"Creative computing" magazine

Recently ran across this curious magazine called "Creative Computing", one of the earliest covering the microcomputer revolution (published from 1974 until December 1985). Readers interested in this can have a look at the some articles.

With titles such as "Is breaking into a time-sharing system a crime?", "Why Supermarkets Are Going Bananas Over Computers", "Videodiscs - The Ultimate Computer Input Device?" or "How Much Privacy Should You Have?", the magazine is definitely an intriguing read today. The topic addressed there ranged from artificial (and "extra-terrestrial") intelligence, computers in education, languages and programming theories, BASIC scripts, upcoming technologies, games and fictions (with "art and poetry").

For people interested in current "trends" such as DIY or privacy, there is plenty to explore in order to understand some underlying roots. See for instance "amateur computing" or How One Computer Manufacturer Looks at the Data Privacy/Security Issue

Why do I blog this? sunday afternoon hops on the internets always lead to curious material. Possibly useful to show students some examples of computer culture history.

Cybersyn: a real-time computer-controlled economy

Two weeks ago in Basel, at the Shift Festival, I saw some material about the Cybersyn project that struck me as fascinating:

"Project Cybersyn was a Chilean attempt at real-time computer-controlled planned economy in the years 1970–1973 (during the government of president Salvador Allende). It was essentially a network of telex machines that linked factories with a single computer centre in Santiago, which controlled them using principles of cybernetics. (...) The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer."

Country computing: a real-time feedback loop

Interestingly, Cybersyn design has been heavily influenced by the architect of this system, Stafford Beer, a cyberneticist specialized in feedback loops of management in corporations. The idea was basically to design a system for capturing, processing and presenting economic information to be managed in real time. A sort of feedback loop with the population, based on various organizations models better described here or in this lecture called "Fanfare for Effective Freedom: Cybernetic Praxis in Government" [PDF]. Some examples below of the underlying model of Cybersyn:

The idea was to have so-called "algedonic meters" in people's home, i.e. warning public opinion meters that would be able to transmit Chilean citizens's pleasures/displeasures to the government or television studio in real time. The government would then be able to respond rapidly to public demands based on these information, ("rather than repress opposing views" as proposed by Stafford Beer).

User Interface design

Also, the interface design has been carried out by the Gui Bonsiepe a German designer working in Chile at the time of the project. Eden Medina, a researcher at Indiana University in the US is currently writing a book about this project (see here). Some quotes from here found there that I've found intriguing:

"I think the image of the operations room looks like something out of 'Star Trek'or 2001. Whenever I show that image, people are stunned. Most people wouldn't associate that futuristic image with the Allende period in Chile. (...) the flat panel projection screens used a series of slide projectors located behind the wall that were attached to the armrests of the chairs. When you pushed a button on the armrest, it would change the slide on the screen. Each of these slide images was hand-drawn by some of Chile's top graphic designers. It looked like something that was real-time and highly automated -- but you have to remember, this was the 1970s."

Why do I blog this? Another good example in the history of technologies that can be re-used in our work at Lift lab. The implementation of cybernetics in a context like this is quite curious and relevant if you think about more recent instantiations of feedback loops in the context of urban computing ("people as sensors"). Also, I find interesting to observe the system design and its link with SciFi in people's mind. It's fascinating to see how the balance between such a complex project (sensors in people's home, etc.) and the design of a chair to convey a synthetic appraisal of what has been sensed.

There's a lot to dig here.

Geosocial/Location-based services usage according to PEW (#techusage)

The PEW Internet&American life project has a new report about usage of location-based services. As usual, it's mostly quantitative data (phone survey) and it's focused on Americans but it's full of interesting material for people who follow this domain. Before heading to the results, let's stop first at how they define the focus of their research. In this research, they only zero in a specific category of LBS: the so-called "geo-social" applications:

"Location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla use internet-connected mobile devices’ geolocation capabilities to let users notify others of their locations by “checking in” to that location. Location-based services often run on stand-alone software applications, or “apps,” on most major GPS- enabled smartphones or other devices."

This is important because it means that the focus is not on car navigation assistant or smartphone GPS platforms.

