| | Stefano Marzano
CEO & Chief Creative Director, Philips Design
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| 1. Questions, questions, questions
Artificial intelligence, Ambient Intelligence... they are terms that trigger the imagination - and, at the same time, call up all sorts of questions in people's minds. What is it? What will it do? How will it do it? What will it look like? How intelligent will it be? Can I keep control, or will it take over? When will it be available? And do I want it, anyway? All very human questions - which come down to "What will be the relationship between this intelligence and me?"
Businesses will also be asking themselves questions. Will Ambient Intelligence find a favourable response deep down in people? Will it meet fundamental needs and desires? Will it be the next big opportunity for our business? Is it something we should get involved in? How will institutions, governments and authorities stand in relation to Ambient Intelligence? How will it be regulated? Will they encourage it and provide the necessary infrastructures?
I would like to ask - and suggest answers to - a number of questions relating to the cultural issues raised by Ambient Intelligence. First, "What will – or should - Ambient Intelligence do?" Then, "How will it do it?" – that is, what experience should it deliver? Then, "What future issues should we be prepared for?" And, finally, "How can we communicate with consumers about something as intangible as Ambient Intelligence?"
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| 2. What should Ambient Intelligence do?
First, what should Ambient Intelligence do? Obviously, we want it to improve the quality of people's lives. And I believe it can do that. But there is a “but!” In itself, technology is not a force either for good or bad. Whether it works positively or negatively depends on what we decide to do with it - because not everything that is possible with technology is actually desirable. It is therefore very important that we make the right choices with Ambient Intelligence.
Balance - a question of choices
We can only do that if we agree on what quality of life and what sort of world we would like to see develop. There seems to be a growing consensus that to achieve Sustainability we need to achieve a good balance between three factors, sometimes referred to as the three P's: People, Profit, and Planet. This concept is changing social, political, and business agendas. So as we develop Ambient Intelligence, we would do well to consider how we can take due account of these factors, and allow them to guide our work.
I would like to suggest some ways in which we can do that, specifically as they affect the cultural aspects of Ambient Intelligence.
2.1 Three factors
Reformulating the three P's to apply more specifically to Ambient Intelligence, I suggest we need to take account of the following three factors.
First, fundamental human drives: what we need and what we want out of life. This is the People aspect.
The second is the constraints that our physical and social environment place on us. This is the Planet part.
And finally, the Profit part, the potential of Ambient intelligence for generating economic growth, profit and wealth.
2.1.1. Fundamental human drives
Let's start by looking at the first factor, fundamental human drives. I do not believe that these have changed significantly since we first lived in caves. We have a reliable guide to them in the many patterns of behavior that the science of anthropology has found repeated – in different places, at different times – over millennia.
Amplification and exteriorization - opening up infinite possibilitiesSpecifically, ever since we began to paint images on cave walls, scratch lines on sticks, or chip stone tools, we have been amplifying our mental and physical powers by exteriorizing them. The French anthropologist Andre Leroi Gourhan has described the emergence of these activities as the most significant turning point in the history of humanity. They allowed us to make the intangible tangible. Gradually, from that point, we began to exploit everything around us to improve our lives and expand our powers. Today, the means may be different, but the goal of our activities is the same.
Empowerment - comfort, freedom, simplicity
But why are we driven in this way? Simplifying, I believe it is because we want to survive, to attain the highest possible levels of comfort and freedom, and to make sense of the world.
So, from finding food and protecting ourselves from the elements and other animals, we started to climb Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, becoming interested in our physical comfort. And our most basic instincts have been driving us to climb higher and higher ever since. In fact, those instincts do not recognise any limits to our aspirations. We want to be everywhere, to do everything, and to know everything, and we want to achieve that with a minimum of effort and a maximum of comfort. Simply surviving is not enough, We want to become invincible, immortal and essentially demi-gods - at all costs and as our top priority.
