WiGLE.net: a submission-based catalog of wireless networks

WIGLE:

WiGLE.net is a submission-based catalog of wireless networks. Submissions are not paired with actual people; rather name/password identities which people use to associate their data. It's basically a "gee isn't this neat" engine for learning about the spread of wireless computer usage.

WiGLE concerns itself entirely with 802.11b networks right now, since it's REALLY hard to deal with cellular networks, 802.11a is so hard to catch, and everything else is so small-share. 802.11b appears to be experiencing an explosive growth, and it's neat to see it cover cities. (...) Overall, WiGLE aims to show people about wireless in a more-technical capacity then your average static map or newspaper article.

Here is "The wireless world this morning (GMT-6:00)" as they say:

Why do I blog this? that's an intriguing community-based catalog of wireless networks.

Street Sudoku

Two days ago, I spotted a girl in Lausanne, Switzerland, solving a Sudoku on a street poster; It's actually an advertisement for a swiss game but some folks seem to like doing the Sudoku on much bigger dimensions than a newspaper format: I spotted this picture in Geneva, it's the second street-sudoku that I saw solved.

How does the size of sudoku changes the way it's solved?

How does the fact that it is embedded in a broader context (being on a poster, in public space...) modifies the way the passers-by can be engaged in such an activity?

Do you play sudoku on walls?

What is funny is that few meters from this poster, one year ago, I also spotted this nice drawings on the ground, did by few kids (which made me think of a street tetris):

Ethnography of Petrol Station Stay

TENDING TO MOBILITY: INTENSITIES OF STAYING AT THE PETROL STATION by Daniel Normark (Environment & Planning A. Pion, vol. 38, no 2, pp 241-252.) is an ethnographic study of ongoing social activities at a petrol station.

Petrol stations constitute a nexus for mobility. Through ethnographic observations it is tested how the continuous flow of vehicles, commodities, money and people is sustained and made accountable. The fieldwork demonstrates that despite its transitory character, the petrol station offers a wide spectrum of ‘duration of stay’. The station was used while being on-the-way as well as providing a possibility to disembark from automobility, i.e. being off-the-way. However, the most important finding is that the station tends to mobility, from the production and recognition of fluency, the constant negotiation and articulation work of situations, to continuous maintenance and repair of movement. Accomplishing a flow of people, vehicles, money and commodities is a complex and delicate task requiring subtle negotiation between staff and visitors as well as among visitors themselves. A negotiation supported and hampered by available materialities of the place.

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of studying non-place (à la Augé), and gas stations are of particular interest, their identity (placeness?) is very intriguing.

Structural uncertainty

Yes it's the Eiffel Tower.

Modalities of space in video games

Axel Stockburger has a very interesting research topic entitled "THE RENDERED ARENA: MODALITIES OF SPACE IN VIDEO AND COMPUTER GAMES". He's working on this at the University of the Arts London, Research Scholarship London Institute with Dr. Angus Carlyle (LCC), Alan Sekers (LCC), Prof. Clive Richards (Coventry University).

one of the most evident properties of those games is their shared participation in a variety of spatial illusions. Although most researchers share the view that issues related to mediated space are among the most significant factors characterising the new medium, as of yet, no coherent conceptual exploration of space and spatial representation in video and computer games has been undertaken.

This thesis focuses on the novel spatial paradigms emerging from computer and video games. It aims to develop an original theoretical framework that takes the hybrid nature of the medium into account. The goal of this work is to extend the present range of methodologies directed towards the analysis of digital games. In order to reveal the roots of the spatial apparatus at work an overview of the most significant conceptions of space in western thought is given. Henri Lefebvre’s reading of space as a triad of perceived, conceived and lived space is adopted. This serves to account for the multifaceted nature of the subject, enables the integration of divergent spatial conceptions as part of a coherent framework, and highlights the importance of experiential notions of spatiality. Starting from Michel Foucault’s notion of the heterotopia, game-space is posited as the dynamic interplay between different spatial modalities. As constitutive elements of the dynamic spatial system mobilized by digital games the following modalities are advanced: the physical space of the player, the space emerging from the narrative, the rules, the audiovisual representation and the kinaesthetic link between player and game. These different modalities are examined in detail in the light of a selected range of exemplary games. Based on a discussion of film theory in this context an original model that serves to distinguish between different visual representational strategies is presented. A chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the crucial and often overlooked role of sound for the generation of spatial illusions. It is argued that sound has to be regarded as the privileged element that enables the active use of representational space in three dimensions. Finally the proposed model is mobilised to explore how the work of contemporary artists relates to the spatial paradigms set forth by digital games. The critical dimension of artistic work in this context is outlined. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the impact of the prevalent modes of spatial practice in computer and video games on wider areas of everyday life.

