Author: Jonny Hankins

Jonathan's Author Bio: Co Editor of the International Handbook on Responsible Innovation, and author of Responsible Innovation, A Narrative Approach, Jonny works for the Bassetti Foundation in Milan publishing articles on innovation and responsibility on their website and in academic and trade journals and also blogging about his interests. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Responsible Innovation and member of the the Virtual Institute of Responsible Innovation

Fun With Faces

4 Replies Jonny Hankins

If you are looking for a little light entertainment on the web this week I may have a couple of sites for you. Both are related to the way you look, and at how others look at you, and you can participate too.

The first site is called All Look Same. The site contains a type of quiz. You are shown photos of people, places, art etc and you have to decide whether they are from China, Japan of Korea. At the end of the test you are given your result with the appropriate advice regarding learning about other cultures.

The exam room contains 8 different categories, from food to architecture, urban scenery, traditional architecture and modern art, but the really fun one is faces. Can you tell the difference between a Japanese face and that of a person from Korea? Take the test to find out.

Korean, Japanese or Chinese?

Korean, Japanese or Chinese?

There are also a couple of sections of holiday photos that really give a run out to your perception neurons.

The second website is somewhat related as it too deals with faces. The Facity site grew out of a project based in Berlin and Tel Aviv, and now covers a multitude of cities. The idea is simple, a series of photos of faces from an individual city, so why not play a game with your friends, show them a page of faces and try to guess the city.

First you can play with your friends, and then why not participate? There are specifications for the photos but the only rule about joining in is that you must live in the city in question, and there are already 100 cities involved.

The list of cities is interesting because it really shows how communication takes place. The faces tend to be clustered, as I presume groups of friends get together and take the photos and then upload them. Milan has hundreds, as do Berlin and Istanbul, but London only has one, miles behind the mighty city of Robbinsville in New Jersey and Targu Mures in Romania.

Faces of women

Average faces for women around the world

Check out the average face section too, as in the photo above of average women’s faces created through a process of comparing single points in many photos, an interesting project I would say.

So why not add your own? Tell them that Technology Bloggers sent you.

Texting While Driving

9 Replies Jonny Hankins

Communication, communication, communication, but at what cost? In many countries it is illegal to use the phone while driving the car, but many people still do so. Maybe using the phone doesn’t seem such a risky thing to do, but texting?

Figures suggest that many accidents are caused by texting drivers, and many companies are offering possible solutions to the problem. Some Apps block phones that are moving through their GPS systems, but this also blocks passenger phones and cannot tell when the owner is on a bus or train, so have override options. Maybe this override option would be attempted while driving however, and that might be dangerous.

A somewhat typical sight?

Other systems make it so difficult to access the texting facility that it would be impossible to use while driving. Well this is all well and good but a teenager that NEEDS to send a text will find a way, and persistence might not be a good thing at this point. The more difficult it is to enter then the more concentration required, and probably more accidents and deaths caused.

Many of the systems available today also require downloading, so they only work in the phone that carries the App. These systems only work if somebody has downloaded it into a phone (typically their teenage son or daughter’s) and the user cannot work out how to disable it, or doesn’t have another phone or friends for just such emergencies.

More sophisticated systems plug directly into the car and broadcast directly to the driver’s seat, but here hardware is required and other problems of system compatibility are raised.

Although I make light of the situation we are addressing an extremely serious issue. If behaviour does not change than these systems may actually put more people at risk, and that is obviously not to anyone’s advantage.

Many other systems that read out text messages or allow you to dictate them are also available, but I am raising a finger at systems that aim to prohibit rather than adapt behaviour, sold to worried parents that think they might be able to stop their children doing something, and not at those that are aimed at responsible drivers.

So does anybody have experience either as a parent or teenage user that they would like to share with the community?

For a few references and more discussion see this article on NBC News.

My First Year as a Technology Blogger

7 Replies Jonny Hankins

Last week was my blogger birthday, on Friday I was one year old. Once I had decided to start writing I had to look for a place to publish. As always I started with Google.

I wanted to write about innovation and technology but from the particular point of view of ethics and responsibility, so I chose my list of search terms. Technology had to be in there, as did blog or blogger, maybe science too, so in they all went.

Several blogs came out, Technology Blogs being the first, followed by Technology Bloggers, a relatively new website in those days. I had a look at the content and the rules of engagement and decided that I should try with them.

And here was my first lesson. I found this blog because of its name. I had never even been on a blog let alone post a comment, so Tech Crunch, Technocrati and the others were not in my vocabulary, nor my search terms. If you want people to find your blog you should choose the name well.

Author Jonny Hankins

Here I am (without make-up)

As I said I was new to the business, I had never used WordPress and never posted anything. Although I had published on the net I had never done it myself, the Foundation that employs me has a Webmaster so I was never allowed to touch the controls myself.

This factor was not a problem in my first posts. I managed to get the body of the text uploaded and Christopher from Admin did the rest. After a couple of months the very same Christopher asked me if I would like to apply for author status. What this means to the uninitiated is you get your hands on the controls.

It took several attempts I might add to get a grasp of them. One problem is the language, norms and technicalities. Tags, links in the piece, correctly titled and opening in new windows, pictures with the right links, excerpts and categories to decide and formulate.

Fortunately Christopher is a patient and gallant man, so one error at a time and over a period of a couple of months I made less and less mistakes, and now I can do it myself.

I really enjoyed my first posts, I started with the problems created by improvements in prosthetic limb technology, they might actually be better than the natural version.

A rather ironic post followed about US immigration and then I got down to some serious and regular writing.

4 months after my first post Christopher suggested the possibility of writing a series, so I opted for a 6 week long series about the health of the planet. At this point I began to triangulate my blog writing with my work and include links to several articles that were posted on my work site. I also produced an Issuu booklet using both my work and the Technology Bloggers logos.

I have continued to link my different communication forms together as it seems advantageous to all concerned. My work website benefits from readers that follow the links here and likewise in reverse. I have also written a few articles for an innovation blog called Innovation Excellence, and although the topics are different they are related enough to allow links to the other portals, and again all benefit.

The series took a lot of work, but once it was finished I did not want to fall out of the weekly routine so I continued to write every week. My posts have in general got shorter, partly through necessity but also through choice. I can cover a lot of different subject matter and ask questions in a few hundred words that I would have wound into much more complex pieces a few months ago.

Comments are the thing that make blogging so interesting a pastime. I always try to reply to as many as possible. Sometimes though I write something that receives very few comments and this disappoints me. They are often posts that refer to complex debates however and not easy to comment on, given the format of the comment system.

This is my 39th article for technology Bloggers, a fair body of work if put together and an enjoyable project. If anyone reading this is thinking or has ever thought about writing I would personally urge you on. It is very satisfying when someone takes the time to read your production and comment upon it.

Roll on another year and thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read and comment, and to Christopher for the patience, encouragement and expertise.