Clippings.reblog

Multimodal Telepresence and Teleaction

Telepresence, Haptic and Networked-Control Systems

"Telepresence has been defined by Prof. Thomas B. Sheridan in 1992 as a system in which the human operator receives "sufficient information about the teleoperator and the task environment, displayed in a sufficiently natural way, that the operator feels physically present at the remote site". Hence a telepresence system enables a human operator to perceive and manipulate a remote environment.

A telepresence system consists of three components. The human system interface (HSI) is handled by the human operator. He/She commands the teleoperator to perform actions in a remote environment. HSI and teleoperator exchange command and feedback signals over a communication line.

To achieve a holistic remote immersion, multiple modes of human perception are addressed including haptic, visual, and auditory senses. The level of the immersion is called the transparency of the telepresence system. To reach this goal telepresence conglomerates three disciplines: robotics, telecommunications and virtual reality.

Intended applications for telepresence systems are telesurgery, teleassembly and teleservice systems. In hazardous environments, for example, multimodal telepresence will provide significant benefits. As illustrated in the figure below search-and-rescue operations could be done by a tele-commanded robot reducing risks and increasing efficiency." Continue reading >>

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Phonic Frequencies:

Shaping Networked Realities

ABSTRACT: The paper introduces a networked multi-user installation and interactive mixed reality environment that combines the fields of interactive art, telecommunication and streaming technologies. Phonic Frequencies is an audiovisual data space whose appearance can be altered via networked communication devices. Visitors are active agents and participate in shaping spaces as they control audiovisual data with their telephones.

Linking the physical space to the digital network space, Phonic Frequencies opens a hybrid reality for distributed sound exchange and visual communication, blurring the boundaries between verbal communication and digital information. The work attempts to break the conventional communication cycle of bidirectional dialogue and to consider the meaning of in- and output from a different perspective." From Phonic Frequencies: Shaping Networked Realities by Tamas Szakal, Christoph Groenegress, Wolfgang Strauss, Predrag Peranovic (c) 2003

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Networked Multi-sensory Experiences:

Beyond Browsers on the Web and in the Museum

"Abstract: The defining characteristic of the digital era is the potential that it brings for “real-time” interconnection between anything that can be measured, expressed, or controlled digitally. The World Wide Web stems from one type of digital interconnection: well-defined standards linking a “browser” with remote machines presenting information to be browsed. Yet digital technology enables more than just new approaches to presentation, browsing, and searching. It can create dynamic connections between different physical spaces and across sensory boundaries, and provide experiential interfaces for interaction that move beyond the mouse, keyboard, and screen. It can relate the physical space of the museum to the virtual space of the Web for both individual and group experiences." From Networked Multi-sensory Experiences: Beyond Browsers on the Web and in the Museum by Fabian Wagmister and Jeff Burke.

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

2014 Museum of Media History

The year is 2014, The New York Times has gone offline and amazon and google are combined to form googlezon. Media as we know it does not exist.

Originally from Protein Feed, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Blasts from the Past

Originally from FutureWire - futurism and emerging technology, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Warcraft addicts

If, like me, you're spending more time in World of Warcraft's Azeroth than is strictly advisable - anyone else see question marks above the heads of staff in their local? - then you'll appreciate the latest Flintlocke strip. For those...

Originally posted by Greg Howson from Games, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Report On Global Ecosystems Calls For Radical Changes

'Many of the world's ecosystems are in danger and might not support future generations unless radical measures are implemented to protect and revive them, according to the most comprehensive analysis ever conducted of how the world's oceans, dry lands, forests and species interact and depend on one another.

'The new report collates research from many specific locales to create the first global snapshot of ecosystems. More than 1,300 authors from 95 countries participated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, whose results are being made public today by the United Nations and by several private and public organizations.' (Washington Post article).

Originally from Disinformation, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Renewable energy market to grow to $100 bln by 2014

Clean Edge stated that the renewable energy markets are poised to grow to more than $100 bln by 2014 from $16 bln in global revenues in 2004. Venture capital investments in US-based energy-tech companies increased to $520 mln in 2004 from $509 mln in 2003, representing nearly 3% of total VC investments in the United States in 2004.

Originally from IT Facts.biz, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Mobile users as mobile consumers: take the survey

As some of you might already know, I'm currently writing my thesis on the sociology of the mobile phone, investigating in particular its marketing implications.
If you live in Italy, the UK or the US, and you're aged 20-40, I need your help.
I've created a 30 questions survey to learn more about mobile users as mobile consumers.
It takes less than 10 minutes to complete it.

To take the survey, just follow this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=62340936843

I will then share the results on my blogs.
I take the chance of this post to thank my professor, Giovanni Delli Zotti, of the University of Trieste, who's helping and supporting me with my thesis.

Thank you!

Martina

Originally posted by martina from Making Money Out Of Mobile, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Lots of old Japanese synth catalogues

< !span class="imageleft"> < !span class="imageright"> Denhaku.com is a huge collection of vintage (1976-1999) synth ads from Japan.

Originally from Music thing, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Happy Man with Plastic Guitar

Yes, it's another pointless picture. This time courtesy of my friend Jim, currently residing in Japan. I wish there was one of these in my local amusements, rather than the crappy fruit machines which now seem to dominate British arcades. More music related machines here and here

Originally from Music thing, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Technocentrism

Papert on Technocentrism:

I coined the word technocentrism from Piaget's use of the word egocentrism. This does not imply that children are selfish, but simply means that when a child thinks, all questions are referred to the self, to the ego. Technocentrism is the fallacy of referring all questions to the technology.  In the proceedings of conferences on technology and education, there are questions like: Will technology have this or that effect? Will using computers to teach mathematics increase children's arithmetic skills? Or will it encourage children to be lazy about adding numbers because calculators can do it? Will using word processors make children become more creative writers? Or will it lead to a loss of handwriting skills? Will computers increase children's creativity? Or will they lead to mechanical, rote methods of thinking? Will the computer increase interpersonal skills? Or will it lead to isolation of children from one another?

Originally from Mauro Cherubini's weblog, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Military Uses of Nanotechnology

The people who run the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University (ACUNU) wanted to better understand the "Potential Environmental Pollution and Health Hazards Resulting from Possible Military Uses of Nanotechnology," along with "Implications for Research Priorities Helpful to Prevent and/or Reduce Such Pollution and Hazards."

They put together a panel, which included representation from CRN, and conducted a "Two-Round Expert Delphi" survey. Here is what they did and what they found:

An expert panel of 29 participants identified potential military uses of nanotechnology that might occur between 2005–2010 and 2010–2025 with their potential for causing health hazards or environmental pollution. The expert panel also identified and rated research questions whose answers might produce knowledge to help prevent or reduce the health hazards and environmental pollution from potential military uses of nanotechnology.

The final report highlights several "potential military uses of nanotechnology that might occur between 2005–2010" with "potential for causing health hazards or environmental pollution," such as:

· Nanomaterials (e.g., nanotubes) in uniforms and equipment to make them stronger and lighter could lead to nanofiber-like materials that break off from uniforms and equipment and enter the body and environment

· Nanoparticles as surface coverings to make it harder, smoother, and/or more stealthy could erode and be inhaled by military staff and the general population

· Nanomaterials used as filters to remove selected impurities from fluids could become very low in cost and hence ubiquitous, and result in many small but discrete concentrations of possibly toxic impurities

od of 2010 to 2025, potential uses and hazards include:

· Artificial blood cells (respirocytes) that dramatically enhance human performance could cause overheating of the body, bio-breakdowns, and their excretion could add to the environmental load.

· Large quantities of smart weapons — especially miniaturized, robotic weapons and intelligent, target-seeking ammunition without reliable remote off-switches could lead to unexpected injury to combatants and civilians, destruction to infrastructure, and environmental pollution.

· Small receptor-enhancers designed to increase alertness and reduce the reaction times of humans could cause addiction and/or subsequent Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, leading to weakness, neural damage, and death.

that these are not necessarily the U.S. Army's plans, but only the opinions of an "expert panel."

Top-ranked research priorities as recommended by the panel include:

· How are nanoparticles absorbed into the body through the skin, lungs, eyes, ears, and alimentary canal?

· Once in the body, can nanoparticles evade natural defenses of humans and other animals? What is the likelihood of immune system recognition of nanomaterials?

· What are potential exposure routes of nanomaterials - both airborne and waterborne?

· Could nanoparticles enter the food chain by getting into bacteria and protozoa and accumulate there?

· How will nanomaterials enter the environment and will they change when moving from one medium (e.g. air) to another (e.g. water)?

· How to identify and dispose of nanomaterial litter?

· How can nanotechnology be used for post-battlefield cleanup (including biological, chemical, and nuclear wastes) so that they do not pollute soil and water?

sed to participate in this study, and we hope the results will be put to good use.

As we have said before, the next two decades will see more change than perhaps the previous 50 years. Being prepared in advance for responsible employment of benefits and effective management of hazards from all emerging technologies -- especially molecular manufacturing -- is essential.

Mike Treder

Originally posted by Mike Treder from Responsible Nanotechnology, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

A Chip for a Neuron

The MIT Technology Review describes the research behind the first direct electrical interface between a semiconductor device and an individual mammalian nerve cell:

Context: The neurons of the mammal brain are hard to study, even when they're isolated in the lab. For more than a decade, scientists have analyzed the large neurons of leeches and snails by linking them directly to silicon chips that record their electrical activity. But mammalian neurons are smaller, and though they can be grown on silicon, the resulting signals are typically too weak to yield useful data. The electrical activity of mammalian brain cells can be read with electrodes, but that can be imprecise and requires careful preparation steps.

Moritz Voelker and Peter Fromherz at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry have now designed the first computer chip that can record the firing of mammalian neurons, though so far only in a petri dish.

Methods and Results: As a neuron fires, the voltage across it changes, so a neuron on a chip affects how transistors underneath it conduct electricity. But in chips with conventional transistor designs, there's so much naturally occurring noise that it swamps neural signals. So Voelker and Fromherz changed the geometry of the transistors to suit the electrical properties of living neurons. They buried the conducting channels of their transistors a few nanometers deeper than usual, making the transistor more sensitive to the low voltages and firing speeds of neurons. The transistors could detect the signal of an ?individual rat neuron in a group, without the elaborate sample preparation that ?conventional electrodes require. What's more, the tran?sistors are significantly smaller than individual neurons and could in principle provide information on how subsections of a neuron behave.

"http://www.biochem.mpg.de/mnphys/publications/05voefro/abstract.html">abstract at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry ...

Flash: BrainGate Neural Interface System...

Originally from Medgadget, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

A new cartographic generation

When considering new technological (personal) cartographies, what scale will space be
mapped? Will the modes of representation in locative media arts shift? I turn to Borges:

...In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.

From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda (a fictional reference)

Of Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. English translation quoted from J. L. Borges, A Universal History of Infamy, Penguin Books, London, 1975.

Originally posted by Matthew Ward from thinking about things, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

School Bans Blogs

Steven Cohen e-mailed me this link to a story in the Rutland (VT) Herald about a jr/sr high school principal who has banned access to Myspace.com, a blogging site. The reason? Well aside from legitimate concerns about kids publishing personal information, the prinicpal says blogging is not an educational use of computers.

Um, I beg to differ. And if anything, this seems to be what they call a TEACHABLE MOMENT. Let's see...we have some kids who are doing what tens of thousands of other kids are doing out there, writing about their lives in a public space. Good for the school for monitoring what the kids are doing there and realizing they aren't necessarily being smart in the way they are doing it. Bad for the school for thinking that denying access will teach them the lesson they need to learn.

Instead, the principal urges parents to check history files and cookies on the computers that their children are using. Oy. This reminds me of Seymour Pappert last week at CoSN when he was talking about the initial reaction of parents in Maine when they announced the 1 to 1 laptop initiative. Many of them said things along the lines of "they're just going to go to porn sites and play games." Pappert, who was one of the major players in the project, responded by saying "But that has nothing to do with giving them the technology. What is it about your children that would make you think they would do that?" Amen.

It's easy to check the history and cookies. It's easy to ban sites that kids are going to find ways to access anyway. What's hard is modeling and teaching appropriate use. That is the only way we're going to help kids protect themselves from the dark side of the Internet.

Originally from Weblogg-ed News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

"Social Literacy" of Wiki Writing

(Via James, who has much to say on this as well...) This piece by Ulises Mejias takes a look at the writing process in wikis as a way to understand the need for what he calls a "social literacy" now needed when tackling collaborative writing spaces.

Thus, social literacy...does not refer to the skills necessary to perform in society, but to the use of the resource of writing in social contexts. Social literacy amounts to the textual practices not (as has been true so far) of a single author, but of multiple and simultaneous authors. Wikis make social literacy apparent by allowing us to witness the evolution of text in time, and evolution that reflects the decisions not of a single individual, but of a community.

In keeping the focus on literacy in the context of writing, this post does much to identify the ways in which we are going to need to prepare students for the negotiation of content and style that is going to be required to navigate these collaborative spaces. And there is much to say about the educational benefits of using wikispace to create content, but not to use it as a discussion space.

There are plenty of other online tools better equipped to support an Initiation-Reply mode of conversation (such as discussion boards for collective dialogue, or blogs and email for more individualized forms of exchange). If appropriate, these tools can be used in conjunction with wikis. But the whole point of wikis is to de-prioritize the individual voice in favor of the collective voice, which dictates the structure and content of the text. This, of course, is a literacy which most individuals in our societies are unaccustomed to. Which is why scaffolding wikis with other technologies that support more traditional forms of communication might be an adequate strategy.

Worth wrapping your brain around if you're trying to find some context for wikis in your practice...

Originally from Weblogg-ed News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Lessig: Writing Not Allowed?

I know, I know. I should just start a Lessig blog. So sue me. The man is inspiring, at least to me. So inspiring, in fact, that after listening to his most recent talk from the 4Cs conference last week, I decided to transcribe the whole thing for further study. (I know...I have no life.)

"Writing Not Allowed?" basically asks whether or not the freedoms we have always enjoyed in terms of "remixing" content through writing should apply when writing changes from just text into audio, video, digital photography, etc. It's a typically well crafted, impassioned plea from someone who just gets it more than most, and I would urge you to carve out 40 minutes to listen to it. I'll leave you with a snippet from the end.

Now you have a connection to this debate that is much more important, I think, than even the profits threatened by this war. You have a connection to the literacy that these technologies comprise. Because when we live in a world that is constituted by these forms of media, we live in a world where our ability to participate in this world depends upon the capacity to critically understand an express in this form of media.

Now we never had that opportunity growing up, in an age where the cost of doing it was so high. But our children will. And you in this context need to become engaged in a single objective which is consistent with the objectives of academics since the beginning of time. You have to defend the freedom to write. You have to defend a world where the expression of ideals using the tools of the age is again free. Because if we allow this issue to be defined and determined by the extremes that now occupy the few, that freedom will be lost to our children. And that loss is much more significant than the loss of profits to one very small segment of the American economy. It’s a loss that will ramify not just in the capacity to speak, but in the ideal of what it means to be member citizens of a democracy. You grew up with the freedom to obey the law, and our kids grow up in a world where that freedom is in so many places, taken away from them.

So I’ve come here to ask you to help in this battle. First to redefine it, not as a war, but as the continuation of the struggle that began when Guttenberg released free speech first in our tradition. You need to enter this debate, and speak with the authenticity of your position, not as promoters of piracy, because no one world believe that you are promoting piracy, but as promoters of the tradition of knowledge that we inherited, and that we have an obligation as academics to pass down to our children in as a robust a form as we inherited.

As teachers, we need to get our brains around these issues. And then we need to do some serious teaching.

Originally from Weblogg-ed News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

The Ethics of Invention

Finally for today (it's 7.30 p.m. already), we're moving into the last keynote session, by Paul Carter. He will speak on the ethics of invention, and begins by attempting a definition of the range of practices included under the overall heading of practice-led research. Importantly, all such practices are interested in invention - for which a precondition is a perception of ambiguity, the return of the repressed material. What conventionally functions in one role discloses other possibility - there is an excess of material that escapes semiotic categorisation. This is what enables invention to begin (but of course it is only a starting-point).

Originally from Snurb's blog, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Nuage Vert

Nuage Vert (Green Cloud) is part of Hehe's free research into altering our perception of pollution.

Whenever we see a chimney emitting smoke or vapour we think of it as pollution. But these emissions function also as weather-veins and landmarks in the urban landscape. If such smoke signals were to signal recycling, displaying the local effort made by citizens when they recycle more (or less), the chimney would then be a sign of environmental effort as well as waste.

The waste incineration site at St Ouen (near Paris) treats the waste that comes from ordinary household bins and the waste which has been rejected from the local recycling site.

The constant plume emitted from the site is visible for miles. It consists mostly of water vapour and emits small levels of dioxins. The aim of the Nuage Vert project is to raise the level of awareness and participation amongst consumers. The colour image on the cloud would change depending upon the ratio between the amount of daily waste collected for recycling and that collected for incineration.

The work will be presented at this year's edition of PixelAche in Helsinki.

(Posted by Regine Debatty in Global Culture – Art, Music, Fashion, and Travel at 11:08 AM)

Originally posted by Regine Debatty from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 31, 2005 | edit

Who's Responsible for Climate Refugees?

