Urban warfare and its categorization of space

In "Slumlords: Aerospace Power in Urban Fights", Troy S. Thomas (Aerospace Power Journal, 2002) describes the challenging environment of future conflicts: urban warfare. Although I am definitely not into military research, the article is interesting because of its representation of space. Some quotes I found interesting:

"Understanding the urban setting is tough, given the complex and diverse nature of the environment. We need a framework that embraces the diversity of cities but in a manner that has actionable, operational significance (...) The urban system is unique in that it consists of five dimensions or spaces. First, the airspace above the ground is usable to aircraft and aerial munitions. Second, the supersurface space consists of structures above the ground that can be used for movement, maneuver, cover and concealment, and firing positions. For airmen, the supersurface warrants special consideration since the enemy can locate weapons such as surface-to-air missiles or antiaircraft artillery there. Structures also channel or restrict movement at the surface. Third, the surface space consists of exterior areas at ground level, including streets, alleys, open lots, parks, and so forth. Fourth, the subsurface or subterranean level consists of subsystems such as sewers, utility structures, and subways. (...) The fifth domain is the information space. (...) Distinctions between modern and primitive cities are a function of three subsystems: physical, functional, and social. All can exist in the five urban spaces. The physical subsystem consists of man-made terrain. (...) The physical and functional character of the urban battle space is irrelevant without the human dimension- the social subsystem, which includes a wide range of variables, such as culture, demographics, religion, and history. (...) rapid urbanization in developing countries results in a battle-space environment that is decreasingly knowable since it is increasingly unplanned. "

Why do I blog this? militaries (airmen in this case) have warfare doctrines that they use to derive strategies and tactics. As a matter of fact, doctrines rely on a vision of the future the try to project. In this article, what is interesting is how they deal with a representation of the urban environments of the future. The quote I picked up are a bit limited compared to what is described in the document, but I found interesting to read about this categorization of space, quite different from the one we often read in anthropology or ubicomp research about space&place.

Playful spaces in Geneva

Why do I blog this? Two interesting examples of playful assemblage, definitely put together in some sort of informal urban setting. Of course they are hidden and a bit less accessible than city skate-parks and kids parks. They however prove to be intriguing in terms of their presence, showing the necessity to have playful area. What does that prove for urban computing? maybe nothing, perhaps the need to leave open spaces (even hidden) for creativity.

Software tool to help citizens visualize their cities’ eco-efforts

The last issue of Metropolis featured an article about See-it, a software tool developed by "Visible Strategies" that helps Albuquerque citizens visualize their cities’ eco-efforts:

"See-it (short for Social, Environmental, Economic-Integration Toolkits) organizes citywide data into a live status report that the average citizen can quickly understand. At the center of the screen is a planet divided into three general areas of focus (ecosystems and agriculture, the man-made environment, and the economy and culture) and encircled by concentric rings of in-creasing specific ity (goals, strategies, and actions). If you’re interested in Albuquerque’s plans for its buses, for example, follow the “Greening Our Travel” goal to the “Vehi cle Efficiency” strategy, where you can read about the fleet’s ongoing conversion to alternative fuels. You’ll also find a graph that evaluates the plan’s progress (on track!) and a form to send feedback to a city manager. “It has forced us to take a good hard look at what data we have and how we measure our success,” says Danny Nevarez, who works at Albu quer que’s Environmental Health Depart ment."

Why do I blog this? there are lots of projects in urban computing that aims at revealing the invisible/implicit phenomena such as pollution, I am curious to see how city dwellers understand/use/employ such platforms. I quite liked that comment in the article: "Of course, the program is only as good as the data behind it, which the city itself provides" but I am more dubious about this comment by a user: "I want to be part of this. I want to be able to see whether I’m reducing my ecological footprint. And if I can’t do that, how can I relate to a government plan?”

Workhop at LIFT about ubiquitous computing

The near future laboratory (Fabien Girardin and Julian Bleecker and myself) organize a workshop during LIFT08 about the failures of ubiquitous computing. The workshop is called "Ubiquitous computing: visions, failures and new interaction rituals":

"We propose to look backward and discusses why we have not reached what has been described in the last 5 years of ubiquitous computing. How might we criticize assumptions and build upon existing models and approaches to design in this context? Can we learn from the discrepancy between the utopia of ubicomp and its deployed reality?

