computer science and behavioral science, with an impressive outreach to how humankind is experiencing information and communication technologies in literally every breath of an individuals life.

The explosive growth of networks and communications, and at the same time radical miniaturization of ICT electronics have reversed the principles of human computer interaction. Up until now considered as the interaction concerns when humans approach ICT systems, more recent observations see systems approaching humans at the same time. Humans and ICT Systems apparently approach each other confluently.

Human Computer Confluence has been mentioned to become a research priority in “Horizon 2020” (2013-2020), the funding programme of the European Commission that follows after the 7th Framework Programme (FP7, 2007-2013). HC2 VISIONS is a research agenda solicitation action (FP7 FET Project HC2) which may or may not be influential to the FET work programme discussion on new directions in human computer confluence. The HC2 VISIONS workshop invites key experts to pose initial research challenge statements articulated by the scientific community in a crowd sourced solicitation attempt. The goals of the workshop are to shape research challenge statements indicating (i) vision, (ii) research approach and (iii) expected impact of prospective research issues by world leading experts in the field. HC2 VISIONS is accompanied by a web-based white-book initiative at www.pervasive.jku.at/hccvisions.

Modern art: n. where it takes a thousand words to explain the picture.

Sun, 20 May 2012 13:46:07 +0900

Evan Esar
In Wickedictionary

Presentation file for Keynote talk at ARE 2012 Download

Sat, 19 May 2012 20:14:41 +0900

Presentation file for Keynote talk at ARE 2012 Download:

Here is my presentation file for the keynote talk I gave at the Augmented Reality Event conference 2012 in Santa Clara

"Intaxication: n. euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money..."

Sat, 19 May 2012 10:59:24 +0900

“Intaxication: n. euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.”

- Derek Abbott, Dictionary of Funny Neologisms

Advice from a Japan industry leader to all youth. Do the things which are most risky now!

Sat, 19 May 2012 03:26:32 +0900

At my class for Innovators Seminar, I invited Mr. Hideto Nakahara a Member of the Board and Senior Executive Vice President of Mitsubishi Corporation which is one of the most important companies in Japan, and perhaps the world.

As a leader of such an important company, he gave some excellent advice to our students which is an important message to all youth. He said Mitsubishi Corporation has to take very safe decisions because it is a large trading company with many employees. However he told our students the following advice

1. Do the things which are the most risky

2. Do it now because you will not be young for long

I thought this was amazing and visionary advice, coming from such a high up leader. We normally would expect conservative thinking at the top level of Japan, but I found Mr. Nakahara incredible engaging and visionary.

http://www.mitsubishicorp.com/jp/en/about/bmembers/hnakahara.html

Submission Procedure for Papers at Advances in Computer Entertainment Conference in Nepal

Sat, 19 May 2012 02:23:50 +0900

ACE - the Advances in Computer Entertainment Conference - has become the leading scientific forum for dissemination of cutting-edge research results in the area of entertainment computing. Interactive entertainment is one of the most vibrant areas of interest in modern society and is amongst the fastest growing industries in the world. ACE 2012 will bring together leading researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to present their innovative work and discuss all aspects and challenges of interactive entertainment technology, in an exciting emerging world environment of Nepal.
Submit your work here: http://ace2012.info/submission
For this year, we will accept papers up to and including eight pages long.
Important date
Submission deadline: Friday, June 1, 23:59 GMT
Reviews will be single blind (i.e., include authorship information with the submitted paper).
Submission rules
- Papers must be in English.
- Previously published work may not be submitted, nor may the work be concurrently submitted to any other conference or journal. Such papers will be rejected without review.
- Papers must be submitted as PDF documents. The paper submissions must use the exact ACM SIG templates. Please find the template at http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates. There are word, word perfect and Latex templates linked on the template page. If you use Latex, please use the style “Strict Adherence to SIGS style” on that page.
- Authors may include supplementary materials (such as a video) with the submission, and such materials are highly encouraged if they provide evidence of the claimed contribution. Videos should not be longer than 5 minutes long, and the total size of all submitted materials (including the PDF document) must be under 20MB. If you include a video, also include a text file describing what codec you used to create the video. Videos should be playable by either the current Windows Media Player or Apple Quicktime player. It is preferable that your video be playable by these standard players without requiring additional codec installations. If you require a special codec (e.g. DivX), make certain that you include instructions on how to find and install that codec. If the reviewers cannot play your video file, it will reduce the chances of your submission being accepted.
Submission procedure
Please submit all materials via the conference submission system located at http://ace2012.info/submission
If you have questions about Papers for ACE 2012, please contact the Program Chairs at submit@ace2012.info
For any other information please contact info@ace2012.info
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"Whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you..."

Fri, 18 May 2012 22:58:01 +0900

“Whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.”