Now, about the main results:

• "7% of adults who go online with their mobile phone use a location-based service.
• 8% of online adults ages 18-29 use location-based services, significantly more than online adults in any other age group.

10% of online Hispanics use these services – significantly more than online whites (3%) or online blacks (5%).

• 6% of online men use a location-based service such as Foursquare or Gowalla, compared with 3% of online women.
• The current number shows little change from the first time this question was asked, in a May 2010 survey, when 5% of adult internet users said they had used such a site."

Some more tables:

Why do I blog this? It's interesting to see the stats for geosocial applications (I'd be curious to compare to broader use of location-based services, such as navigation systems) and the results are fairly in line with my understanding of the situation right now. Important figures to keep in mind when talking about the adoption of such apps.

French-Cyrillic keyboard hack

A French Keyboard with stickers showing letters from the cyrillic alphabet, used by one of my students. Interestingly, some of them are absent on letters such as A, E, R, T... which corresponds to the ones most often used in French (I don't know why Z is in there...)

Beyond treasure hunt: locative games 2010 and the near future

Being interviewed by a French media about the state of location-based gaming, I took this opportunity as a way to frame my recent thoughts about this:

Adoption :(

An important adoption factor for social-locative games is simply... the players: lots of problems described by Dan Hon in his talk "Everything you know about ARG is wrong" can also apply to location-based games: games never have enough players, people who play are not “mainstream”, etc. Above all, the main issue with player is simply the the lack of critical mass... it's never very funny and engaging to play alone. LBGs really suffer from not reaching networks effect, a situation that Kati London in her talk at Where2.0 referred to as "The empty room effect".

Gamification, again

At the same time, it's intriguing to see that game mechanics (in general, but also the one present in early instances of location-based games) have been instrumental in the adoption of a broader category of applications: mobile social software such as Foursquare or Gowalla... which are not games per se. Having lots of discussion with people in the mobile guide/signage/urban discovery/tourism business, it's funny to see how these persons dismiss a service such as Foursquare as being only "a game". Different cultures, different perspectives :) It's also a good occasion for them to dismiss such application as not relevant for their field (to which of course I object that they're entirely wrong).

On the shoulder of "giants"

Interestingly, platforms such as Foursquare (today/tomorrow) or Facebook Places (tomorrow) could be an opportunity to develop third-party games. See for example how City Warfare has been built on top of Foursquare:

"You check into your local pub/coffee-shop/train station using FourSquare (as normal). 2) You open City Warfare in your phone’s browser. 3) You place waterballoons, shoot passers-by with your waterpistol etc. 4) While you are away, those balloons remain where you placed them and will burst when the timer runs out or you detonate them remotely. 5) The aim is to try to get as many people wet as possible. You earn credits which can be used to buy better waterbombs etc."

Location-based game genres

Concerning the challenges and purposes of these games, the types ranges from very focused goals (treasure hunts, people hunting, object collection) to less-defined goals (SCVNGR is interesting in the sense that it lets people defining the challenges). Compared to the past, location-based games have also been influenced by rampant gamification: the emphasis has been made on social comparisons (points, badges, leading boards, etc.)... and of course such games have been included in the toolbox of Media planners and digital communication agencies.

The location-based narrative/storytelling trope has never been huge BUT it less suffered from waves of interest/disillusion. Observers have noted that even standard mobile social software such as Whrrl have implemented collective location-based storytelling. And of course, platforms such as 7 Scenes also offer good possibilities for "mobile storytelling".

Besides games, there has been a surge in the development of "game engines" to enable people to create their own games. See for example what Playground (that we saw at this Lift seminar in Lyon) or Gbanga are doing.

Phones, rather than game consoles

Speaking about platforms, the de facto device for location-based games is definitely the mobile phone. Although the video game consoles such as the Nintendo DS (with games such as Treasure World) or the Sony PSP (with this Golf game), playful location-based activities are fairly limited.