The purpose is to generate debate about the design and integration of ubiquitous systems based on case studies proposed from workshop participants. Moreover, we want to open up a debate around the future of those systems as well as the adoption by a large user base.

The session will start by a short presentation by participants who will each have to describe in 2-3 minutes a ubiquitous computing system that failed and give reasons or causes for that. ..."

Why do I blog this? LIFT is always an enjoyable moments for workshops, let's see what emerge out of that one.

Sensor-based interaction in TGV toilets

Toilet ergonomics is always intriguing as attested by this picture taken from the french TGV. Using the tap water and the hand dryer require to pass your hands close to a sensors, as indicated by the 2 stickers. However: - the depiction in red of radiowave detection is perhaps clear enough for someone used to live with sensor-based device all over the place but not for everybody. - the exact location of the sensor is wrongly depicted as it is not necessarily on the left of the tap/dryer.

Why do I blog this? As we already discussed here, the representation of sensor-based interactions is always more complex than expected by the engineers who designed them. Next time, you're in such train try to spot if the tap has been used (see traces of water).

Tangible and gaming in Aix

Currently in Aix-en-Provence, at the School of Art where I've given a talk yesterday about tangible interfaces (a rerun from my GDC2007 presentation). The talk was part of a workshop called "Workshop Wiimote Hacking. The whole thing was about how to hack the Nintendo Wiimote and turn it into a tool that artists can employ. Students are involved in the process of adding new sensors as well as defining new sorts of usage. Thanks France Cadet for the invitation and Douglas for having taken time to discuss.

The discussion after the presentation revolved around: - How the wiimote might have the potential to become a sort of standard in the living room as the controller. I personally don't predict anything about this. However from current observations of practices, I do think that the Wii is much more than video game device and play an interesting role of multimedia platform in the living room (with photos, usage of personalized mii). In addition, the presence of very focused applications such as wii questions turns it into a platform where facebook-like small application can be played by the family. - Why the game design ideas we have so far on the Wii are so conservative... which turned into why the video game industry is so conservative or how the whole economic system is so controlled by the marketing crowd that it's difficult to go beyond usage of the wiimote as sword/steering-wheel/magic wand. This is a sort of over-statement but it's actually close to the reality. - How this work about tangible interfaces relate to my other work about mobile and pervasive gaming? we discussed the notion of granularity and how complex the game system is when the dimensions reach the city level. Much more than just gesturing in one's own living room, using the city as a game field is complex for lots of reasons (technical, infrastructural, difficulty to have a continuous experience), etc.

Fortunately, there was also an exhibit about games as medium for artists to create and tweak digital worlds. Called gamerz02, there was a bunch of very curious projects.

The one that attracted my attention was Patch&KO (Antonin Fourneau and Manuel Braun): instead of using a joystick people can play Street Fighter 2 using a pachinko interface. In a sense, the player's ability to control the character is disrupted by the semi-random movement of the metal balls. As the designers state, the player has to accept a loss of control. Slightly related was this Tictactoe played by robotic arms I blogged about the other day. In this case, what was explored was that the Tic Tac Toe is a curious game in which the only way to win is to rely on the opponent's fatigue and loose of sight in the game. In the context of two mechanical arms played by a computer, the surest way to win is to avoid playing. Finally, I was also interested by Tchouri by Pascal Silondi, a sort of knife-based interface much more intriguing than always-seen magic wands. Some of the pieces there were maybe slightly easy-going and naive but the whole things made sense and I found find fruitful to make game designers more aware of such work, perhaps some ideas about a workshop/seminar.

Open space for the indefinite

I've recently encountered two times this quote from Lewis Caroll taken in Alice in Wonderland:

'There is no use in trying', said Alice; 'one can't believe impossible things.' 'I dare say you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

Why do I blog this? One of the occurrence with it was in "After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (International Library of Sociology)" (John Law), where the author use it to stress the need to have "metaphors and images for what is impossible or barely possible, unthinkable or almost unthinkable." His claim is that it's important to open space for the indefinite.

