SpacePlace
Lately, I've been amazed by the street art work of dwaesha, especially these "Braille Graffiti" (2005):
Why do I blog this? I already dealt with podotactility here, in this example, things are different (although it looks like vertical podotactiles). What is intriguing is the idea of touching graffitis... Remember something? Very curious practice indeed, but still.
Graham, S.D.N (2005). Software-sorted geographies, Progress in Human Geography29, 5 (2005) pp. 1–19. The central claim of the paper is that computerized systems act as "ordinary" mediators through which people encounter the world, hence the term "software sorting":
"Software-sorting is the means through which such selective access is organized (Graham and Wood, 2003). Such processes operate through a vast universe of what Michel Callon (1986) has termed ‘obligatory passage points’. These are particular topological spaces within sociotechnical systems through which actors have to ‘pass’in order that the system actually functions in the way that dominant actors desire. (...) Crucially, however, the links between software-sorting and geographical inequalities are inherently complex, ambivalent and ambiguous. (...) While they are inherently multitudinous, diverse and ambivalent, and operate at multiple scales, the predominant dynamic of contemporary software-sorting innovations seems to be linked closely to the elaboration of neoliberal models of state construction and service provision"
What I also strikingly interesting for my interest in this paper is this:
"attention has turned away from discussions suggesting that such technologies offer access to some ‘virtual’ domain which is somehow distinct and separable, in some binary way, from the ‘real’spaces and places of cities and material urban life (Woolgar, 2002). In their place, much more nuanced and sophisticated approaches are emerging. These stress that new technologies are intimately involved in the fine-grained and subtle transformations, or ‘remediations’, of place- and space-based social worlds (Bolter and Grusin, 2000; Haythornwaite and Wellman, 2002; Graham, 2004a; 2004b). Far from being separated domains, then, such perspectives underline that the coded worlds of the ‘virtual’ actually work to continually constitute, structure and facilitate the place-based practices of the material world (Dodge and Kitchin, 2004: 198). Castells (1996: 373) calls this the shift from ‘virtual reality’to ‘real virtuality’(see Dodge and Kitchin, 2004)."
And I also liked that one:
"In addressing this wide research, policy and activist agenda, the challenge is to maintain a critical and informed position without falling foul of dystopian and absolutist scenarios suggesting that software-sorting techniques are somehow limitless, completely integrated, and all-powerful. As Koskella (2003) suggests, ‘urban space will always remain less knowable and, thus, less controllable than the restricted panoptic space’"
... given that technologies are not seamless and perfectly working, software-sorted geographies can fail.
Why do I blog this? lots of reading lately from the geography field, certainly because I discovered how that domain address ubiquitous computing from a very relevant angle.
Kids compulsively tagging their zip code in other cities.
I could have taken other examples but I quite liked that one: 1026 is from a village in the countryside close to Lausanne (which is ranging from 1000-1007, 1010-1012, 1014-1015 & 1017-1018). The use of "zip code" tagged on walls is a recurring practice in occidental cities, often showing how people express their (local) identity, using a very formal identity: the zip code fixed by the State.
An intriguing example of a spatial practice, generally done by teenagers exploring Cities and feeling the need to express their feelings.
Reading (again) Lefebvre this week-end, I ran across this quote about the notion of "user" that I liked:
"Let us now turn our attention to the space of those who are referred to by means of such clumsy and pejorative labels as 'users' and 'inhabitants'. No well-defined terms with clear connotations have been found to designate these groups. Their marginalization by spatial practice thus extends even to language. The word 'user' (usager), for example, has something vague - and vaguely suspect - about it. 'User of what?' one tends to wonder. Clothes and cars are used (and wear out), just as houses are. But what is use value when set alongside exchange and its corollaries? As for 'inhabitants', the word designates everyone - and no one. (...) The user's space is lived - not represented (or conceived). When compared with the abstract space of the experts (architects, urbanists, planners), the space of the everyday activities of users is a concrete one, which is to say, subjective. As a space of 'subjects' rather than of calculations, as a representational space, it has an origin, and that origin is childhood, with its hardships, its achievements and its lacks."
