Research

Dial-a-dolphin on your mobile

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Via cnn :

Mobile phone users worldwide will soon be able to dial-a-dolphin if a scheme to record their underwater conversations proves a success, according to CNN.

Scientists at a dolphin sanctuary off the west coast of Ireland have teamed up with British mobile telecoms giant Vodafone to transmit the clicking and whistling sounds of bottlenose dolphins, in an effort to a greater understanding of the life of dolphins.

As long as they don't make the dolphins listen to us...

Scientists have actually used text messaging technology with to monitor wildlife before:

- The University of Agricultural Sciences of Stockholm tagged several dozen moose with special cell phones to track their eating habits and movements across the country.

-- Last year, UK's Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust tagged 20'000 geese and tracked them with satellite technology from the breeding grounds of Canada to Ireland, a 3'000 km flight.

-- And from the Scottish waters, seals sent out SMS to scientists. Tiny tags were fitted on their coats to track their movements and their location pinpointed by satellite global positioning system. As the seals approached shorelines and were within mobile phone coverage, data stored was then sent by SMS from the seals to the land.

Youth and spatiality !

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE playing : stanton warriors - stantion sessions

The relationships between youth and spatiality (as well as spatial forms of social practices) is a central concern I should address in my literature review about the social uses of space. I mean, to focus on young people’s everyday experiences of everyday spaces – both in public and in private spheres.

Reference to find(good starting point I think): Tracey Skelton & Gill Valentine (eds): Cool places. Geographies of youth cultures. London & New York: Routledge, 1998.

This book is reviewed by here by Alexandra Seibel (Department of Cinema Studies, New York University, USA).

The social functions of spatiality described in this book is identity :different ‘locales’ and local settings shape identity formation for youngsters.

Tracey Skelton
Gill Valentine

Worth to check ? # Valentine, G. (2001) Social Geographies: Society and Space (Longman, Harlow). # Holloway, S. and Valentine, G. (eds.) (2000) Children’s Geographies: Living, Playing, Learning (Routledge, London # Valentine, G., and Holloway, S.L. (2002) Exploring children’s identities and social networks in on-line and off-line worlds Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92, 296--315. # TO BE RELEASED : Key Thinkers on Space and Place by Gill Valentine (Editor), Phil J Hubbard (Editor), Rob Kitchin (Editor) - Sage Publications; (May 2004)

Discussion avec K

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Pure private discussion (sorry it's for my personal board :) 'k en attendant je lis pas mal de choses pour cette satanee literature review, et je cherche toujours une question de recherche (c rude) The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:44:21] He pages, "pff surtout une bonne question de recherche ouais" 'k ouais surtout The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:44:40] He pages, "puis savoir dans quel contexte defendre" 'k voila The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar 'k mais j'oscille entre revue de litterature et contraintes (methodologiques et choix de la tache pour trouver quelque chose The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:46:48] He pages, "faudrait pourvoir faire un projection pour savoir dans quel domaine y aura les jobs les plus marrants et ce qu'il faut avoir comme these" 'k urban planning The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar 'k game designer The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:48:05] He pages, "spécialisé MMORG ?" 'K small scale collaborative game in mixed reality par exemple The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:49:29] He pages, "alors c décidé: tu la fera en psychologie sociale ou psychologie d'action" 'k psycho socio-cognitive en fait The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:49:54] He pages, "sinon en sciences de l'information ou communication ... tas le choix" 'k ouais, pierre veut de l'experience controlee The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:50:09] He pages, "ouais mais ca y a pas" Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:50:20] He pages, "pff l'est un peu fondamentaliste" 'k hehe The big dog appears, gently grabs your message and heads for Kaspar Kaspar [at Card Guppies!] tells his big dog to head for your place. [11:50:49] He pages, "bon vais aller o boulot, a + :)"

How space structure language

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE I've found an interesting paper by Tversky and Lee about how spatial features are used to structure language.