This surely seems very abstract but the practice itself of such weird exercice is intriguing in terms of the implications for foresight. In a sense, it reminds of Donald Rumsfeld matrix of known/unknown.

Space in Rio

Discovering new cities on continent where you've never been is always refreshing and intriguing. In Rio de Janeiro, I've tried to make few notes about spatiality. Nothing very professional (I'm not an urbanist) nor linked to my current research, it's rather my naive appraisal of space there. One of the first thing I've done there was to find a spot high enough to embrace the whole cityscape. It's definitely easier here since there lots of high-rise plus tourist spots such as the Corcovado or the Paõ de Açucar which allows to get views such as:

One can easily imagine on that picture how the city grew starting on the right and then spreading all over the place with only hills and the ocean as limits. Interestingly, there has been some attempts to fight against these boundaries: suppressing a hill on the right (where stands the cathedral), putting the material to extend the ground (and new beaches) or having informal buildings on hills (mostly favela areas).

The city appears to be very dense here but when you go to the south or much further from the ocean, it's then less high (still very dense) with favelas or low-rise buildings. Although streets and roads are quite big downtown, favelas do not have streets per se, it's rather corridors where no vehicle could get around (hence the presence of gang members who can secure their presence, less accessible to police forces). Rio is an interesting mix of very controlled urban planning (e.g. street grids very straights) and informal architectures (e.g. favelas).

At the street level, what struck me, especially in Ipanema, Copacobana, Leblon or Niteroi is the presence of a structure almost always based on the model below:

In a sense: street level have either shops or buildings with fences. Generally there are even two fences with digicodes and very often a guardian/janitor. No one seems to live at this level and the first story is also generally very high from the street. As a European, this gives the impression of living far enough from the street level: a sort of Ballardian architecture of control. In a way it's close to what Mike Davis would describe at the city level in LA (Bunker Hill separated form the rest of the city) except that here it's at a micro level: every building seems to maintain a certain distance between appartments and the street. Again, this is entirely different from old colonial one/two-stories buildings or favelas in which appartments spread everywhere there is enough room to put a blanket/mattress.

Beyond visualizing electromagnetic fields

One of the most interesting projects I've seen lately is "the bubbles of radio" by Ingeborg Marie Dehs Thomas. Perhaps it's because I've always been intrigued by visualizing electromagnetic fields as shown by the work of Dunne+Rabby in "Hertzian Tales. As Timo describes on the Touch weblog:

"Using inspiration from richly illustrated books on botany, zoology and natural history, Ingeborg arrived at the concept of an encyclopeadia of radio waves that contains a selection of fictional radio ‘species’. Armed with a well researched and advanced knowledge of the use, application and technicalities of each radio technology she created fictional visualisations of the ways in which radio waves inhabit space. These are creative expressions based as much on personal creativity as on technical or scientific data like range and signal strength. Six contemporary radio technologies were visualised: Bluetooth, DMB, GSM, RFID, Wifi and Zigbee. (...) These visualisations are not intended to be technically accurate or to offer actionable information. Instead they provide a playful cue to reflect and consider radio as something tangible and physical to be experienced by other senses, not just through a screen."

The visualizations are available as a poster here (.pdf) and slides from the final presentation of the projects are there. The book they published seems to be a must have: it's a ‘fake’ encyclopedia of electromagnetic fields, with a main focus on wireless communication.

So why is that important to visualize these elements? As she describes in her report:

"There are many opportunities for where and what these patterns can be applied to. (...) They could be printed on fabric, for clothes and accessories, from handbags, umbrellas, to coats, linings and even underwear. They could be applied to domestic objects that are used near electromagnetic fields; apron for the microwave, cloth for the TV or telephone table, curtains for the windows facing the neares mobile communication antenna, to mention a few."