This deep-seated human longing is widely reflected in myths and legends, and popular culture: in the Faust story, for instance, and in Superman, and Bionic Woman. It is also reflected in many religions, where gods or goddesses are often seen as all-powerful and in essentially human form. And - particularly relevant to us - throughout history this instinct to find ever greater comfort, power, knowledge and freedom has also been the main driving force behind
Miniaturization - maximizing freedom and comfort
But being able to do, know and experience things is not enough. We want it all with maximum comfort and minimum effort. For example, we like flying in a plane because it helps us to be everywhere. But it's far from ideal. We'd prefer to fly like a bird. Or be beamed around, like in Star Trek. And in the home, we
This desire to have devices that amplify our powers but do not hinder us or clutter our lives in the process can be seen as the driver of the increasing miniaturization. Many devices have already made the transition from big static object to small object that we can carry around on our bodies: clocks are now wrist watches, and more recently phones and audio systems have reached the stage of becoming worn on the body. Potentially, many of the devices that we have created to exteriorize and expand our powers will make the journey back inside us - and become effectively re-interiorized.
2.1.2. Social and physical constraints
So much for the first factor that we need to consider. Now, some of the constraints imposed on us by our social and physical environment.
Using intelligent systemsSome of the main elements in our surroundings that we, as human beings, have tried to exploit in pursuing our instinct, have been intelligent systems - in the first place, other human beings and animals. We enslaved or subjugated other nations, and we got others to work or fight for us, even sacrificing them to the gods to help us control nature. We domesticated wild animals and cultivated wild plants. And today, we cultivate microbes, manipulate molecules and are just starting to modify our own genetic code.
Civilisation - the original driver of Ambient Intelligence
However, amplification of our powers thanks to technology has led to greater contact with others and therefore greater socialization. And the more we get to know about other people, the more we realize that we all share the same aspirations.
In the past, that meant, for example, that if we were considering enslaving our neighbours, they were probably thinking of enslaving us. A status quo was reached and we gradually developed rules of good neighborliness - a civilised culture - that put constraints on how far we could go in exploiting other people to achieve our own goals.
As the concept of who our neighbors were expanded - from family, to tribe, to nation, to the whole human race - so the idea of slavery and, more generally, the idea of achieving one's goals at the expense of another became less acceptable. Gradually, the emphasis shifted to achieving fulfillment through self-generated personal growth.
Sustainability
Today, we're also beginning to constrain our exploitation of animals, and we're becoming concerned about the genetic modification of crops, not to mention animal and human cloning, and the natural environment - not only close to home but globally.
It is not just altruism: we are also inspired by what has gone wrong in the past, and by the fear of what might go wrong in the future. As a result, we are much more cautious today about exploiting new intelligent systems. In effect, we are rapidly developing a global civilized culture based on sustainability - an appreciation that the world and its inhabitants are ultimately interdependent. It is a culture that goes beyond environmental issues to include questions of social responsibility and economic viability.
The race to the next stage
The abolition of slavery, the rise of democracy, and the emancipation of many groups in society have led to the development of new technological devices to perform tasks formerly carried out by slaves and servants - resulting in today's sophisticated mechanical and electronic devices that amplify our abilities and increase our comfort and freedom of movement. Now, although we had to give up using organic intelligent systems because of social and ethical concerns, the use of ambient, artificial intelligent systems, can be seen as the next natural step, because they will help us get closer to achieving our objective, but in a civilized way. This is increasingly important, because, the more imbalances are put right, the more impatient people become to see the rest also put right.
2.1.3 Potential for growth, profit and wealth
We now have one factor left to consider: the P for Profit.
Philips values - Using technology to improve people's lives
Ambient Intelligence may lie along on the natural path being taken by human beings, but is it also “natural' for Philips as an organization?
Right from the start, with the electric light bulb, Anton and Gerard were applying the latest technologies to produce goods that would change people's lives for the better. Having light available at the flick of a switch has given us the power to banish darkness for good, and remove a great restriction on our activities. It has increased people's productivity, created employment and therefore wealth and well-being. And that has been the story of Philips ever since - providing technologies that likewise expand our powers and enhance our freedom. The work now being done here on Ambient Intelligence is just the same mission being fulfilled in an exciting new way.
Differentiating power
So we can make a profit with Ambient Intelligence. But it will need to be done in a certain way. As companies come closer together in terms of their technologies, they are finding it harder to differentiate themselves on the basis of technology alone. But there are at least two ways we can differentiate ourselves.
