Where to begin….the past month has been exciting for the whole company. Brian James Tracey, our President (of Plantiga International) and COO (of Plantiga Technologies Inc.), has travelled to Brunei for some very interesting visits. The result of the this trip, which took place back in early April, has proved to be promising and extremely valuable for the future of Plantiga.
Representing the Company, he met with high officials inside the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB), who were more than receptive to our plans. We are aiming to move our research, development, manufacturing and beta deployments to this fair country. He met with them to explore mutually beneficial opportunities between Plantiga and Brunei.
During this trip, we established a good working relationship with Teleconsult Brunei, represented by Lord John E. Shazell (from left to right: Brian James Tracey, Lord John E. Shazell) and Julian Johari. Teleconsult Brunei will play an instrumental role in the growth of Plantiga; we are so pleased by the opportunities that will arise from this relationship.
We are currently in the process of establishing working relationships with both the Unversiti of Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and the Institure Technology Brunei (ITB). It is important to our plans that we establish strong ties with these institutions, as we feel their contributions, especially on the technological and business sides, will provide growing value for their institutions, and our company.
For us, Brunei presents a vast array of opportunities, and over the next little while we are confident that Plantiga will prosper in Brunei Darussalam.
We all need to begin thinking differently about how we secure our critical infrastructure, no matter what country you’re in. It’s the center of gravity in any future conflict, implies Scott Borg, director and chief economist of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit. Everything about the Internet has changed security needs, and, for a fact, the way that it now works has made securing everything more difficult.
Any high-value asset in any country, everything from an electric grid or a uranium processing plant to a hydro dam or a government research facility, will be targeted in future conflicts. To put it simply, our current methods for securing these areas are not only outdated, but they are being undermined on a daily basis. Just last year Los Alamos National Labs, which is arguably the most important and influential research facility in the US, reported 13 computers lost or stolen and another 67 missing in the past year. One can only imagine how much intellectual property and national security information was lost. How is this possible? It’s because the systems they have in place are plagued with systemic problems.
The new security system that we are presenting to the world will attach a biometric tag to all activity, creating stronger ways to audit personnel. This will fix the problems that are so apparent in current practices, specifically the problems surrounding Identity and Location. We have designed a user-centric identity system that is both mobile and persistent. Wouldn’t you want to know what everybody is doing inside the nuclear facility, at any time you choose, no matter what work is being done by that person? We would, and not only that, we would want to know where they did it, what files they opened, and what changes were made to them. To our company, this should be a basic requirement for all critical infrastructure, no matter the country.
The ideas here represent a response to “Hiroshima, 2.0″ which came out in WSJ, April 24, 2009. It’s worthwhile reading this article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123966785804815355.html
Nylon, synthetic rubber and the fluorescent light bulb were innovations that came out of the Great Depression of 1930’s. It was these technologies that brought the US out of its deepest downturn ever. These are a just a few examples of how innovation can drive growth, especially so in recession times. Tom Nicholas of the Harvard Business School wrote last month that “although deep downturns are destructive, they also have an upside. The Depression-era economist Joseph Schumpeter emphasized the positive consequences of downturns: the destruction of under-performing companies, the release of capital from dying sectors to new industries, and the movement of high-quality skilled workers toward stronger employers. For companies with cash and ideas, history shows that downturns can provide enormous strategic opportunities.” The next blockbuster innovation is any one’s guess, but here at Plantiga we see the perfect opportunity for our technology. Really, we are reinventing a product and service that is extremely useful, and basically indispensable (in footwear and in biometrics). We will drive down the cost of shoes for consumers, making it affordable and environmentally sustainable. It’s times like these where our technology has a real shot at tearing down existing inefficient, damaging practices. We will affect footwear manufacturing and overall function, as well as develop the next generation biometric authentication technology. There has been no better time for us than now. In no way are we happy with the current economic downturn, but we do see this as a immense opportunity for Plantiga. There are countless predictions for what the future will be like; throughout history this has been so; but most all agree that there will be increased connectivity of everything, now that we have the Internet. I watched a video that sums this up, with many illustrations, both through visual means and audio reporting. As well as all this we’re finding ‘within it’ that our company’s technology can be found. The ideas here, those that might be considered inspiration for this video report, are right where we ourselves stand, front and center. We’re talking of a talk given by Kevin Kelly at a TED conference, called “Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web”. Here’s the link: In this video, Kelly gives an almost perfect explanation for where we – we the connected – are going, from the Internet of Things to the semantic web. His approach is simple and concise, with no dumbing down of any one point. We find he’s pointing to our technology about mid way through, almost talking