Why do I blog this? personal interest towards the topic. Although the press captured that project as "artist work to visualize bluetooth and wifi", I am pretty sure there is really more to draw out of this work. For example, I would be curious to see how people are aware of these airwaves and how they have a representation of them: how do we represent ourselves the airwaves of cell-phones or microwave-oven. And maybe in a second phase to use this a material to talk with people about the existence and the shape of electromagnetic fields (it would require a less barbarian vocabulary though).

Their usefulness is indeed tough to describe (it's more an intuition) but my impression is that making such things visual is an important first step before discussing them (as we human being are very visual-oriented).

Aging for manufactured objects

In the NYT piece "The Afterlife of Cellphones", Jon Mooallem yesterday wrote about what happened to cell phones after they're discarded. Most of the article deals with methods for recycling and e-waste but the end of it address interesting design concerns of electronic/manufactured objects as it stress how "our affection for many high-tech objects is tied exclusively to their newness. Some excerpts I found pertinent:

"There is no heaven for cellphones. Wherever they go, it seems that something, somewhere, to some extent always ends up being damaged or depleted

“The mobile phone occupies a kind of glossy, scratch-free world,” he says. Whereas a pair of jeans gains character over time, a phone does no such thing. “As soon you purchase it, you can only watch it migrating further away from what it is you want — a glossy, scratch- free object.” You might leave the plastic film over the display for a few days, just so you can take it off later and “give yourself a second honeymoon with the phone,” he says. But ultimately everything that first attracted you to it only deteriorates. You start looking at it differently. “It’s made of some kind of sparkle-finished polymer and it’s got some decent curves on it, but so what? The intimacy comes more from the fact that, within that hand-held piece of plastic, exists your whole world” — your friends’ phone numbers, your digital pictures, your music — and that stuff can be easily transferred to a new one. So you “fall out of love” with the phone, Chapman says."

Why do I blog this? pure personal interest in this discussion about the rush-for-new-objects as well as the role of age on objects. I am personally skeptical about this phenomenon, in the long run.

Caring about the future

Going through the last articles of 2007 (in newspapers), I found this interesting "The World of Tomorrow" in the NYT (via the Dr. Fish mailing list). The article describes how on Jan. 1, 1908 (New Year’s Day one century ago), the New York World had a piece called "1808 - 1908 - 2008) about the past and the future of America (“What will the year 2008 bring us? What marvels of development await the youth of tomorrow?”). The NYT now tried to replicated this by "ruminating" at 2108. Interestingly, more than the predictions the following quote attracted my attention:

"The point of such predictions was not necessarily that they were accurate but that people cared enough about the future to bother thinking about it. Whether their visions turn out to be right or wrong, whether they are bleak or tongue-in-cheek, all are generous efforts to wonder about the lives of New Yorkers of 2108, as those New Yorkers of 1908 once wondered about ours"

Why do I blog this? Although the predictions are interesting, reading them without the few lines above is very important as it shows the purpose of foresight per se: not predicting but caring about the future.

Phone booths variety

The richness of phone booths (Paraty, Brazil)

(Amsterdam, Netherlands)

(Lyon, France)

(Marseille, France)

Please note the different conception of privacy (bubble, box) or how parts of the booth are used in other way (broken glass to seat, to attach a bike, to put ads). What does that say about space? urban computing?

The necessity of green

Perhaps that's the 2007 trend I find the most important (since we now are in 2008 and can look retrospectively): (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

(Geneva, Switzerland)

(Seoul, South Korea)

(Lyon, France)

All these encounters with fake grass in different parts of the world (over the last year) always make me smile and think about how our relationship to nature is important, awkward and controversial. "Green coverage" appears to be the most ridiculous way to convey a sense of nature, showing how it's important for human to still be close to it in contemporary cities. What does that say about urban informatics/computing? There is really a need to be closer to Nature but the proposed solution in these examples is flawed from the beginning.

Multiple taps shower

After the 3-handled tap, here is a four-handled one (Encountered in Paraty, Brazil):

4 handles segregated in 2 positions: one at a regular level and one for giants (for people who "are standing on shoulders of giants"?). However, the 2 above do not work. Any clue?