One way is make sure our Ambient Intelligence properly respects the P for Planet, including not only environmental but also social and economic issues. Trends in business reporting suggest that this will become an increasingly important differentiator in the next few years.
The other way we can differentiate ourselves is on the basis of appearance. Wherever possible, people tend to judge intangibles on the basis of something tangible. In this case, that means what they can see - the object in which the intelligence is embedded - and how they experience it - the type of behaviour it exhibits - and how we present it to the customer. In other words, we can differentiate ourselves in the way our Ambient Intelligence does what it does.
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| 3. How will Ambient Intelligence do what it does?
This brings me nicely to my next question. How will Ambient Intelligence do what it does? What would be the ideal form? What would be the ideal Ambient Intelligence experience?
From our research at Philips Design, in collaboration with a network of specialist institutes, we have isolated a number of general principles, as well as specific processes and tools for generating and validating ideas about this - in the home, on the person, at work, in public places and on the move.
Relevant, meaningful, understandable
First of all, it has become clear that Ambient Intelligence should have a form and experience that users perceive as being relevant, meaningful and understandable. They want to feel it fits in with what they want to do in their specific situation, and how they want to do it in their specific culture. They want it to be significant to them in a deeper sense. And they want to be able to
Relevant
What is relevant? Certain objects in our surroundings are timeless and indispensable: elements like tables, chairs, walls, floors, ceilings and clothes exist in some form in almost all cultures. Although subject to superficial variations, they have remained essentially unchanged for millennia. They have proved themselves to be relevant. But our research has also shown that the relevance of such objects may differ from place to place and from culture to culture. For us, in western Europe, for instance, chairs are more important than carpets, but the reverse is the case in Arab cultures. And, in the case of clothing, the relevance of garments is clearly affected by culture. Contrast the baseball cap with the burkha, for instance.
Meaningful
What is perceived as meaningful also differs from culture to culture. In Japan, for instance, memories and ancestors are very important: even the smallest flat will have room for a shrine. In Italy, the present family is culturally very significant, so family gatherings are highly valued. The British like their privacy. In Islamic culture, offering hospitality is very important.
Understandable
Ambient Intelligence is almost by definition largely invisible to the user. Interaction between the user and the intelligence is also required. But interacting with the invisible and intangible is not something that comes easily to human beings. We are used to decoding the world through physical objects and signs. We therefore need to make sure that we use items in the environment which are meaningful and have iconic value to serve as interfaces. These can then develop further and form new archetypes for interfaces with
Two examples
An example of what I mean can be seen in our project La Casa Prossima Futura: The house of the near future. It shows that the house of the future will actually look more like the house of yesterday than the house of today. The functions that today are contained black or grey boxes will tomorrow be embedded in all sorts of traditional-looking objects, such as terracotta dishes, vases, or picture frames.
In wearables, you can see the same thing. You can focus on the technology - and wear the equivalent of black boxes; or you can embed the technology in such a way that it respects people's desire to convey messages with their clothing - messages of sexual attraction, authority, or membership of a social group. This is what we tried to do in our New Nomads project.
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| 4. How can we create the “right” Ambient Intelligence - the relevant hypothesis for a desirable future?
So how can we actually set about developing a concept proposition in practice? We have to focus on satisfying universal and timeless human needs, but we also need to do it in ways that people will find relevant and meaningful within their own timeframe and culture. We also need to make sure that any ideas we suggest are technologically feasible, economically viable, and in line with environmental and social sustainability: the three P's again.
4.1 Strategic Futures
To do this, we continuously collect information about large-scale social trends expected to develop over the next 5-7 years and that will affect the way people act and feel. We also do field research, that we call Culture Scan, into short-term trends - the latest developments in areas like street-life, film, video games, websites, lifestyle, fashion and cars, up to a maximum of two years ahead. We do the same with information about technological developments and developments in the business world. All this information is then validated with experts, using the Delphi method (amongst others).
Imagineering - benefits, competences, customer interfaces
Based on this information, we use our Strategic Futures® process to “imagineer” or create hypotheses of life scenarios. We first identify what is possible - that is, what benefits we could theoretically provide within 5 to 7 years. Then we apply our findings concerning trends and social developments to identify precisely which of those possible benefits people are most likely to see as relevant to their lives. For instance, in Western society today, there is a growing interest in sustainability, in discovery and in networking: projects that take these or other current interests into account are more likely to succeed than those that don't.
