"Landscape Denatured: Digitizing the Wild" by Eric Kabisch

Had a glance this morning at Eric Kabisch's Masters Thesis called "Landscape Denatured: Digitizing the Wild". He basically describe 4 technologically enabled artworks that explore ways in which digital technologies impact society and culture, focusing particularly on the impacts of information technologies on physical and cultural geography: Datascape, Sonic Panoramas, Unexceptional.net network visualizer and SignalPlay.

What I found interesting is the framework provided for analyzing these works of art:

"To develop a framework for investigation of the processes by which digital technologies, their affordances and their artifacts shape and embed themselves in the world, I will break the process into three stages: the measuring and capturing of natural processes (sensing); the mining, analysis and representation of captured observations and models (narrative); and the introduction of these models into the world through physical or methodological means (propagation).

This framework is useful because it successfully corresponds to many of the individual cyclical and triadic frameworks that inspired the individual artworks composing the body of this thesis work. (...) It parallels notions of geographic information gathering, map production, and map-based decision-making. And it is congruent with Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexküll’s notion of the functional cycle (or Funktionskreis) whereby an organism’s subjective environment is continuously constructed through its sensing of the environment, processing of the information, and continued engagement and action within the world."

Why do I blog this? It's interesting wrt what I discussed here and what Fabien's reactions. See for instance the parallel between Funktionskreis and wiki city.

Besides, I quite liked this part of the conclusion:

"Our digitization of the world thus far is coarse, leading to gaps and pixelation. As we fill in those gaps through models and assumptions we blur certain details, while artifacts of the process are categorized as anomalies. In geographic information systems, this grey area is referred to as “uncertainty” and is not often reflected in end- user representations such as maps. The wild, ultimately, is that which we cannot record, understand, represent or control"

Presentation at CISCO

Yesterday I visited one of the European Tech Center of Cisco to give a presentation about location-awareness and mobile social computing. Slides from my presentations can be found here (pdf, 10.5Mb). It's actually a reshuffled version of my Geoware deck. Thanks Jérome for this opportunity!

Although I do this presentation over and over again, I am always surprised by the discussion that follows. The fact that the context is often different trigger new questions about that topic. Some examples of what we discussed:

"Is "location" really important? Is it really about location? presence? Should it be combined with other information collected through sensors? How to create an added value sufficient enough to remove the privacy barrier? To reach a critical mass of users, aren't GPS devices company more advanced? Given that there is a less big variety of GPS devices (as opposed to phones) can they be considered as platform? For example could TomTom buddies be relevant? What about personal navigation assistant for pedestrians? Social software and location-awareness: can we use geolocation to refine social graphs?"

In the evening, I gave the same presentation at the Institut de Santé au Travail (thanks Yves!) where a totally different audience received the talk and discuss the implications rather from the ergonomic/human factor viewpoint.

Switch conventions

In Switzerland, the large majority of switches fall into 2 categories:

As if there was some sort of CH's designer-in-chief who ruled the existence of switches. It eventually leads to a great homogeneity in their design (compared to the very broad diversity in France for example).

Find it intriguing, and not that bad actually.

Digital space behavior close to physical world proxemics

The ACM technews recently reported on a study about an intriguing experiment in Second Life (presented at the 7th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents):

"University College London researchers are using an automated avatar in Second Life to study the psychology of Second Life users. The automated avatar, called SL-bot, has been used to see if Second Life users expect other avatars to give their avatar the same amount of personal space as is normally expected in real life. In one experiment, SL-bot searched for avatars that were alone. When an isolated avatar was found, SL-bot would approach the avatar, greet the avatar by name, wait two seconds, and then move to within the virtual equivalent of 1.2 meters. SL-bot then recorded the other avatar's reaction for 10 seconds and sent the data back to the researchers. Out of the 28 avatars approached in this manner, 12 moved away and 20 also responded with text chat. Another experiment observed pairs of avatars as they interacted and found that users are, on average, six times more likely to shift position when someone comes within 1.2 meters. The findings show that people value their virtual personal space much like people value their real personal space. During an experiment where undergraduate students with scripts interacted with subject avatars, it was found that female avatars protect their personal space less than male avatars, reflecting real world behavior."

Why do I blog this? apart form the ethical discussion about the use of virtual test subjects, this study is interesting in terms of digital space usage. Result are actually very close to what Jeffrey, P., & Mark, G. described in "Constructing Social Spaces in Virtual Environments: A Study of Navigation and Interaction" (In K. Höök, A. Munro, D. Benyon, (Eds.) Personalized and Social Navigation in Information Space, March 16-17, 1998, Stockholm (SICS Technical Report T98:02) 1998) , Stockholm: Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), pp. 24-38). These authors found studied a 3D virtual world and showed that proxemics can be maintained in virtual environments. Even there, a certain social distance is kept between participants’ avatars. They noticed how spatial invasions produced anxiety-arousing behavior (like verbal responses, discomfort and overt signs of stress) with attempts to re-establish a preferred physical distance similar to the distance obverted in the physical world.