Why do I blog this? I know that challenging the notion of "user" is now more and more common, but still it's relevant to see how thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre questionned it.
Graham, S. (2004): Excavating the Material Geographies of Cybercities, In Graham, S. (ed.) The Cybercities Reader, Chapter 18, Routledge, London. This chapter addresses the "material geographies of telecommunications hardware and equipment" built in the ICT boom of the late 90s showing how the so-called "death of distance" rely on material grounds. The "fabric of cyberspace" is indeed a lot more physical than the immateriality people promote, involving "the messy, complex and expensive construction of real wires, servers, and installations".
Although this claim is now very common in geography/architecture papers (as well as starting to be taken into account in the field of ubiquitous computing), what is very relevant in this chapter is how the authors describe "examples of the recombinant infrastructural spaces that invisibly underpin cybercities. Some excerpts highlight this point:
"These electronic superbanks are not skyscrapers but groundscrapers [interconnected by optic fiber networks]: "huge nine-to-eleven storey buildings with immense floor plates" to accommodate the remarkable IT needs of global financial institutions today (...) Telecom hotels are anonymous, windowless buildings and massive, highly fortified spaces which house the computer and telecommunications equipment for the blossoming commercial Internet, mobile and telecommunication industries. (...) server or 'co-location' farms are housed in highly secure building complexes located in the major global cities of the world. (...) The physical qualities of the chosen buildings (high ceiling height, high-power and back-up electricity supplies) need to be combined with nodal positions on fibre networks (...) isolated and ultra-secure spaces are currently being configured as spaces for the remote housing of computer and data storage operations. There are several elements of this process. In the first element, a variety of offshore small island states (...) old disused sea forts and oil rigs are now being actively reconfigured by e-commerce entrepreneurs, in attempts to secede from the jurisdictions of nation states altogether. (...) the self-styled Principality of Sealand (...) Since September 11th many of London's financial and corporate head quarters have installed massive servers in the platform's concrete legs to improve their resilience against catastrophic terrorism in the City of London. (...) But perhaps even more bizarre is the third part of the process : the reconstruction of old cold-war missile launch sites and bunkers to offer the ultimate in security against risks of both electronic and physical incursion"
Why do I blog this? while I am unsure about "sea forts and oil rigs" (Sea Land has some troubles lately), this enumeration of "recombinant" examples is very intriguing. Surely some material to keep in mind for further investigation about urban computing.
The Digital Invisibility of Broadband and its Representation in the Modern City by Peter Dobers, Paper presented at 97th AAG Annual Meeting, Session "The Invisible City", February 27 - March 3, 2001 in New York, USA. The paper addresses the issue of the concreteness of IT/digitality, especially in urban settings. The "invisible" character of technologies have always been highlighted: the infrastructure of the Internet is invisible to the observer, since dug into the ground and the information transported on these nets is invisible. Based on these premises, the author illustrates how broadband and digits are represented in concrete and socially infused, indeed personalized, ways, discussing "the dialectics between abstract invisibility and concrete visibility and how each is represented". He then gives different examples of "bits" in "very mundance, everyday human siutations" from swedish commercial and Telia movie clips. These are very pertinent to show "how digits are infused with anthropomorphous qualities to enhance our understanding and attachment to digital technology". The idea of having "bits on strike" is kind of hilarious for that matter.
(Picture taken in Geneva few months ago)
Some excerpts that I find inspiring:
"the digits and bits themselves, are rather incomprehensible and therefore invisible to users. (...) Those digits are translations of a situation to which there are no actor that can speak up by themselves (...) [these examples] gives voice and meaning to an invisible part of the modern city, to a situation otherwise incomprehensible. (...) To describe something intangible and invisible as digital information and fast broadband access to the internet, we need to make reference to something else. In this case, something else of the digits of the digital world becomes represented in our world by human beings. These metaphors of humans give sense to a senseless and invisible digital world. (...) Data by themselves can be based on digital rather than analogue media. However, since we live in an analogue world, full of atoms and not full of bits, eventually we need analogue information to reach our senses. (...) It seems that to grasp the invisible, you have to make it visible, and to grasp the abstract, you have to make it tangible and concrete."