Having identified the relevant benefits, we are then in an excellent position to see what competences will be required to implement those ideas. Those competences might be obtained by joining up with a suitable partner; or we might want to acquire or develop them ourselves.
Looking ahead in this way also means we can see what sort of customer interface will be needed to present and take the product, system, or service to consumers. For instance, will we want to sell the product through our traditional channels, or will a different channel be more appropriate or effective? We can also test new paradigms, and aesthetic qualities.
Validation and communication
Each scenario is then validated, again using the Delphi method, with experts, opinion leaders, and a network of research institutes. And, through exhibitions, media interviews and debates, we present our ideas to the general public. The aim is to identify those areas for further research that will lead to hypotheses about “preferable futures,” and to roadmaps of competences and capability development. Projects of this type that we have already carried out include Television at the Crossroads; Vision of the Future; New Nomads; New Objects, New Media, Old Walls; and La Casa Prossima Futura.
“Memories of the future”
This approach not only helps us to understand what people desire and find relevant and meaningful, it also helps to create what neuroscientists David Ingvar and William Calvin have called “memories of the future.” They found that people who think ahead and formulate an idea of what they want to happen are better placed to recognise signs relevant to those ideas. Thinking about potential future developments seems to open your mind to receive them; not thinking about them tends to close your mind to them.
That means, at company level, if we together formulate a number of options in advance, we will be more focused and better able to discuss alternatives with each other. We will also be able to derive hypotheses and roadmaps for functionalities, technologies, new materials and capabilities. And, most importantly, we will be able to concentrate our valuable and scarce resources on precisely those projects that have the best chance of success.
Sharing our scenarios with the public not only provides us with feedback on their suitability and on the best way of approaching consumers with our ideas; it also plants “memories of the future” in people's minds, suggesting possibilities to them that may ultimately turn into new aspirations and wants. It actively involves people in setting the direction of change.
4.2 Getting real
Up to this point, we have been talking about showing people mock-ups and films of possible uses. Now, having filtered the various ideas down to only those that the public and the experts think are most promising, we develop working prototypes, to test the technology, the design, the materials and the way people use them.
At this stage we also want to find out to what extent people would prefer to have the technology on show, or hidden away.
This stage also gives an opportunity to test out appropriate new materials that would allow us to produce the shapes required and create an appropriate look and feel. We need to experiment with modes of interaction, exploring the sorts of relationships people would like to have with the product.
Our prototypes take all these factors into account. They also look good and in tune with the times, because we have to communicate with people in the visual language they understand. We then closely observe different people using them in natural settings. Along these lines, we have already done research into Wearables in New York and London, and into the development of a community network in Edinburgh.
Finally, unlike “ordinary” products, Ambient Intelligence products operate together as a system. We therefore need to understand how people will interact with them as a system. Can people understand how the various component parts work together? What sort of interface do they prefer to use? Which aspects of the system do they interact with most often? Which least often? These and many more practical questions need to be explored through experimentation and observation, and HomeLab will provide us with a vital new laboratory in which we can do this, specifically in relation to Ambient Intelligence in the home.
4.3 Hot or not?
The result of that observation and experimentation is a working prototype that has survived all the filters. At that point, the decision may be taken to put it into production. We then need to be sure that the new product is going to be “hot” when it reaches the market - that its appearance and positioning will be perfectly in tune with trends in terms of colours, finishes, shapes and interface. To find this out, we do a Culture Scan in the intended market to provide guidelines for the final design and launch processes.
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| 5. Business issues
The embedding of intelligence in the environment means that artefacts covering all areas of business will become smart. Digital technology will enter into the core of many other industries. This implies a new model of the relationship between electronics and other areas of business, one which places digital technology at the centre. This new model has both practical and deeper consequences.
Capabilities
First, on a purely practical level, we will need to find partners who can provide the right complementary capabilities. For example, if we find that people want intelligence embedded in a table, we will look for a partner in the furniture business. If they want intelligence in clothes, we look for a clothes manufacturer. And we have already worked in this way with Leolux, FeliceRossi, Levi's and Nike, for instance.