"In perceiving a scene, figures are not just discerned and identified, they are also located. Figures are not located in an absolute way, but rather relative to other reference figures and/or a frame of reference. (...) Reference objects and reference frames serve to schematize the locations of figures. (...) How are reference objects and frames selected? Proximity, salience, and permanence are influential factors (Tversky, 1981; Tversky, Taylor, and Mainwaring, 1997)."

Referenced frames often used : natural borders, axes, side of a room, side of a piece of paper, horizontal and vertical lines (real or virtual)...

LOCATION VS REALITY

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Via doors of perception : Soon, more people will play computer games on mobile phones than on computers or consoles. One out of every three Japanese - 38 million people - already uses i-mode "to connect real to life" as an i-mode brochure puts it. "Location is no longer a barrier to fun and competition", it burbles. Was it ever? The more interesting question is how we will use wireless communications proactively to shape the way we experience places. http://www.nttdocomo.com

Add-on about Proximity and collaborative work

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE In the article "Managing distances and differences in geaographically distributed groups", David Armstrong and Paul Cole (in the same book by Kiesler and Cummings), add other proximity effects on work relations :

- chatting in the Hall - feedback (distance blocked the corrective feedback loops provided by chance encounters) - learning by watching - out-of sight, out-of mind - short is long (the effects of close proximity died off quickly with relatively little distance, making short distances equal to long ones in their effects on group interaction) : "Even if you are on the other side of the cafeteria, you are in another sphere of influence"

Reading Note : effects of proximity on collaboration

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Kraut, R. E., Fussell, S. R., Brennan, S. E., & Siegel, J. (in press). Understanding effects of proximity on collaboration: Implications for technologies to support remote collaborative work. In P. Hinds & S. Kiesler (Eds.)

Distributed work. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

In this paper, the authors identify the mechanisms by which proximity males collaboration easier :

1. Initiating conversations : easier in physical settings than in mediated communication 1.1 proximity increases frequency of communication (people communicate most with those who are physically close) 1.2 likelihood of chance encounter 1.3 transitions from encounters to communication (+ expe : Kendon and Ferber, 1973) 1.4 community membership and repeated encounters -> common ground BUT : (disdavantage of physical proximity) people must attend to the same thing at the same time : it must be synchronous + the opportunistic and spontaneous communication that is supports is not always welcome (interruption, loss of privacy) + it privilege people who are nearby WITH technology : possible chatrroms and moo : chance to encounter thanks to buddy list (whi is available)

2. Conducting conversations common ground, mutual knowledge precise timing of cues, coordination of turn-taking, repaire of misunderstanding BUT (disdavantage of physical proximity): cognitive demands on speaker and listener (monitoring what is being said, feedback...) WITH technology : possible even though it is more difficult with other media, cf article Clark and brennan, least collab effort

3. Maintaining task and team awareness BUT (disdavantage of physical proximity): this information (conveyed by physical proximity) is necessary for internal communication but not sufficient WITH technology : challenging because too much information could be disruptive. But systems do exist. Here I can cite studies about the effect of awareness tools (cf my master thesis)

Proxemics

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Proxemics is the term coined by Edward Hall (1957) to describe the social use of space, and personal space in particular. Personal space is the area with invisible boundaries surrounding an individual’s body. This area function as a comfort zone during interpersonal communication. It disappear in environments (elevator, crowd). As a matter of fact, Hall proposes four main distances represented below that are employed in American interactions. Moreover, each distance has a particular meaning, in terms of the kind of interaction allowed. Hall argues that those meanings depends on the culture. Hall also shows how distance constrains the types of interaction that are likely to occur, by communicating to participants as well as observers the nature of the relationships between the interactants and their activity.