In terms of technologies, the increasing number of smartphones and App stores (such as the Apple Store) have definitely eased the possibility to try and play. It's far less complicated than the past, in which we had to download weird software on Tablet PCs, PDAs and cell-phones with tiny displays + low computing power

In addition, on the sensor side, we will see an increasing use of various data beyond players' location: the usual suspects are of course the number of footsteps (and other accelerometer-based data),... plus self-declared information. Foursquare/Gowalla/Facebook Places check-in are pretty standard here but the use of pictures (taken with a camera) is also common. See for example Foodspotting (which uses "location to augment their own reality-based game").

So, what did we learn?

• Geolocation is only one kind of data that can be employed and LBG should be framed in a broader context: ARG or pervasive games. Coupled to pertinent and original forms of storytelling and game mechanics, the articulation of data such as location, pictures, SMS, tweets, or the ones generated by touch sensors (NFC on iPhone?), accelerometers, have the potential to lead to curious interactions.
• In terms of innovation, the video game industry is definitely not the right actor here. Rather digital communication agency, small interaction design boutiques and digital studio who work on interactive fictions seems more willing to push the envelope. Curiously, the new media art community has slowed down on the "locative media" meme. I have to admit that I haven't seen a lot of projects in the field in the 1-2 years (which correlated with the release of "Spook Country by William Gibson).
• I haven't mentioned Augmented Reality, I don't know what to think about AR and location-based games.

And what are the possibilities ahead?

• To avoid the empty room problem there is a need to design for single-usage, then for collective usage. We can expect platforms like these in the near future.
• Focus not only on geolocation but also other types of data. There will be games that combine the different sorts of data that can be captured or collected. Of course the most simple forms of data (self-declared such as check-ins, pictures taken with the camera) are the most likely candidate.
• Location-based games with scenarios that are too disruptive and complex for daily usage will continue to remain niches. Will people change their route to go to work in the morning? it's a bit unlikely.
• There is still some room in different urban activities: think about urban sport (skateboard, rollerblade, fixie/bike ride, parkour, etc.). The articulation of location-based games with these types of sport is an original idea that can produce good possibilities.

Workshop about Failures and Design Fictions at the Swiss Design Network symposium

Last Saturday, Julian and I gave a quick and punchy workshop called Using Failures in Design Fictions at the SDN 2010 in Basel, Switzerland.

What's better than a broken iPhone screen in a workshop about accidents and failures?

Here's the workshop abstract we proposed to the conference committee:

"The notion of ‘Design Fiction’ is an original approach to design research that speculates about the near future not only with storytelling but also through active making and prototyping. As such, design fictions are meant to shift the interest from technology-centered products to rich and people-focused design. There are of course various ways to create design fictions. One of them we would like to explore in this workshop consists in relying on failures.

We hypothesize that failures and accidents can be a starting point for creating rich and meaningful speculative projects. Think for instance about creating props or prototypes and exhibiting failures within it to make them more compelling. Or showing something as it will work with the failures — so anticipating them somehow rather than ignoring the possibility. What will not work right? What problems will be caused? What does it mean?

Based on short and participative activities, the workshop will address the following issues:

• Can we include the exploration of failures in the design process? How to turn failures and people’s reaction to failures into prototyping tools?
• How can design fiction become part of a process for exploring speculative near futures in the interests of design innovation? What is the role of failures in creating these design fictions?"

The 2-hours workshop started with an introduction about the wide range of failures, accidents, malfunctions and problems that are related to designed objects. We basically relied on the presentation made in Torino for that matter. The point of this intro was also to set the objectives: build a failure literacy (taxonomies, categories...), discuss their role in design using design fictions, fictional storytelling to discover new possibilities/unknown unknowns. We then splitted the participants into 6 groups for 3 short activities.

Activity 1: Listing of observed/existing failures

Given that the participants had a very diverse background (industrial design, fashion design, service design, media/interaction design), the point of this was to cast a wide net and observe what people define as failure. No need to write down the whole list here but here are some examples that reveal the range of possibilities:

• Wrong hair color, not the one that was expected
• Help-desk calls in which you end up being re-reroute from one person to another (and getting back to the first person you called)
• Nice but noisy conference bags
• Toilet configuration (doors, sensors, buttons, soap dispensers, hand-dryers...) in which you have to constantly re-learn everything.
• Super loud and difficult to configure fire alarms that people disable
• Electronic keys
• Garlic press which are impossible to clean
• On-line platforms to book flights for which you bought two tickets under the same name while it's "not possible" from the company's perspective (but it was technically feasible).
• Cheap lighter that burn your nose
• GPS systems in the woods
• Error messages that say "Please refer to the manual" but there is not manual
• Hotel WLAN not distributed anymore because hotel had to pay too many fines for illegal downloads