From Locative Information to Urban Knowledge

(via) In, "From Locative Information to Urban Knowledge" (see in the the conference pre-proceedings), Viktor Bedö addresses a question very close to my research interests: How does information generated and shared through locative media and mobile communication technologies turn into knowledge?. The paper is about information visualization and how an organic metaphor (elaborated by Ben Fry) can be pertinent to represent information generated and shared via mobile communication technologies such as spatial annotation systems. Let's jump directly to the conclusion:

"What we can anticipate is that after reaching the critical volume (1), these community level patterns will have effects on the individual level: users will navigate using these patterns, make decisions based on these patterns, and contribute to them by posting their own information. The pattern emerging on the dynamic urban maps become urban knowledge based on locative information. The primal representation of urban knowledge will be on the map, the method of identifying and interpreting the patterns is looking at the map. It is important to note that there are no cues when inspecting the emerging patterns on the map and there are no masters telling us what to see as we deal with a new instrument showing a new quality. The metaphor of organism/organisation in this case does not transfer meaning, in the, but a way of seeing, that helps ideintifying, discovering the patterns of locative urban knowledge.

(1) The use of spatial annotation and other location avare social software has not reached the critical volume therefore we can not even anticipate by now how many messages are going to constitute a coherent pattern. Will it be fifty, four hundred, or two thousand?"

Why do I blog this? this is very close to something I wrote lately (as well as this blogpost) although it was not uniquely focused on spatial annotation system. However, I am not sure about the "critical volume" described by the author: it's definitely that a topic we discussed a lot with Fabien and Mauro. Will there really be a peak? How the success of certain applications could last over time?

About Metcalfe's law

I sometimes use the Metcalfe Law in my work to describe how communication systems (mobile phones application, location-based services, etc.) have a value only if there is a critical mass of users. Being the only local boob with a fax machine does not allow you to go beyond showing off, it's actually like having one shoe. First formulated by Robert Metcalfe wrt to Ethernet, Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system(N2). It's then interesting to dig that stuff and see why very serious folks in IEEE Spectrum are pondering that argument. They actually critique how this "law" has been turned into a mantra during the Internet Boom (and now with the Web2.0 frenziness) and mostly focus on the correctness of its definition that sits in between linear and exponential growth:

"If Metcalfe's mathematics were right, how can the law be wrong? Metcalfe was correct that the value of a network grows faster than its size in linear terms; the question is, how much faster? If there are n members on a network, Metcalfe said the value grows quadratically as the number of members grows.

We propose, instead, that the value of a network of size n grows in proportion to n log(n)."

(Taken from here)

But more importantly:

"The fundamental flaw underlying both Metcalfe's and Reed's laws is in the assignment of equal value to all connections or all groups. (...) In general, connections are not all used with the same intensity. In fact, in large networks, such as the Internet, with millions and millions of potential connections between individuals, most are not used at all. So assigning equal value to all of them is not justified"

Why do I blog this? it's interesting to understand how such law can be criticized. I actually do think the cluster metaphor is still valid but one should be cautious about how to employ it (and take the limits they describe into account). Should there be a commonsensical use of that law and a more mathematical one (the latter.... to make quantitative forecast... which I am not into)?

Industrial design and ubiquitous computing

Are designers ready for ubiquitous computing?: a formative study is a very interesting short paper by Sara Ljungblad, Tobias Skog and Lalya Gaye that deals with the challenges industrial designers will face with ubiquitous technologies. The paper report a workshop they ran with designers, in which they presented their ubicomp prototyping platform and collected people's impressions. Although it's hard to generalize, what is relevant here is to look at what they learn in this context:

"A Designer is not A Researcher: The designers tended to have a goal-oriented, problem-solving approach to the context-aware technology, rather than the more exploratory approach that is common in research. The idea of developing applications for already existing objects by augmenting them post-hoc was not considered very appealing. (...) We feel that there is a significant difference between researchers and product designers when approaching context-aware technology. The designers were interested, but viewed Smart-Its as a collection of sensors belonging to an end-product, rather than something that could be used as a material during the design process, to explore and learn about “smart” products. This suggests that these designers were only interested in a conceptual understanding of the technology, not a hands-on understanding of it. The question is whether such conceptual knowledge really is enough when designing “smart” products."

Why do I blog this? because this sort of issues is very common and interesting to investigate. Of course this is very contextualized to their platform but there are interesting elements here.