about it literally: footwear that connects to the whole web, itself one part of a massive information cloud. Kelly talks about ‘the one’, which basically is the name he gives for the Internet of Everything, focusing on how it will bring about more efficiency and transparency.Plantiga is, in our opinion, a part of this future (not that we’ve mentioned this to either TED or Mr. Kelly; not knowing, really, how to do this in a ‘righteous’ manner), and, as Kelly predicts, we are all just-beginning at the knee of the curve here. Things are, historically speaking, at take off, and this is where the last ten years will look nothing like the next ten. We think, as does Kelly, that tagging and searching; for literally anybody, anything, and any activity is where we are all headed. One significant difference between Kelly and us: both privacy and security are enhanced when people are using the new shoes, not threatened. For instance, every one and every thing will have unique ID (every file, every situation, every noted instance of almost everything). And still, each individual ID is uncompromising; steadily pointing to it’s owner, albeit constrained by time. Although we are just a start-up building footwear as an information tool, in this world of connectivity we have the potential to be an essential part of every connected human. We got back from Singapore about a week ago. There we have set-up most of our technology’s development stream, from modelling to prototyping and testing. So it looks like we will be spending a great deal of time there over the next year and a half. One of the best things to come out of our trip there was the addition of Brian James Tracey to our team. Brian brings with him a wealth of experience in footwear, its production methods, design, and especially, function. As well, he has previous management experience in running a footwear company. As a group of three now, we all share a common goal, and that is to make a real difference at the very foundation of where someone stands. Everyone has been dealing with the results of archaic methods in footwear production their whole lives, in fact for hundreds of years, and we feel it’s about time certain advancements were made that actually prevented the pain problem, not just bandaged it up. What sets the foundation for all of our company’s digital applications is the development of footwear as an information tool, a tool that is always generating movement and dynamic data via your gait. Not only will this shoe system persistently produce information from your gait, it will be a product that acts as an interface between you and your immediate environment; examples being rocky terrain, stairs, edges, slopes, your entire ground and more, in other words, your whole ambient terrain. There have been previous inroads in the the idea of a shoe transferring gait information; notable among them the Nike + ipod insert that delivers running and aerobic info. Others have followed, but no technology aligns its vision with our own: the idea of a shoe that delivers gait and movement information at multiple levels. Our system’s potential applications can be used to solve real technological and usability problems in everything from pure and applied research to health care and biometrics. When a shoe can be seen as an integral part of a digital system, relaying information that can be used for analysis, identity and location, there is then a deep connection between the human and digital worlds that they are interacting with. This new level of association will allow for multiple uses of the new footware as an information tool. I’d like to note that our footware will allow for energy harvesting as well, which means all of the shoe’s digital expressions have the potential to be self-powered. Technorati Tags:identity management, security, biometrics, identity, Gait analysis, Technology, Information Tool, Footwear, Interface Technology First, let me begin by defining the parameters in which I mean automating ID. The context for this observation is the Internet, and the lack of automation simply is the amount of sign-on’s we must go through to access any account on-line (social, financial, business or otherwise). Everything in the ID world requires a multi step process. The verification procedure is exactly that: process after process, accessing this database to move to another. We are even instructed to fill out our ‘memory cue’ or ‘where were you born?’ question and answer. There is a high rate of non-repeat users of these systems, based on the difficulty in using them. The fundamental problem with not having automation is the human experience attached to the complexity of enrollment and continuous sign-on’s. OpenID has made inroads but still suffers from a lot of growing pains (a phishing attack is an example of this vulnerability). There are many ways to look at user-centric identity but really it has to be based on the person, and in some form of an automated way. Biometrics, in all forms, has been pursued to develop a more robust identity system, but still has fallen short. There needs to be a ubiquitous user-centric identity system whereby automation is inherent in its design. This would allow for greater usage and above all, a system that actually works. I’m not pretending to have the answer but at Plantiga we are researching and developing a system that has, innate in its design, automation. Not only will it be automated but mobile. Whether or not we reach our goal in the ways we have envisioned, we have used the concept of automating ID as an over-arching vision for where ID needs to go. Technorati Tags: In many of my conversations with investors, researchers, journalists and even fellow biometric technology developers, I have often been asked whether or not the human gait is identifiable and if there might be an algorithm that once generated can give us a transferable pattern that’s useful. The short answer is Yes. The obvious comes from the simple experience that many of us have had, of recognizing a friend or family member at a distance, where all you see in their silhouette. The amount of academic research that backs this up is immense. R&D bodies around the world are conducting gait pattern recognition research under the name of HID, or Human ID at a Distance and much is being published. The University of Southampton and Georgia Tech