20130124 Protei presentation at Tokyo University

I am very excited to announce that Protei will be presented January 28th, from 10:30 to 11:30 at Tokyo University, Department of Applied Physics, Graduate School of Engineering/Faculty of Engineering. Building No. 6, Faculty of Engineerng, Hongo Campus
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656
TEL: +81-3-5841-6800 FAX: +81-3-5841-6803

Place:工学部6号館大会議室

Great thanks to Prof Alvaro Cassinelli for setting up this event.

Protei technology will be presented by both Cesar Minoru Harada and Gabriella Levine in english, some short part may be in Japanese, followed by Q&A. Free entrance.

Network Growth Programming

2012/09/03 Blog / Research / Space / Visual

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I have been continuing to research how physical social networks (made with people and strings) can be grown. In addition of the 7 basic network topologies – which I consider now as only a subset on network growth “instruction”- I listed 4 larger ensembles :

Behavioural Programming: Guiding people to form 1) Line, 2) Mesh, 3) Fully connected, 4) form groups.
Visual Programming: Asking a group of connected individuals to conform to prescribed geometrical figures.
Numerical Programming: Giving each single individual a set of simple instructions to apply regardless of other dynamics, and let these “naturally” interact.
Entropy: After having conducted these previous experiments, giving participants the instruction to do whatever they want with the string.

I have also updated the instruction set of instructions for the “Behavioural programming” here :

Warm up
Walk random patterns eyes open
Run random patterns with eyes open
Walk random patterns eyes closed
Run random patterns with eyes closed
Stand up still eyes open, look at others
Stand up still eyes closed, feel others
Stand up still eyes open, stand up on one leg
Stand up on one leg, close one eye. Close the second eye.
Spin in one direction until you get dizzy.
Spin the other direction until you cancel the dizziness.
Stand up still eyes open, look at others
Stand up still eyes closed, feel others

Linear Network (Line)
_ I pull one line and connect everybody.
Walk random patterns eyes closed
Run random patterns with eyes closed
Stand up still eyes closed, feel others
Stand up still eyes open, look at others

Mesh Network (Mesh)
_ I cut the line, disconnecting some, reconnecting others in a mesh.
Walk random patterns eyes closed
Run random patterns with eyes closed
Stand up still eyes closed, feel others
Stand up still eyes open, look at others

Fully Connected Network (Fully Connected)
_ I each and everyone.
Walk random patterns eyes closed
Run random patterns with eyes closed
Stand up still eyes closed, feel others
Stand up still eyes open, look at others

Community building (Segregation)
How do you feel?
We went through 3 different types of network topologies :
1) a line network
2) a mesh network
3) a fully connected network
Which one did you prefer / dislike? Why?
What defines a community? Why?
Now I will get back to giving a few more instructions.
_ Pause.
Stand up still eyes closed, feel others
Feel others with the strings.
Which strings do you like most? Which string would you rather drop.
Keep the strings you like, drop the strings you don’t feel comfortable holding.
Eyes closed, keep holding the strings, but now move freely, wherever you want to go.
When you feel you are in the right place, stop. Take your time.
When I will see more than half of you standing still, this will be the end of this part of the experiment.
_ Pause.
How do you feel?
What did you learn?
What did we learn as a group?
How could push this experiment further?

I will continue this research further later – that was just a research note – and a cool poster coming out of it :) Original files here (.ai .pdf .jpg). Do you know of any interesting references / books / pdfs about network growth / evolution / topologies? Thanks!

Open Hardware for the Environment ~ PhD Thesis

2012/08/27 Research

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Cesar Harada is currently candidate for a PhD, writing on ”Open Hardware for the Environment” at Goldsmiths University of London, Design & Environment department, under the supervision of Prof Jennifer Gabrys.
Protei, the International_Ocean_Station and Openet.org are the 3 main components of this research.

<Cesar> This page will host the abstract, table of content and link to the subpages of the thesis.
Research notes (+“PhD” tag), paragraphs, chapters, papers will be published on this website as blogposts and eventually compiled in a traditional academic format for journal publication and peer reviewing. I will often publish drafts posts, interact with comments and come back to edit/improve my posts. I intend to use a markup language I have developed in previous pieces of writing, I called AcademiXML (inspired from LaTeX and XML).</Cesar>

WORK IN PROGRESS

Abstract

Open Hardware for the Environment

Table of content / Outline

Introduction
Open Hardware for the Environment
Environmental Monitoring system
Protei
Open-H2O
International Ocean Station
Perspective
Appendix

Abstract

Open Hardware for the environment
Practice based investigation
Oceans as field
Approach : hands-on iterative, fast cycle innovation, bio-mimicry, Design & Artificial Selection.

