This weekend I went to a course at Engineers Without Borders, an organisation for helping engineering students and recent graduates lend assistance in the third world. We built a Hexayurt (a hexagonal shelter), built some furniture, added some solar panels to the Hexayurt’s roof and got some low power computing going inside. It’s actually thrilling watching a computer powered by nothing but the sun. Thrilling in a quiet way; we didn’t light cigars or open champagne - that would be unsustainable - more like the ‘free energy’ frisson you get from wind surfing or sailing.  

It’s probably overused, and it’s certainly not particularly beautiful, but the following Thomas Jefferson quote expresses the idea at the heart of all technological utopianism, and, I think, the spirit of the weekend:

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

70 years after Thomas Jefferson died the modern standard barer for this concept was born: Buckminster Fuller. In a world of finite resources (‘Spaceship Earth’ as Bucky put it) he believed  that the only way to satisfy human wants was to be very smart about how we use our resources. Buckminster Fuller himself contributed some gems to our stock of ideas for making efficient use of the little we have.

Perhaps his two most successful additions were the octet truss and the geodesic dome. The octet truss is a design pattern that we see holding up roofs and the like all around us, while the geodesic dome has become a symbol of modernity.  

Vinay Gupta, designer of the Hexayurt, is a child of Buckminster Fuller in two senses. Firstly, he apparently contributed a tiny correction to Bucky’s specification of the geodesic dome after a counter-cultural community invited him to have a look at why their domes always came out a bit wonky. An error in the 4th decimal place of a measurement was the culprit. Geodesic domes are very sensitive to small errors, it’s a testament to their symbolic power that they continue to be built - I’m told they frequently leak if not put together with 4th decimal place accuracy.

Vinay has a more conceptual link with Bucky in the hexayurt project: the desire to share a design idea which makes people’s lives better. Hexayurts are a cunning design pattern which describes a way to take 12 standard 8 x 4 sheets of plywood (or another material) and turn it into a waterproof hut with no waste. It’s a direct response to another draw back with the geodesic dome - manufacturing it from rectangular sheets of timber always wastes at least 20% of the material.

It’s intellectually appealing to come up with a design that requires only 6 cuts to turn 12 standard sheets of timber into a shelter. However, In a third world disaster context, which I think is the primary intend use of the Hexayurt, I’m not sure that this imperative to minimise waste is actually a primary concern. As one of the other participants in the course pointed out to me, in such a  scenario there is never any kind of waste - any material not used in the shelter itself would be put to use elsewhere, or burned as fuel.

Perhaps this is one of the potential pitfalls of conceptually beautiful design; it’s easy to fall in love an elegant solution and lose sight of the messiness of the real world. If Buckminster Fuller’s frequent failures can be summarised, this is problem I would point to. I hope the Hexayurt doesn’t inherit this property from its forebares.

Aside from the Yurt itself we built the furniture using a system called Grid Beam, went to a talk about logistics in remote places and learned about thin client computing with Aptivate.

It’s interesting to on reflect how complimentary each of these things is. For example, it’s easy to dismiss (as Bill Gates has) the desire to get computing into developing countries. However, as Thomas Jefferson points out, any vector for ideas can have profound, cost-free impact on standards of living. A great example of this is the Literacy Bridge project in Ghana, which gives users access to information about effective farming techniques. The Hexayurt, as a design pattern, can be spread at any scale for free to anyone who has Internet access.  Again, Grid Beam is another “open source” design pattern that can be used by anyone who has a means to find out about it. In both cases the designs are such that it they are agnostic about the material used to make them and can be adapted to suit local needs.

It’s an optimistic picture, and perhaps one that should be tempered with a knowlege of how hard development actually is, and particularly with Africa’s obstinate stagnation despite a surfeit of good intentions.  

If the weekend was anything to go by the do it yourself, open source, low energy, sustainable approach has massive appeal in the west - so whatever it's fate in the developing world at least among nerds their will be lots of home made furniture made in solar powered sheds.