Activity 2: Description of anticipated failures (design fictions)

In the second activity, we asked people to craft two stories about potential failures/problems caused by designed objects in the future. By projecting people into the near future, we wanted to grasp some insights about how failures can be envisioned under different conditions. Here again, some examples that came out:

• Identity and facial surgery change, potentially leading to discrepancies in face/fingerprint-recognition,
• Wireless data leaking everywhere except "cold spots" for certain kind of people (very rich, very poor),
• Problems with space travelling
• Need to "subscribe" to a service as a new person because of some database problem
• People who live prior to the Cloud Computing era who have no electronic footprint (VISA, digital identity) and have troubles moving from one country to another,
• 3D printers accidents: way too many objects in people's home, the size of the printed objects has be badly tuned and it's way too big, monster printed after a kid connected a 3D printer to his dreams, ...
• Textiles which suppress bad smells also lead to removal of pheromones and it affects sexual desire (no more laundry but no baby either)...
• Shared electrical infrastructure in which people can download/upload energy but no one ever agreed on the terms and conditions... which lead to a collapse of this infrastructure
• Clothes and wearable computing can be hacked so you must now fly naked (and your luggage take a different flight)

It was interesting to notice that the "observed failures" (activity 1) were about a large range of designed objects (without necessarily Information Technologies). In this second case, ICT were always involved in the anticipated failures. It is as if we had trouble projecting other possibilities.

Activity 3: Towards failure taxonomies/categories

The last activity consisted in building a taxonomy of failures based on existing and anticipated ones (what the group came up with in Assignment 1 and 2): kinds of, categories. Some categories and parameters that emerged were the following:

1. Short sightedness/not seeing the big pictures
2. Failures and problems that we only realize ex-post/unexpected side-effects
3. Excluding design
4. Bad optimization
5. Unnoticed failures
6. Miniaturization that doesn't serve its purpose
7. Cultural failures: what can be a success in one country/culture can be a failure in another
8. Delayed failures (feedback is to slow)
9. When machines do not understand user's intentions/technology versus human perception/bad assumptions about people ("Life has more loops than the system is able to understand")
10. Individual/Group failure (system that does not respond to individuals, only to the group)
11. System-based failures versus failures caused by humans/context
12. Natural failures: leaves falling from trees considered as a problem... although it's definitely the standard course of action for trees)
13. Good failures: Failure need interpretation, perhaps there's no failure... alternative uses, misuses
14. Inspiring failures
15. Harmless failures

Why do I blog this? This is of course a super quick write-up but we wanted to have these ideas written so that could build-up on them in other workshops. Also, what the groups worked on is close to the literature about accidents and problems in Human-Computer Interaction (I'm thinking about Norman's work) but it went beyond the existing lists. In addition, what was interesting, especially in the last assignment was that the list of categories reveal some important norms and criteria of success that designer have in mind.

Thanks to all the participants!

Gestures from the 21st Century: train ticket control

Seen yesterday in a Swiss train. Digital device to iPhone interaction for visual marker recognition. Yet another curious situation to observe in the train (after train sensors) because there are sometimes some problems for the system to read the 2D code. As usual with new forms of interactions, it leads to lively discussion with the other passengers (who have their own stories about the problems caused by this).

Game maps evolution and level design

A map of Zelda found at Atari2600.com

Last week in the Guardian gamesblog, I ran across this insightful piece called "The lost art of video game cartography". It's basically about " the homemade map remained an important navigational device" and the importance of map (hand) drawing on a notepad while playing back in the early days of the video game era.

A map of Loco Roco found at Quickjump

The article describes the different approaches ("naturalistic approximations of the game environments, creating miniaturised ordinance survey maps" versus "more diagrammatic approach, inspired by the topographic purity of Harry Beck's tube map"). It also reflects upon the evolution of game design.