Why do I blog this? since space/place are the cornerstone of what I investigate in my research about pervasive games, I am interested by this approach.

Anti-social behaviors to criticize anti-social behavior

Jan Chipchase's last post is about anti-social behaviours (of dog owners) "through actions that many other people would consider anti-social, even if it involves graffiting one's own wall reminds me a trend in Geneva: everywhere on walls, journal distribution cases, trash-cans... there is this message "PLEASE KEEP GENEVA CLEAN" or "LAISSER GENEVE PROPRE" (it's actually both in english and french). An example:

Mapping Swizterland

Mapping Switzerland was an interesting exhibition by Hosoya Schaefer Architects, Zürich:

This exhibition curated by Pius Freiburghaus and organized by the Perforum at the Kulturzentrum Seedamm looks at maps, art and myths. It attempts at finding new ways to describe the identity of Switzerland ranging from the scientific to the artistic. Participants in the exhibition include the ETH Studio Basel, the ETH Institute of Cartography, Büro Destruct und Ursula Palla.

Hosoya Schaefer is showing eleven maps of Switzerland and its global context on 2m x 2m panels. With the panels leaning against the wall or propped up on wooden blocks, the installation alludes to the provisional and impermanent nature of the information on which these maps are based. Not an apodictic new ‘truth’ is searched for, but new ways of thinking. (...) Visualizations can help to propose new ways of thinking. They can help to see oneself not only in the historically grown context but also in the flux of globalization. We looked at a series of such factors. The graphic language of the maps, based on the density of information used in an atlas, is meant to go beyond the straightforward transfer of information and to evoke associations and open up space for fantasy.

There was also a nice article about it in the Weltwoche (pdf, 6.3Mb).

Why do I blog this? I like these visualizations that try to show things in a spatial way.

Some street objects in Utrecht

Tracking and displaying the paths of visitors

Via Computing for Emergent Architecture: You Are Here 2004 (led by Eric Siegel) is an interesting application that tracks and displays the paths of visitors traveling through a large public space.

The system displays the aggregate paths of the last two hundred visitors along with blobs representing the people currently being tracked. When viewers approach the work, they can display the live video image with the paths of currently tracked visitors superimposed. (...) The technology of this system is rooted in surveillance systems that are rapidly being put into place in all of our public spaces: airports, shopping malls, grocery stores and our streets and parks. The motivation for such public systems ranges from security and law enforcement to marketing and advertising. The system of this artwork is wholly anonymous – no data is collected and the only use of the information is by the museum visitors to track themselves and their friends. However, in many real-world applications of such technology, the identities of those being tracked are also registered. You Are Here provides a visceral understanding of surveillance systems' capabilities and a sensual, visual representation of information that is normally only accessible as dry statistics.

This benevolent application of tracking is also meant to show the interconnectedness of viewers' with other visitors to the space by give them a sense of the aggregate presence of people over time.

Why do I blog this? it's an interesting art piece that address the issue of spatial data, food for thoughts for our replay tool project.

Paul Virilio and accidents

Just finished reading Paul Virilio's book "L'accident originel" in the train this morning. It was amazingly interesting, here some excerpts of an interview of the author about this book:

Accidents have always fascinated me. It is the intellectual scapegoat of the technological; accident is diagnostic of technology. To invent the train is to invent derailment; to invent the ship is to invent the shipwreck. The ship that sinks says much more to me about technology than the ship that floats! Today the question of the accident arises with new technologies, like the image of the stock market crash on Wall Street. Program trading: here there is the image of the general accident, no longer the particular accident like the derailment or the shipwreck. In old technologies, the accident is "local"; with information technologies it is "global." We do not yet understand very well this negative innovation. We have not understood the power of the virtual accident. We are faced with a new type of accident for which the only reference is the analogy to the stock market crash, but this is not sufficient.