Cultures
Having found partners, we will need to work out appropriate ways of working together. Each industry has its own cultures and codes; and we shall need to learn to understand each other and find new common ground if the partnership is to be successful. Design, materials, development, manufacturing, and marketing will all need to undergo radical adjustments on both sides.
Values
But besides finding partners with complementary competences, it is also important to find partners who share the same values and affinities. Because only when you have the right fit both in terms of competences and values do you have a partnership that consumers will find credible - and therefore also a proposition they will accept.
Part of that credibility will also depend on how the partnership relates to the consumer. The two parties have to work out a new form of joint customer relations. They need a common channel for dealing with complaints, questions and advice; a common way of approaching the customer or potential customer, and so on.
All in all, we need to develop a totally new competence in building good relationships with complementary partners.
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| 6. Deeper issues
I've touched on some of the culture- and value-related aspects of the new business situation that Ambient Intelligence gives rise to. Now I'd like to touch on a few more issues of a more abstract kind that we shall have to confront at some point.
Educating our intelligent objects
Very soon, familiar objects that used to be static and unintelligent will become “subjects” –active and intelligent actors in our environment. Ambient Intelligence is about creating new types of relationships, not only between people and their active objects, but also among those objects themselves. Consider a smart home in which various products are activated as we arrive home from work. The message device reports on who's called, the audio system plays our favourite music, the cooking centre tells us that dinner's ready and - Oh, it's six o'clock! Time for the news! – so the TV flicks on automatically as well. If you've had a hard day at the office or a tiring journey, the last thing you want is to be greeted with a whole lot of noise as all these devices compete for our attention. So we need to educate our ambient intelligent systems. Or rather, we need to build good, social behaviour into them, along with the ability to learn. By doing so, we will essentially be defining the culture of Ambient Intelligence.
Ambient Intelligence products will be the modern-day equivalent of trusted butlers, maids and valets. If you wanted your butler or valet to serve you well, you had to train them to do things the way you wanted them done. Quietly and efficiently. Like new employees or indeed, like babies, they need to be educated in the morality, etiquette and culture of the society they're entering. They need to be socialized; their personalities need to be shaped.
We are patient with babies – we give them a couple of decades to achieve an acceptable level of socialization. But we will not be so patient with objects. We'll want them to come into our lives almost fully socialized. They'll need to be ready-to-use, grown-up and sociable... from Day One.
The next challenge
At the moment, we are only envisaging the first phase of Ambient Intelligence, in which intelligent devices will behave in a predictable way, performing actions selected from a closed set that has been programmed in at the design phase. However, in due course, we will move on a second stage, with objects that can develop behavior that has not been explicitly programmed in, but which can arise through the interaction of various parameters.
An Ambient Intelligence of this sort will grow up, as it were, becoming customized over time to the requirements of the user. Users may be able to invest in “training” for their Ambient Intelligence, which in turn will mean that they will almost “care for” it in the way good parents care for their children and good employers care for their employees. We will need to be prepared to deal with the cultural implications of this development.
Where is the boundary?
Another cultural issue we will need to consider at some point will be the desirability of Ambient Intelligence being incorporated into an even more intimate ambience - into our own bodies. We are already incorporating Ambient Intelligence into our clothing. And we are quite happy to have a pacemaker built into our bodies. Last month, a British professor (Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading) took things a step further by having a chip implanted into his wrist linked to the median nerve, which operates the muscles of the hand. It was part of a larger project called Project Cyborg, partly funded by spinal injury organizations.
This has a medical justification. But how long will it be before we accept the implantation of chips for non-medical reasons? Attitudes to the body are already changing. Body piercing, tattoos and cosmetic surgery are much more common than a generation ago. And only this month, a US company (Applied Digital Solutions) received the go-ahead from the FDA to market a chip that can be injected into children or Alzheimer's patients, so that they can be traced by GPS. (Incidentally, the fact that most of the 2,000 applications the company has already received come from South America rather than the US, shows
If this sort of product finds widespread public acceptance, will we have crossed an important boundary? Where will people draw the line between the organic and the inorganic, the real and the artificial? And how will that affect how we view and treat our Ambient Intelligence systems... and each other?