Alex Steffen: If the climate models hold true (and things don't get worse than expected), by the 2080s upwards of 200 million people are expected to have...

Originally posted by Alex Steffen from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Nanotechnology could promote hydrogen economy

Say "nanotechnology" and people are likely to think of micro machines or zippy computer chips. But in a new twist, Rutgers scientists are using nanotechnology in chemical reactions that could provide hydrogen for tomorrow's fuel-cell powered clean energy vehicles. In a paper to be published April 20 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, describe how they make a finely textured surface of the metal iridium that can be used to extract hydrogen from ammonia, then captured and fed to a fuel cell. The metal's unique surface consists of millions of pyramids with facets as tiny as five nanometers (five billionths of a meter) across, onto which ammonia molecules can nestle like matching puzzle pieces. This sets up the molecules to undergo complete and efficient decomposition.

Originally from Physics Org, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Xeni Tech on NPR: Changing view of downloading music

Xeni Jardin: For today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I report on how the popularity of online file-sharing sevices has affected the way music fans find, distribute and listen to music. I speak with artists Michael Donaldson (aka Q-Burns Abstract Message) and David Byrne, and random folks buying tunes and movies at a record store in Hollywood. The short version? It seems that for many music-lovers, "consuming habits" involve some combination of purchased hard goods (CDs, DVDs, vinyl); paid downloads; and "illicit" P2P or other unpaid forms of tune-sharing. Those complex behaviors may explain in part why some studies show that music sales are up in spite of the fact that P2P use is still high, and growing.
Link to archived audio for this segment, Link to more archived "Xeni Tech" segments on NPR's Day to Day.

Related on Boing Boing: David Byrne launches internet radio station

Originally posted by Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Tix LED Clock

The Tix LED Clock is a somewhat classy (if you live in an adobe hut on an alien world), LED-based clock that shows you the time in one of more than a million different patterns. Each panel represents a digit of the time, wherein the number of lighted squares is the respective value for that panel. (It's 12:34 in the above example.) Still, you don't need to tell anyone else that, allowing your friends to believe you're far more intelligent than they are. It can be your secret code-clock! It's only $60 and definitely easier to read than the binary clocks on ThinkGeek.

Catalog Page [ThinkGeek via RedFerretJournal]

Originally from Gizmodo, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

GIzmodo Japan: AU by KDDI Sweets

Jean Snow—I've gone on and on about the great work that KDDI's AU is doing in the design department (see the AU Design Project), but you know, they've also become quite good at going after certain key demographics, and it's not hard to see what they're trying to do with their new Sweets line, featuring their patented "friendly design." Going head-to-head with Docomo's Lechiffon, the Sweets phones come in 3 appropriately named colors: Cassis Mousse (pink), Vanilla Beans (white), and Mango Pudding (orange). You can also adorn them with an assortment of case coverings. Kawaii!!!

More pictures after the jump.

Product Page [KDDI]

Originally from Gizmodo, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

X-Wing in Times Square

We don't know why, exactly (an M&M's promotion, we heard), but there's an X-Wing in Times Square. I might dork out and try to take a picture with me in the frame, but I'm not sure the train is running to Hatchi Toshi Station. Something about some power converters.

I mean 'do.' There is no try. (Thanks Catherine Punk for the photo and Dave for the heads-up.)

Originally from Gizmodo, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Picotux Linux-Based RJ45-Sized Computer

Kleinhenz, a German electronics company, is shipping their new network-enabled Linux system in a unit just about the size of a standard RJ-45 Ethernet jack. The "Picotux,"barely big enough to print its MAC address on, is based on the NetSilicon DigiConnect ME, a fully functional Linux-based OS, with up to 8 MB of Flash memory and blinking LEDs to tell you what's going on in there. It requires 3.3V of DC power but also includes a serial port and a processor up to 55MHz. It's available in Wireless flavor as well, with the wired version costing about $130. A similar, Ethernet-sized web server has existed for some time, but this is likely the first running a Linux kernel on it. It's available today, if you speak German. (Their product page doesn't have any ordering information.)

Linux on an Ethernet Connector [LinuxDevices]
Product Page [Kleinhenz]

Originally from Gizmodo, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Robot Maru gets a girlfriend

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology have developed a "female" remote-operated humanoid dubbed Ahra. This counterpart to the "male" Maru robot has a feminine voice and different body color.

Like Maru, Ahra is a network-based robot, meaning a high-performance computer plays the role of an external brain. The couple are in effect two separate bodies with a single brain. Under the command of the computer the two help each other with tasks such as moving tables. When shaking hands with a human, Ara senses their strength and adjusts her grip accordingly.

Via Digital Chosunibo.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Gossips wall

The Hello.Wall, developed at the Fraunhofer Institute, is an ambient display that emits information via light patterns. While it fulfils an informative role for the initiated members of an organization or a place, others might see it as an atmospheric decorative element and enjoy its aesthetic quality. The work is therefore at the crossroads of privacy-enhancing technology and informative art.

The Hello.Wall can rely on other artefacts to communicate more detailed information. These mobile devices are called View.Ports. Depending on their access rights and the current situation [e.g., distance to the wall], people can use View.Ports to decode visual codes/light patterns, to download or just browse information [e.g., video], to paint signs on the wall, or to access a message announced by a light pattern.

SIAM is a task-management system able to foster group communication and provide awareness of what other people are doing. SIAM focuses on a collaboration infrastructure and user interface to manage tasks, where every object can be synchronously shared and every change is immediately visualized at all machines.

The Personal Aura enables users to control their appearance in a smart environment. In real life, every person adopts different social roles, depending on their situation and social environment. The Personal Aura enables persons to decide whether they are "visible" and in which social role they want to appear.

Via Eyebeam reBlog < Information aesthetics.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Temporary Residence of Intelligent Agents

The aim of the TROIA -Temporary Residence of Intelligent Agents- project is to focus public awareness and discussion on the technologies of political control which are taking ground in Europe.

TROIA is developimg a huge transportable stage that will function like a Trojan Horse by infiltrating the concious and unconcious precepts of both the visitors and passers by alike. Though it has the appearance of a gift it carries a dangerous and at times subversive content.

The subject matter is communicated by performers acting as undercover agents provocateurs following a script generated by each host country where TROIA is exhibited. The actors, not detectable as such, mingle with the crowd and go to see the event with them. Their task is to initiate conversations and to infiltrate the public space with information and opinions.

This combination of subtle dissemination and spectacular form should open a field of tension within the visitor that lasts well after the project is finished ...

Video at the bottom of this page.
Via PixelSumo and Networked_performance.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

The camera that doesn't take pictures

Alain Bublex' Awareness Box is a camera that does not record images, focussing exclusively on the act of taking pictures. It is an object made to heighten one awareness and attention, a new type of electronic product -developed in collaboration with Siemens- that helps one observe better. ... The Awareness Box allows you to capture an image once in presence of the subject, but without recording it, as each image taken erases the precedent one.

Via Pasta & Vinegar.

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Game Gardens

From the folks who brought you that adorable mmog Puzzle Pirates, Three Rings have created Game Gardens: a place of 'experimental online game development.' So if you know how to program in Java, you can use their tool kit to create you own games and upload them to the site for others to play. They also provide a forum in which to ask questions and share ideas. So if you've ever been curious about what it's like to make a multiplayer game, here's your chance.

Originally from Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

RFID Cards Get Spin Treatment

Sensitive to privacy concerns associated with RFID, the Department of Homeland Security wants to call the tags in its new employee ID cards -- and, potentially, U.S. passports -- 'contactless' or 'proximity' chips. By Mark Baard.

Originally from Wired News: Top Stories, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

plagiarism

[Update 30/3: the end of the exposed plagiarist story]
There have been a few cases of plagiarism of the cut-and-paste from the web variety by students at our department, and luckily the university has very clear routines for how to handle it. If an exam paper or paper submitted for assessment in a portfolio is suspected to contain plagiarism, the person grading the paper may not grade it but instead sends it on to a committee with an explanation of what the problem is and the committee decides what is to be done. The student also has the opportunity to explain him- or herself. I believe the committee has a lawyer and a couple of student representatives on it, which seems fair. If the student is found to have plagiarised, the exam will be annulled and the student may be barred from taking exams at any university in Norway for one or two semesters, depending on the gravity of the plagiarism and how advanced the student is. Obviously it is seen as more serious if a grad student plagiarises than if a first semester does so and there’s reasonable grounds to think it might be a misunderstanding.

As a grad student I taught a little in other departments and once graded an exam paper where 2/3 of the paper was cut and paste from the net with no sources given. I reported it to the person who was responsible for the course, but was told to simply fail the student. The next semester I heard from other teachers that the same student had done exactly the same thing in another class, and thinking it was the first time it had happened, they hadn’t reported it either. Imagine what we teach students if we allow them to plagiarise their work?

All the cases I’ve come up against in Norway so far involve students who wrote in English, which was a second language for them. That may have made the cut and paste sections particularly visible to their teachers. Perhaps there is just as much plagiarism in Norwegian essays, but the paragraphs are translated or better integrated so that teachers don’t notice.

I was amused by this exposé of an American college student who foolishly asked a comedy writer to write an essay for her. He accepted, found out her real name, wrote a cut-and-paste essay he assumed would be detected as plagiarism, wrote it up on the web, and sent an email to her Dean.

Of course, it’s not really amusing. It’s tragic for students who are banned from taking exams for a year of their lives. It casts the whole system of portfolio evaluations and grading into doubt, because there must be so many cases that aren’t caught. And yes, even scholars plagiarise - the Vice-Chancellor (equivalent to the rektor in Norway or the President in the US) of Monash University in Melbourne resigned after having been found to be a “serial plagiariser” in the seventies and eighties (he’s now getting a top job in academia again). It is entiredly possible to imagine an academic community based on sharing ideas freely, but as long as each individual academic and his or her institution gain or lose financial benefits and scholarly respect directly based on publication and citations of said publications, plagiarism will be the academic equivalent of embezzlement. Students’ plagiarising is a slightly different issue. Yes, it threatens our perception of the academic system of publishing being fair and natural. It also threatens our system of giving grades and degrees. Finally plagiarism threatens the whole idea that university and college students are supposed to be learning something more substantial than how to game the system and get a degree.

Most of all I’ve discovered my own fury when confronted with plagiarism, though. They think I’m stupid not to see through this? How dare they waste my time like this? Why on earth would I put effort into doing a good job as their teacher when this is all they think learning is worth?

I think we need to be strict and very consistent about plagiarism.

Originally posted by Jill from jill/txt, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Mobile phones as political channels in Persian Gulf

The Washington Post has a story this week about mobile phones serving as a political forum for dissent in several Persian Gulf countries.

Demonstrators use text messaging to mobilize followers, dodge authorities and swarm quickly to protest sites. Candidates organizing for the region's limited elections use text services to call supporters to the polls or slyly circulate candidate slates in countries that supposedly ban political groupings. And through it all, anonymous activists blast their adversaries with thousands of jokes, insults and political limericks.

There is a strong potential for democratic activism along these lines:

The technology also helps democratic organizers who are often badly overmatched by the Gulf's authoritarian governments. In a region where formal political parties are banned but loose political societies are often tolerated, text messaging allows organizers to build unofficial membership lists, spread news about detained activists, encourage voter turnout, schedule meetings and rallies, and develop new issue campaigns -- all while avoiding government-censored newspapers, television stations and Web sites.

As with bullying by text, the story also points out the use of this technology for abuse:

Rola Dashti... pressed her phone's text message button and read an anonymous insult circulating on hundreds of Kuwaiti phones, digital graffiti that attacked her family's Persian ancestry and disparaged her Lebanese-born mother. "Here's what voters will gain if they vote for Rola Dashti," the text message read, as she recalled it. "They will learn the Iranian accent. They will learn a Lebanese accent. And they will learn how to work with the American Embassy to get money."

Originally posted by Bryan from Smart mobs, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

The People's Network - Rise of the Mob

For this story about the rise of the mob writer Drew Turney interviewed Howard Rheingold and two members of the Smartmobs blogteam. The original story was published in the Australian Internet magazine Internet dot au, December 2004.

Since the advent of the modern science fiction era, ubiquitous connectivity against a backdrop of smart and networked machines has been an essential part of every serious vision of the future. For the first time, a network of information by, of and for the people is starting to look like a reality, now that social mobilisation and technology have met in the middle.

According to Rheingold and plenty of other influential writers and thinkers, the immediate connectivity the mobile phone offers (or whatever it will morph into in the near future, both in tandem with the Internet and as a conduit to it) will create a vast online world that’s more inextricably linked to the real world than ever before.

The story was devised, interviews conducted and research compiled over mobile and fixed-line phone, email, posts to online forums & email mailing lists and SMS – with respondents in Sydney, Perth, the United States, Berlin, Amsterdam and St Petersburg.

Originally posted by Gerrit Visser from Smart mobs, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Digitally-evolved Cooperation

Avida is a freely downloadable artifical life environment. Avida allows artificial life to self replicate and evolve, and allows those evolutionary a-life changes to be tracked in a highly detailed manner.

Carl Zimmer, author of The Loom weblog recently published an article in Discover. Avida software opens up some smartmob-ish possibilities for artificial life simulations, in the form of information ecologies and economies among Avida's a-life:

The Avida team is now trying to address the mystery of cooperation by creating new commands that will let organisms exchange packages of information. “Once we get them to communicate, can we get them to work together to solve a problem?” asks Ofria. “You can set up an information economy, where one organism can pay another one to do a computation for it.”

If digital organisms cooperate, Ofria thinks it may be possible to get them working together to solve real-world computing problems in the same way Myxococcus swarms attack their prey. “I think we'll be able to solve much more complex problems, because we won't have to know how to break them down. The organisms will have to figure it out for themselves,” says Ofria. “We could really change the face of a lot of computing.”

Originally posted by Samuel Rose from Smart mobs, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

The Future: Solar Panel Stickers

Photo: Nikkei Net Japanese researchers developed a ultra-thin solar cell that can be easily shaped, colored and applied to fabrics. Researchers at Gifu University and Gunze Ltd. developed a prototype solar blouse with red stars (0.4mm thick sol...

Originally from I4U Future Technology News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

KromoZone

A Platform for Networked Multimedia Performance

"Abstract: Kromozone is a networked, interactive/intra-active, computer-based realtime performance system. All elements are interconnected via ethernet interfaced within the Max/MSP/Nato environment. This allows for information at any station to be passed to any other station for control, monitoring, reinterpretation, and processing. An audio station’s parameters can effect the manipulation of video at another station for example. This creates not only interaction between performers, but intra-action where performers can actually get ‘inside’ each other’s instruments and directly affect the output. In some performances, stations are placed throughout the audience, who is invited to participate. In using the KromoZone performance system, we have explored the implications of networked performance, the use of alternative sources for signal and control input, the design and use of non-standard performance interfaces, and the inclusion of live-manipulated video projections as a viable and integral part of a performance." From KromoZone: A Platform for Networked Multimedia Performance by Stephan Moore and Timothy A. Place, University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

The Royal Society of Emotional Geocachers

Place is Story>>Character Equals Space

Navigate a hypertext journey of sound, image and video where stories and characters intersect over time and across the city geography as one link leads you on foot to another. Available via GPRS on your mobile phone, or download from the internet on to your PDA (such as a Palm Pilot).

"This site exists for members of the society to document key personal experiences at specific locations. Please join us and add your own story of place. We've designed this site specifically for mobile devices so members may read & comment upon other members experiences in situ. The Rules; be true, place is story, character equals space, every story must connect to another story. Every tale must contain gps co-ordinates, maps and directions."

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Switch Interview with Victoria Vesna

Extending Our Influence Beyond Our Local Spaces

"Inna Razumova: The Web is an ephemeral, virtual medium that is associated with the mobility, manipulability, and transformation of data. Web is also one of this culture's primary places for a fetishization of the body. (spy cams, pornography, dating networks, avatar-based chat rooms, etc.). In your opinion, why is a medium that functions mostly through disembodiment so fascinated with the idea of body?

Victoria Vesna: It is because our bodies do not only consist of embodied, physical parts and our minds are not separate from our bodies and we are not separate identities. I do not consider this an opposition (idea of body/disembodiement), but a return to learning that we have etheric bodies, and can make telepathic connections to others on the other side of the planet. It is very empowering to have a sense of connection to someone who shares your ideas, whatever they may be, and feel a physical sensation in relation to this...The Internet provides a space for exploring our many identities, and experimenting with ideas of extending our influence beyond our local spaces." From Interview with Victoria Vesna by Inna Razumova, May 15 2001, Switch, Issue 16.

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Herald Sun: Aussies rank US behind China

From the Herald Sun: WHILE John Howard staunchly followed his close friend George W. Bush to war, Australians don't hold the same affection for our key ally, with the US ranking below China, France and Japan in the public's...

Originally posted by Sophie Beach from China Digital News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Pervasive Game Development Today

Originally posted by fgirardin from del.icio.us/tag/pervasive, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Solar Powered Bag

Originally from shiny shiny, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

"Icon" ads over commercials at TiVo

TiVo's support section has a new entry about the ads. The takeaway tip is that you can hit CLEAR to remove them from your screen.

