gadgets – Ignite Seattle

We grew up watching medical droids, tricorders and stasis chambers as mainstays in futuristic medicine but it wasn’t that long ago that bionics, the hypospray and telemedicine were also merely science fiction. While there aren’t many open APIs or much rapid product development, the IT revolution hasn’t left the medical industry behind completely.

Chris DiBona takes us on a tour of the near future with his visit to the annual American Telemedicine Association Exposition and talks about the state of IT in the latest medical gear.

About Chris DiBona

Chris DiBona is the Open Source Programs Manager for Google, which includes running the Summer of Code, releasing open source software on Google’s Code website and contributing to several og Google’s blogs. He also helps plan the annual Sci Foo Camp with Tim O’Reilly and Nature’s Timo Hannay.

You can find Chris writing on his personal blog, Egofood or on Twitter @Cdibona in his spare time (spare time?).

We geeks love our personal tech. iPhones, Kindles, and netbooks – these are the things we are quick to buy, and quick to trade up to stay on the bleeding edge. But in our wake we leave mountains of discarded, useless, and toxic ex-electronics. We have accepted this cycle of perpetual desire, momentary fulfillment, and discarding to chase new desires as the inevitable cost of technological life. But must this necessarily be the case?

Humblefacture is a movement to better understand how the way we make things affects our society and the environment. Using this understanding, practitioners of Humblefacture aim to make things more safe, useful, and accessible to more people.

Dominic Muren shows us how modular design, biologically-inspired construction, and user fabricated components can be used to create consumer electronics which go beyond “green materials” to create truly sustainable manufacturing.

About Dominic Muren

Dominic Muren is a full time lecturer in Design Studies in the Department of Design in the School of Art at the University of Washington. He has written extensively on design and how it relates to society, both online as a writer for Treehugger.com, and on the weblog IDFuel.com.