Rethinking restaurants

Digital ID: 482752. Abbott, Berenice -- Photographer. February 10, 1936 Notes: Code: III.C.1. Man takes pie out of Automat, stone counters and walls below metal and glass display. Source: Changing New York / Berenice Abbott. (more info) Repository: The New York Public Library. Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. See more information about this image and others at NYPL Digital Gallery. Persistent URL: digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?482752

It is Valentine’s Day weekend and a lot of people (including myself) will be taking loved ones to restaurants. When I was young, I worked at a restaurant that had phones on all the tables. There were no waiters – when the customer was ready to order, they would pick up the phone and it would ring in the kitchen. A cook would answer the phone, write down the order, and cook it. When the food was ready, the cook would ring the phone on the table – and the customer would go pick up the order at the front desk, and pay.

I think it would be cool to experiment with some new (and old) models  for running restaurants. I don’t think anything is particularly wrong with current restaurants, I just have a habit of rethinking current ways of doing things.

Below are a few ”what if” thoughts I have when I visit restaurants:

Automats

Automats, where people could go and buy food from what was essentially a gigantic vending machine wall have declined and almost disappeared since the 1950s. As the US interstate system was developed suburbs grew massively out of this massive government action – and the dense urban population that used these restaurants declined. I still wonder why there are not more of these in densely populated cities. Although the personal touch is certainly reduced, the cost and efficiency could make up for that in some instances. With newer technologies and better foods, I would think that super high-tech automats could be created today that would be much better than those that existed in the 50s.

Hub restaurant

A ”hub restaurant” would be a restaurant that served food from other restaurants. For example, the customer would walk into the restaurant and they would have some basic drinks and peanuts or other simple snack-type appetizers. It would not have a kitchen. Instead, it would have a group of ”runners” in place of a kitchen. The customer would have a large menu with items from restaurants that are physically around the restaurant – let’s say within 5 miles. This would be a pretty diverse menu. The customer would still have a waiter/waitress and would still order from them. The customer would get drinks and snacks and could put in their order for a meal. The orders would then be phoned in as pick-up orders at other restaurants and then given to the ”runners” who would go pick them up. The customers would have a restaurant experience, but they would be able to order many different types of food – Italian, burgers, Chinese – all at the same restaurant.

Digital menus

By putting menus on a server, and also allowing orders to be digitally automated, restaurants could take orders via mobile phone. They could also have digital touch menus on all the tables that would allow the menu to be read and allow orders to be made inside the menu via touch. When not in use as a menu, these digital menus could have a browser to surf the web and could have some games built in as well.

Conveyor belts

Sushi restaurants use conveyor belts to allow people to sit down and quickly grab food off the belt and eat. The bill is based on number of plates. What if other types of restaurants used conveyor belts for different types of foods? Special plates could be built using warming elements powered by their proximity to the belt to keep all food items warm (through resonant induction charging). The plates could also be built with RFID built in so that the waiter or waitress could simply scan them to bill you. The plate would know the price of what is on it. The customer would pick up a chicken fried steak plate, a mashed potatoes plate, and a green beans plate. Each would know its price and would tell the table what the bill is. The table itself could sense what plates are sitting on it and tally a bill in real time as you pick items off the belt and put them on the table. I don’t think that this would work in all circumstances, but it could work in situations when the restaurant has a big crowd that is in a hurry (like for lunches).

Mobile restaurant

A restaurant could be built that fits on the back of a tractor trailer. It would drive around town and stop at specified locations to bring on new customers and let off others. It would be a big tractor trailer (with great suspension) that would have a kitchen and rows of tables along the sides. The sides of the trailer would be large windows. The routes would be chosen to maximize great views. Plus, it would stop at scenic points to sit for a while to allow people to eat and enjoy the scenery. Eating at the mobile restaurant would feature a different view every night. This might be especially good for visitors to big cities that would like to see all the sites and get dinner at the same time.

Open sourced analytics

I am ready for the next wave of analytics. I think that using the “open source” model for analytical data could be great. I think the world is ready for powerful group facilitation to vet analytical data in order to get to the facts.

I would call this idea “open sourced analytics”.

“Open sourced analytics” would be based on common technology platforms that facilitate the sharing of common, core measurement data and the algorithms applied to make sense of that data. An incentive system and checks and balances would of course need to be applied, as this sort of thing would still be open to some manipulation.

Think of it as a new type of wiki, but with more structured data and with sets of algorithms open for scrutiny, and tweaked in an organized and open manner by all participants.

Think about government data that is currently publicly available but unused: What if data sets were made available in a powerful platform that also allowed everyone to query the data and build their own models over time? Useful findings would rise to the top. As technology progresses, governments will likely open up their data – data around crime, budgets, park access and so on, so that everyone can see that data.