I don't want to keep harping on this new feature, but I do want to return some nuance to this discussion by restating that I believe in all the screenshots I've seen, the ad is rough looking and obscuring too much of the screen. For the life of me, I can't figure out why TiVo would not put the ad down in a corner, perhaps taking up to 25% of the screen, wrapped around some TiVo OS chrome, so at least it looks like it should be there. The way the ads appear now, it almost looks like your TiVo has been hacked by an outsider. TiVo's UI and software engineers do some beautiful work, agonizing and testing each and every option, and customers are used to the friendly, eye-catching software, but this looks like something they were forbidden from working on.

Of all the screenshots I've seen, this one is my personal favorite for the worst possible interaction:

Nope, that doesn't obscure the show or degrade your ability to see what is going on at all. :)

Update: to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I just took a photo of my TiVo during a blockbuster commercial, then mocked up a quick ad format from a screenshot of the blockbuster homepage. Compare this with the photo above and I hope you'll see what I'm trying to say about how these need to be integrated with TiVo's look and feel for customers not to feel they're being taken.

At least it looks like it was supposed to be there. Why won't TiVo at least make them look more like this?

Originally posted by Matt Haughey from PVRblog, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Collaborative technologies v. collective will

What If They Built A Muni Wi-Fi Network And No One Came?

Nice to see someone point out that just because we can do it doesn't mean we should. And this reminds me of another dodgy assumption: that technology can or will create a commons. I've done my fair share of consulting work that very quickly demonstrated that no collaborative technology can work where there is no collective will.

Originally posted by Anne Galloway from Purse Lip Square Jaw, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Sometimes it sucks to be European

Not often, really not often, but when it comes to electronici, films y games, we often get to wait. For a long time. Cases in point: European WoW (full up, gearing up for round two, but months after the US release) and European PSP release (aaaaaaaaaages away).

Why am I complaining now? Because I like to complain. Also! Because I just realised why I want a PSP. Not for the games .. got a pink SP and will soon have a DS of some sort, I'm sure. Not for the movies - UMD can bite my arse. No, it's for the HACKS. Yeah baby. The thing has been out mere moments, and already - web browsers hacked from games, TV on the go,  Pr0n Station Portable, Korean versions to have real web browsers, all sorts of interesting beginnings with the social element, designer cases and general wifi-enabled, shiny shiny loveliness.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the PSP and far more than you need to. Mainly I want to show my bosses what Doctor Who looks like on a PSP. Portable TVs and mobile phone screens just haven't done it yet, and this is why:

Wait, that's not really showing it. How about this:

Not quite? Nearly?

No, HERE it is:

THAT's why.

Also, when you're web browsing, this screen size looks like it just tips it over into "yes-s-s". 

Such a minor detail, really, and yet, and yet.

Originally posted by Alice Taylor from Wonderland, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Sometimes it sucks to be European

Not often, really not often, but when it comes to electronici, films y games, we often get to wait. For a long time. Cases in point: European WoW (full up, gearing up for round two, but months after the US release) and European PSP release (aaaaaaaaaages away).

Why am I complaining now? Because I like to complain. Also! Because I just realised why I want a PSP. Not for the games .. got a pink SP and will soon have a DS of some sort, I'm sure. Not for the movies - UMD can bite my arse. No, it's for the HACKS. Yeah baby. The thing has been out mere moments, and already - web browsers hacked from games, TV on the go,  Pr0n Station Portable, Korean versions to have real web browsers, all sorts of interesting beginnings with the social element, designer cases and general wifi-enabled, shiny shiny loveliness.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the PSP and far more than you need to. Mainly I want to show my bosses what Doctor Who looks like on a PSP. Portable TVs and mobile phone screens just haven't done it yet, and this is why:

Wait, that's not really showing it. How about this:

Not quite? Nearly?

No, HERE it is:

THAT's why.

Also, when you're web browsing, this screen size looks like it just tips it over into "yes-s-s". 

Such a minor detail, really, and yet, and yet.

Originally posted by Alice Taylor from Wonderland, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Internet Surpasses Yellow Pages for Consumer Info

Originally from FutureWire - futurism and emerging technology, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

the fashion student blog

If there’s one fashion blog you subscribe to it should definitely be this one. Here’s the RSS feed.

Making shirts like tutus… ace!

Originally from incorporated subversion, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Centered Communication: Weblogs and aggregation in the organisation

I’ve posted a draft version of my blogtalk paper Centered Communication: Weblogs and aggregation in the organisation over at IncSub. I’m not about to rewrite it all… noooooo way :o)… but feedback / comments would be really cool. It’s a kind of mismash of Christopher Alexander, Ulises Mejias and a sprinkle of me complaining about discussion boards and going on about how RSS and blogs are the answer to everything ;o)

Here’s the abstract:

Centered Communication: Weblogs and aggregation in the organisation

Over the last decade business, educational and community organisations have attempted to enhance their operations through utilizing the web. A significant amount of this effort has been directed towards the development and management of internal communities, employee knowledge and organisational information. To this end, complex and powerful tools have been sourced, developed and implemented to create intranets, learning management systems, community sites, portals and virtual team spaces.

However, while many organisational communication processes have been revolutionised by direct interpersonal communication through email and Instant Messaging (IM), only limited successes have been achieved through the use of these web-based environments. It is argued that this has occurred as a result of the limitations in design of tools brought about by a tendency to embrace tree-like and centralised principles and their associated technological solutions.

In light of these arguments, this paper outlines an alternative, centred (as opposed to centralised) approach to online communication. In doing this, an organisational online communication model based around the use of weblogs and aggregation is presented and discussed in relation to its application in a large, distributed and complex setting. Key to this model are the assumptions that ownership, control, independence, choice and design for subversive use are critical in establishing conducive, motivating, authentic and effective online communication and knowledge environments.

[read the whole article and tell me what you think…]

Originally from incorporated subversion, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

[Future] “The Image of the Future” online version

(via) French forecaster Michel Godet put online a pdf version of “The Image of the Future” by Fred Polak. It’s great since this book was almost impossible to find (check amazon). The book is from 1953 and I worth reading (it reminds me when I read “The Future Shock” when I was a teenager). Even the frontpage is stunning!

Originally from pasta and vinegar, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

[Tangible] OK lets check brain wave controllers :)

Chris O’Shea pointed me on this very relevant project: rain-Computer Interface for Musical Applications:

bjective of this project is to develop technology to interface the brain with musical devices. In addition to improving social well-being and gaining a better understanding of the underlying neurology of musical processing

Originally from pasta and vinegar, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Telegraph

Artist -> dylan davis
Inspiration The initial inspiration for this interface came when driving to Sydney on the Hume highway. Whilst driving along I noticed huge telegraph cables crossing the highway, the highway had high banks either side and these huge cables slung over the highway dipping with a smooth curve. I imagined the cables as a huge double bass and thought about the deep bass sounds that would from strumming these huge cables. Concept The concept of this sound toy is to use the strings of a telegraph line as a sound toy, to generate bass tones. The user will play the string by moving the mouse across the strings thus playing a note. The note generated will depend on the position along the string. The volume of the note will depend on how hard they move the mouse across the string. Version 1.0 This initial version used maths to ascertain whether the mouse's position above or below the line and when the mouse crossed the line, that triggers the sound to play. The interface also tracks the distance travelled by the mouse between the enter and exit frame events to work out how hard the user had strummed the strings and increases the volume. The position the mouse interacts with the telegraph's string was tracked with the mouse enter and the length of the telegraph's string was divided by 16 to give a plus 8 and minus 8 octave scale on the initial sample used. Version 2.0 The revised version gave the control back to the user and was more in keeping with the tactile qualities of a double bass. The strings have to be plucked with a mouse click, this triggers the sound playing. There is a different note for each string and the notes are pitch shifted over a plus or minus scale. Ongoing To improve the interaction and user feedback. To use high quality samples set to an exact note that can be accurately pitch shifted to give correct musical scale. To look at how volume functionality could be a depending on how hard the user pulls at the strings. Extending the Concept Using a web cam linked to goggles it would be possible to capture these images in real time. The use could wear a headset and look at telegraph lines and using their hands play the telegraph lines as musical instruments. The level of contrast between the sky and the telegraph line would have to be quite high to calculate the co lour difference between sky and cable, the user would also have to have a glove with either led placed on glove to calculate the position and movement of users hand against the background. [more]

Originally from Rhizome.org Artwork, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Chris Crawford and interactive storytelling

Well, here is something, by way of Mark Barrett and Robin, that distracts me enough from trying to get to level 40 in World of Warcraft that I'm going to update my blog.

Two years ago, Greg Costikyan wrote a post-GDC entry on his blog that expressed a lot of the frustration that I think many people, or at least me, were feeling (even if I was a bit more optimistic than Greg). It looks like this year that honor may go to Michael Mateas, over at Grand Text Auto.

Michael makes many points that are worth commenting on, and I will do so later. But first a more personal issue.

Down in the comments, Chris Crawford writes:

Yes, the years of failure have sapped my energy. I don’t have the energy to work 10 hours a day on it as I once did. I work for a few hours, then my mind wanders. It takes enormous discipline to sit down and force myself to continue working on a project that the entire world – my wife included – thinks an utter waste of time. I take no creative joy in my work, nor any optimism that it will ever produce the results I hope for. I work now out of towering stubborness, and out of desperate fear of the thought that my life’s work – and therefore my life itself – has been an utter waste of time. I’m like a shipwrecked sailor in a rubber dinghy thousands of miles from any possible rescue, stubbornly paddling forward because there’s nothing else to do but die.

I remain absolutely certain that interactive storytelling can and will be achieved. Many of the arguments I witness on the topic no longer excite my attention, as I have long answered most of those questions to my own satisfaction. First among these is the “plot versus interactivity” debate. I solved that problem 15 years ago, published the solution, and nobody seems to have noticed it. Fine. They’ll figure it out someday. There remain serious problems to be solved, but I no longer consider any of them to be killer problems. They are what physicists like to call “engineering details".

So when others say that they are losing interest or getting discouraged, I can surely second that emotion. This is not an easy problem. It will not be solved by a few brilliant strokes of genius. It demands the solution of a number of gigantic problems. I believe that I have found one approach that solves those problems. I can see others making progress on very different strategies that seem promising. This is going to be a long, hard struggle. But make no mistake, someday we will plant our flag at the top of this mountain. If my role is to be the dead body holding down the accordion wire far below the summit, so be it.

personal history. At the spring ECTS in 1993, while I was a level 3 beginning game developer working for a small company in Germany and there still was a spring ECTS - remember the ECTS? - Richard Garriott gave me Chris Crawford's telephone number. (For many years, this was my ultimate name-dropping story.) I called Chris, we talked about game design, he recommended that I read the journal he was publishing, the Journal of Computer Game Design, later Interactive Entertainment Design. So together with my good friend Erik I bought every single back issue and a subscription. (Most of the material is now available online.) This had a great influence on my development as a game designer, and I still believe that no-one has written as much quality material on game design as Chris. In fact, if I hadn't read all that, I probably would have written a lot more, and it would not have been very good.

Chris and I kept in touch. I met him in person in Utah in 1994, and I visited him a couple of times in San Jose, meeting his charming wife and his many pets. We met at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 1996 (which started a five year run of me going back to the Netherlands once a year to watch twenty movies a week), and there he told me something along the lines of: "Jurie, you're a smart kid, I want you to be working on interactive storytelling in five years time." Since I'd missed my personal goal of making the Citizen Kane of interactive by age 26, I agreed.

And I missed that new goal too. But interactive storytelling is basically what I've been wanting to do even before I started making games for a living, when I was a demo programmer in the late eighties. Chris's obstinacy and frustration are a more intense version of my own. Even though I took a safer, more circuitous route, pretty much every career decision I've taken was to get me closer to somehow being involved in interactive storytelling. I've seen my share of failures and frustrations, and yet, because I am apparently a stubborn, unreasonable optimist who won't take no for an answer, I keep going.

During all that time, there was always Chris's inspiring example. He has dedicated himself to this endeavor for a ridiculous amount of time, making a huge personal investment. Who was I to call myself stubborn compared to him? I never quite worked up the courage to take the big step and focus on interactive storytelling full time, instead of, ah ah, trying to change the system from within.

This is the first acknowledgment of the cost and the frustration I've seen from Chris (as well as the first acknowledgment that there is more than one way to skin this particular cat). Perhaps perversely, I think it's a good thing: it would have been bad if he had never shown this human side. Nevertheless, I hope it doesn't mark the end of his involvement in interactive (so far the signs are good.)

Like Chris, I think interactive storytelling can be done, it will be done, and it's terrifyingly hard. But why try doing something easy? I can't think of a more fascinating quest than trying to create a completely new artistic medium. Onwards!

Originally posted by Jurie Horneman from Intelligent Artifice, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Lawyers Take Hold Of Blogging

After more than our share of public blood lettings in the blogsphere as a result of employee bloggers running afoul of their corporate parents, it is not surprising that companies are starting to issue blogging guidelines. The issue is a real one but until recently it was a small and isolated problem. But if ever there was an indication of the increasing prevalence of corporate blogging, it can be found in the email alert I just received from the Howard Rice law firm. The email alert was entitled "Corporate Blogging: Seize the Opportunity, but Control the Risks" and it laid out both the legal risks raised by corporate bloggers and some "practical guidance" for dealing with those risks. In fact, when I spoke with the Howard Rice lawyers who issued the alert, they said that they were rapidly developing an "expertise" in the law surrounding blogging and would be issuing additional blogging alerts in the future.

Blogging is indeed mainstream when legal practices emerge around it -- which is not to say that the advice Howard Rice gives isn't well taken. As a former lawyer, I couldn't help but spend a bunch of time thinking about the legal implications of blogging on my professional life before we started VentureBlog. As a result, I ended up drafting one of the first blog Terms of Service out there (who knows, maybe it was the first -- I couldn't manage to find anyone else's to plagiarize at the time I was drafting VentureBlog's). More importantly, we also spent a chunk of time talking with the whole August Capital partnership about blogging and how it might implicate the partnership either directly or indirectly. While we obviously concluded that the benefits of blogging greatly outweighed the risks, it was extremely helpful to go into it with eyes wide open and clearly set expectations within my "company."

Given all that, let me share with you Howard Rice's Risks and Guidance around corporate blogging:

While corporate blogs offer novel opportunities, they also present significant legal risks. Companies that anticipate these issues and plan accordingly can reap the benefits of corporate blogging while reducing the risk of litigation. Among the legal issues raised by corporate blogging are:

Defamation and Privacy Torts. Companies may be held liable if their employees post content to the corporate blog that defames or invades the privacy of third parties.

Intellectual Property Infringement. Posts that include a third party’s intellectual property, such as copyrighted material or trademarks, may expose the company to liability for infringement.

Trade Libel. False or misleading statements made on a corporate blog about the goods or services of a competitor that cause or are likely to cause the competitor harm may be grounds for a trade libel action.

Trade Secrets. Inadvertent disclosure of company trade secrets on a company blog can destroy the “secret” status of such information, rendering it ineligible for trade secret protection, and disclosure of a third party’s trade secrets could expose the company to liability for trade secret misappropriation.

Securities Fraud. Material misstatements made on a company blog could expose a publicly traded company to liability for securities fraud under Rule 10b-5.

Gun-Jumping. While a company is in registration, statements made on a company blog “hyping” the company could be deemed a prohibited offer of the company’s securities, in violation of federal securities laws.

Selective Disclosure. Disclosure of material nonpublic information on a publicly traded company’s blog could be deemed a prohibited selective disclosure under federal securities laws.

Forward-Looking Statements. Failure to include appropriate cautionary language accompanying a forward-looking statement on a reporting company’s blog could cause the statement to fall outside the statutory safe harbor for such statements.

Employment Issues. Companies that terminate employees for posting inappropriate content to corporate blogs may be sued for wrongful termination, with plaintiffs claiming that the employer authorized the posting is discriminating against them for exercising their right to organize, or is violating their free speech rights. (Similar issues arise when an employee is terminated based on the content of the employee’s personal blog, or the content of instant messages or email sent by the employee.)

User Privacy. Companies that collect personal information from individuals who visit or post comments to the blog may be required to comply with state, federal and foreign privacy regulations.

Discovery. Companies can be sanctioned in the course of discovery for failure to produce archived blog content.

Practical Guidance

To minimize the risks, companies should carefully consider their blogging strategy and take proactive steps to minimize potential exposure. Such steps may include:

ing a written policy for employees that sets out clear guidelines for corporate blogging and raises awareness about possible pitfalls. Companies may wish to have separate guidelines for employees’ discussion of the company in their personal blogs.

Establishing terms of use for the corporate blog and posting appropriate disclaimers that limit the company’s liability for third-party statements and other claims.

Regularly monitoring the corporate blog for content that violates terms of use, employee policies or applicable laws.

Taking the steps required to qualify for the safe harbors available under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Ensuring that any personal information gathered from users via the corporate blog is handled in compliance with applicable privacy laws and the applicable privacy policy.