Why do I blog this? These aspects are very interesting, from the "hybridization" of space standpoint. It also reminds a talk By Yo Kaminagai (urban designer) about the fact that digitality takes lots of room, and really materialize in space through cables, servers, wiring.
Today participating to the Urban Networks and Network Theory at the University of Lausanne. The seminar addresses two issues: 1) The transition from a network/networks of actors, individuals, firms or institutions to the coherent development of a city or system of cities, 2) The potential transfers and links between the various disciplinary and methodological interpretations of the concept “network”. Some notes below about the highlights (raw notes, not well formed).
(Picture taken yesterday in Zürich)
Introduction by Géraldine Pflieger and Céline Rozenblat
There are a variety of scales and aspects which intersect, connect or overlap, and function like networks. The central issue for research on urban networks is to identify, from a transdisciplinary perspective, how each of these networks function and interact in and through the urban space. This will be the central focus of the present seminar.
This will require an examination of the transition from networks of actors to networks of cities through the interlinking of different types of network: - technical set-up: this refers to the actual physical presence of cities, their morphology, density, topology and topography; - technological and organisational innovations and their dissemination in urban practices; - social networks and functional spaces linked largely to the legacies of history but which play an active part in the dynamics of the internal and external networking of cities.
Space of flows: networks between global and local by Manuel Castells
There are interactions between space of flows and ICT. We know that technologies are not a determinant but a mediator. Contrary to futurologists, no demise of cities but we are seeing the most important urbanization phenomenon we have ever seen (we crossed the 60%, 2/3 in 20years).
The most important aspect is the emergence of a new space of flows: of capital, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds and symbols. This leads to a new urban form: the metropolitan region (peter hall+kathy payne use the concept of polycentric metropolis). In most cases, there is not institutional unit in this metropolitan region (even the greater london authority is not sufficient). It's interesting to observe how people call their metropolitan region? You don't say the "SF Bay Area" because San José is bigger than SF. A solution Manuel takes is to use the term employed by TV new: in Los Angeles, it's not LA but "southland" (but south of what?), it's a reference to an area we know it's there.
To Castells, networks explain the concentration in places (you don't grow first and attract). What is important here: - micronetwork of decision making/initiative = face 2 face (you have to be in financial places, knows who is who, what is who) - micronetwork of implementation = through electronic media, the network of implementation is macro
This explains the concentration : once these mechanisms is in place, the rest can be explained: infrastructure of communication, services... it develops because there is something to communicate, creation of opportunities because there is money, there is a market... facilities and... jobs... which attracts globally (hence hubs for immigration, multi-ethnic places)... + economies of synergies (2+2 = 5): being in a place where you interact with others leverage innovation
Cities remain the source of creation value, power, social selection and quality of life has nothing to do with it. It's entirely subjective ("can you imagine more boring places than SV?, these people don't go to SF bars, are they here for quality of life? no they're hypnotize by creativity"). As he said "cities become trendy only when they have the power to launch the trends, the rest is consulting for mayors".
When this multi-layer of global network coincides, in a way, then: - economies of synergy takes place into that node (academic research+tech...) - this becomes a mega-node: london, NYC (but not Boston)
Elements discussed in the Q&As: this node concentrate more and more power and wealth global networks also exclude other dimensions dissociation between the space of flows and the space of places power is constructed in the space of communication the key positions are switchers between networks (politic, business, media...) the more you connect to the internet, the more you talk within the company
Designing connections: people, places and information by Federico Casalegno (Mobile Experience Lab) design/communication perspective goal of the lab: rethink the relationships between people, places and information using cutting edge IT
First part of the talk is about how you can think to map forms of communication (map flow of communication and communities), especially people using mobile phones. How the content of the communication flows between users. "it is not down on any map: true places never are" Hermann Melville map use of mobile phone conversations 3 levels: micro/tribal/macro - micro: conversation+txt+undeground/secret communication (teenagers do not need to talk, they just beep the partner in order to appear, name on the cell phone). This forms an aura of communication: "the womb". - tribal: one person expert in the tribe about a certain topic publishes about it to the others - macro: rave parties, someone got the information that there is a party somewhere, send a message to others that you have to meet at a certain place... word of mouth... and you start exchanging content (what style of music? what dj?). you start to have a level of communication. Then everyone gets in the same place
There are different forms of communication, different metaphors: the womb, jellyfish, butterfly, intimate daisy, etc. they are way to understand social networks of mobile phone users
Two projects to rethink communication, place and people: 1) The Electronic Lens (eLense) creates talking landmarks and radically rethink the interactions between institutions, citizens and places. People will point telephone to physical building and get information (magnifying glass), access to information by pointing to an object. Application that recognizes buildings + post voice messages about buildings + start to design communities/group of users that can access to information.