have entire labs (many with post doctorates and others helping out) dedicated to this field of study. Other professionals are conducting research at Notre Dame and University of South Florida, under the heading of Computer Science. The point I’m trying to make is that an individual’s gait is recognizable, but so far the data is only coming from objective, camera based snapshots, where the body’s image is primarily turned into a silhouette, with a pre-designed algorithm being used to mark the identity. It’s the future of this science that is most interesting, but for the moment I’ll not go into our technology. So again, gait is identifiable, but it runs into problems with all the variables like clothing, walking malfunctions and more. And the biggest problem of all is that “HID” is funded by those interested in the surreptitious use of gait recognition. How about all of the reasons that we’d voluntarily give others our data? So long as we know just how much of it is given up and that we can disable the access? At Plantiga, we are reviewing and internalizing the existing research in the design of our own gait biometric system. The foundation we depend on is consistently working with ongoing data generated from within our internally structured footwear. Gait is an ultimate biometric because even when standing still, it can constantly be captured. One can’t quite walk around the airport or government office with a fingerprint scanner attached to their thumb, or an iris checker suctioned to their face. Gait, if you can capture it properly, could be the ultimate biometric in that it would be mobile (as in on the person) and persistent (as in always generating data). Technorati Tags: I tend to believe there is a failure when it comes to understanding how a security plan will work; with the current framework, there is nothing that is 100% foolproof. You will not find or create the ’sealed box’ where a breaching of the system is impossible. This is true at both the theoretical and philosophical levels, and it’s also true at the matter-of-fact real world levels. At the theoretical level, most any securitized installation can be undermined, with any number of variables the culprit. For instance, any system requires human involvement, and since humans are dynamic individuals with agency of many sorts, one cannot guard from human malfunction at some level. This can be transferred over to real world problems, where current security networks and identity management systems are consistently being breached due to the human involvement. Philosophically, the ’sealed box’ metaphor builds a culture of fear, because as freethinking human beings we usually understand that, once you begin securing one aspect of life, you must keep the ball rolling, metaphorically speaking. In other words, security brings insecurity. Instinctually, we comprehend that networks upon networks must be built to achieve any success with a security installation, at both the digital and physical levels. Thus a culture of fear is built, which ultimately is bad for business. There should be protocols in place, where measured risk and real-life examples are more than just considered, but are internalized instead, created and recreated in a calculated way, all of it dependent on the given systems. Added to this, the human element in the security system has to be limited, controlled and user-centric. In other words, some of the protocols and technology should be working covertly so as to mitigate the risks that are brought on by human variability. Ultimately I’m pointing to our company’s technology platform, as I do feel it will solve most all of these issues. Imagine a security system where the interface between an individual and the networks they deal with is always at work beneath the surfaces, where a clear connection is lying between the human/analog and digital networks they are involved with. Most everyone in our line of work is (or at least should be) familiar with the book “The Singularity Is Near” by Ray Kurzweil, a 652-page tomb with the body of it ending at page 490, the rest containing Appendix and Notes. His focus, so it seems at first, is the equation of a human-scale Successful relationship when working with machines. This is reflected in the numerous charts and graphs that are showing this “knee” where the rate of change is a likely surprise for the majority of us — because we, in our species-form, are not quite free of seeing things beyond what is incremental — what is successive, what follows one thing after another. We might reflect on our early days inn the African veldt. Our emerging mind being so caught-up in what’s coming at us next that it had little time to develop a long range view — what is really a necessity for organization — self-organizing included. It is a sad fact that people, the majority, will only see the future when and if Someone-else, a particular leader with a certain bent being the usual pick, has both Seen the-future and Approved. So long as there is a recognized vision for a mind-set that will cover most of the eventualities, most will be OK with any program the leader will come up with. For each member of a chosen group will then have their job to do. Even with the author’s TED appearance; there was an abundance of graphs and charts showing us the exponential growth of things. In no way do we mean to criticize this approach, especially since the conviction and persuasive levels were so highly felt when catching what he delivered! But we are thinking that there is something more to this growth business, and perhaps it isn’t enough to focus our attention on defining the coming changes by seeing the progress through what has gone before. But it should also be noted that the rest of his book makes it clear where many of the possibilities lie. Most all of his graphs are showing the logarithmic scale, many of the time-lines so depicted covering many, many years. It seems though that the scale itself has little of the ’sticky’ about it. Why else do we all look back with such surprise when seeing where the huge multiples are leading us to? whatever the progression might be. There is a lot of 20/20 hindsight with this view, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but with an exposition that will use insights at this level there is often a need for a recognized for authority; it is not