IDF: Intel's People-Centric Vision of the Future

So we went to a technology conference and an anthropology lesson broke out. On the third and final day of the Intel Developer Forum, Dr. Genevieve Bell, an Intel Fellow and the director of interaction and experience research at Intel Labs, unfurled a vision of a mobile-driven future that had less to do with circuitry and more to say about the real-life people who use mobile technology in their daily lives.

Bell, an anthropologist, exhorted developers and technologists in attendance to look beyond the purely technical problems they face. Rather, it's important for one to be cognizant of the human experiences technologies provide, she said, with an eye towards creating mobile tech that simplifies rather than complicates daily life, assists people in attaining a smooth "flow" in their endeavors, and ultimately, helps us to become "our best selves—more productive, more healthy, better parents, better partners, better friends, etc."

How this happens will be highly variegated among different users of mobile devices and other on-the-go technologies like wearable tech, Bell maintained. So much so that instead of attempting to tackle mobile by creating one-size-fits-all solutions, we should be thinking of mobile as a personalized experience for all 7 billion potential mobile device users on the planet.

That's a pretty daunting task, Bell admitted, suggesting that tech innovators simply think in broader strokes rather than try to build custom technologies for every individual on Earth.

And if all this sounds like a lot of ambiguous talk with little practical significance, plenty of the more quant-y types could be heard grumbling as much following Bell's presentation.

Fair enough, but my own take is that occasionally jostling the engineers and coders away from their blueprints and algorithms to lay a "Big Picture" rap on them can be useful. What people want from their next mobile device isn't just a faster chip/bigger screen/more apps or whatever—it's to gain a tool that makes them better somehow, trite as that can be to say out loud, especially over 90 minutes to a crowd of thousands.

And anyway, this is Intel. It's not like there wasn't any cool futuristic stuff thrown in during Bell's talk. Specifically, the chip giant offered us some glimpses at technologies being developed at Intel Labs that pertain to mobile security, privacy, and identification, wearable tech, and extreme low-voltage computing.

Password management was one area Bell focused on as an example of technology complicating our lives rather than simplifying things. Intel Labs principal engineer Lama Nachman joined her onstage to demonstrate some intriguing user identification technologies utilizing machine learning that Intel is working on, including voice recognition and an accelerometer-driven security protocol which can determine whether a person carrying a mobile device is its owner or an imposter based on the way they walk.

Fingerprint scanners are cool, I guess. Cooler is a phone that will ID the person who stole your phone as an "imposter" because it measures the differences in their gait as they run away.

Mike Bell, vice president and general manager of Intel's New Devices Group, demonstrated some of the remarkable things Intel is able to do using almost negligible amounts of power.

"Milliwatts are so yesterday," Mike Bell joked as his team showed simple demo board transmitting a fairly complex stream of data to a laptop using just the power gained from a couple of coils dipped into a glass wine. Getting decent compute functionality from practically nothing could be a key to advances in wearable tech such as clothing with mini-computers stitched right in, Genevieve Bell noted.

An example of where such advance might go? Perhaps the prototype cycling jersey made by Fraunhofer which she showed in action during her talk. The jersey uses stretchable circuits to equip a cyclist with LED lights and accelerometers that make biking safer.

"The future isn't just devices but also clothing. What if the clothing we wear keeps us safe and helps us to navigate our surroundings?" Bell said, adding that this was just one application in a wide open space for innovation in mobile technology.

"There's not just one mobile future but rather lots and lots and lots of them. Maybe what we're talking about is not one future but a future for every single person on the planet, seven billion futures, in fact."