Archiving corporate blog content in a well-organized and readily available form."

ice for sure (particularly in light of the not insignificant perils corporations clearly face with bloggers). That said, the problem for corporations is that blogging isn't under centralized control. Much like the problem of rogue access points in an enterprise, bloggers can pop up anywhere on the grid and, despite clearly stated policies, create risks for the corporation. Even in those circumstances where a company is fully aware of a blogger in its midst, it can run significant political, competitive or legal risks from the things that the blogger chooses to write. I'm sure I'm not the only one who keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop on our good friend Mr. Scoble. Despite all that, it is clear that blogging is here to stay, so I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more advice from the folks at Howard Rice and every other law firm for that matter. When the stakes are high, the lawyers come rolling in from all directions.

Originally posted by David Hornik from VentureBlog, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Edinburgh Interactive goes live

The Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival (formerly known as the EIGF) has launched its website, complete with a list of the 2005 conference sessions for industry and other interested parties. Inspiring contention, this year's lineup includes "Mobile Games Aren't Going...

Originally posted by Aleks Krotoski from Games, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Game story: The Book of Waste

The Book of Waste is the latest interactive story in multimedia from Dreaming Methods.  It's a brooding hypertext, with pieces of stories distributed into short stories, then into sequences within them.  Stories range from rural horror (maybe) to urban isolation and teen anxiety.  There's some cross-hatching by theme and tone, along with some game hints (a code number).

As usual with Dreaming Methods, the multimedia presentation is excellent.  The sound is especially effective, persistent and rich.  Each story appears with a different hypertext mapping scheme, sometimes hooked into the text.  Stories appear as text layered on top of images, each lexia combined with one or two images, which can move uneasily.  Media appear as narrative structures, such as the story using video as a metaphor, or the tale nearly hidden within an audio tape.   The whole thing is presented as beta, with two stories posing as incomplete, but it's hard to say if this is really a work in process or just the expression of all of these fictions' cumulative suffering and failure.

Edited to add: interestingly, DM now publishes text-only versions of some of their projects, including this one.

Originally posted by Bryan Alexander from Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 30, 2005 | edit

Robosurgeons May Sew Up Soldiers

The Defense Department invests in robots for battlefield surgery. Also: Sony's PlayStation faces copyright scrutiny.... Microsoft gets a European name for Windows.... and more.

Originally from Wired News: Top Stories, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Global Warming's Silver Lining

Some scientists and academics think Earth's rising temperature is a good thing, especially for people in cold places and those who like large squid. Environmental watchdogs say the optimists have the wrong idea. By David Cohn.

Originally from Wired News: Top Stories, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

"Climate Change Commitment"

Here's a bit of jargon watch: I've been noticing an increasing use of the phrase "climate change commitment" to describe the idea that global warming is now inevitable if not already here, and we have to begin to anticipate the consequences (such as sea level rise and shifting weather patterns) even while we work to control emissions in order to keep things from getting really ugly. example:

While the concept of climate-change commitment isn't new, these fresh results "tell us what's possible and what's realistic" and that for the immediate future, "prevention is not on the table," says Roger Pielke Jr... To Pielke and others, this means adaptation should be given a much higher priority that it's received to date.

In short, because of climate change commitment, we now need to actively embrace climate foresight.

(Posted by Alex Steffen in QuickChanges at 07:14 AM)

Originally posted by Alex Steffen from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Hybrid Savings Calculator

Footprint calculators are a good way to get a sense of how one's lifestyle affects the environment -- a way of making the invisible visible, as we say -- but they often suffer from being a bit too generic, making broad assumptions that may not necessarily fit how you live. Tools for measuring use are helpful, if sometimes awkward (a problem remedied by better ways of presenting information). What we need more of are ways of calculating the effect of specific activities.

Mixed Power, one of the growing number of web sites for hybrid car enthusiasts, gives us a good start with its handy-dandy web calculator, designed to let you figure out just how much you would save by dumping that Canyonero XCM and moving to something without the godzilla-like carbon footprint. Enter the price of gas, the mileage of your current vehicle, how many miles you drive in a given timeframe, and which hybrid you're considering -- HCH, HAC, Insight, Prius, Escape or RX400h -- and your savings will be shown. The calculator tells you how many fewer gallons of gas you'll be consuming, and how much money you'll be saving -- an almost useless figure, since gasoline prices won't remain stable for the full 10 years to which the calculator projects. Fortunately, the calculator also reveals how many pounds of CO₂ you will no longer be personally responsible for via your driving -- a number which is of mild interest to most people now, but will likely be a regular part of conversation a decade hence.

We have a well-connected, well-informed network here -- what other environmental/lifestyle calculators have you run across?

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in A Newly Electric Green – Sustainable Energy, Resources and Design at 05:01 PM)

Originally posted by Jamais Cascio from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

FabLab Future Salon

FabLabs are pretty damn worldchanging, and we've been swooning about them since first wrote them up last September. $20,000 gets the future in a box: a self-contained facility with tools to build just about anything (anything bigger than a microchip, that is). The MIT Fab Lab program has already deployed six Fab Labs around the world, in a poor part of Boston, in Norway (with some of Europe's last remaining nomadic people), in Costa Rica, in Ghana, and two in India; a Fab Lab in South Africa is coming soon. The Economist has a brief but interesting story about Fab Labs this week, noting that the World Bank has been leery to underwrite purchases of Fab Lab equipment in the developing world, calling it too "speculative." We prefer to think of it not as speculation, but as foresight.

Dr. Neil Gershenfeld heads up the Fab Lab project, and has just finished a book on it. He'll be dropping by the Bay Area Future Salon on Friday April 15. While that's terrific for those of us in the SF area, if you can't make it in person, don't despair: a real-time Internet Relay Chat session will be transcribing the talk, and there will be a Quicktime webcast available, as well. This will definitely be a talk not to miss.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in Events - Conferences, Festivals and Meetings at 12:55 PM)

Originally posted by Jamais Cascio from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Wind Power Maps

Treehugger points us to a site at the US Department of Energy showing wind power maps for most American states. There aren't too many surprises in store -- as expected, wind power tends to be greatest along high hill and mountain ridges, and along coastlines. Still, it's interesting to get an early warning as to which locations may turn out to be wind power capitols in the not too distant future (hello, Wyoming!).

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 04:11 PM)

Originally posted by Jamais Cascio from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Eliza Redux

A Robot Who Talks Too Much

Eliza Redux--by Adrianne Wortzel--is an interactive telerobotic web site providing a space for text-to-speech and oral discourse, acting out, and playfulness in the virtual environment of a psychoanalyst's waiting room and inner office. Video and audio of a real physical robot is streamed to the web reactive to visitor text input. Issues of control and lack of control become paramount for the user. Wortzel is implementing ways to bring Weizenbaum's original 1966 ELIZA program into the 21st century.

Wortzel is seeking a computer science professional or student in the New York City area who can lend his/her skills to an internet-broadcast robotic art installation. She is looking for a developer to facilitate communication between clients running flash applications, a server database, and an extremely talkative robot.

Job Requirements:
- SKILLED DEVELOPER in jsp, flash, xml.
- Be able to learn a pre-existing set of commands from the robot control interface.
Ideally, you will also
- Have understanding of database retrieval & modification
- Patiently explain technology needed to execute high-level art ideas
- Be willing to troubleshoot & debug until things work right, everything from web-cams to multiple socket connections.

Job length: Immediate start, completion deadline -end of May.

You will receive at the very least a $500 stipend, and experience/credit in a robotic art installation bound for gallery showing. An article about the project is coming out in the June issue of the prestigious Journal: Leonardo. Plus, you'll get to work in a tech-decked paradise lab with fun people and an even more fun humanoid robot. Even if you don't have all the skills outlined above, we're very interested in hearing from people who are enthusiastic & quick at learning. To apply, contact Prof. Adrianne Wortzel at muse(at)cooper.edu or cell: 646-567-9648

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Pervasive Game Development Today

24/7 Immersion

"...Pervasive gaming was first the vision of Swedish company It's Alive!, meaning location-based games that surround you, 24 hours a day, everywhere. When you walk down the street, you're walking through an adventure world draped on top of the real world, and people you meet may be characters in the same game you're playing. Pervasive games are built upon three core technologies: mobile devices, wireless communication, and sensing technologies that capture players’ contexts. It is actually the blend of technologies combined with the location-based and often public nature of game play, gives pervasive games their distinctive identity [Bridging the Physical and Digital in Pervasive Gaming]." From Pervasive Game Development Today by Fabien Girardin.

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Is It Time To Cry "Peak Oil"?

Originally from A Theory of Power, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Driving through soundspace

Today, people are storing larger and larger quantities of digital pictures, videos and sounds and it gets increasingly difficult to browse these vast amounts of information.

I Am Driving Through Sound Space, by MIT researcher Carlos Rocha, is a driving simulation-style installation that immerses the user in a landscape of sound. A computer, equipped with a steering wheel, becomes the vehicle of navigation, demonstrating a different way to browse digital information.

IADTSS takes advantage of the Cocktail Party Effect, the ability to distinguish a single sound source from many others. IADTSS spatially maps individual sounds from a large collection into a virtual world, assigning unique spatial coordinates to each sound.

A user moving through the space will hear each sound source coming from their proper location, in a process called Sound Spatialization. The intensity of each sound diminishes with its distance from the user, and it is heard in stereo according to its position relative to the user. By implementing the Doppler Effect additional spatial clues are provided: as a user moves towards a source, the pitch of the sound increases and vice versa.

The driving wheel and foot pedals gives the feeling of driving through the database at variable speeds without loosing precision.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Go to the cinema and star in the film you're about to see

During the Expo 2005, spectator queueing to see a movie at Toshiba’s digital cinema are submitted to a futurecast, they place their faces into a hole in the wall for a few seconds. High-resolution digital cameras perform a quick scan from several angles, and everyone takes their seats.

The animated film, Grand Odyssey, begins as normal but the entire cast is made up of walking, talking digital replicas of people in the audience.

Each speactator gets a role — there are soldiers, doctors, scientists and politicians involved in the story — as a Toshiba supercomputer is processing the one-time-only film.

Elsewhere, Hitachi is inviting visitors to a virtual reality safari where they get handsets that contain a prototype of the mu-chip, a processor which, when brought close to particular transmitters, downloads any information on offer in that area and displays it on a small screen.

The safari ride employs a 3D projection system designed to work with a set of sensors strapped to the hands. In the virtual reality world, solid-seeming objects can be plucked from mid-air and examined more closely in the hands.

Elsewhere, NTT DoCoMo shows its object-recognition binoculars which recognise certain objects and displays details about them in the eyepiece.

Fix on a passing plane and the device will tell you the flight number and destination. Turn your attention to a flower, and it will tell you what variety it is.

DoCoMo hopes to use the technology in camera-equipped handsets. With particular databases of information installed, the phones could be pointed at objects of interest and used to collect information. Waved past an item in a shop, for example, it might inform users where the same thing could be bought more cheaply.

Via The Times.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Context Photography

As creative tools, digital cameras could transcend the constraints of analogue devices and give birth to new aesthetic practices in the act of taking a picture.

Context Photography, a project from Sweden's Viktoria Institute, looks at how factors like pollution, temperature and sound could be used as parameters in a digital camera and "visualised" in a picture.

The prototype uses sensor input to affect the image in real time with graphical effects. It is implemented on a Tablet PC, with the screen acting as a viewfinder, and all processing is performed by a C++ software program. A webcam serves as a lens, and a small mouse taped on top of it is used as a trigger. A condensator microphone connected through a small pre-amplifier, measures the sound level. Movement is retrieved as a vector field from the differentiation of subsequent images captured by the webcam.

The user points with the webcam, sees the image and its real-time effects on the viewfinder, takes a picture by leftclicking on the mouse, and changes effect combinations by right-clicking. When a picture is taken, an audio feedback is heard; the image freezes a couple of seconds on the screen, and is saved as a JPEG file.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

Global Bearing

We can't feel the round Earth though we live on a globe and satellite photograph do not really synchronize with the ground under our feet.

Global Bearing, by Hirakawa Norimichi, makes it possible to feel the round Earth in your sense, and explore it by controlling a pole set on the floor. When the pole is moved like a gyrocompass, the map of the other side of the planet will appear in conjunction to its inclination.

The special experience - pointing the world through the ground - that we can't experience in usual may be able to influence audience's thought. For example, if you could point to Iraq through the ground, the TV news might be seen with some difference. or if you could point to your trip destination, you could enjoy your trip more before your leaving.

Winner of the Excellence Prize for the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2004.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

In Chloe, a great city...

Originally posted by Anne Galloway from Purse Lip Square Jaw, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 29, 2005 | edit

e-waste guide

Source: eWaste Guide - Home

"Electronic waste, or e-waste, is growing rapidly given the faster rate of obsolesce of electronic equipment. The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (seco) has commissioned the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA) to conduct a study of the controversial issue of e-waste disposal, which implies both risks and opportunities on a global scale."

Posted by Gavin on March 26, 2005 | TrackBack (0) | edit

Cell Phone with Built-in Projector

Siemens researchers have developed a cell phone featuring a built-in projector system. A laboratory model was presented at CeBIT 2005 in Hanover. The system makes it possible to project a complete keypad or display onto a surface. With a special pen, users can write on the virtual keypad and operate the phone`s functions.

Originally from Physics Org, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Samsung Announces Next-Generation Mobile Trends and Technologies

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today delivered an extremely optimistic outlook on the market migration to mobile technology before 700 IT technology enablers at the second annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in the Westin Taipei Hotel in downtown Taipei. Samsung, which plans to steadily increase its business and investments in the mobile marketplace, said it foresees dynamic growth in corporate and consumer mobile usage over the next decade. The company predicted that, as the movement toward ‘mobile convergence' accelerates, key functions will merge introducing more user-optimized mobile applications, calling for more innovative advances in semiconductor technology.

Originally from Physics Org, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

The voluntary RFID implant

Privacy advocates the world over tremble with fear—the end is near! A man has voluntarily implanted an RFID chip in himself, alert the tin-foil hat police immediately. Why’d he do it? He doesn’t seem too terribly sure, but he knows he wants to place RFID sensors all over his house to automatically log him into his computer, open locks, and god only knows what else. Oh, and for what it’s worth, he didn’t perform the surgery himself—he had a doctor friend pitch in. Weak!

[Flickr photoset]

[Via BoingBoing]

Originally posted by Ryan Block from Engadget, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

The transparent desktop optical illusion

Yeah, you just take a shot of what’s behind your screen and make it your desktop background. We’ll spare you the “Why didn’t we think of that?” biz as we just sit in awe of its completely obvious awesomeness. And yes, we tried it, and yes, it’s more difficult than it looks to get it just right, especially if you don’t have a laptop. It’s all about the fold-down screen, dude.

[Via BoingBoing]

Originally posted by Ryan Block from Engadget, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Project Annihilation: Death of an iTrip

Some companies make you jump through hoops to get a replacement for a malfunctioning device. Griffin Technology takes a rather different approach to the process by issuing replacements right away, and asking only that the customer destroy the non-functioning device “in a creative manner” and send photographic evidence. Well, one customer took the challenge to heart and decided the only sane thing to do would be to take the obvious route: blow it up with model rocket engines. Luckily, she also had the good sense to document the whole process. Witness evidence of destruction after the jump.

[Thanks, Jason]

Originally posted by Barb Dybwad from Engadget, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Atari Cartridge USB Flash Drive

Look, he admits right there on the page that he knows this is sort of retarded, so let's cut him some slack and wallow in the joys of a retro refit well done. I mean, he even made a new label and everything!

Retro Flash Drive [BrendanDawes]

Originally from Gizmodo, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Toshiba's 4GB 0.85 Inch Hard Drive in April

Whoa, remember that 0.85 inch hard drive from Toshiba that was announced like a year ago? Well it's finally ready to go into production in April. And it was 2GB back then, but now it's up to 4GB. Toshiba plans to put the drives in portable audio players and cell phones. Let's hope they have some nice shock protection in these, because one good fall and oops, there goes your whole contact list.

Toshiba to Produce 4GB 0.85" Hard Drive in April [Impress Watch]

Related
Toshiba Whips Out Tiny Hard Drive, Smacks Apple

Originally from Gizmodo, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Autonomous outdoor cleaning robot

This merry little machine is the SUBARU RoboHiter , an outdoor cleaning robot currently on show at Aichi World Expo. It cleans the floor whatever weather, is able to pick up a garbage can and is equipped with GPS, position recognition and a moving system using a laser sensor and triangulation.

RoboHiter can communicate with two of its robot mates to ensure a synchronized cleaning of fixed areas.

Picture from CleaningInfo.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Early Japanese typewriters

Determined to make their offices as efficient as those of the West, the Japanese invented a typewriter for their own complex writing system.

The first one, appropriately named Model No. 1, appeared in 1915. Some minor improvements aside, the original design remained unchanged for several decades.

Video of a Japanese typewriter in action.

Via del.icio.us.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

EnterActive (11th & Flower)

Electroland's EnterActive (11th & Flower) project at 11th and Flower Streets in downtown Los Angeles consists of a luminous field of LED embedded into a facade and controlled by pedestrian traffic into the building.

Environmental intelligence and surveillance of human activity are combined with a video-game sensibility. Activities on the walkway also trigger massive light displays on the building face. When the walkway interactivity is triggered users witness their impact on the building face via a video display.

Quicktime video.

See also Kinecity's project for 7 World Trade Center that uses camera based recognition systems to activate facades, tunnels and interiors.