This morning I went to a talk about devices which interface directly between the brain and computers. By way of an introductory remark Louise Marston noted that "for thousands of years humans have wanted to be able to communicate directly from one brain to another, which of course we can, by witting." This set the tone for a discussion about the topic of technologically extending the functionality of our bodies.

The panel all agreed that it is a mistake to imagine that using (for example) brain implants to communicate with computers represented a sea change in our sense of self.

Anders Sandberg pointed out that we already use contact lenses and clothes to extend our personal capacities. What makes the ideas such brain implants alarming is that they represent a 'transgression' of our physical bodies. However, as Anders continued to point out, this transgression "makes good posters for films" but isn't actually that practical, mostly because the dangers of infection and medical complication.

Instead he favoured subtle, low level interaction between brain and computer. He gave the beautiful example of his relationship with his laptop - he can subconsciously tell if the hard drive is ok from the noise that it makes.

Other examples include MIT's "Sixth Sense", while Professor Kevin Warwick showed a photo of a device that allowed users to get messages from their computer via tiny electric shocks on their tongue. Probably not to everyone's taste. 

Optogenetics a new approach again. This involves altering your genetic code so that your neurons respond to light and then shining a laser through your cranium to manipulate your brain's behaviour.

While some of the technologies under discussion are not even on the lab bench yet, one technology already in medical use: Deep Brain Stimulation to treat Parkinson's. An implant electrically stimulates the thalamus which reduces the  symptoms of the disease. Some patients go from being unable to dress themselves to being able to drive again. Impressive stuff, but it also reifies a moral thought experiment. Some people who use the device experience personality changes, for example becoming compulsive gamblers. Who would be responsible if the a patient had a personality change and went on to commit a crime? The device manufacturer, the surgeon or the patient? One guy is already suing his doctor because of gambling spree he claims was bought on by medication. 

Perhaps if we had more debates about these kinds of moral dilemmas we'd have a more nuanced understanding of what's at stake. It drove me nuts during the riots that _every_ news presenter had to ask anyone that said anything explanatory about the cause of the riots "Are you making an excuse for them?". Surely we can have a more sophisticated understanding of morals than that discourse seemed to indicate.

The panel itself had some interesting characters. Anders Sandberg comes from the grandly titled Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford, which is also home to a philosopher I particularly like -  Nick Bostrom. He's very entertaining, I seem to remember that he did stand up for a while.  Bostrom also responsible for a confounding logical conclusion through his simulation argument.

Professor Kevin Warwick has had all manner of things implanted in him - a sure sign of commitment to your work. He told us he has a graph of the electrical activity associated with the onset of Parkinson's on his living room wall to keep him focused on his work. Presumably he has a very understanding wife too - some of his experiments have included her, for example wiring their brains together to facilitate direct electrical communication. I once wrote a short story about exactly this. Unfortunately it's not very good; I hope their experience went better than my short story.

Throughout the whole talk there was a tendency to wander between brain-computer interfaces and the subject of artificial intelligence. It seems to me that there isn't really an obvious link between the two, except that they both endanger our sense of self. In many ways this is the most fascinating aspect of the technology. Most people distinguish between using technology to restore function that's been damaged by disease or a car accident and the more treacherous moral territory where technology is used to exceed our 'normal' abilities.

We discussed that the use of a notebook as a memory aid would be could be considered a synthetic extension of our natural abilities, and that no one considers this to have moral implications. However, as I write this I'm quite happy to take advantage of a spell checker and my notebook.

It would feel weird if the computer started improving my prose by suggesting eloquent synonyms, or perhaps advised me that the above "not to everyone's taste" pun is an execrable crime and should be deleted immediately. When computers, through implants, other types of brain-computer interfaces or artificial intelligence start doing things that we consider uniquely human - like creativity and punning - I think it really will cause us to radically reconceptualise ourselves. In this sense, I wonder if examples of using clothes or glasses to enhance ourselves are misleading, because they don't strike at core concepts at what it is to be human. Or perhaps we'll just get over it.