The whole book deals with this idea of accidents ("ce qui arrive" / "what happens"), dromology, relation to space, speed and media. It comes form an exhibit he worked on at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, advocating for a future "Museum of the Accident": here's what he says: "Is the reconstituted accident a foreshadowing of the Museum of the Accident?":

I also like his point of how technology reshapes the spatial praxis as well as the notion of familiarity I addressed yesterday:

I think that the infosphere - the sphere of information - is going to impose itself on the geosphere. We are going to be living in a reduced world. The capacity of interactivity is going to reduce the world, real space to nearly nothing. Therefore, in the near future, people will have a feeling of being enclosed in a small, confined, environment. In fact, there is already a speed pollution which reduces the world to nothing. Just as Foucault spoke of this feeling among the imprisoned, I believe that there will be for future generations a feeling of confinement in the world, of incarceration which will certainly be at the limit of tolerability, by virtue of the speed of information. If I were to give a last image, interactivity is to real space what radioactivity is to the atmosphere.

Why do I blog this? because I like what Virilio expresses and how he does it.

Places, familiarity and proximity

The french website Espace temps features an interesting article about the shift in place inhabitance, by Mathis Stock. There is a shift between two ways of living in a place; there are actually 2 models "mono-topique and "multi-topique" (in french).

Les points rouges indiquent les lieux familiers, les points jaunes les lieux non familiers : ce modèle graphique signifie que contrairement à d’autres sociétés ou d’autres époques, les lieux proches ne sont plus nécessairement ceux qui sont les mieux connus et les plus familiers. On voit notamment dans ce modèle que les lieux familiers peuvent être situés à des distances plus grandes que le rayon marquant la limite de l’espace de proximité. La variable discriminante pour déterminer la familiarité avec les lieux n’est plus la distance, mais la fréquence. Le second cercle symbolise l’accroissement de l’accessibilité à partir d’un lieu — supposé classiquement en forme de cercles concentriques — mais qui ne rend pas compte des accessibilités différentielles, c’est-à -dire des accessibilités localement meilleures.

This is nicely expressed by one of the graphic in this paper (on the left: the old "monotopique" model, on the right, the new ""polytopique"model):

Red points depicts familiar places, yellow one depicts non-familiar places: this model shows that now, geographically-close places are not so familiar or well-known as it used to be. Familiar places can be far from each other. The important variable that explains the familiarity of places if not the proximity but the frequency.

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of not focusing on distance but frequency of places visit to characterize the familiarity. Besides, this is just a glimpse of the paper, it's fully of good references and ideas about the concept of mobility.

BookCrossing Zones

I am a great fan of the concept of bookcrossing, it really corresponds to an habit for me. Now what I find interesting is the notion of BookCrossing Zones. According to wikipedia:

Official BookCrossing Zones, which are sometimes called OBCZs or OBZs are located in places like Starbucks coffee shops, restaurants or other places where accessible to the public. These OBCZs refer to bookshelves placed there so that BookCrossers could catch or release books.

Look at this OBCZ World Map! Still a work in progress but very interesting.

Reconfiguration of social, cognitive and spatial practices in cities due to technological innovations

After my post about the inevitable existence of electronic ghetto in cities (quoting Mike Davis and William Gibson), I had a discussion with Anne about how technologies (and hence interaction designers) are sometimes not aware of side-effects due to their creation, especially in terms of social, politics or even cognitive practices. For that matter, I am interested in reconfiguration of specific practices in cities due to technological innovations. It's been some time that I am trying to list interesting case studies about that. Books like "City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn" (William J. Mitchell), "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution" (Howard Rheingold) or "Beyond Blade runner: Urban control, the ecology of fear" (Mike Davis) gives some elements. I tried to find other examples.

Before the introduction of elevators/lift, there was a different social repartition of people in the spatiality of buildings. Rich people were leaving on the first floor, to avoid them having to climb stairs. The higher you went into buildings, the less wealth you had in city-dwellers. The usage of elevators in building where people were living (previously elevator was just used to carry materials such as coal), inverted this repartition: the last floor, now accessible with the technology were for rich people. This is an example of how a technology created a social reconfiguration in space.

Another kind of effects is of course related to cognition. There are indeed important consequences of having information about public transport now allowed with new technologies (urban information display in the vehicle or on an information board) or the organization and the interoperability of information. For example, I like this example by Vincent Kauffman (urban sociologist here at the school): the regularity of different train schedule (there is a train geneva-lausanne every 20minutes with regular shifts: 7:45, 8:15...) plus the interoperabilty of transport means (the departure of city bus is coordinated with trains arrivals) allows people to easily remember commuting schedule and hence better predict how they would manage their spatial practices. These new technologies (urban displays) and the organization of information (due to technological advances) impacts cognitive mechanisms (i.e. memory in the example I described). What's next? would such a intelligent system achieve its goal (i.e. facilitating navigation by suggesting all possible alternative shortest route that connect two or more transition points on a map)?

