Branding
Within a market of extreme competition, branding seems to be emerging as the new focus of marketing, PR, design, and strategic planning. A brand is a model of success. In this sense, a brand is an anticipation: A future state - generically called success - affects the current state of design, advertisement, and corporate communication. Thus the development of branding tools and methods will have to involve anticipatory procedures.
Disease detection in search of medical predictors
Anticipation-based medicine reports on progress in anticipatory disease detection. M. Pamela Griffin and J.Randall Moorman (University of Virginia), in collaboration with Medical Automation Systems, Charlottesville, Virginia came up with a method to analyze change in newbornīs heartbeat patterns. This serves as a predictor for neonatal and sepsis-like illness before the onset of sepsis (major cause of infant mortality).
Researchers at the University of Erlangen (Germany) examined change in the ability to differentiate odors and discovered this to be an early indicator of Parkinsonīs disease.
Anticipation based early diagnostics, focused on predictors, is an area of fast growth. Risk adjusted treatment methods based on predictors improve recommending procedures in heart disease treatment as well as in orthopedic surgery.
Technology Assessment - Research in cooperation with Design Review
New technologies emerge in higher numbers than ever. The rate of obsolescence keeps increasing. Therefore, technology assessment is becoming as important as technological development. Many methodologies are applied today, but almost none qualifies as adequate. Anticipation is a very good candidate for assessing how technological innovation will eventually fare.
Handwriting recognition
Jeff Hawkins, developer of the Palm Pilot and Handspring, applied anticipatory procedures - auto-associative memory - in his handwriting recognition software. His claim that autoassociative memories help in make predictions about the input led to a pattern recognizer software supporting hand-printed character recognition. Future fault tolerant applications in the area of human activity characterized by lots of attention to patterns and few motor skills (such as security surveillance) can be expected.
Improved retrieval of data from hard disk
Enzo Mumolo (Universita di Trieste) reported on ways to minimize data retrieval time through anticipatory positioning of the hard disk arm. Once patterns of data use are analyzed, an anticipatory procedure places the HD drive arm in areas of likely frequent retrieval. A continuum of optimization algorithms have been derived, featuring different prediction performance and, hence, different complexities. Trace driven simulations have shown that relative seek time reduction from about 11% to 23% for a workstation workload can be obtained using anticipatory movements.( Results reported in a Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, 1998)
Security and theft prevention
Project in cooperation with PKA, Essen
Video monitoring is intended to deter theft. But once a crime is committed, the thieves tend to destroy evidence, including the videocamera and tape. An anticipatory dimension to camera surveillance could be achieved through continuous on-line mirroring of data. This will not only safeguard data from destruction, but also aid in identifying felons through access to the on-line data.
Self-repair
Several research centers around the world are developing self-repair functions. The future state of "disrepair" in a material from which products of all kinds are made triggers anticipatory processes of material self-healing and even self-repair of simple devices. Moreover, considering the self-repair function of the living, a new generation of products, combining the artificial and the natural are conceived. The lounge chair designed by J. M. Massaud is made out of technopolymer containing animal protein. Due to its composition the material is able to self-repair slight damage to the material of the surface.
The chaiselongue designed by J. M. Massaud is made out of technopolymer containing animal proteins. Due to its compilation the material is able to self-repair slight damage on the plasicsī surface.