A list of intriguing digital cameras

A follow-up to this blogpost, I started making a short list of "curious digital cameras" Microsoft's Sensecam, a wearable digital camera that is designed to take photographs passively, without user intervention, while it is being worn.

The Wingscapes BirdCam which uses an infrared sensor to detect birds and then automatically captures photos or videos (of your birds while you are away).

Tospom: a ball-shaped camera that takes pictures while playing catch.

Satugo: a bouncing ball camera.

Blinkcam takes a Polaroid picture everytime you blink.

Sascha Pohflepp's blinks and buttons, a networked camera that capture a moment by continuously searching on the net for other photos that have been taken in the very same moment.

Spycamera stuff can also be found.

An HP camera that could be equipped with circuits that could be remotely triggered to blur the face of those who don’t want to have their photo taken.

Why do I blog this? it's both the interest in automatic cameras as tools for User Experience research and as curious devices from the near future. Automatic camera can indeed be used to ask people to reflect on their activities (with some ethical limits) and weird cameras are very interesting devices to imagine new uses.

Please feel free to add any other references in the comment part of that blogpost, it's good to keep track of stuff. There must be thousands of models and prototypes.

Near Future Laboratory interview

Julian posted on the near future laboratory website the translation from an interview we gave to Digicult, an italian magazine about digital culture. The interview deals with the near future laboratory's existence (" an opportunity in a design and research practice that operates between traditional long-term academic research studies and short-term commercial product development"), rationale ("a positive reaction to the difficulties of engaging in creative, insightful, fun and innovative work with fewer of the constraints we have found in academia and in the normal commercial world") and some current projects.

Why do I blog this? tracking the near future laboratory conversations!

"The Jetsons" as a touchstone for the future

In a WSJ article, Jason Fry how he feels like George Jetson with all the technologies that we have around (cell phone, TiVo, etc). He interestingly describes what was interesting in that TV series:

"Then there was another influence, one that makes space opera sound like real opera. That, of course, was "The Jetsons" -- the Hanna- Barbera show featuring flying cars, robot maids, and Space Needle apartment buildings filled with Rube Goldberg labor-saving devices. I doubt the creators of "The Jetsons" ever imagined how they'd influence kids growing up in the 1970s. (...) Why such an influence for a show that was basically "The Flintstones" in aerial houses? (...) The only reason "The Jetsons" is a touchstone for the future instead of just childhood nostalgia is that it was "about" the future -- which was bound to arrive because, well, that's what the future does. (...) "The Jetsons," on the other hand, is pretty close to a sure thing, conversationally. (...) The other thing about the future is it tends to arrive slowly -- so slowly that often we don't notice how thoroughly things are changing."

And then relates to today's situation:

"I may not have a ticket to a moonbase quite yet, but if you could send me back to the 70s to tell my nine-year-old self what's coming, he'd be thrilled. To him, for all intents and purposes I am George Jetson.

What technological milestones have taken place during your lifetime? What do you take for granted that your nine-year-old self would have never believed possible? And what do you think the future holds? "

Why do I blog this? pure interest in (past) representation of the future and how it unfolded afterwards. Cultural artifacts like TV series are part of that ecosystem. And it's crazy how today the word "jetsons" is employed in discourse about the future (newspaper articles, futurists conference, designers' discussion and even academic papers).

This notion of a "touchstone" for the future is important, the normative representation of "what could be" at that time is the benchmark towards which one evaluate what we have today ("where's my 3D video phone that I could use in my flying car?").

Geographies of science-fiction

Lost in Space : Geographies of Science Fiction edited by Rob Kitchin and James Kneale is a collection of essay on the geography of sci-fi novels and films. Contributors are coming mainly from the field of human geography and literary critic. As described by Kitchin and Kneale:

"the starting point for this book is the belief that science-fiction opens up a space in which authors and readers or viewers can reflect upon the nature of a wide variety of things (...) a privileged site for critical thoughts (...) a foil for thinking about present-day geographies, their construction, reproduction and contingency, and thinking about how we theorize and comprehend a range of concepts such as space, nature, subjectivity and reality. Here SF becomes a useful cognitive space, opening up sites form which to contemplate material and discursive geographies and the production of geographical knowledges and imaginations. (...) The geographies of cyberpunk are therefore 'this world re-placed and dis-located'; like the settings of fantasy they are made realistic through careful exploration which rarely steps far from the plausible"

Why do I blog this? this was a week-end reading, I was actually more interested in the underlying rationale of the book (why paying attention to sci-fi spaces) than the topics analyzed here which often address gender and psychoanalytic perspectives of sci-fi spaces. A corresponding analysis of sci-fi spaces/tools would be very relevant to understand UX issues, projected meanings and potential failures. Or, what about sci-fi representation of space and urban computing? That book reminded me of this french book I've read last year entitled "De New-York à Coruscant" by Alain Musset.