Any game/interaction designer might find interesting the discussion about the influence of level design on drawing maps manually:

"while early Japanese RPG titles like Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda initially required some mapping skills thanks to their burgeoning use of open world 'overmap' environments, later iterations brought in a variety of navigational aids (...) world maps that opened up new sections as the player gained fresh abilities, (...) teleportation zones, and the ability to set waypoints across a map screen – somewhere along the line, travel became an inconvenience rather than the point of the game. (...) CD-Rom technology allowed the birth of the cinematic adventure (...) The whole concept of exploration has changed; we no longer need to explore to progress, we explore to find power-ups and hidden extras, and in this overtly stage-managed form of freedom, cartography isn't really necessary. The pictorial map has been replaced by the didactic walkthrough. (...) Even so-called 'open world' titles are map-free experiences. There will usually be a mini-map or radar display in the corner as well as an HUD that paints your required destination with big arrows and a distance read-out."

Why do I blog this? This is related to my interest in video game spaces (see some earliers posts about it here or on the Terra Nova platform). I have always been fascinated by vernacular maps like these and find interesting to see how the game design features influence the production of such artifacts. From a design standpoint, I think it'd be curious to envision games that would force people to create maps (or games that would force people to use external material such as notepad, pens, figurines or whatever seems interesting).

Speech at the Swiss Design Network about Science-Fiction and Design

Here are the slides of my talk, which concluded the Junior Research Day at the Swiss Design Network 2010 in Basel. It was about the relationships between Sci-Fi and Design... which allowed me to introduce some of the concept that Julian Bleecker or James Auger would address later on in the conference. [slideshare id=5597554&doc=sdn2010-nova-101028114235-phpapp01]

Thanks Laurent Marti and Martin Wiedmer for the invitation!

About African science-fiction

An interesting text by Jonathan Dotse about African science-fiction:

"There are also artistic reasons to look forward to an African science fiction renaissance. African storytelling tradition contains the very sort of metaphysical themes that science fiction is best equipped to address: themes of identity, self and community, and relationships between generations in time. There is no shortage of inspiration for science fiction within African life today, as the pervasive reach of technological development is being witnessed even by those in the most remote regions of the continent. Aesthetically, science fiction gives the writer power to create landscapes that blur the distinction between the literal and metaphorical interpretations of a story to produce an absolute representation of a complex idea. The writer can freely traverse the continuum of time, placing the present time in its right context by clearly framing it between the future and the past. This freedom could yield invaluable additions to the classics of African literature by tackling critical new issues while opening radical new dimensions to existing ones."

Why do I blog this? preparing my speech about sci-fi and design for the Junior day at the Swiss Design Network requires some examples :)

Density of information

The density of information on the back of a Polaroid camera, observed at the flea market in Geneva.

Components of Science Fiction #scifi

As claimed by Fredrik Pohl "A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam". Just thought it would be good to play with a LOLtechnology such as graphjam to exemplify this quote.

Problems about car automation #techusage

Wandering around the Internet, I stumbled across this website about a car technology, which has an interesting flow of comments about how people feel towards it. It's about the “ECO pedal”, i.e a pedal system that uses onboard electronics to determine when the driver is excessively accelerating (and therefore wasting gas and emitting more emissions) and can actually push back on the driver’s accelerator foot.

Some comment examples.

"Now your gas pedal will be able to say, "Shame on you, you wasteful person!" I'd like to see how well the GT-R runs the ring with this technology added.

NO! GOD, NO. i don't want to argue with my car about how fast i should be accelerating. i get in enough arguments about that with other people.

That's unnecessarily intrusive. Lighting up an indicator in the instrument cluster should be the most the car can do to tell you how to save gas.

What ever happened to KNOWING HOW TO DRIVE??? We managed to make it through nearly an entire century of the automobile without parking-assist, radar cruise, lane-keep assist, and now a freaking accelerator nanny? If people want to drive greener, then leave it to them to decide to accelerate slower when they're able, yet still be able to haul ass if it's life-or-death necessary. Please auto companies, stop making it even easier for people to drive while dicking around with their iPhones."