2) Urban garden: rethinking bus stops (with french company RATP) One node in the city: the bus stop, what is the future of bus stop? Started to design a prototype: parametric design, integrate and support the urban environment They also describe the future of the bus stop as a self organized landmark with user-generated content. Internal interactions: people can see when is the next bus, if there are problems information but also "urban garden" where people can post messages/recommended places/looking for a bass-player in a music band (!). External interactions: physically reflecting the richness of the local communication on the outside messages posted but also sensors and cameras that measure the traffic/noise production/air pollution that can have negative impact on the "tree" representation.
The whole point of these projects is that technologies as mediators between individuals, local activities. These concepts are prototypes, some aspects will be implemented (la ligne 14!).
Conclusion: framed into the history of cities: pre-industrial cities consisted essentially of skeleton and skin then cities in the industrial era had physiologies (water/electric supply systems) electronic systems are now nervous systems where technologies are embed in the urban fabric
Why do I blog this? This sort of multi-disciplinary meetings is very insightful, it gives context and perspectives to what I'm doing (as well as provide data for foresight work). Ta to Géraldine for the invitation to participate.
The last issue of IEEE Spectrum is about "megacities" and how to solve some of the big engineering challenges we face as the world's cities multiply. There is a good bunch of articles about various topics. Some notes about the one I've been interested in: How to See the Unseen City By Sandra Upson That paper is about the density and complexity of subterranean networks which mirrors the congestion wealthy cities experience at their surface. What is interesting from a human perspective is that quote
"To many city dwellers—and even to many city officials—underground infrastructure is both out of sight and out of mind. When inspecting pipes, the city commonly uses electronic listening equipment as its first line of defense. Maintenance workers dangle a microphone down a manhole and attach it to a water main to assess whether flow has been disturbed by a leak. More detailed checks are conducted from within a pipe, using what is essentially a video camera on wheels. (...) Fixing a break in a line, whether pipe or wire, also entails finding it—and knowing what else might lie above it. Although individual utilities each have approximate maps of their own infrastructures, few have coordinated closely with other agencies. (...) Those who dig a hole also run the risk of unearthing a bone or two. To reclaim valuable real estate, many cities had to exile their cemeteries, which moved their headstones outside city limits but often left the bodies behind. (...) Vertical cemeteries by no means indicate that the underground frontier has been fully conquered."
How to Fight Crime in Real Time By William Sweet and Stephen Cass Rapid data retrieval that accelerates investigations in NYC is a topic tightly connected to ubicomp and foucauldian concerns. The articles describes how works the central computerized control room, the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC), which focus is “simply to speed up police reactions in emergencies, where seconds can be a matter of life and death.”
"Standing in the RTCC with Onalfo and D’Amico on a quiet spring afternoon, facing a theater-size display divided into six or seven changing rectangles, the lead author of this article gets a briefing on how the system works. To the lower left, there’s what’s often called a ticker (though it does not really resemble a list of stock quotations), showing a list of crimes reported in emergency calls to 911 or by officers to dispatchers. A red dot alongside an entry indicates the crime is in progress and deserves priority attention; yellow dots mark resolved situations. Another system of red and yellow dots shows whether police cars are immediately available for action. (...) Access to the data warehouse is granted only with passwords backed by the biometric ID cards that all NYPD employees carry, and every query is logged so that any suspicious entry into the system can be investigated"
Articles about garbage in megacities and electric infrastructures black-outs are also important to things in context. See here as well for a whole outline of the special issue.