Category
 Approximate distance Kind of interaction
Intimate distance up to 0.5 meters
 Comforting, threatening
Personal distance
 0.5 to 1.25 meters
 Conversation between friends
Social distance
 1.25 to 3.5 meters
 Impersonal business dealings
Public distance
 more than 3.5 meters
 Addressing a crowd

Discussion with Pierre

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About my literature review : I have to make a taxonomy. Three objects : Person/Artefact/Location (a fourth : activity ?). Distance/Spatial relation between those three objects : between persons (proxemics), artefacts/persons, location/artefacts, person/location (absolute or relative distance), between locations. Relation between location and activity : places/location "afford" (affordance) a certain type of activity (notion of place according to Dourish) in the same way artefacts afford an activity.Relation between objects : distance, properties (belongs to...), activity (what do we do in this place ?).

I will present those three obejcts and their relation in three settings : real, virtual and mixed.

I will introduce the different dimensions and explain the relations. For each relation, I will present the major results in the three stettigns (if available). For instance, about person/artefacts : in the real world, artecfacts that we can take/point/use... and in the virtual world : David Ott's masters thesis and then... the others stdies presented in the article for JoCSCW. Person/person relation : physical world (proxemics, personal space) virtual world (proxemics ? trouver etude la dessus; il ya personal space : cf murray)

Literature review for the JoCSCW : 3-4 pages.

If students at University are given mobile devices (augmented with location-awareness stuff), do Schelling Points will be modified or not ? A semi-controlled experiment on a group could be conducted. We can show students social maps (with different range/radius)... or a variable radius (30m for buddies and 10m for unknown people).

I have to list tasks that are : MOBILE and/or JOINTLY CARRIED OUT. [Par exemple : quand quelqu'un commande un plat à la caféteria, il recoit un SMS pour l'avertir que c'est prêt]

Geocode your gear !

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Nowaday, attaching information to real world’s stuff and gear is a trend. Projects like Aula or HP Cooltown (“everything has a web page!”) are a step toward this direction. Applications like tourist navigation, collaborative work or games. Geocoding is about embedding the location of an object in… the artifact itself. At the moment, geocoding an object in the physical world is possible but difficult. Indeed, one could use RFID tag and a tag reader but there is no universal protocol to sort out the artifacts or to search them. On the contrary, web pages (kind of artifacts) could be easily geocoded thanks to tag or RDF structure format (META tags, meta stands for metadata).

For instance, tags are used on geourl. This website maps documents in cyberspace to real-world locations. You add this code in the of your html document :

<meta name="geo.position" content="41.8833; 12.500" / >
<meta name="DC.title" content="Jackson’s blog" /  >

The first line contains the Latitude and Longitude, and the second line contains the site’s name. Once the site is added to GeoURL’s database, you can immediately see who else has registered Web pages in (or about) your neighborhood. These coordinates are called an "ICBM Address." (Like, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile – old hacker slang). geourl is a search engine that can help you to search website and locations with map and vizualisations. The problem is that using latitudes and longitudes is not that trivial. GPS coordinates or those indication are not human readable as well as location names.

Another more complete format (source : igargoyle) for holding geospatial data is proposed by Dublin Core (beware xml syntax):

<dcterms:spatial&#62 Elements: <dcterms:description> (#PCDATA) : The description of your location. <dcterms:projection> (#PCDATA) : The geospatial projection used. <dcterms:north> (#PCDATA) : Distance north or south of the equator, measured on a meridian. Same as Latitude. This number is expressed in degrees. <dcterms:east> (#PCDATA) : Longitude in degrees east of the Greenwich Meridian, with any number of decimal places. This number is expressed in degrees. <dcterms:elevation> (#PCDATA) : The distance from sea level. This number is expressed in meters. <dcterms:accuracy> (#PCDATA) : The geospatial accuracy of your coordinates. If you are purposely being fuzzy about your location, pick a point near your location and under accuracy, put an approximate distance to your real location. This number is expressed in meters. <dcterms:speed> (#PCDATA) : The temporal speed, usually obtained from a GPS unit. This number is expressed in meters.

On the one hand, we have those metadata presented above. On the other hand we need software in order to search, sort, parse and transform into graphical maps those data. At the moment, those applications are yet to be developed… Use a searchbot to find your keys, your skateboard or your hipster trucker hat !!!

And what about privacy in such context ?!