Likewise, there are interesting concerns lately about whether location-based services might modify behaviors and practices in cities. This question often pops up when people think about location-based games. Results from the MogiMogi game test showed very interesting behaviors: players who wander around in the city using their car or the metro when new objects are released; or once a player complained because he went to a place where he though an object would be but it was not present since it was just there when the moon was full.

Also Daniel Blackburn (manager of Carbon Based Games) questions whether the bluetooth social games might modify people’s behavior in physical space by creating new technosocial situations:

With GPS games such as mogi some players would detour from their everyday routes to go and pick up a virtual object. With Bluetooth enabled game will people try to get within range of someone while there phone is in their bag so they are unlikely to hear it so that they can steal virtual objects without their knowledge. Or will they stay clear of people at work because they are at a high level than the game than them and they want to avoid defeat again. Or will they be constantly checking their phone because they’re convinced someone is trying to virtually assassinate them an could set of a bomb at any time. Meaning they would need to run with there phone to get it out of range of the blast.

Even though I like the example, I am still dubious by this last example (compared to the two others); there are still lots of big expectations with lbs.

Why do I blog this? well, what do I want to show here is that technologies sometimes reshuffle human practices in terms of spatial dispersions, cognitive appraisal of space and social organizations of infrastructures. Maybe I should write a better discussion of this and wrap this up in a paper, here is quite messy. This said, there is still the question of foreseeing the future reconfiguration due to emerging technologies.

An electronic ghetto within the emerging information city

Today reading in the train: "Beyond Blade runner: Urban control, the ecology of fear by Mike Davis. An excerpt I liked:

Perhaps, as William Gibson suggests, 3-dimensional computer interfaces will soon allow post-modern flaneurs (or 'console cowboys') to stroll through the luminous geometry of this mnemonic city where data-bases have become 'blue pyramids' and 'cold spiral arms'.

If so, urban cyberspace - as the simulation of the city's information order - will be experienced as even more segregated, and devoid of true public space, than the traditional built city. Southcentral LA, for instance, is a data and media black hole, without local cable programming or links to major data systems. Just as it became a housing/jobs ghetto in the early twentieth century industrial city, it is now evolving into an electronic ghetto within the emerging information city.

Why do I blog this? what I like there is (1) this idea of embedding virtual data flows in reality (through light/displays, as in this project or this one for example), (2) the notion of electronic divide: there's going to be ghettos without data holes.

This is connected to Usman Haque's paper about Invisible Topographies quoting Antony Dunne:

Humans have only recently begun contributing to the cacophony with their pagers, medical devices, television broadcasts and mobile phones. This abundant invisible territory, a topography that is altered in shape and intensity by both natural and human-constructed landscapes, has been called "hertzian space" by industrial design theorist Anthony Dunne. He has observed that hertzian space is often ignored by designers saying, in Hertzian Tales, that the "material responses to immaterial electromagnetic fields can lead to new aesthetic possibilities for architecture.

An example of such idea is Tunneable Cities project by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, part of their “hertzian tales” (thanks you elastico!):

In certain circumstances people do not even notice if a room grows to four times its size

A paper in Current Biology by Andrew Glennerster and colleagues shows that humans ignore the evidence of their own eyes to create a fictional stable world as described in the Oxford University News.

The Virtual Reality Research Group in Oxford used the latest in virtual reality technology to create a room where they could manipulate size and distance freely. They made the room grow in size as people walked through it, but subjects failed to notice when the scene around them quadrupled in size. As a consequence, they made gross errors when asked to estimate the size of objects in that room. (...) These results imply that observers are more willing to adjust their estimate of the separation between the eyes or the distance walked than to accept that the scene around them has changed in size,’ says Dr Glennerster. ‘More broadly, these findings mark a significant shift in the debate about the way in which the brain forms a stable representation of the world. They form part of a bigger question troubling neuroscience – how is information from different times and places linked together in the brain in a coherent way?’

Why do I blog this? this is an interesting example of the weird connections between cognitive systems and space perception.