Push To Talk in Brazil

Having spent a little bit of time lately in the Rio de Janeiro area in Brazil, I have been impressed by the quantity of people using Push-To-Talk on their cell phones. A good way to emulate walkie-talkie feature, I've seen mostly used by workers (delivery and taxi people) as well as teenagers. It generally provide users with an open channel of communication.

There isn't so many user studies about PTT but the work by Allison Woodruff seems quite relevant for that matter. In Media Affordances of a Mobile Push-To-Talk Communication Service, Woodruff and Aoki report how teenagers use PTT in the US, describing 3 "interaction styles":

"

1. Focused conversation is aligned with the phenomenon of sustained turn-taking and is exemplified by the communicative activity we termed substantive conversation.
2. Bursty conversation, characterized by short turn sequences separated by lapses in talk, is aligned with reduced interactional commitment and is exemplified by chit-chat and micro-coordination (and to a lesser degree, by instances of play and extended remote presence).
3. Intermittent conversation, characterized by long response delays between individual turns, is aligned with reduced accountability and divided attention and is exemplified by many instances of play and extended remote presence.

"

In "How push-to-talk makes talk less pushy (a paper presented at the 2003 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work), the researchers showed how PTT lowered interactional commitment ("For example, participants did not feel they needed to reply immediately when someone spoke to them via the cellular radio (contrast this with a telephone conversation, in which people generally feel they must respond promptly when someone speaks to them)").

Why do I blog this? some notes about technology usage while in Brazil. I find very interesting the possibilities and the usage of such open channel. It's also curious to see that in Europe PTT is not that employed by teenagers.

Urban informatics

Adam has an interesting query/blogpost about "what do you feel are the most significant contemporary developments in urban informatics? The most resonant projects, the most powerful interventions, the scariest precedents?". That's quite an important question that I try to ask myself for a while. Since I have not definite answer, I tried to pick up some examples I find relevant to get a messy list of "urban computing" projects:

• Location-based services: be they single-user (navigational devices such as personal GPS navigator) and ones who can have a social layer (see DASH for instance) but also mobile social software
• Urban screens and interactive billboards (see more about this here).... that can display representations which allow to make explicit invisible or implicit phenomena: blogging pigeon, Real Time Rome (among other Senseable City projects), AIR, undersound or Tripwire, etc.)
• open mapping projects (like open street map) and other geospatial web applications (see Jo Walsh's stuff, especially here piece about MUDlondon) a la place-based annotations (Urban tapestries among lots of others).
• Geographical Information Systems (./ although there would be a lot to say about this)
• pervasive games (no list about this here but you know what I am talking about)
• Identification systems such as these RFID cards you now have in most occidental cities in subways.
• Defensive Space can also be supported by technologies: not only CCTV, Vsee for example the mosquito sounds to avoid teenagers loitering
• Lazarus/zombie devices
• infrastructures can also count: think about wiring, server farms or gigantic telecom hotels.

But of course, it's a bit awkward to limit oneself to purely urban/contextualized projects: a cell phone, web mash-ups, Twitter or whistles might well count too.

This is really non-exhaustive and raw list, there are multiple points of entries that can be used to go beyond this: technologies (RFID, GPS...), the number of users (single-user, multi-users), the role (navigation, entertainment), the nature of content (delivered by an institution, user-generated, sensor-captured), the context of the project (product, services, art piece), etc. Well, that's a starting point for now.

Then, the next question that I particularly interested in is not the projects but the activity of people in contemporary cities (as you may have noticed in this blog): people putting stickers on the streets, fake grass, crocheted stuff on signs, fake heart stickers on traffic lights, etc.

Question your tea spoons

A quote by Georges Perec is a good way to start off the year:

"What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we open doors, we go down staircases, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed in order to sleep. How? Why? Where? When? Why?

Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare.

Make an inventory of you pockets, of your bag. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out.

Question your tea spoons.

What is there under your wallpaper?

How many movements does it take to dial a phone number?

Why don’t you find cigarettes in grocery stores? Why not?