Brilliant! One of them made me think about this insightful quote by Mark Weiser back in the days: "I don't want to argue with my car about where I want to go. And of course, it can be traced back to Philip K. Dick's Ubik.

Why do I blog this? collecting examples of tech automation/assistance for an upcoming lecture.

Accidents, mistakes, failures and malfunctions, a talk at Share Festival (Torino)

Last Wednesday I went to Torino. I was part of a "Warm-up event" for the Share Festival, which focuses this year on a topic called "Smart Mistakes". The talk was called "Accidents and failures as creative material for the near future" and slides can be found on Slideshare. It was actually an updated version of an earlier talk I've given at Interaction 2010.

[slideshare id=5531113&doc=share-torino2010-101022102413-phpapp02]

The talk starts with a presentation of how accidents are cool and funny (on the Internets)... which lead me to a sort of typology of failures and a discussion about how problems, accidents and malfunctions are actually important for design. I then move to how failures, problems and limits of technologies can be employed as a design tactic.

Thanks Simona for the invitation!

Bruce Sterling on robots in acm interaction

Some excerpts from an interesting interview with Bruce Sterling about robots from acm interactions in 2005:

"AM: What do you think of as the most successful or surprising innovation in robotics in the past? BS: Well, robots are always meant to be “surprising,” because they are basically theater or carnival shows. A “successful” robot, that is to say, a commercially and industrially successful one, wouldn’t bother to look or act like a walking, talking human being; it would basically be an assembly arm spraying paint, because that’s how you get the highest return on investment out of any industrial investment make it efficient, get rid of all the stuff that isn’t necessary. But of course it’s the unnecessary, sentimentalized, humanistic aspects of robots that make robots dramatically appealing to us. There’s a catch-22 here.

You can go down to an aging Toyota plant and watch those robot arms spray paint, but it’ll strike you as rote work that is dull, dirty, and dangerous—you’re not likely to conclude, “Whoopee, look at that robot innovation go!” When it’s successful, it doesn’t feel very robotic, because it’s just not dramatic. (...) AM: How do you think robots will be defined in the future? I’d be guessing that redefining human beings will always trump redefining robots. Robots are just our shadow, our funhouse-mirror reflection. If there were such a thing as robots with real intelligence, will, and autonomy, they probably wouldn’t want to mimic human beings or engage with our own quirky obsessions. We wouldn’t have a lot in common with them-we’re organic, they’re not; we’re mortal, they’re not; we eat, they don’t; we have entire sets of metabolic motives, desires, and passions that really are of very little relevance to any- thing made of machinery.

AM: What’s in the future of robotics that is likely very different from most people’s expectations? BS: Robots won’t ever really work. They’re a phantasm, like time travel or maybe phlogiston. On the other hand, if you really work hard on phlogiston, you might stumble over something really cool and serendipitous, like heat engines and internal combustion. Robots are just plain interesting. When scientists get emotionally engaged, they can do good work. What the creative mind needs most isn’t a cozy sinecure but something to get enthusiastic about."

Why do I blog this? Currently working on the program of the upcoming Robolift conference in France next March... led me to accumulate insights like these. Might also be interesting in my design course and for research projects about human-robot interactions.

About a voting device

A voting interface encountered last week in Lyon at the local city council. It's interesting to note:

• The possibility to interact with the room using the micro feature (which stands to "microphone"),
• The arrow on the right indicate a LED that is switched on when the person enter a identification card in the device... which enable the participation in the voting process,
• The range of possibilities (from ++ to --, via the neutral 0), which surprised me as more complicated than a "yes/no" system,
• A LED (at the top) that indicates whether the person already voted.

To some extent, this device partly embeds a small portion of the representative democracy. As you can see it's fairly asymmetrical (the only feedback the user can get is the LED that show if she/he voted).

Why do I blog this? Local observation of a curious object. It would be intriguing to re-think such a device in different ways (more symmetry, open to third-parties and citizens, etc.). Pressing one of these buttons is important given that the person who is entitled to do so "represent" a bigger number of people ("citizens"). Could this be reflected in the design of the interface?