But what about analyzing it? This is where the open analytics platform comes in. It would give everyone the tools to analyze the data in the open so that everyone can scrutinize the way the data is being massaged and analyzed.

What about research data from universities concerning heath studies and other scientific studies? Open sourced analytics would allow open access to the data and tools to analyze it for patterns, predictions and more.

Getting good data and making it available is only half the battle. The other half is opening up all the data-driven massaging and modeling that happens with the raw data. This will in turn open up a new world of accuracy and conversation regarding what we can know and what we want to know as a society. And ultimately, it could improve everything.

The new news

People often stick to ideas and concepts they have known all their lives. This can be a hindrance to innovation. Both individuals and businesses latch onto linear thinking and miss how things can change. We like to think linearly, but reality is not linear. When the automobile came out, some continued to improve horse carriages and horse whips. Why? Because everyone knew transportation was all about horses and carriages. As Ford said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”. The media is one of the most obvious areas where people have latched onto what they have known their entire lives, so it is difficult for them to see what is coming. Dear newspapers, magazines, and book publishers – if you think you are in the “printing words and pictures on paper” business – you missing the boat.

For my entire life, magazines and newspapers have been words and pictures printed on paper, and for the past 15 years, some of that same exact information has moved to the Web. So in order to improve on that we just take those words and pictures and put them on computers, right? Yes, but there is more. New devices and new technologies will push the meaning “book”, “magazine”, and “newspaper” into new areas. And, news organizations will need to change and develop new skill sets to create these new types of media.

New devices/ technologies

iPad devices can be future they are looking for. I have been looking for something like the iPad to be created for some years now, because I believed that a tablet-type device that is properly designed and marketed would mark the big turning point for computing and media. My guess has always been that there is a big market for tablet computers. The reason being that it meets most people’s home computing needs. Many people only surf the web and do a few other basic tasks – yet the industry is selling computers that run powerful applications which casual users will never buy. So tons of hard drive space is left dormant as people move more and more into the cloud for their computing. A solution that invests less in hard drive space and expensive hardware, but which invests in a user experience – all in a low cost device – can be a winner – especially for books, newspapers and magazines. But, new skills we be required.

New skill sets to create a new product

Old media companies – like newspapers and book and magazine publishers have a new skill set to develop. Skills in printing on paper will continue to decline, while multi-media skills will be in increased demand. Over the past decade these media companies have moved in that direction because of the web. But technology will re-make media and publishing companies into content, trust, curation and multi-media expert companies. “Newspaper” will become an antiquated term – kind of like “carriage”. Paper won’t be involved in the process of most newspaper distribution. Being able to research and write well will still be critical – but what will be needed more and more is the ability to turn information into videos, pictures, images and interactive features. The iPad type devices will mean this type of content will be more easily accessible for everyone. Unbound from the more expensive, bulkier and slow-to-boot-up computers – the tablets will boot almost instantly and do all the things you want to do more conveniently. This type of device makes a great platform for a lot of things – including better books, magazines and newspapers.

For example, we have all read text books. Imagine a new type of textbook on a tablet device. It would have interactive charts, graphs based on real data sets. The data would be in the textbook and could allow the student to create their own queries and charts – another level of interactivity. Video and sound could be incorporated. Social functions would be available, too. Text and images could be shared with friends instantly. This is the textbook of the future, and it looks a lot like the book, magazine and newspaper of the future as well. I have a Kindle, which I like a lot. But I expect more from media now, because of the internet. I will be reading a Kindle and I will think: “I need to email this paragraph to a friend”. But it does not have that capability – right now.

A couple of my favorite media sources – The Economist and the Wall Street Journal seem to be at the leading edge in these areas. And, from data I have seen, these two sources are not experiencing the big decline in subscribers that have plagued other newspapers and magazines. Part of this is because these two news sources are simply superior news organizations and writers – but another reason is that they moved earlier than others to incorporate what technology could offer their readers. Especially the Wall Street Journal, which for years now has done a great job of creating interactive features on its website. These features, and ways of working, will move onto tablet computers in the long run. I think this may apply to books as well. I believe books will also morph into multi-media and data-driven experiences. This will shape new media – and will reshape the companies behind them. This will be disturbing for many in the industry but exciting for consumers of their valuable content.

Time traveler's cheat sheet

Time traveler’s cheat sheet Boing Boing.

Our Exponential Future

About 1260 AD, Ibn Khallikan, a Kurdish historian living in the Abbasid Empire (modern Iraq), wrote an encyclopedia with biographies of many famous men (though no women). One of the biographies includes a story about chess and the meaning of “exponential growth.” The story takes place in India, because Ibn Khallikan knew that chess was a game that came from India.