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I wasn't expecting BCB6 to be like it was. What I understood was that anyone could talk, what I didn’t realise was that if I didn't talk it would feel like a cop out.

There’s a board in the reception area with a grid of all the rooms and all the time slots. Anyone that wants to can stick up a card with a subject for a room, with each session lasting 30 minutes. It could be anything, one person had a card up saying “Come and hit me. This is not a metaphor, I have boxing gloves” .  Another person did a test of a board game they were designing (“Peacehaven the board game” - Peacehaven is one the least nice parts of Brighton).

The first thing I went to was a workshop on looking after your mac. It’s only now that I write that down that I realise how twatty that could sound. It was very helpful though. I might upgrade to an SSD, in case you were wondering -  it’s the best upgrade you can do. X Code loads in three seconds.

Standout talks came from James Hugman on revolutions and the web and Jim Purbrick on games.  

I think everyone accepts that calling the various bouts of civil unrest that have occurred recently ‘Twitter’ or ‘Facebook’ revolutions was hyperbole. As James Hugman proved, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some interesting stuff to say about tech and politics. He started his talk by explaining an encryption service aimed at activists called Rubber Hose. It’s designed so that it can be decrypted in multiple different ways, preventing an unintended recipient from knowing if they have the original message. It’s called Rubber Hose because if an activist is tortured to reveal their password they can give the one that decrypts the data into an innocuous message. Here’s the thing that really surprised me - Rubber Hose was programmed by Julian Assange. He’s a nerd!

Other gems included an image of a manual called “How to protest intelligently”. On the front page the instructions read (in Arabic and English) “Do not spread through Facebook or Twitter”, because the publishers knew the government was monitoring social networks.

In economically crippled Spain, tenants who get eviction notices have taken to using the web to summon up flash mobs when the bailiffs arrive. Faced with the prospect of having to remove 100 people from a house they police usually advise the bailiffs to give up.

Finally, I was very interested to hear that the Police in the UK are struggling to get the data they want to arrest rioters. Although RIM (makers of Blackberry devices) have handed over the text of all the messages sent, they have not passed on all of the associated meta data, which seems to have a different legal status.

No where in the talk did James Hugman try to convince us that the Internet was about to unlock a Utopian Global Democracy, and the discussion covered topics such the use of tools intended for activists by criminals and the use of the web to track dissidents.  Every time a quesiton was asked and the James Hugman said ‘I don’t know’ my admiration for him increased. He simply presented some interesting facts without trying to try to force a point of view on us.  

If the topic of the web and democracy has been bedevilled by bullshit, then the topic of “gamification” has had it even worse. However, Jim Purbrick, who used to work on Second Life, clearly drew on a deep affection for games and long experience to support his views - quite the opposite of the band-wagon-jumping phonies who litter the Internet with blogs about Gamification.  There’s a substantial literature around games which I’d love to check out, including the economist Edward Castranova and MMO pioneer Richard Bartle, who described online games as giving users a opportunity to learn more about themselves by going on a “hero’s quest”. This lead to my favourite quote of the conference, when Jim Purbrick, who speaks in a manner very similar to Mark Kermode, blithely remarked that “a hero’s quest is obviously the canonical meta-story”.

I was particularly interested in the Bernard Suits definition of a game as “voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles”. This puts an interesting perspective on the idea that we might use game mechanics in areas such as helping people reduce energy consumption or improving eduction - concepts which are often mooted. It seems to make sense to me that as soon as a game is about overcoming a necessary obstacle then it’s no longer a game.

At no point the the word game have the suffix 'ification' added to it. Enough said.

Then it was my turn to talk. I wasn’t expecting to, so I only had about an hour to put my talk on Philosophy and Technology together. Although my subject was something I’ve been thinking about for ages I found it very hard to communicate. However, it resulted in an interesting debate, loosely in the same vicinity as the point I was try to express.  There are so many well known philosophical debates that it’s quite hard to steer around them, in my case we ended up talking about the ethics of genetic engineering, which wasn’t really what I was trying to get at.   