Millenials and workplace behavior

The last newsletter of Steelcase is about the behavior of millenials (born 1978-1999) in the workplace. Some excerpts of the findigns I found pertinent:

The youngest generation, the millennials, is entering the workplace. The oldest millennials are still in their 20s, but already they're creating some workplace trends of their own. (...) Among the findings: Millennials are three times more likely to work off-site or while traveling, compared to other office workers, Formal meeting spaces are less important to millennials than their older co-workers, Millennials are less distracted by noise. (...) “Millennial workers come to the business world prewired. Four out of five colleges offer wireless networks, and the average time a typical college student spends online has nearly quadrupled in the past eight years,” (...) Campuses provide a broad observation deck for seeing what’s likely to come next in the workplace, Roy continues. “We spend a lot of time on campus observing students and faculty. How are they using the space? How are they interacting? Are there any gaps? What could we provide that would make the environment work better? Students today want more flexibility, more technology, more cool spaces. They’re not looking to come out of school and go backward in time.” (...) Tech is both part of the millennial multitasking workstyle and an enabler of it (...) There’s also growing evidence that millennials, more than any other generation, value natural daylight in the workplace, and they’re more apt to ask questions about air quality, efficient energy use, “green” materials and maintenance procedures,and other environmental issues. (...) “When millennials start with a company, the Number One thing they request – and require -- is a mentor,” says Simoneaux. “One of the strategies we've proposed is a 'mentor pod,' an open workspace where experienced people can go to work. By simply being there, it signals they're available to counsel others.”

I like this result also:

For example, 91% of boomers, gen-Xers and traditionalists say that having meeting spaces available for scheduling is an important factor that affects their satisfaction with their workplace. Fully one-third say it's a problem finding those spaces. Fewer millennials think it’s of medium or high importance – 81%. After all, when you're used to collaborating informally, you tend to worry less about meeting rooms with big conference tables. As long as there’s a casual space like a cafe or lounge area, millennials can and prefer to work in a variety of places.

Why do I blog this? the relation between space and collaboration is both a research project here at the lab and one my favorite concerns. These results nicely highlights the relationships between space and collaborative work.

During 3GSM in Barcelona, they put wires in the streets

Maybe it's because there is the 3GSM conference about mobile phones in Barcelona: wires are not very trendy and people leave them in the streets:

The Orb: Passive Stumbling and Information Awareness

Hector Jaime from Restate Media pointed me on their project called The Orb, which is a wireless network stumbling platform. They describe the purposes of stumbling as:

• we could make out of the information visualisation. all those nice net art pictures or fancy colours making up forms.
• [people] could also be aware of the amount of information travelling around and on which directions, with this information we acquire the generation of an urban understanding of the nature of the regional digital information, its flows, density reach and quality along with consuming habits of small regions and communities. in short we can profile the information flows
• Publishing localised information of near information access points permits citizens to gain awareness of places to access relevant information within their local context, activating in such ways new information flows there for common localised knowledge.
• Social Information Awareness
• Identify Knowledge Sources

Why do I blog this? I would say that I am more interested in the visualization of information flows, perhaps this is due to my curiosity towards the overlay of virtual layer on top of the virtual world (and the fact that I am not so confident in using this raise social information awareness).

Temporary architecture in Geneva

For fans of temporary architecture only: this bunch of temporary work capsules had been installed close to my place in Geneva. I like the way it looks - kind of apocalyptic shelter - though:

On the same issue, see Alain Bublex's work.

Super Mario Bros Maps

At last! I found the complete maps of Super Mario Bros.

Also, read chaotic n-space network for a good analysis of SMB level design:

SMB was rather revolutionary in terms of level design. Earlier games had usually only had a few game screens which did not change. Games like Adventure, which had distinct levels with multiple screens, were the exception. SMB, however, was a scrolling platformer with 32 different levels, some of which were even mazes. Gamers had no choice but to memorize some levels. The last level is a good example of this: There is a specific sequence of pipes one must go down in order to get to the end of the level; take the wrong one, and Mario is returned to the beginning of the level to start all over again. This memorization was probably SMB's biggest contribution to the gaming world. While almost all games require some level of memorization, and Super Mario Bros. was not really the first of its kind, SMB took it to a new level and a new prominence, setting a precedent for most of the popular console games to follow. This came to be both a blessing and a curse. While it introduced a new genre, it also introduced a new fad, as large portion of following games would be sidescrolling platformers. Just as first-person three-dimensional shooters dominate now, and Space Invaders or Asteroids style shooters dominated the early years of gaming, these games came to dominate gaming in the late eighties and early nineties so much that one becomes almost sick of them. And as level design and graphics began to dominate new games, gameplay tended to suffer: Each game was just like the last one, but with a facelift.

Why do I blog this? I am an absolute fan of SMB.