Which reality is real?
A less obvious, but equally fundamental issue that awaits us, is an ontological one - about the nature of existence itself, or at least how we perceive it. Marshall McLuhan famously said that the medium was the message – that we were becoming more interested in television, for instance, than reality. The French sociologist Jean Baudrillard of the Sorbonne thinks this is only the beginning. He argues that the traditional relationship between media and reality is being reversed. Increasingly, the media are no longer seen as just reflecting or representing reality. They constitute a new, hyper-reality that's felt to be even more real than “real reality”. The fact that we call semi-staged programmes like Big Brother “reality-TV” probably says more about what people think of as “real” than we suspect.
Will we get so used to interacting with our Ambient Intelligence that it will affect the way we interact with real people? If we come to experience more of the real world through technology rather than directly through our senses, are these indirect experiences less valid? Is hyper-reality less valid than physical reality? Where can we draw the boundary between physical reality and imagination?
We may not want to get into deep philosophical discussions like this every day, but, at some point and in some form, these are issues we will need to confront.
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| 7. How to measure intelligence?
For now, let's come back to earth with a more practical topic. A few minutes ago, I compared Ambient Intelligence systems to butlers, maids and valets. And I also mentioned the problem of communicating with consumers about something as intangible as Ambient Intelligence. The metaphor of the butler may help us out here.
A piece of research I read a few years ago by a Florentine anthropologist compared the standard of living of a freeman in Ancient Greece with someone in Western society in the 1980s. The problem was to find a common measure. Based on the fact that a freeman in Ancient Greece was allowed to own 8 slaves, and taking into account what work the slaves did, the researcher managed to work out that today, with all our domestic appliances and conveniences, we have the equivalent of 36 slaves!
I understand butlers are becoming fashionable again (Pim Fortuyn has one, I believe). So why don't we use the butler as a unit of measure of convenience and ease in Ambient Intelligence? After all, the power of cars is measured in terms of horses. When the term “horsepower” was first coined, it must have called up a wonderful picture: a carriage drawn by an enormous team of invisible horses. Who wouldn't want a carriage like that! So perhaps we can soon describe a top-of-the-range Ambient Intelligence system as “a 120-butler system”. People can boast: “I have 55 butlers”, and real estate agents can praise houses as “A highly desirable townhouse: 6 bedrooms, 112 butlers”.
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| 8. The Culture of Ambient Intelligence - Human culture in the broadest sense
To conclude, Ambient Intelligence is more than just a question of embedding technology into objects.
It involves human culture in its broadest sense - universal desires; complex social relationships; different value systems; individual likes and dislikes; the sustainability of economic and natural ecosystems; and codes of ethics, conduct and communication, both in civil society and in business.
The more we understand all these aspects, the better we will be able to find satisfactory answers to all our questions, shape our propositions, and succeed in providing people with an Ambient Intelligence that they feel comfortable with and can welcome into their lives as something that, in the broadest sense, truly improves their quality of life.
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| References
Baudrillard, Jean, Le Système des objets (Paris: Gallimard, 1968); pp. 255-83 trans. as “The System of Objects” by Jacques Mourrain, in Mark Poster (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings (Stanford: 1988) 10-29 ____________, Simulacrum and Simulation, S.F. Glaser (trans.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1995
Calvin, W. H., “How to think what no one has ever thought before,”” in J. Brockman & K. Matson (eds.), How Things Are: A Science Tool-Kit for the Mind, William Morrow & Co., (1995)
Ingvar, D., “Memory of the Future: An Essay on the Temporal Organization of Conscious Awareness,”” Human Neurobiology, (1985), 127-136
Leroi Gourhan, A., Gesture and Speech, trans. A. Berger, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (1993)
Maslow, A., "A theory of human motivation", Psychological Review, 50 (1943), 370-396
________, Motivation and Personality, New York: Harper, 1954
________, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, New York: The Viking Press, 1971
McLuhan, M., Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Cambridge,
Applied Digital Solutions: www.adsx.com
Project Cyborg: www.kevinwarwick.com
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