Michel Foucault and Space

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE I found a very nice text of Michel Foucault about spatiality : in english or in french.

He presents how our conception of spatiality evolved. He distinguished three periods :

- Medieval space: the space of emplacement (sacred places and profane plates: protected places and open, exposed places: urban places and rural places...) - After Galileo and the seventeenth century, extension was substituted for localization. - Today the site has been substituted for extension which itself had replaced emplacement.

According to Foucault, we are more concerned by space than by time (because of demography for instance). "This problem of the human site or living space is not simply that of knowing whether there will be enough space for men in the world -a problem that is certainly quite important - but also that of knowing what relations of propinquity, what type of storage, circulation, marking, and classification of human elements should be adopted in a given situation in order to achieve a given end. Our epoch is one in which space takes for us the form of relations among sites."

Mobile Phone SONAR !

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A mobile phone is a powerful AWARENESS TOOL that can tell you the PRESENCE of somebody. Yesterday, I was wondering whether my friend Elise (who was in Italy for holidays) was back in France or not. I sent her a SMS. My Nokia Phone receives reports to tell me whether the SMS is delivered or just pending. The meaning could be interpreted like this :

SMS delivered : she's back in France (I know that she did not take the internation option) Pending SMS : she is still in Italy or she is in France and her cell phone is off.

Outdoor distributed computing

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE I attened a seminar at EPFL about Outdoor distributed computing. Here are few notes.

Constraints on outdoor computing : outdoor adversity ! - nods are volatile and mobile (dynamic configuration) - networking is ad-hoc : unpredictable delays - location may dictate the role of computation : naming must include location - conventional distributed computing does not work. - configuration changes during execution !

Gargoyle

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Being a gargoyle is obviously one of the next big thing !! Gargoyle : a term from Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It is meant to be a person who is decked out in computer gear such that they are able to catalog all data collected through their senses as well as get data that is useful to whatever goal that they have. Via everything2 In Snow Crash the author describes how a vast number of people all around the world gather information and various pieces of intel, uploading it all to "The Library" for anyone to search for and use. Whenever someone uses a piece of information you have uploaded, you get paid.

Another term for gargoyle is stringer.

infogargoyle review the must-have technology to be a smart gargoyle.

Que dire de plus ?

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"Toute la vie des sociétés dans lesquelles règnent les conditions modernes de production s’annonce comme une immense accumulation de spectacles. Tout ce qui était directement vécu s’est éloigné dans une représentation." - Guy Ernest Debord

Utilisation de l'espace chez les jeunes

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Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Kokoreff, Michel. - La dimension spatiale des modes de vie des jeunes : le cas d'une cité de la banlieue parisienne. - Sociétés contemporaines (Paris). - (17), mars 94 : p. 29-49 ; bibliogr. ; résumé en anglais. - Une enquête ethnographique destinée à analyser les rapports entre une catégorie de jeunes, leur espace résidentiel et la ville conduit à faire l'hypothèse du caractère structurant de l'expérience urbaine dans l'organisation des modes de vie. Elle souligne les clivages, vie familiale/vie de quartier, espace de fixation (la cité, le local) / espace de mobilité (ville, RER, quartiers de rencontre à Paris, la Défense, les Halles) et témoigne de l'attachement profond des jeunes à leur cité.

Analyse spatiale

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Bonnes ressources concernant l'analyse spatiale L’analyse spatiale met en évidence des structures et des formes d’organisation spatiale récurrentes, que résument par exemple les modèles centre-périphérie, les champ d’interaction de type gravitaire, les trames urbaines hiérarchisées, les divers types de réseaux ou de territoires, etc....Elle analyse des processus qui sont à l’origine de ces structures, à travers des concepts comme ceux de distance, d’interaction spatiale, de portée spatiale, de polarisation, de centralité, de stratégie ou choix spatial, de territorialité...Des lois de la spatialité relient ces formes et ces processus, et sont intégrées dans des théories et des modèles du fonctionnement et de l’évolution des systèmes spatiaux .