Trying to articulate your thoughts out loud is a real insight. I discovered that having what you think is an interesting idea in your head and being able to transfer that idea to other people are two very different things.

Of the four geek events I’ve blogged about so far, Bar Camp Brighton has been the most fun. It runs over the whole weekend, I felt that just going on the Saturday was enough for me - although I imagine the Sunday has quite a different atmosphere.

When I first arrived and told someone that I wasn’t intending to speak they told me about their pancake philosophy. When you cook pancakes the first one is always rubbish, but the following ones get better and better - the same is true of speaking in public. So I’m pleased I’ve just tossed my first dud, and looking forward to having another go.

TechHubTuesdays is like a real version of Dragon's Den, in that it's not crafted into a TV friendly narrative, and like a fake Dragon's Den, in that no-one is going to get any money.

In case you haven't come across TechHub as a venue, it's a desk sharing / office sharing space just of Old Street roundabout. It looks like it's been squatted, with missing ceiling tiles and makeshift fittings. It's actually quite expensive.

London hackspace is a club for people who want to make things out of electronics,  a perfect city-centre shed. It's a man zone, the kind of place where Fred Dibnah would be comfortable if he were born in 1998. Rather than steam and wrenches and grease, there are soldering stations, 3D printers and circuit boards. During one of the presentations the inventor of a device called Nanode explained how much time he’d given to the project. Someone reverently whispered “he’s got a wife!”. I suspect he may have been in the minority.

Hackspace is important and it knows it, as was attested by an incongruously sharp suited man who ask questions about commercial prospects. It's important because the residents are exploring the border between the physical and the virtual worlds. There's a device that calculates the number of people in the building using two laser beams to detect comings and goings. A label on it says "do not hack", presumably because if it didn't someone would take it pieces and turn it into something else. It's symbolic, even as you walk in your physical presence is turned into data.

There were two presentations, both on the theme of the turning the physical environment into data. Before we went I explained to two friends that came with me that I thought the Patchube website (talk No. 1) was like YouTube, only for physical data: a place where anyone can upload time-sequenced information about the temperature of their greenhouse, the location of their smart phone, whatever takes their fancy. This description turns out to be pretty accurate, but in fact that Patchube is pronounced Patch-bay, so I'd just made the analogy up. When the nuclear disaster happened in Japan, people started using Patchube to stream data from Geiger counters they had bought. Patchube served as an aggregator, and others produced visualisations of the data. The resulting maps of radiation were apparently more accurate than any data the government realised.

Patchube relies on there being lots of sensors in the world. The Nanode (Talk No. 2) is the answer to this problem. It is a circuit board about 5x5 cm with an ethernet connection so you can plug it into a network just like you would a laptop. What's really special about it is that it runs as a web server, so if you know how to make web pages (which must be the most widespread type of programming knowledge) you can understand the data Nanode produces. It can send data straight to Patchube, at which point anyone can start using it. The Nanode retails at £18.

Invention is the mother of necessity, but it’s clear that Patchube and it’s associated network of sensors haven’t quite found their necessity yet. They’re exciting, but it’s hard to put your finger on why.

To give an example of permeability  between real and virtual, Usman Haque, the founder of Patchube told us of a gardener trying to grow a particular breed of Indian chillis, requiring very precise conditions. He has sensors measuring soil PH, humidity etc. What he needs is for someone in India to do the same, and then he will be able to copy the environmental natural conditions precisely, thus successfully growing his chillies. Physical stuff -> Data -> Physical stuff, it’s a fax machine for topsoil.  

We accidentally turned up an hour early for the talks, and decided to get something to eat before we went in. Conversation turned to the hotdog man at Old Street (apparently they’re great hotdogs) who tweets his location. If we’d have known then what we know now, perhaps we’d have talked about him streaming data from his grill into Patchube to give it genuine physical context (queue length, remaining sausages etc.)  