According to this story, King Shihram was a tyrant who oppressed his subjects. One of his subjects, a wise man named Sissa ibn Dahir, invented the game of chess for the king to play, to show him that a king needed all his subjects and should take good care of them. King Shihram was so pleased that he ordered that the game of chess should be preserved in the temples, and said that it was the best thing he knew of to train generals in the art of war, a glory to religion and the world, and the foundation of all justice.

Then King Shihram asked Sissa ben Dahir what reward he wanted. Sissa answered that he didn’t want any reward, but the king insisted. Finally Sissa said that he would take this reward: the king should put one grain of wheat on the first square of a chessboard, two grains of wheat on the second square, four grains on the third square, eight grains on the fourth square, and so on, doubling the number of grains of wheat with each square (an exponential rate of growth).

“What a dummy!” thought the king. “That’s a tiny reward; I would have given him much more.” He ordered his slaves

to bring out the chessboard and they started putting on the wheat. Everything went well for a while, but the king was surprised to see that by the time they got halfway through the chessboard the 32nd square required more than four billion grains of wheat, or about 100,000 kilos of wheat. Now Sissa didn’t seem so stupid anymore. Even so, King Shihram was willing to pay up.

But as the slaves began on the second half of the chessboard, King Shihram gradually realized that he couldn’t pay that much wheat – in fact, to finish the chessboard you would need as much wheat as six times the weight of all the living things on Earth.

(London, 1843-1871, Biographical dictionary of Ibn Khallikan, vol. III, p. 71). – Kidipedea

One big risk for humans is that we may not always precieve the world correctly. We live in a world that can change exponentially with brains that like to plot things out linearly.

In other words, we do a bad job at perceiving reality in some cases. (It is no secret to those of us interested in cognitive science know that humans minds are flawed. Here is a list of cognitive biases if you want to peruse a few. We have a habit of perceiving things that are not true.)

The theory I propose that can cause us problems in the future: Humans seem to think (and plan) in a linear growth fashion while reality can be exponential.

So, we seem to have problems getting our minds around exponential behaviors. They can sneak up on us, like in the old story above. For example, energy usage, population growth, and consumption of resources are all growing at an exponential rate.  Exponential depletion of resources combined with exponential consumption layered on top of exponential population growth appears to be the reality we are moving into at this point.

Let’s take a look at a population graph of the world since 10,000 BC. This is an exponential graph. Once you get on the right side of one of these things, it can start going almost straight up at this scale.

From Wikipedia

Combine a population that is growing exponentially, combined successful populations of people moving out of poverty to become ever more consumption oriented – and you could perhaps have a problem at some point.

Our history plotted on this population chart has been one where growth and consumption has been the goal throughout history – and man has not had an issue because the finite amount of total resources was so much larger than the population’s demands. But, I think there has to be a point where exponentially depleted resources meet exponentially growing demand, and we have an issue. We would at that point meet a new paradigm that we have never encountered before. So, the future over the next 20 years could be much different than the last 20.

On the positive side, we can make progress at an exponential rate. Ray Kurzweil, futurist, technologist, and all around genius predicts exponential growth in certain information technologies, which can allow us to survive and thrive. For example, he believes that solar energy is improving at an exponential rate and will be capable of providing all of our energy needs in 20 years.

The reason why solar energy technologies will advance exponentially, Kurzweil said, is because it is an “information technology” (one for which we can measure the information content), and thereby subject to the Law of Accelerating Returns.

“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” he said. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.”

Solar Power to Rule in 20 Years, Futurists Say

So, what what topics should be paid attention to in order to understand the future? I recommend 4 words that start with “E”: Energy, Environment, Economics, and last but not least… Exponential growth.

LinqMax – A simpler way to share

I just launched a site that Tomorrow’s Trends followers may be interested in. It is called LinqMax.

If you are a user of Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, or Gmail and like to share links then this may be a service you might be interested in. It is pretty basic and simple, but that is how I like it. Basically, you add a button to your browser bar. As you surf the web you can click on the button that adds a bar across the top of your web page. You can then share with friends on your favorite social websites and email. It also has voting and discussion capabilities if you choose to log in and use that functionality. It is integrated with Google and Yahoo! so that you can login using your existing login and password.

Check it out if you are interested.

LinqMax

What separates extraordinary and average people?

Malcolm Gladwell¬† has come out with some interesting concepts. And, he has a new book out called Outliers. The new book poses the question: “why do some people succeed, while so many more never reach their potential?” He applies the concept of scarcity and abundance to people and their capabilities. Here is a video where he discusses his new book and its concepts.

BarCamp Memphis

BarCamp Memphis is complete and has been a resounding success. (A BarCamp is a user-generated technology, business, entrepreneur conference – generally around techie stuff.) A great crowd showed up and we all enjoyed it. Thanks to all who pitched in and helped us shape it into something good. I enjoyed being a planner this year for the event. If you missed my presentation, or want to view it again – see below:

Changes

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: technology)