Via Information aethetics and Computing for Emergent architecture.
Also by Electroland: interactive walkaways.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

China's Next Cultural Revolution

The People's Republic is on the fast track to become the car capital of the world. And the first alternative-fuel superpower. By Lisa Margonelli from Wired magazine.

Originally from Wired News: Top Stories, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Refugee camps, slums, mobility and time

While theories of mobility, nomadism and flow continue to capture the imagination of intellectuals, I try to remember that mobility may only be freeing when it is freely chosen. An increasingly common critique is that nomadic ways of life have always been difficult, and the kinds of forced or compelled mobility experienced by exiles, refugees and migrant labourers are very different from the mobility chosen by tourists or privileged by academics and professionals who routinely travel the world.

Liberian Refugees Yearn to End a Life of Fleeing (via plep)

"Over the course of 13 years of civil war, approximately 340,000 Liberians fled their country seeking refuge in other West African nations. Among those who fled are some 4,000 Liberians who live in a refugee camp in Oru, Nigeria ... The experiences of the Liberians - who share the camp with Sierra Leoneans, Rwandans, and Sudanese - vary. While some arrived as the Liberian civil war climaxed in mid-2003, others have been living in Oru for over 10 years."

I find it difficult to grasp spending ten years on the move and never leaving this one place. In Oru are one room dwellings shared by multiple families, schools and training facilities, shops and restaurants, and young men say "We have nothing here for our minds to do... We're all getting older. I'm getting older..."

I'm thinking of Chantal Mouffe's comments in Hope about how our current preoccupation with mobility suffers for not acknowleding how important our sense of belonging is. I'm thinking about slums and squatters, and Neuwirth's suggestion in Shadow Cities that these ways of living are challenging our assumptions about community and property.

In Oru, residents build with donated materials; it is state-sanctioned space. It's temporary, always trying to both get home and be at home, to belong there and not-there. In Brazilian favelas, people construct buildings of self-procured materials; settlements are opposed by the state. A slum constantly works towards permanency but is under constant threat of erasure. It is home trying to belong even more, home resisting mobility.

How can we understand tensions between mobility and stability? Can they be reduced to agency and structure? What kind of flow would this be?

How does time play out?

Originally posted by Anne Galloway from Space and Culture, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

War and poetry

Notes on war aesthetics by Joshua Schuster

"If after World War I the true trauma of battle shattered any easy collaboration between war and art, the links still remain latent in the very idea of an avant-garde, which is after all a military term that puts art on the offensive. The avant-garde mounts a militant aesthetic, proposing a cultural war of social and poetic means. If poetry were to totally dislocate itself from a war aesthetic, it also would have to go beyond the premise of an avant-garde..."

(via wood s lot)

Originally posted by Anne Galloway from Space and Culture, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Artistic intervention

Very cool! A Wooster Exclusive: Banksy Hits New York's Most Famous Museums (All of them)

"Dressed as a British pensioner, over the last few days Banksy entered galleries [in The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Natural History] and attached one of his own works, complete with authorative name plaque and explanation.

He says - 'This historic occasion has less to do with finally being embraced by the fine art establishment and is more about the judicious use of a fake beard and some high strength glue.' Banksy continues - 'They're good enough to be in there, so I don't see why I should wait'.

Staff at the New York Met discovered and removed their new aquisition early Sunday morning while Banksy's discount soup can print took pride of place in the MoMA for over three days before being torn down. As of now, the other two pieces currently remain firmly in place..."

(Via Regine)

Originally posted by Anne Galloway from Space and Culture, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Let's colonize space for fun, noted physicist says

Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study professor emeritus Freeman Dyson sketched out a possible future in which humans colonize asteroids and genetically engineer potatoes that can grow on Mars....

Originally from KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Social networking services in 2005

Wired surveys the social networking service scene, focusing on economic viability and integration with other functions.

What they have in common is the pursuit of a business model that will allow them to translate other peoples' social networks into profits for themselves.

Originally posted by Bryan from Smart mobs, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Fast flirting by mobile phones

The Syndney Morning-Herald reports on fast flirting, or rapid romantic/sexual contact enabled by cell phones.

Singles cruise their dial pads to unearth prospects' profiles with options to view photos and videos, search sexy profiles and send and receive "kisses" and flirty chats. You can get it when you're walking your dog, drinking at your local, slumped over the desk at work, in the bath or going for a run - you can get it anywhere.

Like toothing, dogging, and other stories of mobility and sex, we're seeing yet another tweak to human sexual culture under the impact of wireless technologies.
(thanks to Jim Downing!)

Originally posted by Bryan from Smart mobs, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Usability In The News: Touching New Interfaces

Matt Jones and Chris Heathcote are Nokia's oracles. Officially, Jones is a concept development manager and Heathcote is a user experience manager in Nokia's Insight & Foresight group. Unofficially, the two are inciting a revolution in the way we interact with our mobile devices, and each other. At last week's Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, they wowed the crowd with a demonstration of a Nokia's Near Field Communication, a cell phone shell containing a reader for wireless electronic tags. According to the researchers, NFC isn't just another wireless standard though. Rather, it's a harbinger of the "tangible interfaces" to come.

TheFeature: What exactly is a tangible interface?

Jones: We're trying to come up with ways to rethink and remap the idioms of computing and communications that have traditionally been tied to the desktop and laptop so that they work better in the contexts in which people use smart phones. Embodied interaction through tangible interfaces is one way to do that.

TheFeature: Can you give a concrete example?

Jones: We're looking at how touch can be used to execute a number of tasks or interactions so you don't have to switch contexts from the real world to the world inside the screen. For instance, one person could touch his device to someone else's and give them a "digital gift," to borrow a phrase from our old boss Marko Ahtisaari. That digital gift might be something as simple as a URL or a photo that I've taken of a moment we just shared.

Originally posted by Usernomics from Planet HCI, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Usability In The News: Tags, Autolink, and Microformats

Danny Sullivan over at SearchEngineWatch.com is skeptical of the benefits of tagging. After all, he points out, we’ve had the meta keywords element in HTML for years and most Search Engines started ignoring it after so many people abused it. He sees tags as no different, suggesting that they’ll be abused before long.

I agree with this to some extent. I remember when I first heard of tagging, I wanted to know, “how is that different than meta tags?”. I think we’ll see in the coming months…and we’ll also see some interesting things on the kind-of-related “microformat” front. Microformats are basically an “extension” of XHTML that leverages a standard format so that aggregators can understand them (and people thought the semantic web was bunk). For example, Bud Gibson is proposing a new XFolk microformat for folksonomies. Interesting stuff!

Originally posted by Usernomics from Planet HCI, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Phone cultures set nations apart

European and US culture differ in many things, including in the way they use telephones. Choices made by governments and companies can mean teens in Athens, Georgia, talk on their fixed-line phones for four hours a day while those in...

Originally posted by Regine from textually.org, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Having a cell phone shows if you're mature

An increasing number of teenagers are asking their parents for cell phones. And increasingly, parents are ready to say "yes" because they like knowing their children can contact them if needed and because of operators' "family plans", informs CNN News....

Originally posted by Regine from textually.org, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

21st century way to find dream home - by text

An SMS service launched today will transmit 24-hour property information to house hunters in Scotland, informs The Scotsman. Potential buyers tap a reference code displayed on "For Sale" or "To Let" signs outside properties into their mobile phone and...

Originally posted by Regine from textually.org, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Fileshare With Your Skin

Giving P2P a whole new meaning, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation claims development of a viable Human Area Network that can transmit data at 2Mbps over the surface of the skin. Among other potential benefits is security, because the effective transmission range is only about 20 cm. "If you can't pick up [the signal] it can't be cracked." Read more here.

Originally posted by Judith Berman from Futurismic, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Blast Theory presents Can You See Me Now?

Join the Hunt

Played online and in the streets, BAFTA-nominated Blast Theory challenge you to a game of cat and mouse around a virtual map of Cambridge. Log on using the public terminals situated in the Junction's new café bar or play online at canyouseemenow and be dropped in at a random location from where you must avoid capture by the Blast Theory 'runners'.

Eavesdrop on your pursuers' conversations and swap tactics with other players as Blast Theory (as real actors positioned on the real streets of Cambridge) hunt down your virtual presence with the aid of handheld computers and GPS technology. FREE to play. April 1st-3rd 2-5pm; April 6th-8th April 4-7pm at The Junction, Cambridge.

Artists' Workshop: April 6th 1-4pm; £5/£4 concessions

The player is a key feature in all Blast Theory's work. This afternoon workshop will look at how the audience engages directly with an artwork, in dialogue with other 'players' and the artists.

Using the player as a focus, participants will respond creatively to site/space, game structure and forms of media/communication technologies to inform and stimulate their own media and performance practice. Finally all participants are welcome behind the scenes at 4pm to look at the hardware, software and performance preparation of 'Can You See Me Now?' Blast Theory's award-winning interactive game, presented by the Junction.

Suitable for artists looking to expand their understanding on new performance technologies, participants should come prepared to move, draw and talk.

To book a place call the Junction box office on 01223 511511 or visit in person at The Junction, 2 Clifton Way, Cambridge, CB1 7GX. [via DAN]

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

HyPod

Body as Interface

HyPod is an interactive multimedia installation that invites the public to use their bodies as an interface and, coordinating their movements with other people in the same dark room, navigate a hyperdimensional world of images and sounds created by dozens of artists around the world. HyPod is based on a Web-based project called HyGrid.

HyGrid is a digital art piece currently undergoing collaborative creation by many different artists around the globe in a continued visual dialogue. With HyPod, a group of people gathered in the same physical location can navigate together through HyGrid. Using their bodies as an interface, they can experience how it feels to collaborate and interact with other participants in the process of viewing the work. Beside the images created by Sito Electronic Arts collective, HyPod also features original sound integrated with the interactive installation.

Lenara Verle is an artist and researcher in the field on Net art and collaborative art. Participates since 1994 in the award-winning group Sito Electronic Arts (www.sito.org - receiver of the Prix Ars Electronica in 1996 for the collaborative project HyGrid). Summer 2000 UNESCO-ASCHBERG resident artist at the art and technology research center CAiiA+STAR, England (www.caiia-star.net).

CAPES/APARTES Young Artist Grant laureate 2001 at the New School, New York. Participated in collaborative art exhibits in Rome, Italy; Porto Alegre, Brazil; Montreal, Canada; New York and Los Angeles, USA. [via Rhizome]

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

The Rise of Smart Buildings - Computerworld

Building-automation systems used to function in separate technology silos. Now vendors are rapidly adopting IP, Web services and other technologies that are beginning to converge with traditional IT infrastructures

Originally posted by kortuem from del.icio.us/tag/ubicomp, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Quake is ten!

Which means I must be ancient. The quake logo was the only thing I ever considered having tattooed...

Anyway:

For years, the fragging faithful have gathered for what has become Valhalla for worshippers of first-person shooters -- QuakeCon, which turns 10 this year. The event takes place in Grapevine, Texas, from August 11 to 14.

The gathering was first held in the summer of 1996 by a few IRC pals who wanted to meet face-to-face. According to the organizers, "less than 100 attendees gathered at the Best Western in Garland, Texas, that first year to play and talk games and compete." Last year's event drew a record 6,000 attendees; this year's is expected to bring even more.

Though named after the "Quake" series, the roster of games featured at QuakeCon has expanded. The games of choice are "Quake," "Quake II," "Quake III Arena," "Quake III: Team Arena," "Return to Castle Wolfenstein," and id Software's latest shooter, "Doom 3." The next "Quake," "Quake IV," was not mentioned in the announcement.

So sez teh CNet. All hail the greatest game ever made. Yes, you included.

Originally posted by Alice Taylor from Wonderland, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Mobile phone usage

The innovation and growth on the mobile phones front is astonishing. The top-end phones available now have the processing power and storage available in desktop computers from just 4-5 years ago. Little wonder then that 2004 saw 674 million phones being b

Originally posted by iftf from del.icio.us/iftf, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Blogs, Everyone? Weblogs Are Here to Stay, but Where Are They Headed?

"Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter puts blogging right up there with the printing press when it comes to sharing ideas and disseminating information."

Originally posted by iftf from del.icio.us/iftf, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

CAE - Introduction to blogging

My partner flicking through the paper found that the excellent Council for Adult Education in Melbourne are doing an ‘Introduction to Blogging’ course by Lissa Kennedy (who doesn’t appear to have a blog… tell me if you do!)

Things are catching on…

Originally from incorporated subversion, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

[VideoGames] Stamkey: giving virtual real-estate a physical presence

Stamkey is a pc/mobile application developed by Sachihata. A tag embeds personal information into a camera-phone readable format that can be imported into mobile phones. As I don’t read japanese, I rely on Josh Rubin’s blog for the game comcept explanation:

The Stamkey is a stamp that you open up and creates a 2D barcode that can be scanned by a mobile phone. The data received from the barcode is personal information, which is then stored in the mobile. They say that people are placing these 2D barcodes on business cards. But really the possibilities are endless. Just think, no more standing around dictating digits for another for punch in their phone or the expected call back for proper digit exchange.

Originally from pasta and vinegar, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

[VideoGames] Motivation and mobile gaming

A submitted paper for Digra 2005 (I think they made a mistake and the system is badly protected, we should not be allowed to access to submission):
User Experience in Designing Mobile Multiplayer Games by Anu Kankainen. The authors, as a user experience practioners, explains how motivation relates to the mobile gamer experience.

A motive is understood as a need that is driving the user to interact with the game. This need is often emotionally directed. (…) Motivational level needs address “why a person is doing what s/he is doing”; action level needs address “how person is doing what s/he is doing.” Action level needs are often cognitive level needs that are related to a mental model of how to conduct an action. Motive and action does not have a meaning without context. Context issues - time, place, things and people- are especially relevant to mobile game applications, since the game-playing environment can vary substantially. (…) 49 mobile game users participated in the tests.
(…)
design guideline examples:

1. MOTIVE: Games fulfil social motives by letting the avatar enjoy respect, love, or power, which the player will feel when really immersed in a game. Multiplayer games bring social concepts into play. Interacting with others makes people feel they belong to a group and that they get respect from others. Cooperation and competition are two sides of a coin. Being a member of a group requires friendly cooperation, but at the same time there is a constant competition for status within the group. Playing against real people means that power and admiration are at stake.
   • Games become more interesting when players can compare their performance with the performance of possible community members. Give the user the possibility of updating his/her scores to the high-score list of the game community despite the level of his/her scores.
   • Show the user both the scores of some of the best players and the scores of players who performed closest to the user.
   • Consider using the community high-score list in selecting opponents of equal strength for multiplayer games.
2. ACTION: Post game consists of actions after the game is over. Game communities, high-score lists, or chat with other players about game strategies and tactics can be an essential part of the game experience. In our user tests the greatest difficulties when acting in a game community were caused by inadequate feedback.
• When the user is connected to a game server, s/he needs to know what has happened and is happening in order to know what to do next. If there is no feedback about interactions on the server, the user will think the actions have failed.
• After the user has uploaded a file (for example, a clip or a ghost) to a server, provide clear feedback that the file has been uploaded and where the destination folder is.
• After the user has sent a challenge to a friend, provide feedback that the challenge has been sent successfully.
3. CONTEXT (TIME): In two-player games, the player does not usually keep playing when his/her opponent is interrupted. However, it should be possible to continue the game after the interruption, because short interruptions are frequent in mobile contexts.
   • In two-player games, the game should go into Pause mode for both players if one of the players is interrupted, for example by an incoming call. It must be possible to continue the game.
   • When in Pause mode, the game should go into its Main menu or Pause menu where the first command is “continue 2-player game”. It must be possible to quit the game during the pause, because the interruption may take long time.
   • The player who was not interrupted should receive information about why the game is being paused. For example, “Waiting for other player to continue”. In games with more than two players, other gamers may want to continue when one player is interrupted, therefore pausing everybody’s game is not a convenient solution.
   • Design games with more than two players so that the interruption of one player does not interfere with the other players’ game. The interrupted player’s game can be switched to the background without pausing the game or the player is dropped from the game. The preferred action depends on the game type.

this? This all relates to the discussion we often have at the lab about how to engage users with mobile technology. A tough issue.

Originally from pasta and vinegar, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Com-Badge

"Siemens has developed a sweet little wearable, Bluetooth-based badge that lets you speak commands to control your house, talk to others in your house and accept and conduct phone calls. For all intents and purposes, lest any of you be confused, this is life imitating art in the finest sense. The system can recognize 30,000 words once you press the button on the badge to activate it."

Originally posted by ianm from spruik, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Coolest mobile games

David Collier has made available the presentation he did at the Game Developers Conference 2005 with Matthew Bellows from WGamer.
Their annual "Cool mobile game demos from around the world!" show. Heavy PPT presentation. (15.6MB)

Originally from IN-duce.net, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

xrayipod

Digital Shotgun posted a photo:

An x-ray image of an iPod

Originally from technology - Everyone's Tagged Photos, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Future Challenges

Challenges of surviving, sustaining, and flourishing in a nano-enabled future look suspiciously like challenges we face today, only with much higher stakes. Although "past results may not be an indication of future performance," our track record is not all that good.

