Getting Simple

Getting Simple

By Nono Martínez AlonsoSociety & CultureEducationArtsSelf-ImprovementDesign
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Getting Simple episodes

  • #4: Jacob Hamman — Virtual Reality and Life Habits to Prevent and Reverse Alzheimer's Disease

    Jacob Hamman on how virtual reality and healthy life habits can help prevent and reverse Alzheimer's disease.


    Jacob grew up in Phoenix Arizona. After studying architecture at the University of Southern California (USC), he worked as an architect at Gehry Partners for seven years. He holds a Master in Design Studies in Technology from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he developed Archiverse, an immersive virtual reality modeling environment to create massing models at early stages of the design of a building.

    Jacob's life shifted after his mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Inspired by the work of Dale Bredesen, he decided to research how virtual reality could help prevent and reverse Alzheimer's disease. The system he currently develops at Zenjoi incorporates a series of engaging cognitive and physical exercises, healthy life habits, and stress-reducing therapies into a virtual reality world to reduce the risk to suffer cognitive decline.

    He is also one of the members of Growy, a startup that re-envisions the food distribution system by bringing locally-grown food to our houses. Jacob and his partners describe this exciting adventure as an "in-home gardening companion and social platform for sharing knowledge of healthy and delicious food."


    Links
    • Gehry Partners is an international architecture firm established by Frank Gehry in Los Angeles, California in 1962.
    • formZ, AutoCAD, and Rhino are two- and three-dimensional modeling tools.
    • Contact 3D scanners probe the subject through physical touch, while the object is in contact with or resting on a precision flat surface.
    • Virtual reality is a computer-generated scenario that simulates a realistic experience.
    • Archiverse is an immersive, full body design interaction virtual reality environment to create massing models at early stages of the design of a building design, developed by Jacob at Harvard GSD.
    • Leap motion is a hand tracking device for virtual reality.
    • Zenjoi is using the latest virtual reality technology to seamlessly combine physical and cognitive exercises with personalized stress-reducing therapies.
    • The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline by Dale Bredesen. (See it on Amazon.)
    • Brain HQ is an interactive brain training program built by by Posit Science Corporation.
    • Early-onset Alzheimer's is Alzheimer's disease diagnosed before the age of 65.
    • Reminiscence therapy is defined by the American Psychological Association (APA) as "the use of life histories – written, oral, or both – to improve psychological well-being. […]"
    • Alive Inside is a documentary about the power of music to re-activate certain connections and trigger past memories.
    • Google Earth VR allows you to travel anywhere in virtual reality by using Street View with a virtual reality headset.
    • 1Second Everyday (1SE) by Cesar Kuriyama is a mobile application to create a video diary wiyh the photos and videos in your phone.
    • A Landscape of Memories: Aging Disasters is a project developed by Nono in which a player—inside a brain being damaged by Alzheimer's disease—has to fight virus to recover a series of memories embedded in three-dimensional cubes and audio clips.
      • clips.
    • Lumosity is a brain training mobile application "create by scientists and game designers."
    • Google Photos (and other services) bring back alive photos from previous events and years. This is what we refer to as "nostalgia bombs."
    • Sleepcycle is a sleep analysis and alarm clock mobile app.
    • The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Tim Ferris. (See it on Amazon.)
    • The ketogenic diet is "a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet" which, according to Wikipedia, "can provide symptomatic and disease-modifying activity in a broad range of neurodegenerative disorders […]"
    • Growy is a startup that re-envisions the food distribution system by bringing locally-grown food to our houses. Jacob and his partners describe it as an "in-home gardening companion and social platform for sharing knowledge of healthy and delicious food."

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      Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast.

      Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0.


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      1 hr 13 min
    • #3: Jose Luis García del Castillo y López — Will Robots Simplify Your Life?

      Jose Luis García del Castillo on robot control accessibility, learning from open-source software, the joy of being an educator, simple living, eating healthy, and more.


      Jose Luis is an architect, computational designer, and educator who advocates for a future where programming and code are tools as natural to designers as paper and pencil. In his work, he explores creative opportunities at the intersection of design, technology, fabrication, data, and art. His current research focuses on the development of digital frameworks that help democratize access to robotic technologies for designers and artists. Currently, he is a Doctor of Design candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, an educator of computational creativity in the Arts+Design Department at Northeastern University, and a Research Engineer at the Generative Design Group at Autodesk.

      You can find Jose Luis tweeting at @garciadelcast, taking pictures on Instagram at @garciadelcastillo, and writing code on Github.

      Updates

      2019.10.09 · You should definitely take a look at Jose Luis' course: GSD-6338: Introduction to Computational Design at the Harvard GSD.

      2020.05.01 · Jose Luis is recording tutorials and live streaming on YouTube at ParametricCamp.