(Picture taken yesterday in Geneva)
Why do I blog this? these papers gives some context about the reality of urban computing, all of them give a good overview of different aspects regarding urban issues.
BW on SL and alternatives. The claim of the author is that "companies are thinking twice about the popular virtual world are finding more security and flexibility in alternatives". Why? some excerpts helps to describe the reasons:
"the Web-based parallel universe is a messy marketplace where you're as likely to see a bare-chested, rabbit-headed avatar trolling for adult-themed entertainment or vandalizing a digital store as a corporate suit leading a training session. And some companies want to target age groups younger or older than the average 30-year-old denizen of Second Life. (...) Starwood Hotels & Resorts discovered avatars don't need to sleep, and so a virtual hotel didn't make much sense in the long run. Unlike Adidas or General Motors (GM ), which sell digital versions of Reeboks and Pontiacs in the online world, Starwood didn't have goods to sell—and found itself unable to sustain avatars' interest."
So, some companies are adopting diverse solutions like creating their own world. Why do I blog this? curiosity towards the buzz about 3D virtual worlds. I don't understand why these articles never refer to past experiences such as There or Active World. People who want to ponder the arguments developed in the BW piece might have a look at csven's blog.
Slides from my Reboot talk are here (pdf, 1.1Mb).
The presentation I made, entitled "Hybridization, fusing, melting, coalescence and salmagundi" was about hybridization. I basically gave an overview of what I find interesting in projects about hybridization of the digital and the physical, a sort of compendium of the consequences (from the cognitive to the architectural) and the implications. Take-aways of my talk are: - hybridization of the digital/physical are coming in a large variety of ways - leads to changes from the cognitive to the architectural levels - revisit false ideas: do not oppose the digital and the physical, less utilitarian future, digital takes room. - reality is complex, need to study situations (not just technologies)
Thanks Thomas for the invitation!
Arrived in Copenhagen today, for Reboot.
Picture taken this afternoon, technology of access marked by a heart drawn by a passer-by. Love+access, there was surely some good motivations because there are no precise affordance to draw this shape around this key hole..
Walking in Geneva this morning, I walked up some stairs near the Rhône river on which there is a message on each steps. One of them says "Depuis quand n'avez vous pas pris contact avec le sol?" ("since when haven't you feel the ground?"). This made me think our behavior towards the ground is very normative and, as a matter of fact, poor. Apart from specific cultures (mmh some backpackers in Marseille as depicted on the picture below), it's not good to sit/lay/do stuff on the ground (especially on pavements)
Why do I blog this? some curious design opportunities here... some already tried to do something with podotactility:
Or information visualization (to guide people going from one music spot to another)
Yet, it's still about seeing the ground or feeling it with the feet...
Spotted two days ago in Marseille, France:
This looks like "On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time" to use Guy Debord's formulation. What happened to the other halves of their physical presence? What does that mean?
Today was in Marseille (France) for a multi-disciplinary seminar about "urban research" and IT that gathered social scientists, companies (transportation systems) and managers form the public sector (city council, region, the "State", funding bodies) led by french think tank FING. Discussions were mostly about how to work together, how each of us experienced it and what are the role of the partners. I haven't really taken notes, rather some thoughts that I was interested in.
The assumptions The assumption here was to if the purpose is to develop urban innovation (develop applications, systems... invent the future of urban services somehow), it's not possible to do it alone but there's a need to act as a group. So if a research project about developing certain systems want to be efficient, it should involve all these people. In addition, there is also a need to be accepted. For instance people from a city council dismiss research about certain ubiquitous computing applications because the project did not involve "urban" people: "Did you work with transportation companies? Did you have a partnership with citizen's association? No hmmm okay so your project is interesting but far from reality".