- Conan O’Brien addressing the graduating class at Dartmouth in 2011, one of 5 ½ timeless commencement speeches. (via explore-blog)

People and Technology. A cool video showing the intersection of...

Fri, 18 May 2012 22:56:39 +0900

People and Technology. A cool video showing the intersection of people and technology.

Secrets of Japanese Meetings

Fri, 18 May 2012 19:10:00 +0900

As a foreigner it is quite rare to be asked to the standard Japanese company meetings. What I mean are those meetings which are not something to do with international matters and there is no information in English. I was asked to represent our faculty to a meeting of the “Information Technology Center” (basically handling all computer administration and “Media Center” (basically libraries), representing our school. It was 6pm to 8pm on Friday night. On the one hand it was on the one hand extremely boring way to spend a Friday evening. But on the other hand I really could experience some secrets of Japanese culture. At each meeting there were two men doing almost all the talking. One man looked a bit older, talked less, and looked like the boss. We basically listened to a long list of reports. In western cultures meetings are held to actually discuss or decide something. But in Japanese meetings I think that the purpose is not to decide anything. In fact it seems everything had been decided before the meeting. At the end of the meeting they asked if anyone had questions but nobody did. We all bowed. I wondered what was the purpose of the meeting. But I guess it is a kind of “wa” or harmony which is important in Japanese culture. By me being physically present and representing the school we showed harmony with the decisions. I found it an interesting and somewhat entertaining experience of some more secrets of Japanese culture.

Descriptive Camera

Fri, 18 May 2012 17:08:21 +0900

Descriptive Camera:

This is so cool and amazing. A camera which outputs a text description rather than a photo. And the method is ingenious - sending the picture to Amazon Mechanical Turk for crowd-sourcing. Are you like me, bombarded with thousands of pictures that you never have time to look at and find it so hard to search? This camera would be great. We can really search for something like “picture of a cake at a birthday party”.

Descriptive Camera Presentation (by mrichardson23)

Fri, 18 May 2012 16:53:33 +0900

Descriptive Camera Presentation (by mrichardson23)

Emotivate: what we do every day in research.

Thu, 17 May 2012 07:28:00 +0900

Emotivate: n. using utopian visions of the future, dramatic pleas, and dire consequences to inspire an organization to change. Derek Abbott posted in Dictionary of Funny Neologisms

"Brilliant advice from Atari Founder on how to be innovatove."

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:35:19 +0900

“Brilliant advice from Atari Founder on how to be innovatove.”

- From the Mindshare conference.

Be Uncomfortable
“You wanna build your IQ higher in the next two years? Be uncomfortable. That means, learn something where you have a beginner’s mind. I like to play chess. So it turns out, the neurogenesis (the birth of new brain cells) of chess, for me, is over. My brain grew a great deal when I was first learning, but once I really got it down, it’s very, very incremental. So if you want to do it right, learn how to ski. And then once you feel like you’re kind of under control, learn how to snowboard. And then learn how to rollerblade, then do tai chi, then do yoga. Stay on the uncomfortable path and you will find that you can get smarter.”
Look For Beauty
“Walk to work, even if it’s four miles. Ride a bike to work. Drive a different way. On your way there, try to find beauty. You’d be surprised how much more of the neighborhood you can perceive and experience when you’re looking for unique spots of beauty. When you get to work, you’ll find that you have a better attitude, you’re more content, and you can put away your Zoloft.”
Move Your Body
“Exercise aggressively. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Get your heart rate to 80% of your ability, and then for the next three hours, just learn something. It turns out that when you are exercising aggressively, your brain is creating BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), ‘Miracle-Gro for your brain.’ That is a precursor protein for dendrite formation (dendrites are branched extensions of nerve cells). You’re putting in hardware for the software.”
Go (The F***) To Sleep
“Remember that we can only in our forebrains handle 5-7 items. Our backbrains can handle massive amounts. So when you’re given a problem, think about it before you go sleep, and chances are you can solve it by the next morning. What’s happening is, your background processing is going on with many many more synapses, and you’d be surprised by the capability you’re able to unlock.”
Trust Your Ideas
“Innovation almost has zero constituency. For example, if I showed you this left-handed purple widget, maybe no one thinks it’s a good idea, yet it’s clearly innovative. And so, when Steve Jobs and I used to hang out, one of the things we used to talk about is innovation, and I told him, ‘Steve, if you believe in something, and you go into a room and there are 50 people there, and all 50 of them tell you that you’re crazy, stick with it. Stick with your project.’”
“Innovation is hard. It really is. Because most people don’t get it. Remember, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, these were all considered toys at their introduction because they had no constituency. They were too new. And what you’re working on right now may in fact fall right into that. And if you see clearly, the pathway to the future, stick to it.”