      Links
      • Cesar Pelli, Mecanoo, OMA, and MVRDV are international architecture firms for which Jose Luis worked as a structural consultant.
      • Parametric design is a paradigm in design where the relationship between elements is used to manipulate and inform the design of complex geometries and structures.
      • Visual programming environments let users create programs by manipulating graphical elements rather than by writing code. (Some are Dynamo, Grasshopper, or Scratch.)
      • Ben Fry is an American expert in data visualization. He is a co-developer of Processing, an open source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the basics of computer programming in a visual context.
      • The Block Research Group (BRG) at ETH Zürich focuses on several core areas, including computational form finding, structural design, fabrication, and construction technologies.
      • Compas is an open-source, Python-based framework for computational research and collaboration in architecture, engineering, and digital fabrication led by Tom Van Mele.
      • Robot programming (and software) is the set of coded commands or instructions that tell a mechanical device and electronic system, known together as a robot, what tasks to perform.
      • Machina is an open source, C# library for action-based real-time control of mechanical actuators. Machina can also be used with Dynamo and Grasshopper.
      • Robot Drawing is a quick installation that uses Processing and Machina for Dynamo Jose Luis and I did for having a robotic arm draw with a Sharpie what kids were drawing on a touch screen that took place at Kids at Autodesk Day 2017. Watch it on YouTube.
      • Machine Learning for Artists (ml4a) is a collection of free educational resources devoted to machine learning for artists.
      • Roomba is a series of autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners sold by iRobot.
      • Colin Angle (CEO of iRobot) gave a TEDMED TED Talk titled Will a robot care for my mom? at Palm Springs, CA.
      • Human-computer interaction (commonly referred to as HCI) researches the design and use of computer technology, focused on the interfaces between people (users) and computers.
      • Jean Piaget is known for his theory of cognitive development that explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world.
      • Seymour Papert was one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, and of the constructionist movement in education.
      • Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn day long conference is an open forum for educators teaching computer programming in creative and artistic contexts led by the School for Poetic Computation.
      • Interfaces for Digital Making: Reflections at The Intersection of Creativity, Matter, Computers and Minds was written by Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo in 2016.
      • Brian Drey is Jose Luis's SoundCloud DJ profile.
      • Seth Godin is an American author who has written more than twenty books on marketing and how to defeat the resistance.
      • Dale Carnegie was an American writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills.
        Episodes mentioned
        • James Melouney
        • Zach Kron

          I'd love to hear from you.

          Submit a question about this or any previous episodes.

          Join the Discord community. Meet other curious minds.

          If you enjoy the show, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps.

          Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast.

          Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0.


          Follow Nono

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          1 hr 23 min
        • #2: Zach Kron — Putting More Ideas Into The Things We Make

          Zach Kron (@zachkron) talks with Nono about how new digital tools allow designers to work (and wether these tools make our lives simpler), and about life habits, boredom, constant connectivity and disconnection, digital clutter, and more.


          Zach describes his daily job as "Banging digital tools with a stick to make them break." Since 2007, Zach has been involved in the research and implementation of software that drives real world building projects and democratizes advanced design practices. Before joining Autodesk—where he is a senior product manager–Zach worked as a designer in several Boston-area architectural offices on projects ranging in scale from furniture to bridges, and has taught at Autodesk, at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and ACADIA (Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture).

          You can find Zach on Twitter at @ZachKron and writing at DynamoBIM.org.


          Updates

          2019.12.05 · Zach is now sharing his beautiful hand (and robotic) craft on Instagram at @kronzach.


          Links
          • Dynamo is an open source visual programming environment for design.
          • Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
          • Quakers are members of a historically Christian group of religious movements. (We talk about the ability to sit quietly alone or with others.)
          • Haiku is a very short form of Japanese poetry.
          • Bad Monkeys is a group of design technologists spread around the world, working to change the AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) industry "one workflow at a time."
          • Bread & Puppet Theater is a politically radical puppet theater founded by Peter Schumann, active since 1960s, where bread and theater belong together, currently based in Glover, Vermont.
          • The Cheap Art Manifesto, Bread and Puppet Glover, Vermont, 1984.
          • Walter Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
          • Shapeways is a 3D printing service and marketplace.
          • Style transfer is "the technique of recomposing images in the style of other images."
          • The Resistance is Handmade is a project by Victoria and printed at Albertine Pres by Gather Here.
          • Designalyze is a podcast (and website) by Brian Ringley (@brianringley) and Zach Downey (@zdowney).
          • The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
          • Buildz. Practical notes for making impractical things by Zach, 2009-2015.
          • We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone. —Orson Wells

            • I'd love to hear from you.

            Submit a question about this or any previous episodes.

            Join the Discord community. Meet other curious minds.

            If you enjoy the show, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps.

            Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast.

            Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0.


            Follow Nono

            Twitter.com/nonoesp

            Instagram.com/nonoesp

            Facebook.com/nonomartinezalonso

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            1 hr 10 min
          • #1: James Melouney — How to Lead Your Best Life

            Author James Melouney on the art of success, self-motivation, positive habits, and purpose.


            James is the author of the book The Art of Success, a book to help others lead their best life.

            Connect with James on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.


            Books
            • The Art of Success by James Melouney (also available on iTunes, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo)
            • How To Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler.

              I'd love to hear from you.

              Submit a question about this or any previous episodes.

              Join the Discord community. Meet other curious minds.

              If you enjoy the show, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps.

              Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast.


              Follow Nono

              Twitter.com/nonoesp

              Instagram.com/nonoesp

              Facebook.com/nonomartinezalonso

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              36 min

            About Getting Simple

            From the publisher's feed

            Conversations on simple living, lifestyle design, creativity, technology, and culture. Nono is a creative technologist and AI researcher.