So how will the future turn out? Let's look at a few challenges of the next 10 or 20 years (with acknowledgements to reader 'cdnprodigy' and her/his comments on the "How Rich?" thread).

1. Avoid situation where initial lead in developing molecular manufacturing (MM) is quickly lost to late-comer(s) with superior resources, leading to potential for out-of-control arms race and/or world domination -- In any exponential curve, nearly all action occurs at the very end; if latecomers have competing, simultaneous crash Nanhattan-programs, none may get necessary lead time to sterilize other programs worldwide. And anyway, would we trust anyone but ascetic Buddhists to do so unmegalomaniacally?

2. Prevent further concentration of power, brought about by MM, into members of elite political and military institutions -- Unless channelled democratically (somehow), MM seems likely to do nothing other than exacerbate the current dynamic.

3. Avert massive job dislocation, global economic disruption, and social chaos (super accelerated "creative destruction") brought about by local, customized, cheap, powerful product manufacturing -- Revolutionary industrial advances historically impact large numbers of people negatively at first, then gradually provide increasing benefits to most, but on a scale of many decades. This time it could happen in just a few years.

4. Convert industrial capacity into supply of basic survival necessities for every human (with surplus split among producers?) -- There has been enough industrial capacity to supply basic survival necessities and thus, fully develop our world's intellectual capital, for a few decades. It hasn't happened, though.

nges. Precarious hazards.

The preliminary conclusion of CRN's research to date is that molecular manufacturing capacity will have to be regulated, perhaps on the international level. There are several approaches that might help. Note that we are not officially advocating any of these approaches yet; we don't know enough about how the technology will be developed or in what context.

We also have to point out that we don't think any single approach will be sufficient. An effective program will require a balance of several different kinds of administration. Some possibilities include built-in technical restrictions in portable nanofactories; intellectual property reform; and international cooperation or monitoring of various kinds. Despite the difficulties and complexities, we believe a solution can be found (albeit difficult to implement) to preserve most of the potential benefits while averting the most severe risks.

In addition, our early research indicates that developing MM technology sooner, rather than delaying it, may be helpful in avoiding some of the more serious hazards, as well as in bringing needed humanitarian benefits. This does increase some risks, but reduces others; overall, we think it's safest to develop MM as soon as possible.

Without some controls, advanced nanotechnology could be extremely dangerous -- but desirable to many people. In addition, manufacturing systems probably will be portable and easy to duplicate. This means it will be quite hard to control the use of the technology if unrestricted versions become widely available. On the other hand, overly restrictive policy will encourage uncontrolled release. It seems likely that an early, closely guarded, cooperative international development program is probably the approach that retains the most control in the long run. How to achieve this in an effective, responsible and democratic manner is yet to be determined.

Knowing that we have many more questions than answers, that the challenges we face are similar to those we have not yet solved (but with higher stakes), and that the transformational impacts of molecular manufacturing could occur quickly and with little warning, we believe comprehensive and thorough study of these issues is urgent.

The longer we wait, the greater the risk.

Mike Treder

Originally posted by Mike Treder from Responsible Nanotechnology, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Growing World Consumption

Just read a sobering article at Asia Times: "Too much for Mother Earth."

It says that China already outconsumes the US on four of the five basic commodities -- grain, meat, coal, oil and steel. If China grows at just 8% per year (currently they're doing 9.5%) then their per capita income will pass the current US value in just over 25 years.

And India, which currently has an economy growing at 7% per year, is projected to pass China's population by 2030.

With efficient technology, the world could easily support 10 or even 20 billion people with a quality of life and quantity of toys comparable to the current US standard of living. We just have to reduce pollution and inefficient use of land, and get more efficient at production of a few basic substances like clean water and protein.

But today's technology is not efficient. Our light bulbs throw away 98% of the electricity as heat. Meat production uses horrendous amounts of grain -- which means land and water and oil and agricultural runoff. There are hundreds of examples like these.

We will need better tools and infrastructure. Not just available, but cheap to produce and easy to install.

We will need farsighted intellectual property laws that allow the rapid rollout of advanced technology to areas that can't (yet) afford to pay premium prices for it.

So we're asking for a technology that's powerful, efficient, and cheap enough to supply solar power, desalinated water, fuel cells, and high-tech agriculture for 10 billion people within 30 years. (Advanced medicine would be nice, too.) It took a century or so to build today's industrial infrastructure. We need a technology that could rebuild it, better, and quickly enough to avoid ecological or political meltdown. Molecular manufacturing could do it. Other technologies might be able to do pieces of it, but at higher cost.

There's another problem. If we manage to develop a powerful and efficient technology, it will be very easy to use it for new and more energy-intensive things. At some point, even with perfectly efficient technology, heat pollution will become a problem of global scope. If we would settle for an excellent standard of living, this would not be a problem for centuries. But if we all try to acquire the latest flying Hummer, or vacation in orbit too often, we could easily outstrip the planet's basic ability to radiate heat to space.

The good news is that advancing technology will also give us the ability to monitor the environment in far more detail, so we will have far clearer and earlier indications when we're doing something that's not sustainable. But we will still need the political will to limit ourselves in some ways -- or else the Gods of the Copybook Headings will return and limit us in ways we won't like at all.

Basic human needs are rapidly becoming easier to satisfy. Already, Americans use about 100 times the energy that their bodies need. As more and cleaner resources come online, only radical selfishness or denial will be sufficient to justify the continued existence of abject poverty in the world.

Advancing technology will give us more abundance, more choices, and more capacity for self-reflection. Let's work toward a world where competition and luxury are tempered by coexistence and ecology, and where deprivation is always accountable and never acceptable.

Chris

Originally posted by Mike Treder from Responsible Nanotechnology, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

The Pitch Becomes a Conversation

On CondeNet an article from the New Yorker on changes in advertising. Lots of interesting items on history, direction and statitistics regarding marketing. The quote below provides some of the essence of the internet's value to marketing. The conversation has begun.

...On the Web, consumers can comparison-shop and get reviews—sometimes scathing—from people who have tried a product. Internet advertising fell after the dot-com collapse of 2000, but it jumped twenty-one per cent in 2004, and advertisers now spend more than seven billion dollars on the Web. In the old days, it was often said that half of advertising was wasted but no one knew which half—“spray and pray” is how Yahoo’s chief of sales, Wenda Harris Millard, sums up the situation. Millard, who was once the publisher of Family Circle, recalls that in 1992 a full-page ad in her magazine sold for a hundred and sixteen thousand dollars. Yet if Bufferin had asked what impact its ad had on sales, Millard says, the magazine wouldn’t have had a clue.

Today, she says, because consumers leave a digital fingerprint with each click, companies like Yahoo have many clues about buying habits—albeit perhaps not as many as Internet research companies claim. Today, the technologies that permit advertisers to track consumers also give consumers a way to hide from advertisers. Internet users can block pop-up ads and spam, and can refuse to give out more information than a mailing address and credit-card number. Millard and others have thought about trading free cable or other services for the right to track a consumer’s buying habits. For privacy advocates, that would invite Big Brother into the home. Others would say that Big Brother has been there for some time. ...

Originally posted by Franz from IFTF's Future of Marketing, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Mandatory Mileage Gauges?

Rod Edwards at Sustainability Zone suggests that making mileage information readouts mandatory would be a useful step towards greater driving efficiency. It's a not-so-unreasonable argument: the cost of implementation would be fairly low, so automakers couldn't complain about expense; it would be useful information, giving consumers a way to make better choices; and anecdotal evidence suggests that drivers change their habits when shown how mileage is affected by driving patterns. I'm told that many new cars already include mileage readouts (some with the ability to shut it off, when the news is too painful). Mandatory mileage gauges would by no means result in sufficient improvement in efficiency by itself, but it would be a good -- and easy -- start.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 04:02 PM)

Originally posted by Jamais Cascio from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Brazil, India and SA Trade Alliance

Another sign of growing South-South alliances: industrial federations from Brazil, India and South Africa have teamed up to advocate for Southern interests in trade negotiations and coordinate investment:

The [new group] will foster the development of an investment network geared to small, medium, and micro-enterprises. ...

that they are increasingly speaking with one voice as three large democracies from three continents. We are obviously not exclusive, and we want to involve more countries in all of this as well, but it is a way to begin a cooperative effort," [Brazil's Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim] affirmed.

Since the creation of the IBSA - the abbreviation for the union between India, Brazil, and South Africa - in 2003, the three countries have made advances in political projects in the technological field, such as the defense of free software. Between 2003 and 2004, trade between Brazil and South Africa grew around 40%, reaching US$ 368 million (R$ 1 billion). Trade between Brazil and India experienced more modest growth, calculated at 17%.

(Posted by Alex Steffen in QuickChanges at 06:18 PM)

Originally posted by Alex Steffen from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 25, 2005 | edit

Re-Imagining Apple

Far be it from me to accuse anyone of having an Apple fetish, but I think hiring an ex-Apple product designer to do speculative mock-ups of potential new products might be a bit obsessive. But Business 2.0 likes them some Apple, for sure, and has just put up pictures of five potential new Apple gadgets (or more, depending on how you count) that they think might come out in the future. It's a companion piece to another article that is subscription only, sadly.

Re-Imagining Apple [Business2]

Originally from Gizmodo, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

History of the Laptop

Chris Null over at Mobile PC Mag does another great follow up to his Top 100 Gadgets of All Time, this time detailing the history of the portable computer, from the IBM 5100 Portable Computer pictured here, up to the first modern laptops. It's a tear-jerker for those of us who lived through this era, seeing old friends like the Compaq luggable (mine had more wonky than usual floppy drives) and catching a glimpse of a few I'd not known about.

It also inspired me to keep on with my current tinkering project goal (which let me tell you, is way beyond my limited abilities): getting an Epson HX-20 laptop online via serial cable -> IR -> cellphone. Of course, I've got to buy a working HX-20 first, and every time I mention it on here, you bastards go out and outbid me on all the eBay sales. Stop that.

The Birth of the Notebook [MobilePCMag]

Originally from Gizmodo, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Nuclear power plant art

Take a giant projector, a helicopter and the Gösgen-Däniken nuclear power plant (Switzerland) and you get amazing projections, part of the light art project "Monuments of Switzerland" by Gerry Hofstetter.

Gallery of pictures (zurück means "back" and weiter "next").

Via injoke.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Computer that feels the force in the room

Four years before the Apple Powerbook got "motion sensored" (and repurposed), Jonah Brucker-Cohen's LiveWindow installation attempted to translate the physicality of the real world into the virtual. Any vibration on the floor around the computer was relayed to a browser window which could be accessed via Internet. If the room sensed vibration, the window began to shake, and its text to fall down.

An earthquake sensor on the floor measured vibration in the room. When someone hit the monitor or jumped, the Geophone sensors sent a signal to the computer which then talked over the network through a server which relayed the message to the browser window. When the window got the message, it triggered some local javascript which shaked the window and made the text fall.

LiveWindow also worked with other inputs: a light sensory for ambient light changed the background color of the window, a microphone picked up room volume and changed the size fo the window, and the amount of movement in the room caused the window to move around accordingly.

LIVEWINDOW is one of the Physical Web Interfaces projects by Brucker-Cohen.

Via Coin-operated.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Rfid music player

Dividuum has found a way to use RFID tags with a reader to store and play back music.

SID-files are stored on RFID tags. When you put the tag near the reader, the music is played on the stereo.

A stack of tags placed near the reader will act as a playlist. Remove one of the playing tag, and the program will play the next SID-File in the stack.

Video and pics.

Via Unmediated < Hackaday.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

AID: Art Interface Device

Microprocessor platform for building electronic installation art

Originally posted by watfiv from Eyebeam reBlog, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

A History of Portable Computing

PCM2 writes "MobilePC magazine is running an exhaustive history of portable computers, going all the way from the IBM Portable 5100 to last year's OQO. Do you remember the three-pound Epson HX-20 from 1982 that boasted a 50-hour battery life? Or that the first color portable came from Commodore? Interesting stuff." They have the compaq luggable I learned BASIC on in middle school in the 80s. 28lbs of power baby!

Originally posted by CmdrTaco from Slashdot, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

In Search of the Sixth Sense

n this interview, Ray Kurzweil discusses birth, death, and the potential offered by non-biological thinking processes. "I believe we'll demonstrate a mouse that doesn't age within approximately a decade," he says. "And within a decade of that we'...

Originally from KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Biological computer can run 1 billion programs

Technion Israel Institute of Technology scientists have developed a biological computer, composed entirely of DNA molecules and enzymes constructed on a gold-coated chip, that can run 1 billion programs. This increase represents a dramatic advanc...

Originally from KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Self-Assembling Robots

The future of robotics lies beyond mimicking humans and in shape-shifting machines that transform themselves into configurations based on changing circumstances. There's a new generation of experimental robots, such as the M-TRAN II robot develope...

Originally from KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Bloggers' future influence on the media industry

"While blogging is wielding some influence in media and political circles, traditional news outlets are still the dominant sources of information for the American public." This quote from a CNN/USA/Gallup Poll released on March 22 may hold water today, but what future effects does the media industry expect from these digital diaries? The answers are diverse.

1. The age gap: The Gallup Poll demonstrates figures of blog readership (correlating to internet use) that are the opposite of figures of newspaper readership. Whereas 61% of the 65 and older age group read a daily paper, only 32% of 18 to 29 year-olds do the same. On the other hand, a mere 33% of the older demographic consult the internet, 28% of which read blogs, whereas 91% of the younger age group use the internet with 44% browsing the blogosphere.

2. The changing newsroom: As online citizens' media websites such as OhMyNews are turning profitable, Mark Glaser has written an article at the Online Journalism Review that describes the evolution of a new type of editor: the citizen media editor (CME). Although there is no paper yet with this official title, Glaser predicts that more will surface such as they already have at MSNBC.com or NorthwestVoice.com. He defines the CME as "Part chat moderator, part copy editor and part ombudsman."

3. The media's PR role: an article in Toronto's The Globe and Mail shows that blogs are diminishing the media's role as a public relations tool. Blogs, theoretically written by "normal people," empower companies to have direct contact with their consumers, thus bypassing the media who traditionally has played a major role in PR firms' message. A prediction that blogs will become more influential in swaying public opinion comes from two "trust" polls, one in Canada and one in the United States. The first showed that 55% of Canadians trust a "person like yourself," falling only behind academics and doctors, and that 56% of Americans do the same, up from a mere 22% of peer trust only two years ago.

4. The business opportunities: "The value of blogs to businesses is their ability to enable and facilitate communication," says Frank Barnako at Market Watch. He goes on to say that blogs are both good and bad for publishers; good because their content is being read, attracting people to their website, but bad because it becomes impossible to charge for their content. Chuck Richard, vice-president of Outsell Inc., a technology market research firm that has recently released a report on blogs concurs that "they are going to be big." A similar article at The Deal provides a summary of the venture capital that is being presently put into blogs and citizens' media. Although it notes that it's still early in the blogging game, the article predicts that "social media" investments will not experience the same crash landing that technology companies went through in 2001: Citizens' media is "Not the next bubble."

Source: CNN/USA Today/Gallup, Online Journalism Review, The Globe and Mail, MarketWatch (registration required), and The Deal

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Mobile phone plan for Tube users

Passengers will be able to use their mobile phones on all parts of the London underground by 2008, reports the BBC.

"London mayor Ken Livingstone has announced plans to install transmitters which will also allow access to wireless internet and digital radio.

In the down side, concerns were raised by the Liberal Democrats last year about the security risks of such plans. And both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives warned the new technology could allow terrorists to detonate bombs remotely. "

(~~sniff~~ -kc.)

Via textually.org

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Blog, Vlog, Podcast, Mobcast

So many new words, so little time. Blog (web log), Vlog (video web log), Podcasting (including audio in your RSS (really simple syndication) feed for download into an Apple iPod or other MP3 player) and Mobcasting (mobile podcasting) an Andy Carvin acronym which posits the use of smart phones to create podcasts -- are all relatively new words that represent one extremely big idea -- unfettered plebeian access to the fifth estate.

Until a few years ago, governments (secular or non) had almost complete control of information. That made (and continues to make) information a form of currency -- like the military and other stores of economic value. These "new words" are much more powerful than the technologies they represent, they speak a new language of information and, to be sure, currency.

The value you will place on this information is in direct proportion to the use you have for it. Most people won't care about the rantings of a technophile or a housewife lamenting her need for appropriate child care -- or will they? Imagine a world where a group of protesters use their cell phones to acquire and document their experience with government forces and aggregate (and spin) that audio/video experience on the web. How about a simple group of friends witnessing a car accident or something worse.

We are at the dawn of a new era -- not the cliche version of the phrase -- "new era" the home game! Imagine the power of an individual when they are able to publish and internationally distribute audio and video more efficiently than CNN or Fox News. That's not years in the future ... it's already here. Want to believe? Check out some of the websites like http://tv.oneworld.net
or http://www.audiolink.com or http://www.audiolink.com and just play the tape .. err ... file to the end.

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

wi-pics -- aim, snap, transmit

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Geert Lovinks concepts in critical internet culture

dr. G. Lovink (IAM) The principle of notworking - Concepts in Critical Internet Culture. (PDF; 2196 KB)(English)

Media theorist, net critic and activist dr. Geert Lovink focusses in this public lecture on three conceptual fields: the relation between multitude, network and culture,the art of collaboration and ‘free cooperation ’, and finally he presents elements of a theory of ‘organized networks ’.