Reverse-engineer science-fiction from the past / imagine sci-fi of the past

An interesting quote from William Gibson in this interview in Wired UK:

"When I was a kid in the late fifties and the late sixties reading a lot of science fiction from the 1940s, I used to simultaneously reverse-engineer the history of the world from whatever version of it that science fiction writers were implying in their imaginary futures, and I was patching bits in my own imagination to not have the story spoiled by some ludicrous anachronism. So I sometimes imagine children doing that to Neuromancer. If you wanted to do an interesting thought experiment, try to imagine writing a science fiction novel in 1981 that would have had a representation of the cell phone in society in exactly the way we use it today.

If I could have got that word from the future to my unconscious somehow, I don’t think it would have worked, I don’t think I would have been able to sell it. I would have been writing a novel in 1981 in which everyone talked to each other constantly on little pocket radios and sent each other messages through the telephone system. I can’t imagine that being the stuff of a sensible narrative. It would have seemed so bizarre and incredibly indulgent on the writer’s part."

Why do I blog this? I like this kind of thought experiment, perhaps I should try it with design students in my course about the evolution of interfaces.

Human-cell-phone proximity on the beach

Seen in Marseille, France last week-end. An interesting occurrence of very close proximity between a human being and his cell-phone. Various remarks here:

• The user seems to have a certain level of trust in leaving his phone like this, while being asleep. Thieves can take it readily (I've often seen people's phone being stolen like this in café).
• The contact of the phone on the human skin is definitely useful to know is someone calls you or if you received a message (through vibrations). It's also possible to have a quick glance to the screen, in case it's needed. The effort to interact with the phone is then quite low.
• Some people fear being so close to their phone because of waves/electrosmog, this guy doesn't seem to mind about it.

Why do I blog this? documenting practices from the 21st century, surely some material to be reused later on in courses/articles/speeches.

Computer motherboards, citadels and Michel Houellebecq

For those who read the Michel Houellebecq's latest novel, there is this intriguing quote "computer motherboards, which, when filmed without any scale indication, evoke odd futurists citadels"... which immediately made me think of this wall observed in a shop in Lisboa, Portugal.

In French: "les cartes mères d’ordinateur qui filmées, sans aucune indication d’échelle, évoquent d’étranges citadelles futuristes”

Upcoming speeches in Lyon, Torino and Basel

October is a busy month, here are the blurbs of 3 talks I am going to give in the near near future: Citic (Lyon, France) - October 15

I'll be on a panel about how the usage of digital technologies and the hybridization of the digital and the physical will influence our relationship to space.

SHARE Festival (Torino, Italy) - October 20

Title: Accidents and failures as creative material for the near future Abstract: This will be a talk about product failure, glitches, errors and accidents. It will focus on how people experience them and how they can be a starting point for creating near future worlds. Think for instance about creating prototypes and exhibiting problems within it to make them more compelling. Or showing something as it will work with the failures — so anticipating them somehow rather than ignoring the possibility. What will not work right? What problems will be caused? What does it mean? We will rely on examples of failed robots, absurd aircrafts or the intentional destruction of mobile phones and vending machines to show how studying these examples can be relevant in the design process. Based on these examples, the talk will deal with two issues: how can we include the exploration of failures in the design process? How to turn failures and people’s reaction to failures into prototyping tools?

Junior Research Day, Swiss Design Network (Basel, Switzerland) - October 28

Title: From Neuromancer to the Internet: the role of science fiction culture in design Abstract: This will be a talk about a feeling you must have had as designers. About comments such as "Ah, you're designing that interface from Minority Report" or "Oh yes, it's like that weird chair from 2001 a Space Odyssey". If your work is about interaction design, this kind of remarks are very common, but it also applies to other design domains. It is as if the visions described in science-fiction films and books led to expectations about what will happen in the future. The speech will uncover what is hidden behind these reactions.

The talk will address what design can learn from science fiction: original metaphors, anticipation of problems when using new technologies, speculation about peculiar types of material, etc. But the presentation will also deal with design fictions: how design allows making speculative and provocative products to raise questions about social interactions in the future.

We will mention examples such as failed robots, walking architectures or the metaphors that shaped the Internet. Each of them will shed some light on the relationship between science fiction and design.