Administration

Legal : Intellectual Property combination
Financial
Social
Psychological
Communication
Technology
Art : vision
Design : conditions
Engineering : means
Science : findings
Environmental Applications

Introduction

A practice-based part-time PhD.
Context
Cultural background.
Scope
What is at stakes : why we need Open Hardware to address Environmental issues today?
History of the mouvement : the maker and the Environmentalist movement convergence.
Places & Cultures : Northern America, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Oceania.
Communities & Focuses : Social Networks, Energy, Water, Food, Sanitation, Transport…
Entrepreneurship & Non Profit Development : Sustainable business Development & Community Management strategies : networks, blocks, herds, nodes, wet networks…
Open Hardware Heros : Figures of the movement.
Open Hardware development strategies.
A research built around my personal investigation.

Personal Story and motivation

Father : Shinto, hands-on approach
Mother : Story telling, and social networks
Brother : Politics and ethics

Investigation Method : Hands on iterative method.

Art and Science : A thin line
Professional and amateur. 2 cults to the same god.
The tools of collaboration :
Internet x workshop
Social Media, influence, character building
Buzz words, branding and network of influence.
Environment monitoring and cleaning system
Protei + The International Ocean Station + Open-H2O Chapters

Experiences commented

== MIT ==
The urge to update a
method of investigation (hands-on iterative, thinking by prototyping and testing)
intellectual property (open Source)
financial (crow-funded)
technology thinking (shinto)
Revenue Model (profit + Non-profit)

== Gulf of Mexico ==
Experience
genesis of the project

== Japan ==
Goal
Method
Itinerary
Journey
Science
Sociology
COnclusion

== San Francisco, Summer 2012 ==

== Unreasonable at Sea ==

Experiences

Protei

Shape Shifting Sailing Robot to sense and clean the Ocean.
Motivation
Technology
Applications

International_Ocean_Station

Manned floating laboratory for Ocean Exploration.

Ocean Data Infrastructure & Open-H2O Community.

Ethics & Practical implications of running an Open Hardware project for the Environment

Process Notes

Going from a volunteer informal R&D group to a funded international non-profit community (Open-H2O) and a small manufacturing business (Protei.inc)
Savannah Ocean Exchange
2008 : Open-Sailing up
2009 : Open-Sailing Down after Ars Electronica
2010 : Open-Sailing up
2011 : Protei within Open-Sailing
2012 : Open-Sailing becomes Open-H2O
Open-H20 and Protei separates
Motivation to separate the community in a non-profit and for profit entity.

Topics

Intellectual property
Retail cost
Speed of development & Decision
Revenue model
Public Vs Private information and timing
License
On a thin line
Budgeting and prioritizing
Area of expertise
Network
Organisation structure
Ownership and Decision making process
Valuation and shares, capital
Value of the community
Growing social networks and the importance of social media for crowd sourcing
Crowd sourcing R&D and minimizing structural expense
Ethics, Accountancy and the Meritocratic model.
Ethics : 1. Environment, 2. People, 3. Technology, 4. Profit
Transparent accountancy
Meritocratic model
Lean Structure
Work items
Value allocation
Rating system

Towards a Consortium

Private (individual)
Corporates (companies)
Academic (universities)
Governmental (countries)
Intergovernmental (Agreements and international funds)

Conclusion : the need of open hardware technology

Future of Open Hardware for the Environment

Epilogue

Robodiversity
Social Architecture
Social Network and crowd funding
Controlling complex network with a minimum number of nodes
Research and Influence, qualitative and quantitative.

Bibliography

Author / Sources
Annexes / Downloads

References

Energy Animal

2010/08/27 Object / Performance / Research

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Working with Southampton University scientists on a promising “flexible marine energy converter”. Until march 2010 for EPSCR, NESTA, RCA, UK.

20130124 Protei presentation at Tokyo University

Open Hardware for the Environment ~ PhD Thesis

Abstract

Open Hardware for the Environment