Lovink critically observes the network dilemmas in the age of smartmobs and describes the impact of smartmobs, social software and social networking.

(..) "A key question of my recent work has been how networks deal with the ‘frus-trated ’,those who breach the consensus culture.After 9/11 and the following instalment of a global security regime,this is no longer such an odd question. The age of the ‘true believer ’ is over,,as amateur mass psychologist Eric Hoffer (1951) described this twentieth century figure in his study on mass move-ments. Networks are ultimately an obstacle for those who want to sacrifice their lives for a holy cause. To use networks for propaganda purposes is pos-sible but not as effective as old school broadcast media.".

The videostream of this public lecture delivered in Amsterdam on February 24 2005

transcript of the public lecture (in dutch)

earlier on Smartmobs 'Uncanny networks'

Geert Lovink is Lector Interactive Media on the Hogeschool of Amsterdam

Originally posted by Gerrit Visser from Smart mobs, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Honey, I Geotagged the Kids

How collaborative cartography could enable us...

"...Whether it's wearable computing that tracks our locations no matter what we happen to be doing, cell phones that let us enter our locations, moods or other data, or even all the wireless nodes, satellites and grid networks capable of finding, resolving and comparing all this information, we're talking about an entirely wireless phenomenon. We're also talking about what might prove to the be ultimate legacy of all our hard work here in the wireless trenches: locative media.

The phrase itself was originally coined by Karlis Kalnins, of gpster.net, who applies the precise logic of linguistics to an otherwise seemingly vague field. "Locative is a case, not a place," Kalnins says, meaning it stands for a final location of an action or the time of the action. In other words, it doesn't just happen in space, like a map, but also in time..." From Honey, I Geotagged the Kids by Douglas Rushkoff, theFeature.

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Vectors

What a Tangled Web

"While viewers of net art are used to layered reading and articles enhanced by visual and interactive components, Vectors, a new online journal published by The USC Annenberg Center for Communication in Los Angeles, is one of the first to introduce complex interactions into academic writing. While each of the eight projects presented in the inaugural issue of Vectors has a unique look and approach to the subject of Evidence, all are linked--graphically and conceptually--through numerous thematic threads. These threads are explored in the 'Vector Space,' an interactive section of the journal where viewers can draw lines on the screen to illuminate where the various contributions intersect. There are numerous ways to enter into, explore, and visualize Vector's and although those who would rather download a text may be disappointed, those enthusiastic about expanding forms and of academic discourse will find Vectors a winding and welcome addition." - Jody Zellen, Net Art News, Rhizome.

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Crosswalk

Urban Action

Crosswalk --a Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies (PIPS) publication--is dedicated to further investigations in psychogeography, experimental public art, critical architectural theory, and all practices inbetween. Crosswalk v1.1: Psy-Geo Provflux 2004 was published to coincide with the first annual Psy-Geo Provflux, a two day event investigating how the urban landscape in Providence (Rhode Island, USA) affects its social and artistic community. A call has just been issued for Psy-Geo Provflux 2005.

Crosswalk v1.2::Space Ships includes "Collective Practices," "Interventionist Diaries," "Contemporary Nomadism," "Free Culture," and "Public vs Private."

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Drift

Being Lost

"The ubiquity of GPS (global positioning satellite) and other tracking technologies suggests that "being lost" may itself be an experience that is being lost. However, simply knowing ones geographical location as expressed in longitude and latitude coordinates has little bearing on ones personal sense of place or direction. Drift poses the age-old question "Where am I and where am I going?" in a contemporary moment in which spatial positioning and tracking technologies provide evermore precise, yet limited, answers to this question.

The installation embraces the flow of wandering, the pleasure of disorientation, and the playful unpredictability of drifting as it relates to movement and translation. Sounds blend footsteps on different surfaces with spoken word in different languages. Spoken word passages are drawn from poetry and literature dealing with the theme of wandering, being lost, and drifting. Meaning also drifts as Rousseau, Joyce, Kerouac, Mann, Dante, Woolf, and others are presented in the original and in translation. The Watten Sea becomes a metaphor for hertzian space as visitors are invited to wander among layered currents of sand, sea and interactive sounds that drift with the tides, and with the shifting of satellites as rise and set, introducing another kind of drift.

The installation covers a 2 km x 2 km region that is filled with areas of interactive sound. The region moves with the tide such that at low tide all the sounds are out on the Watt, at high tide they flood the town. Sounds play automatically as you wander through these interactive areas with a Pocket PC, GPS and headphones. The location of the areas changes constantly with the shifting tides - therefore, the best strategy for finding them is simply to wander."

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Wakie Talkie Watches

Originally from shiny shiny, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Jabra JX10 designer headset

Originally from shiny shiny, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Mapping the future

I don't have the NewScientist subscription necessary to read The new pioneers of map making, but here are some comments from IFTF's Peter Dreyer, and some seemingly related issues come up in Honey, I Geotagged the Kids by Douglas Rushkoff.

Rushkoff begins by outlining the ways maps have changed over time, specifically in reference to what computing makes possible, and claims that "we can now truly see the way so many different things are -- or have been, or will be." (In searching the wikipedia, he must have missed the entries for map design and the map is not the territory.)

Nonetheless, he draws out other political aspects of cartography, or how mapping now has the potential to shift from an elite or specialist practice to one "allowing normal people to manage, present and create media with a geospatial component" which may in turn "revolutionize and democratize the process and practice of cartography."

He describes the locative media community as :

And despite agreeing that locative media may indeed offer revolutionary possibilities for wireless communications, Rushkoff doesn't see much interest from the mobile industry in things like low-cost access and open platforms. "Until locative media applications offer wireless providers or phone manufacturers a genuine competitive advantage in the way that, say, driving maps do, a future of collaborative cartography may have to wait..."

I don't know. I'm pretty sure that delivering potential consumers to advertisers would be considered a "competitive advantage" and, somewhat sadly, I've always assumed that commercial applications will be the first kind made widely available to the public. (In my dystopian imagination I see a city layered not with beautiful love stories but with a thousand corporate grabs for my attention.) But I also believe that our ideas about what "collaborative cartographies" mean will change and we will be challenged, yet again, to re-evaluate our assumptions about power, structure and agency. In other words, I still have hope.

Originally posted by Anne Galloway from Purse Lip Square Jaw, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Wed, Mar 23: Alternate Controllers Series

Date -> Wed, Mar 23
Mondays 3/28 - 4/25 @ Harvestworks, 596 Broadway, Suite 602 "Alternate Controllers," a series of 8 concerts focusing on the modern intersections of art and technology. Central to this series is the exciting way that musicians and composers assimilate various machines into their creative process. Fro [more]

Originally from Rhizome.org Calendar, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

RFID DIY Starter Kit

For $480 (£250) you can pick yourself up a RFID Starter kit from iAutomate that includes a long range RFID reader, software plugin and the required cabling.

Originally from Protein Feed, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Layers promise cheap circuits

A layered structure for organic transistors promises low power and high output for inexpensive electronics.

Originally from Technology Research News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

WordPress aggregator blog

Things just keep getting better in world WordPress… over 100,000 downloads of WordPress 1.5 and now Robert from infOpinions gets a WordPress aggregator up and running. Very cool… am pondering how much this adds to feed2js though? I guess it could be a kinda Edu_RSS for each of us (although whether that’s a good idea or not I’m unsure…)

Originally from incorporated subversion, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

[Locative Media] About collaborative cartography

(via) New Scientist has a very pertinent article about map hackers (like Jo Walsh who use GPS to build their own maps.

ARMED with a Global Positioning System receiver and a pair of itchy feet, Jo Walsh walks a different route around town each week. She is slowly but steadily building a digital map of her neighbourhood in Bristol, UK. In doing so, Walsh is reinventing the pioneering spirit, for she is one of hundreds of people using cheap, off-the-shelf satellite tracking equipment to make their own maps.

The principle is simple. Set your GPS receiver to record longitude and latitude at frequent intervals during a walk, bike ride or car trip, then download the information to a computer and watch as it traces out your journey on screen. And by combining data from various trips, you’ll get a rough but usable digital map of the world you live in. “You just need a GPS receiver and data cable and then anyone can do it,” says Walsh’s husband and collaborator Schuyler Erle

Let’s then quote their book: Map Hacks, a must-read for map hacker wannabees.
The collaborative map field appears to be booming, it’s funny that there were no talk about it (as well as about locative media) at eTech 2005. Maybe, as Jo said in the Locative mailing list it’s because it’s now no longer emerging but people begins to really use it! OK so now collaborative cartography is not just a trend, it’s used; which is good. I see many interesting domain in which it could be useful, ranging from educational purposes (learning how to map, discovering areas…) to more serious issues (for firefighters and deminers for instance)

Douglas Rushkoff in the Feature also deal with that issue. He underline the very thriving “collaborative map/cartography” community and also claim that the wireless industry is not so much into it.

Although media artists are desperately in love with the possibilities afforded by locative media, sadly, the mobile phone industry outside of Japan and South Korea hasn’t exactly warmed to the nascent field. The Mapping Hacks trio’s list of demands from operators and manufacturers includes low-cost location lookups, user access (through the phone) to everything that his phone knows and open hardware and software platforms for experimentation and innovation. All of these comprise a fairly reasonable wish list, but considering the conflicting interests of the many links in the mobile value chain, the operative word is still “wish.”
(…)
nd until locative media applications offer wireless providers or phone manufacturers a genuine competitive advantage in the way that, say, driving maps do, a future of collaborative cartography may have to wait until kids raised on GPS crayons are running the world.

Originally from pasta and vinegar, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

New Projects in Rhizome & Weak Network Development

Just a couple of updates on projects that are experimenting with the potential of rhizome structure and weak networks:

Locus: Billed as an "Experimental Social Interface", Locus examines your instant message patterns, compares it to the characteristics of other IM users, and identifies shared interests and similarities that you may not have been aware of within your existing network. This raises the possibility that the expanding connectivity and power of the internet may automatically suggest to rhizome nodes potential link partners--either online in the sense of suggested blogs to link to, or off-line in the sense of business networking, etc. The potential to partially automate the process of creating weak links (See TOP Chapter 9) in a social or business network provides rhizome yet another advantage over hierarchy, as hierarchy cannot effectively utilize such a tool without jeopardizing its structural command and control.

(Above) Diagram from HP's analysis of social networks

HP Leadership Diagrams: Hewlett-Packard is now experimenting with a process of analyzing the email flow within an office to identify the de-facto leaders, and the most critical participants in various fields. By examining who sends emails to who, and in what proportions, along with the content of these emails, HP is diagramming the power relationships within business structures. As expected, they have identified that most leadership and power is held by hubs in these email communications networks, and not necessarily by those appointed with positions of formal power. As email communication (or other forms of easily diagrammable communication) become increasingly ubiquitous, what impact will this type of automated analysis have on the evolution of hierarchal or rhizomatic power structures? Does this type of diagramming represent a tool to better control the information processing problems within hierarchy, or does it represent a tool to better adapt rhizome structure to areas previously dominated by hierarchy?

Originally from A Theory of Power, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

$16.98 bln of semiconductors sold in January 2005

SIA says January 2005 semiconductor sales were $16.98 billion, 22.8% ahead of the $13.83 billion in sales achieved in January 2004. Sales in Asia Pacific region leaped by more than a third compared to January 2004.

Originally from IT Facts.biz, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

3 Launches Multiplayer Gaming

3 will launch multiplayer games on its mobile network in April. Initial real-time games will include No Refuge, a tank battle war game from Mobile Interaction, and Lock 'n Load, a shooting game from Synergenix. Also, 3 will launch the "turn-based" multiplayer game Cannons Tournament, a shoot and fire cannon game supplied by Macrospace which [...]

Originally posted by james from MocoNews.net, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Climate Change, Open Source and Blogs

Critics of global warming projections have put their data where their mouths are - and started a blog. Climate change is a real and serious issue, and I firmly believe the combination of open-source science and 'open source journalism' will produce both better science and better policy.

Originally posted by Joe Katzman from Winds of Change.NET, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Hardware Hacking Workshop

"If it sounds good and it doesn't smoke, don't worry if you don't understand it." - N. Collins

Inspired to hack common consumer electronics for artistic ends, but don't know where to begin? Consider taking the Hardware Hacking Workshop with Nicolas Collins, internationally-known composer and editor of Leonardo Music Journal, an annual devoted to artists who are working at the boundaries of music and developing technologies. The workshop is being held at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center in New York City, April 15-18.

No previous electronics experience required...(more)

Basic soldering skills will be learned through building contact microphones and coils to sniff electromagnetic fields. The students will open up a range of battery-powered "consumer" technology (radios, electronic toys), observe the effect of direct hand contact on the circuit boards, experiment with the substitution of components, and listen to unheard signals running through the circuit. Knowledge acquired through this process will be applied to building circuits from scratch (oscillators, amplifiers, fuzztones, etc.

On April 18, Collins will perform two compositions on hardware devised by students during the workshop: "Bower Bird" for battery activated loudspeakers, and "Slight of Hand" for flesh-controlled portable radios.

A demonstration of the workshop's activities will be held at Harvestworks this Friday, March 25, at 7:00 p.m. ET.

(Posted by Emily Gertz in QuickChanges at 07:44 PM)

Originally posted by Emily Gertz from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Genetic Backup Files

The current issue of Nature includes a report by biologists at Purdue University about the Arabidopsis thaliana plant's ability to reverse mutations in subsequent generations. While the article itself is only available to subscribers, summaries are available at Nature News, the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others. This is one of those discoveries that sounds a little esoteric at first, but could have some pretty important implications.

In the traditional understanding of genetics, organisms which reproduce sexually only express mutations when both parents carry the trait, while organisms which reproduce asexually will pass any mutation along to subsequent generations. Arabidopsis thaliana, a mustard weed, is of the latter type, reproducing through self-fertilization. The plants being studied had developed a mutation known as "hothead," where the flowers were fused (as in the photo). The researchers noticed that about 10% of the offspring of the mutated plants had reverted to the normal configuration and, when examined, the normal non-mutated genes, the same as the grandparent plants. In effect, the mutation had been wiped away.

They spent over a year testing various explanations for the phenomenon, from external pollen contamination to normal DNA repair mechanisms; none of the conventional theories worked. The only remaining answer was that "backup" or "cache" copies of the genes existed, but an examination of the DNA found nothing of the sort. The Purdue team has come to believe that the most likely location for the backup is the RNA, which is inherited separately from the DNA. As RNA is traditionally considered to be used primarily to help DNA replicate, and is known to be prone to many more errors during self-copying, RNA has not been studied as closely as DNA.

The upshot: under certain stress conditions, Arabidopsa thaliana is able to restore its correct genome from a backup file during reproduction. While the Purdue team has identified this phenomenon as happening in a single particular species, there is evidence that it happens more generally across plant species; the Post article notes that reversion from mutation is not uncommon in lab plants, but is often assumed to be the result of external contamination or researcher error.

But perhaps most interestingly, the phenomenon may not be limited to plants. It could show up in animals, even in people.

A similar process might even go on in humans. This is suggested by rare cases of children who inherit disease-causing mutations but show only mild symptoms, perhaps because some of their cells have reverted to a normal and healthier genetic code.

If humans do correct their genes in this way, Pruitt suggests that the procedure might be usefully hijacked by researchers or doctors. They might be able to identify the RNA molecules that carry out the repair and use them to correct harmful mutations in patients.

The implications of this discovery are manifold. It's a sobering reminder that DNA is not the sole determinant of biological outcomes. It's a warning flag for all manner of biotechnology research, as it means there may be a broad mechanism able to reverse engineered genetic changes; this could mean that conclusions about interactions between GMOs and non-engineered organisms will need to be re-examined in light of possible reversions of parts of the new code. If a similar mechanism is discovered in animals, gene therapies and human germline biotechnologies will face more significant challenges than currently anticipated.

And, as the researchers observe, it could have important medical utility. Triggering the mechanism to fix mutations is one scenario; using the "backup" genetic data as templates for genetic therapy or corrective bioengineering is another. Of course, it may not apply to animals, or the mechanism could work in a very different way. Nonetheless, this discovery has opened an unanticipated -- and potentially quite valuable -- pathway for research.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in Unlocking the Code – Science, Systems and Technological Breakthroughs at 01:42 PM)

Originally posted by Jamais Cascio from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 24, 2005 | edit

Flat-Screens Lead Gadget Prices Lower in Jan. :NPD

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Flat screen computer monitors and giant plasma TVs led U.S. consumer electronics prices lower in January, although declines were moderated in the first month after the peak holiday shopping season.

Originally from Reuters: Technology, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

The Birth of the Notebook

Mark Frauenfelder: Chris Null has written a great article about the early history of portable PCs for Mobile PC magazine.

Inspired by the IBM 5100 and Xerox's Notetaker -- a 48-pound machine with a keyboard that folded over the display -- Osborne's eponymous computer was cobbled together from the cheapest parts he could find. The Osborne 1 hit the market at $1,795, with dual floppy drives and a 5-inch CRT. Flip the keyboard over the front, latch it on, and your 24.5-pound computer was ready to go wherever you needed it. Osborne had amazing success with the product, but it was fatally crushed by the birth of Compaq in 1983, which copied the Osborne carefully while adding one killer feature: IBM compatibility.