The Nanode is open source hardware,  in the sense that you can order the components and make it yourself using the freely available design. The process is such that it doesn’t involve any complex industrial tools.  Preassembled and kit versions will all be shipped from China. Some might think this morally dubious, but I’m impressed by the fact that Ken Boak, it’s inventor, went to stay in Shenzhen to meet the companies who would manufacture it. He also pointed out that, unlike some other similar devices, the Nanode will be affordable to Chinese workers who are paid in the region of £150 a month.

The missing killer app, the creative approach that will make Patchube’s practical appeal manifest, probably isn’t going to be thought up exclusively by the current Hackspace residents. Making it all function is nerd fun, but put to good use needs wider participation.

I know that that Hackspace does a lot of work to embed itself in the community, but I suspect a lot of people who would be fascinated by its multifarious possibilities don’t know about it. I mean this in kindness, but precisely because it’s where computers interface with the real world Hackspace should also be a place where nerds do the same.

An aside: The Hackspace toilets have a sign saying “Techhub memberships – please take one” above the bog roll. A rivalry? I’m backing Hackspace. (For the uninitiated, Techub is the more commercially oriented hot desking space for tech startups in Old Street.)

If you like Twitter, if you see potential for citizens to access government services via the web, if you blog, then you're a hopeless, unsophisticated optimist who signs up to every passing fad. 

This Wednesday I went to a London Web event to hear venture capitalist and ex-Goldman Sachs employee John Frankel talk about "Using VC Funds To Change The World". I took it to be implicit in the title that it referred to changing the world for the better. I think what it actually referred to was changing the world by making a lot of money for yourself, and, if you are lucky, John Frankel.

Two topics particularly caught my attention. Firstly the way the dialogue between audience and speaker dwelt on why Europe couldn't produce Startups like "the Valley", echo ing Eric Schmidts' comments later in the week to the Edinburgh TV festival. My natural response is to feel that there are few circumstances where being aiming to be more like the US is a useful policy.  Calling Old Street Silicone Roundabout is symbolic of a naff, and hopeless, attempt to ape America. Anyway, I think that observation sets the context for what I felt was the most salient point of the evening.

A lot of questions were asked about what qualities Mr Frankel looked for in a startup, questions he was clearly used to fielding. Taking the liberty of summarising him, he wanted to invest in a future monopoly like Google or Facebook. Though expressed in many different ways, the idea was that he would put his money in services that could hold society to ransom by using their scale to ensure that they have no competitors.

In too many places to list, I've heard the San Francisco originated cyberculture of the web is one of Doing No Evil and being generally lovely. You might think I'm naive to believe this stuff, but actually I kind of do. Whilst I'm not saying that I think Google and Facebook are run for the good of the world, Google.org exists, Bill Gates is the biggest philanthropist in history and Mark Zuckerberg has signed a pledge to give at least half his wealth away. I'd also point to the fact that Google, Yahoo and Facebook have been prepared to open source all kinds of things, in many instances where they stood little to gain. These firms seem distinct from the gray homogeneity of normal capitalism. Just look at how frivolous their names and logos are: Yahoo! insists on an exclamation mark while Google's logo was designed by a friend of the founders and is, by any normal standard, terrible. Facebook is not a name that a marketing department would come up with.

I strongly got the impression that this is not the MO of the next wave of startups - they are funded by former Goldman Sachs wonks with a view to earning money by exploiting consumers using their monopoly powers. Startups will not be sparked from an exciting PhD paper or from a dorm in a university - they will be the spawn of business plans and spreadsheets and market research.

For reasons I don't fully understand the web seems to make monopolies easier to build, which is incredibly bad news for everyone except their owners. And now I realise there is a whole world of funding for anyone who wants to seize that opportunity. Inevitable perhaps, but normally when I go to a talk about the web it will be about (perhaps overblown) claims that the Internet will make everyone's lives better, especially poor people, especially in developing countries. This talk was exactly the opposite.