It matters little to me that these questions should be fragmentary, barely indicative of a method, at most of a project. It matters a lot to me that they should seem trivial and futile: that’s exactly what makes them just as essential, if not more so, as all the other questions by which we’ve tried in vain to lay hold on our truth."

(Georges Perec, The Infra-Ordinary, 1973) Why do I blog this? I think this words are a good agenda for now, they nicely show the sort of attitude towards techniques and technologies one can have "to rediscover something of the astonishment that Jules Verne or his readers may have felt faced with an apparatus capable of reproducing and transporting sounds". And as he said "Nothing strikes you. You don't know how to see." Why is this important, maybe first to highlight how the mundane is intriguing. Beyond the descriptive level, it's also curious wrt to innovation and design as it allows to ask question and possibly to nurture near future worlds.

City legibility and ambient informatics

Reading "City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn" (William J. Mitchell) during the holidays, I ran across that quote:

"we are beginning to know and use cities in new ways. Long ago, the urban theorist Kevin Lynch pointed out the fundamental relationship between human cognition and urban form - the importance of the learned mental maps that knowledgeable locals carry about inside their skulls. These mental maps, together with the landmarks and edges that provide orientation within the urban fabric, are what make a city seem familiar and comprehensible. But for us artificially intelligent cyborgs, the ability to navigate through the streets and gain access to city resources isn't all in our heads. Increasingly we rely on our electronic extensions - smart vehicles and hand-held devices, together with the invisible landmarks provided by electronic positioning - to orient us in the urban fabric, to capture and process knowledge of our surroundings, and to get us where we want to go."

Why do I blog this? Except the "cyborg/intelligent" rhetoric that I don't parse and acknowledge, that quote is quite interesting and it echoes with recent readings such as what Greenfield and Shepard describes in "Urban Computing and Its Discontents" or the work of Anthony Townsend that I mentioned the other day. This is interesting as I am interested in how urban computing (will) affect cities, especially how location-aware applications or networked objects would change city life (the "user experience" of city sounds pretty lame here).

The link between Lynch's work about the legibility of cities and urban computing is of great interest to me as it resonates with my background in cognitive sciences. To some extent, it boils down to this simple question: "how people take decisions about what they do in an urban environment?": how do people navigate through streets and avenues, how do they choose specific points of interest, how do they change their path, etc. Kevin Lynch provided some answers about this, showing how mental representation of space is built based on urban elements such as paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. For instance, he showed how specific angles of elements in a city allow for easier way-finding, or how people position their head and body in relation to their environment in navigation determine their navigation. The reason why this is interesting is that Lynch's work is a bit less mentalist as the dominant model in cognitive sciences: people's decision can be based both on mental representation (very cognitive) AND situated elements of space (less cognitive). On top of that, you can add the fact that mental maps can be built upon situated elements...

Anyway, back to Mitchell's quote, electronic flows of information and representation can modify and affect the decision process I just described. However, I am still missing elements about this, more detailed accounts of the interlinkages between cognition/urban forms and urban computing.

High bench in NYC

A quick glance at Fecal Face always lead to odd encounters. This time the crazy story that piqued my interest was the one of a high bench located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC. 10 feets in the air on metal stilts, this bench led to some head-scratching. Photos of the sculpture installation on the Lower East Side by Brad Downey and Mike Wrobel (found on the Fecal Face website).

Why do I blog this? Well, I find this sort of urban intervention intriguing, although weird at first. It certainly raises eyebrow but can also lead to some questions about our city environments. It seems that the bench has been removed by the city Department of Transportation and the NYPost asks boringly "is it art or just odd", which is definitely not the right implication to explore here. Fecal Face is clearly more relevant with that topic, proposing "Because Darwin was an elitist" as caption to the picture above.

Clark's laws

In "Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible", Arthur C. Clarke describes these 3 laws that are relevant wrt foresight research:

"

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

(...) As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there."

Why do I blog this? these very basic laws are interesting to understand Clarke's approach to writing science-fiction and what are the underlying traits of his prognostications. Although, it's sci-fi, there is a lot to learn from his novels and these quotes act as valuables rules for foresight research; the implications of each of them would be good to discuss.