Link

UPDATE: Stefan says: "I actually worked on an Osborne in the early '80s. The college SF club had one. We used it to lay out the schedule and generate individually numbered tickets for our SF convention. I recall using the included BASIC to create a program that would generate a Superbowl betting grid.

"One of the big selling points for the Osborne was the software. The company pioneered the concept of bundling. In addition to the CP/M operating system, you got WordStar, a spreadsheet, a flat-file database program and so on. It even had a nice app for reading and writing PC-format disks.

"The computer itself was, frankly, a piece of shit. The monitor was 52 columns wide; when your typing reached the end of a line the display shifted left. It was terribly susceptible to static shock. You learned to save your work every few minutes in dry weather, because resets and lockups were a regular occurrence."

Originally posted by Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Toy lab: kids rebuild used toys, endow them with powers

Xeni Jardin: Tiffany Vincent says,

I read Xeni's "Toy Zen" post, and it reminded me of Cincinnati's Toy Lab, a wonderful (non-profit) place where children (and adults) make toys out of old toys. They run all their donated toys through a gigantic washing machine several times before unleashing them on the masses. Kids assemble their toy, name it, and assign it powers before having it photographed and placed on the Web for all to see. I've spent hours of productivity giggling at the toys these kids have invented.

Shown here: Name: Tassie. Inventor: Sydney, age 7. Comments: "She can spit on people and she can fly."

Link.

Originally posted by Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

DecoTel desk phone and other assorted retro-tech

David Pescovitz: Oak Tree Enterprises sells all kinds of unusual retro-tech, from 1970s handheld videogames to vintage electric fans to this stately Western Electric "DecoTel" executive desk phone. This broken, yet classy, conversation piece will set you back $55. Oak Tree Enterprises' site design and text is a real treat too. Link (Thanks, Imaginary Foundation)

Originally posted by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Takara's Choro Mode Pet cellphone bot

A line of cutesy minibots that you control with your cellphone? You know there’s no way that’s not going to have something to do with Japan. Not sure how long these have been out and about, but Takara offers five different Choro Mode Pets—a blue bunny, a brown cat, a green cat, a brown dog, and a white dog (no brown bunny, but we think Vincent Gallo will live)—each of which you can control using the keypad on your phone (press 2 to go straight, 1 to go left, 3 to go right). The Choro Mode Pets can also sing songs, run around in circles, and according to 3Yen, pretend to “see a ghost and get scared.” Each pet costs ¥999 (about $9.50), and is controlled via a cable, rather than Bluetooth (hardly any Japanese handsets have Bluetooth).

Originally posted by Peter Rojas from Engadget, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

WiFi Wok and the Chinese cookware 2.4GHz repeaters

Not a new electronica group, but an ongoing project by New Zealander Stan Swan to make some seriously DIY WiFi repeaters out of — what else? — Chinese cookware, among other kitchen and household gadgets. Turns out cheap cooking scoops make great 2.4GHz parabolic mesh dishes. Who knew? We don’t see too many WiFi extenders with bamboo handles in the States — surely a missed opportunity for the wireless adapter market.

Originally posted by Barb Dybwad from Engadget, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Scanner Camera

Michael Golembewski's Scanner Camera project explores how digital photography can create new types of images and become an art form in its own right.

A camera works by focusing light through a lens, and projecting an image onto a surface. Golembewski's cameras are similar to homemade cameras, but instead of using film or photographic paper to record the projected image, he substituted a low-end flatbed scanner. By connecting the scanner to a laptop and clicking on the scan button, the projected image is captured and converted into a digital format that provides surprising insights into the ways that forms, motion, and time are translated from the real world to a 2D image.

The next steps of his research are to build "DIY Scanner Camera Kits" which will allow any photographer or enthusiast to build their own scanner camera for under £60. A professional quality scanner camera will also be prototyped which will allow for the capture of very large image files, providing motion distortion effects.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Circuit board pieces

Paul Slocum's circuit board pieces feature drawings rendered in tin-plated copper on circuit boards and integrated with simple circuits that illuminate LEDs and a neon lamp.

I found a way to translate bitmap images into the circuit design program I was using, and converted actual and recreated images that I had made in elementary and jr. high school.

Via Tom Moody.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Oscillating windows

Oscillating Windows, by Katherine Moriwaki, is an application for close-proximity network communication that uses physical co-location, proximity, and group interaction to move a digital image from one location to another.

The system consists of two "windows" on either side of a room. While the room is empty, the image remains on one side. As individuals equipped with an ads hoc networking device enter the room, the window oscillates to the other side through the network created by the participants, provided certain formations are realized. Participants "play act" as nodes of a network which will only form when people arrange themselves in certain body configurations.

During an Oscillating Windows workshop, interesting behaviours emerged, as some people would choose to aid or obstruct the pathway of data, making themselves physically accessible or inaccessible.

Oscillating Windows provides an opportunity to exploit the natural formations and patterns of individuals and groups in social and public space.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Infographic of blogosphere traffic spikes

Xeni Jardin: My blog-mate David Pescovitz and I were interviewed for a Sydney Morning Herald story about the Bloggies (Boing Boing was among this year's winners). A nifty infographic ran along with the story. It's based on Technorati data, and points to some of the events/memes which led to the greatest spikes in blog traffic from 2004-2005. You know something's wrong with the world when "Kryptonite Lock Controversy" grabs roughly the same amount of blog-reading attention as "Indian Ocean Tsunami," though there may be more to the data than meets the eye. Link to story (subscription required, user name "boingboingdotnet" password "boingboing")

Originally posted by Xeni Jardin from Eyebeam reBlog, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Rise of the Green Machine

In a nation of gas-guzzlers, Toyota made hybrids cool. Now the world's No. 2 automaker wants to make the internal combustion engine obsolete. By Brendan I. Koerner from Wired magazine.

Originally from Wired News: Top Stories, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Steamboy Rages Against Machines

Anime legend Katsuhiro Otomo explores the corrupting power of science in Steamboy, a sci-fi fable set in Victorian England. The ambitious animated film is a gorgeous action movie, though ultimately overwhelmed by its own machinery. By Jason Silverman.

Originally from Wired News: Top Stories, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Exploding Radio II

This week has brought more evidence that radio is an industry in the midst of disruptive transformation. The big news was that Viacom is planning to split off its broadcasting side, including the troubled Infinity radio division. But there were many smaller signals as well that radio as we know it is about to change. For instance:

* Arbitron and comScore Media Metrix released the online radio ratings for January, which for the first time include Live365. Led by Yahoo! Music, AOL and MSN, the four top streaming radio sites now have nearly 5m listeners a week. That's not only a lot, but it means (if I'm reading the stats right on the "persons using radio data" here) that the top Internet radio sites have more listeners than any US radio station.


* The WSJ had a great page one piece (inspired by our own cover package, I suspect) that discusses how the trend to ever-tighter playlists is now reversing as stations play more music. With listenership at a multi-decade low, they recognize that the quest to keep listeners by using market research to pick the perfect top 40 has now proven a failure. Instead, more stations are playing more eclectic, even iPod-like, mixes. They're also starting to cut down on ads, which today make up an oppressive 22 minutes per hour for many stations.

Meanwhile, there's been a lot of interesting Exploding Radio commentary and analysis around the web this week:

* Barry Ritholtz, a good financial analyst, adds an interesting perspective to the WSJ piece:

One thing I note as missing is a discussion of the long term generational effect, and the threat to a possible radio recovery: Since 1996, radio's decay has led to an entire generation of listeners who have essentially written off radio (at least, when it comes to music).

The other key issue: Radio as a source of new music, and its relationship to the labels. It used to be part of the draw -- a relationship with a trusted DJ who plays music you like, combined with introducing you to new songs (trust is the key component in granting someone taste-maker status).

* Technology Liberation Front, a blog worth subscribing to, has an excellent analysis of why concern over Clear Channel's radio "monopoly" is so misplaced. It also notes an amazing (and very encouraging) new white paper from the FCC:

"[T]he Scarcity Rationale for regulating traditional broadcasting is no longer valid.” So begins a stunning new white paper from the Federal Communications Commission. In the paper, “The Scarcity Rationale for Regulating Traditional Broadcasting: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed,” author John Beresford, an attorney with the FCC’s Media Bureau, lays out a devastating case against the Scarcity Rationale, which has governed spectrum & broadcast regulation in the United States for over seven decades.

* The Pew Internet Project released a report that finds that the Internet surpassed radio as a source of political news for the first time last year.

* NPR's "Here and Now" show had a segment on exploding radio, based on our issue (I was a guest). You can listen to it here.

* Fred Wilson, a NYC VC who has written some of the best analysis of radio's future, disagrees with my flip assessment that radio is "hosed". Two responses: 1) I meant "radio as we know it" 2) That was "endism"--exaggerating decline for rhetorical effect--and it's okay.

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

PSP Video 9 - PSPcasting

There are tons of videos available for download from the internet. Unfortunately, nearly all of it is unplayable on the PSP. Wouldn't it be cool if you could automatically download, convert and copy these videos to your PSP for later playback? Well now you can.

(Also check out iPSP. Good find, Josh. -kc.)

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Self-healing networks

John Borland profiles some research out of Cornell University on self-healing P2P networks (where "network" includes the people as well as the software+hardware). The goal is to permit network users to root out spam, but Credence could also easily be used to remove the various spoof and decoy files that the Cartel has used to pollute the P2P waters.

Via Copyfight

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Remix Culture: Culture, Technology, and Creativity

This interview with Lawrence Lessig conducted during the recent OReilly Emerging Technology Conference, makes an argument for developing new policies ...

Originally from Technology Review RSS Blog Feed, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Wired Japan

There used to be a Japanese version of the magazine WIRED, with its own editorial content, and Oyayubizoku offers up a desktop montage (pictured above) of some of its original covers.

Originally posted by Jean Snow from jeansnow.net, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

URBAN SCREENS 2005

Discovering the Potential of Outdoor Screens for Urban Society

URBAN SCREENS 2005 is an international conference ranging from critical theory to project experiences by researchers and practitioners in the field of Art, Architecture, Urban Studies and Digital Culture. The focus is on understanding how the growing infrastructure of large digital displays influences the visual sphere of our public spaces. How can the commercial use of these screens be broadened and culturally curated to contribute to a lively urban society?

The conference will feature three main topics: 1) Shaping the urban media-scapes; 2) Addressing the social value and civic culture; and 3) Experiences from practical case studies. SUMISSION DEADLINE: 1 May 2005

Public space has always been a place for human interaction, a unique arena for exchange of rituals and communication in a constant process of renewal, challenging the development of society. Its architectural dimension, being a storytelling medium itself, has played a changing role of importance in providing a stage for this interaction. The way the space is inhabited can be read as a participatory process of its audience. The (vanishing) role as space for social and symbolic discourse has been often discussed in urban sociology. Modernization, the growing independence from place and time and the individualization seem to destroy the city rhythm and its social systems. New virtual spaces have been populated instead. Starting with the development of virtual cities within chat rooms and spaces for production of identity, we now face community experiments like collaborative wikis, blogs or mobile phone networks in the growing field of social computing. Parallel to this development an "event culture" has evolved in the real urban space of internationally competing cities, focusing on tourism and consumption. In the context of this rapidly evolving commercial information sphere, developers are bringing new digital display technology into the urban landscape.

Considering the social sustainability of our cities it is necessary to look closer at the liveability and openness of public spaces. The experience, made in the new digital communication spheres, might serve as an inspiration for the social enhancement of our urban surroundings. Instead of just showing commercials, could the large outdoor displays function as experimental "visualization zone" of the fusing of the virtual public spaces and our real world? Can screens function as a new mirror reflecting the public sphere, a medium of communication of the city with itself?

The conference wants to launch a discussion about how digital culture can make use of the existing and future screening infrastructure, in terms of art and social or political practices, generating a higher value for its operators and "users". We want to address the existing commercial predetermination and explore the nuance between art, interventions and entertainment to stimulate a lively culture. Other key issues are: mediated interaction, content, participation of the local community, restrictions due to technical limits, and the incorporation of the screens in the architecture of our urban landscape. We are happy to announce our special guest speakers Lev Manovich, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego and Mike Gibbons, Chief Project Manager, Live Events, BBC.

CONFERENCE:

TIME: Friday, 23 Sept. 2005 (extended to 24th according to feedback)
LOCATION: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
ORGANIZATION:
- Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer, Institute of Network Cultures, Interactive Media, Hoogeschool van Amsterdam
- Jeroen Boomgaard, Department of Art and Public Space, Gerrit Rietveld Academy / University of Amsterdam
- Mirjam Struppek, Urban//ReseARTch, Berlin
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROJECT PRESENTATIONS
SUMISSION DEADLINE: 1 May 2005

Researchers and practitioners in the field of Art, Architecture, Urban Studies and Digital Culture are invited to submit proposals for papers and presentations on key issues and implemented cutting-edge projects.

The following aspects might serve as guideline for content, addressed in submissions:

Topic 1 "Shaping the urban media-scapes"

- The historical overview of the development an urban media-sphere.
- Future technologies and visions shaping the media-scape
- Critical review of visual and sonic noise versus liveability
- Peoples predetermined media perception in public space
- Melting layers of technology and the cityscape creating a new dimension
- Investigating the aesthetics of design in the context of the urban landscape

Topic 2 "Addressing the social value and civic culture"

- From consumer entertainment to participation of a wide range users
- Limits and challenges of new responsible public-private partnerships
- Mediated interactions as new forms of civic culture and use of public space
- Issues of censorship in content management
- Possible social applications for the community addressing local events, social integration, education
- Long-term value of local identity and cultural diversity through open access?
- Urban branding changing the perception of locations

Topic 3 "Experiences from practical case studies"

- Experiences with production of new and old cultural content for screens
- Technological limits and challenges in content creation and enhancement
- Evaluation studies, responses from participants and interactions
- Case studies of cultural screenings
- The role of government involvement, policy, planning and management
- Experiences with public and private cooperation
- Cooperation with other art forms and creative industries

______________________________________________________________
APPLICATION FORMAT

1. Name of the project/paper
2. Author(s)
3. Contact person (e-mail/phone/fax/postal address)
4. Short 350-word abstract of the paper/presentation
5. Short biography of the author(s)
6. Related web-links
7. Description of the type of media needed for the presentation

______________________________________________________________
ADDITIONAL CALL FOR SUBMISSION OF DIGITAL IMAGES

For a visual screening we are collecting various pictures of urban screens. Please submit high-resolution images in digitalized format, together with the date, the name of the location and photographer.

For your inspiration look at the Russian Internet Journal about large
electronic LED screens: http://www.screens.ru/
______________________________________________________________
FURTHER INFORMATION - MAILINGLIST

Preparations of the event will include an online discussion via a special mailinglist. During and after the conference live web-casting and other online documentations will present the content to a wider audience.

To subscribe and participate in the urbanscreens-l mailinglist register at:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/urbanscreens-l_listcultures.org

If you would like to know more, have a look at the background text:
http://culturebase.org/home/struppek/Homepage/urbanscreens_background.html

_____________________________________________________________
CONTACT FOR SUBMISSIONS:

Mirjam Struppek
urbanscreens (at) networkcultures.org

Institute of Network Cultures
t: +31 (0)20 5951866
f: +31 (0)20 5951840
www.networkcultures.org

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

rfid music player

don’t take off your tinfoil hats quite yet, but just when you thought rfid tags were all about the man wanting to track you, somebody has come up with a more positive application.

dividuum figured that since some rfid tags can store a kilobyte of data, he should be able to gzip a sid audio file and squeeze it onto one of these larger tags.  he then wrote some software for his pc that interfaces with an rfid reader and will play the sid file contained in a nearby tag.  put a stack of cards next to the reader and it will cycle through them like a playlist.

follow the link if you want to download the source or check out a video of it in action.

Originally posted by Jason Striegel from hack a day, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Grand Text Auto » ISEA Fashion (Wearable Computing) Report

Her answer to the idea of Remembrance Agents, for instance, includes an “Intimate Memory” outfit that leaves a visible marker of intimacy events such as whispering, touching, and groping.

Originally posted by suttree from del.icio.us/tag/ubicomp, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Building the future

"Impacts of New Technologies on Urban Forms and Urban Design"

Originally posted by timo from del.icio.us/tag/ubicomp, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

Political subjects/objects

I'm back. Fitter, happier, more productive.

A couple of things this morning:

Peter says "folksonomies aren't interesting from an 'emerging technology' perspective -- they're interesting from a social and cultural perspective". Yup, and not least because they involve contextual (i.e. political) values instead of universal (i.e. apolitical) truths. But am I the only one who wonders what folksonomies have in common with Volkswagens?

The New York Times looks at mosquito nets "made in Kenya, paid for in Geneva, arranged for in Atlanta, demonstrated in Somji" and struggling to be distributed around Nigeria with de-worming drugs. The story quite nicely draws out the networks and flows of people, objects and ideas that demonstrate how technologies are always already political.

Originally posted by Anne Galloway from Purse Lip Square Jaw, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 23, 2005 | edit

FirstShot - (kids) digital camera