something that prepares a person to understand the coming changes. We can evaluate charts and diagrams, which we have to do if only for a picture that is useful for the grown-ups show & tell, but there’s not enough for a firm handle on catching where we might take things, not enough for us to be sharing with another person, meme wise. An early quote from the book… From my perspective, the Singularity has many faces. It represents the nearly vertical phase of exponential growth that occurs when the rate is so extreme that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed. Of course, from a mathematical perspective, there is no discontinuity, no rupture, and the growth rates remain finite, although extraordinarily large. But from our currently limited framework, this imminent event appears to be an acute and abrupt break in the continuity of progress. I emphasize the word “currently” because one of the salient implications of the Singularity will be a change on the nature of our ability to understand. We will become vastly smarter as we merge with our technology. An argument can be made for more than one Singualrity, the first one being a-person, a life. There is a consciousness that will stand up in a given environment. I am alive … Whatever happens next is all due to him or her (and me and you) being here, living here, living now. It can be made more complex … but so what? From our youth onwards, we will all devise things, from creations to rationales, to whatever else works; but a-life itself remains the basis for all other understandings (and the reference is to conscious life, life with an “I” in how its identity is made real, made a “Self”, never a worm-shaped life or other such form!). We include the whole of the created universe in the realized existence. We all need our ground to stand on, and being thankful for all of it is right up there, at the edge of consciousness for every individual. Now the second Singularity, it might be argued (and just for the fun of it), is an individual’s relationship with any one of their tools. Anything, anything at all that is used for a purpose is an extension of the body and nervous system, and thus it can be called a tool that will have an interface, in the modern sense. It should not be that difficult to define — and trace what is left behind through time and artifacts — the tracks from their passage through a life. Many of these may be a part of the historical record (which itself is usually parsed, from the ‘history’ of a days journey to the nature of a process, the steps, of getting through a plan or a recipe), or simply stuck to the machine/interface itself. Whatever connections we make, each of them will be tied in some way to how we go about facilitating things, with each of us unique, whether successful or not in our attempts to achieve something. When carrying a process to completion there is a story here and it might be made visible. It might be seen clearly enough to note a projection, a direction and future tracks. Predictable in other words. It is not just things with moving parts that are ending up making-a-machine; automation is more of an additional complexity, not the definition. How we reach and grasp, and all of the other actions we engage, in this oh so very real world, are mostly aided and strengthened by the choices we make … when defining our tool-sets. And these are machines in the greater sense of the term. Within our grasp are some new tool/machines; what used to be just ‘our footwear’ will soon enough have an interface. And it is just such an interface, considering the way it will mediate and differentiate between our biological selves and our digital connections, that will tie and link us, in our individual ways, to others. Whatever we might do on a network, or the Internet, is joined by what our person does — one moment after another. May we suggest a slight change to Kurzweil’s book title; “The Third Singularity Is Near”? Links: Another book, “Technology Matters: Questions To Live With” by David E. Nye is a good book that puts the whole of technology In Context. Reading it right along with the Singularity is a pleasure. And “Cool Tools” by Kevin Kelly has a lot of great stuff when it comes to these matters. See his “The Technium” for another fine-way to view things about tools.
Securing Critical Infrastructure?
April 27, 2009 by plantiga
Opportunities in Innovation
January 8, 2009 by plantiga
TED, Kevin Kelly, and Us.
September 9, 2008 by plantiga
Our First Singapore Venture
May 28, 2008 by plantiga
Footwear as an Information Tool
February 8, 2008 by plantiga
Why is ID not automated?
November 13, 2007 by plantiga
identity management, security, IDM, biometrics, identity, Technology, OpenID
Is gait recognizable and can it be a viable biometric?
September 11, 2007 by plantiga
security, biometrics, identity, Gait analysis, Technology
Foolproof Security: Is it Possible?
June 28, 2007 by plantiga
The Singularity is Past
June 20, 2007 by plantiga
From Division comes Something to Count
The book has a website, and so too does the author with his many interests. All of this material is pretty important. (I don’t quite ‘get’ the cover for the book. We can see it “improved” with an Asimov inspired robot that is standin in a forest glade smelling a rose, a Pterodactyl flying by.)
Updates on Brunei
May 7, 2009 by plantigaWe want to take a second to thank H.E. Wendell J. Sanford, the Canadian Trade Commissioner, and his entire office, who have been ever so helpful during every step of this process (from leftt to right: Nural Salwani, Julian Johori, H.E. Wendell J. Sanford, and Brian James Tracey).
If we have anything to do with it, this world will look at lot different 5 years from now.
Our technology’s pipeline is almost complete. Right now we are designing our execution plan, as well as drafting our financing architecture. These next two years are going to go fast and we want to make sure we know what our part of the future will look like; and to the best of our ability we will act to accomplish this. The one thing the Singapore venture did was to reinforce the global marketplace’s acceptance of what we are doing. Not only are we going to shift how footwear is made, used and thought of, but our company is going to be key in providing the new footwear that will act as an information tool.
[From Left: Quin, Norman, Brian]