Incentive to work with each others? That said, the problem is that all the potential actors (researchers, city councils, engineers, designers, funders, etc) have different ways to apprehend reality and are evaluated differently. Alain D'Iribarne for example mentioned that researchers need to publish, politician to be (re-)elected and companies to have ROI or to have a proper time-to-market R&D (as wanted by the french state who gives tax rebate). What happen is that in the last 20 years these criteria have been strengthened and led each group of actor to follow their own path. This is clearly what I feel as a research in which the only incentive I have to work with some companies is curiosity to work on specific situations/problems (and funding of course). What is left after this categorization is that some people act as bricoleurs and try to do research that fit with companies or city councils' interests... but they have their own academic niche or stop doing what is thought as "pure" academic research.
Classic debate All of this lead to the classic debate about the role of researchers in our modern societies: who should pick up the research topics? why funding that? A public company complained about the fact that they haven't found any interesting new theories that would change the way they act as a transportation structure in the last 20 years (as opposed as the person said, to "big science" who can sinking their teeth into big physics theories...) I don't know if this is a fact or an opinion (I'm prudent but IMHO it's an opinion) but it shows that there is certainly a problem here.
Of course, companies (public or private) brought to the table the fact that they need a more finalized research both about the content (research questions) and the method ("we don't want 120 pages report"). There is indeed a growing need to have researchers working with company people and implement their ideas, "not just throw them in the air".
Different rhythms A side topic was also the importance of time. It has been said that railways or metro are build for a certain amount of time (100 years for railways, 40-50 years for metro), given the investment. One of the attendant was concerned about how to articulate this with technologies that change every 2-3 years. How to predict that you may need to build infrastructure (like metro tunnel and station) that are big enough to be modified with new technologies? Where can you put electrical infrastructures, GSM and Wifi boxes in a 100 years-old metro station when it's impossible to add any new artifacts because it's so packed that fear to fall on the railways?
What did I learn? Of course this debate about what research should be is a bit cliché but we really have to deal with it. I can feel it in my own professional work: how to balance the need to have multi/inter/trans-disciplinary work required by ubiquitous computing and the current system? That is to say, more pragmatically, how to survive as a researcher who need to publish but might break the "rules" of publication by adopting new methods, concepts, paradigms, etc.?
Further out, this leads me to think that there is a strong need for certain stakeholders (city coucils, regions, public companies, private companies) to conduct projects at the crossroads of research and consulting. Hence a need, perhaps, of new structure closer to think tanks than consultancies. This definitely resonates with all the shell I belong to (simpliquity, near future laboratory, liftlabs).
This doorway, spotted this morning in Saint Jean de Luz (France) is kind of special. When Louis XIV of France got married to the Infanta Marie-Thérèse, the doorway through which the royal couple passed has been walled up aftwerwards so that no one can use it anymore.
Why do I blog this? an interesting spatial marker of an historical phenomenon, not to mean that every walled doorways are so royal.
"Every social space is the outcome of a process with many aspects and many contributing currents, signifying and non-signifying, perceived and directly experienced, practical and theoretical. In short, every social space has a history. (...) history must account for both representational spaces and representations of space, but above all for their interrelationships and their links with social practice. (...) things could not be created independently of each other in space without taking into account their interrelationships and their relationship to the whole."
"The Production of Space" (Henri Lefebvre)
The picture above has been taken in Paris one month ago, I though it could illustrate Lefebvre: the notion of space as a production and the idea of history. On the picture, one could see different layers: - the physical environment in the form of pavement, that adopts a certain infrastructure driven by how things work in certain countries and culture. In this case, it is very french as attested by the type of concrete and stone used. - a regulation layer in yellow which depicts where people must not park - and some expression of people's creativity as shown this pink trace. It's actually a new new graffiti trick that consists in throwing paint on the ground.
If you scratch the surface of Amsterdam, you can feel the contrast between the open-ness of transparent window and these signs of defensive space as shown by these pictures. This is not a critique, but there is certainly a relationship between certain people's behavior and the presence of almost invisible aggressive protection systems.
Kuzuoka, H., Kosaka, J., Yamazaki, K., Suga, Y., Yamazaki, A., Luff, P. & Heath, C. (2004). Mediating Dual Ecologies, Proceedings of CSCW 2004, Chicago, 8th – 10th November 477-486. In this article about using robots as a communication medium/surrogate device to convey information between people located in different places, there is a pertinent discussion about "dual ecologies. Some excerpts:
"When people communicate via video-mediated communication systems, however, the relationship between space, gesture, and speech can become fragmented and gestures become relatively ineffective. For example, an individual may try to point to an object that is physically located within the remote environment by gesturing at their screen. The remote participant, however, is unable to connect the gesture as it appears on their monitor with the actual object in their environment and may not be able to make sense of what is being referred to (...) the use of a remote-controlled robot as a device to support communication involves two distinct ecologies: an ecology at the remote (instructor's) site and an ecology at the operator's (robot) site. "
Why do I blog this? I am less interested in the robotic aspects and how it supports mediated communication than in the vocabulary employed here about "dual ecologies" (very well connected to the discourse about "hybrid ecologies"), proximate/distal activities (ecology of the remote/ecology of the operator). This is of interest for my new project about the hybridized spaces. There does not seem to be a clear consensus on terms and how to express this different spaces that are fusing/merging.
This Metropolis article is close to some of the elements I presented this morning at the Mediamatic workshop called "Hybrid World Lab". The article basically discusses the visibility of ubiquitous computing, or we'd better say its invisibility that most often the time is caused by the delegation of certain functions to artifacts. Some excerpts I found pertinent:
"the digital world is increasingly operating on our behalf, in physical ways. Cars no longer need keys, and tollbooths no longer require you to stop. (...) Ubiquitous computing “is hard to see literally,” Adam Greenfield writes in Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. “When even a space that is entirely empty may in fact contain—to all intents, may be—a powerful information processing system, we can no longer rely on appearances to guide us.” (...) we’re at this odd historical moment when we’re living mostly—although not quite totally—on the network, but the network is mostly—not quite totally—invisible to us. "
The picture above depicts my university, as you can see, it's quite empty. As a matter of fact, this is a whole ubiquitous computing environment with tons of data flowing between these buildings. You have architect researchers sending maps and administration people sending stuff on the wireless network. There are also weather/temperature sensors, vending machines that allows order from cell phones, etc.
Back to the Metropolis article, the following quote about "living on the network" is also interesting:
"It’s only in the last ten years that we have begun to live on the network—if not sitting in front of a computer, eyes locked on the screen and fingers on the keyboard, then with a cell phone by our sides. In the process, we’ve happily given up the barriers to entry, all that “dialing up” and “logging in.” Similarly, the objects we use to access the network are dematerializing, not only in minimalist iPhone-like ways, but also into an invisible network cloud, a phenomenon known as “ubiquitous computing.” Phones, cars, televisions, and credit cards are all communicating among each other more and more, while showing their antennae less and less. Even at the scale of the city, we have stopped building our biggest antennae as monuments, like Toronto’s CN Tower or Seattle’s Space Needle, and instead try to hide them out of sight. "
Indeed, instead people prefer to disguise phone mast as trees. Why do I blog this? I really like this metaphor of shifting from infrastructures as monuments to new practices. It all boils down to the question of visibility: should things be visible to have a clear affordance? should they be visible so that user have "control" on the process? What about the infrastructure? should it be visible too? If not would we need warnings?
As Fabien describes, the presence of infrastructure is important. But it goes beyond the very existence: does the visibility per se have importance in terms of interacting?
The picture above has been taken last week-end at CERN... nice "visible infrastructure" architecture in which the tubes (the flows) are clearly visible and people can rely on their orientations to draw inferences about process.
This might be one of the nastiest device I've seen on the street (apart from barbed wires). I ran across this thing in Paris few weeks ago, not sure about what it's made for but the affordance for me is clear: don't put stuff in that street corner, don't stand there, and inevitably don't pee here. Why nasty? the pointy fences are definitely aggressive.
To me this is a nice metaphor for things such as DRM (digital right management) protections that are supposed to prevent you from doing something but inevitably it's cracked (or you can stride over that fence) and do what you wanted to.