Anyway, I find all this literature interesting to understand (and criticize) the normative futures that are propelled and often perceived at the so-called obligatory spaces we will have (or ought to deserve?).

Future/past of entertainment?

Folks from our lab today visited colleagues next door to see the current projects they're working on, some sort of low-cost CAVE and haptic interfaces. Very instructive to try it out live. Quite big pieces of machinery anyway.

In the past twenty years, what were the improvements in haptics? What were the main lessons? What were successes an failures? Does the Wii count here?

Is that the future or the past of entertainment? Why?

Street illusion

The presence of illusion on the streets of Geneva, a glimpse of entertainment on your daily stroll to work. What if urban signs were based on different reading levels?

Device Art

Reading Device Art: A New Form of Media Art from a Japanese Perspective by Machiko Kusahara this morning in the train was a good way to start the day. The author describes what he intends by "device art", describing how this concept took shape on the basis of an analysis of works by contemporary Japanese media artists such as Toshio Iwai, Nobumichi Tosa (Maywa Denki), and Kazuhiko Hachiya:

"The concept is a logical extension of a change in the notion of art that already started in the early 20th century with art movements such as Dada and Surrealism. More recently, interactive art has redefined forms of art and the role of artists. What we call device art is a form of media art that integrates art and technology as well as design, entertainment, and popular culture. Instead of regarding technology as a mere tool serving the art, as it is commonly seen, we propose a model in which technology is at the core of artworks. (...) As a concept, Device Art is rooted in the analysis of the key role that devices play in certain types of art, that is, artworks involving hardware (a device) specifically designed to realize the artistic concept. The device itself can become the content. Technology is not hidden, its function is visible and easy to understand, while it still brings about a sense of wonder. Well designed interfaces made of the right materials facilitate interaction for users, often in a playful manner. (...) a device could be the "body" of an artwork that offers an artistic experience to its users / participants. In other words, the "resulting" experience cannot be separated from the device specifically designed or chosen to enable this experience. Producing multiple copies of such work and distributing it as a commercial product makes it accessible to a wider audience, provided the piece is designed in such a manner that anyone could use and enjoy it. An artist's concept could become a part of people's lives, rather than being kept in museums and galleries. Why not share art with more people?"

(Picture from the Bitman project by Ryota Kuwakubo)

Why do I blog this? what is important here is the idea that "device art" can be described as "a form of media art that integrates art and technology as well as design, entertainment, and popular culture". This is both a holistic AND a boundary object. It's not very surprising to read this from a japanese author but it's relevant to see the underlying motivations and reasons.

Also think about the contrasting approach with lots of projects we see in Europe or in the US that do take a totally different angle. I am thinking about recent robotic projects seen in Europe that really don't want to remove the existing boundaries.

How to design an alien

In an issue from december 1991 of New Scientist, there is a curious article entitled "How to design an alien". It's definitely not the astrobiological dimension that struck me as relevant, but rather these quotes:

"[inventing new planets] requires building a new world ecology with a detailed evolutionary history so that the plot does not have any obvious contradictions (...) although every detail must be different, there are patterns of general problems, and common solutions to those problems, that would apply to life anywhere in the Universe"

Why do I blog this The "theoretically possible after all" dimension as well as the balance between particular challenges/universal solutions described in Cohen's article is very interesting, as an exemplification of the design process.

Defining "slanty design"

Russell Beale use the term "slanty design" in a short article he wrote for Communications of the ACM recently.

"Slanty design is the term I've given to design that purposely reduces aspects of functionality or usability (...) Slanty design incorporates the broader message, making it difficult for users to do unwanted things, as well as easy to do wanted things. Designers need to design for user non-goals—the things users do not want to do or should not be able to do even if they want to. If usability is about making it easy for users to do what they must do, then we need to have anti-usability as well, making it difficult for them to do the things we may not want them to do. So slanty design reflects two subtly different characteristics: that we need to design for broader goals than individual users may identify, and that we need to incorporate anti-usability, as well as usability, into our systems. (...) Slanty designs result from five key design steps: - Identify user goals; - Identify user non-goals—the things users don't want to be able to do easily (such as deleting all their files); - Identify wider goals being pursued by other stakeholders, including where they conflict with individual goals; - Follow a user-centered design process to create a system with high usability for user goals and high anti-usability for user non-goals; and - Resolve the conflicts between wider issues and individual goals, and where the wider issues win out ensure that the design meets these needs. "

Why do I blog this? I find interesting this notion of "anti-usability" though cueing and preventing people form doing certain interactions.

Beale, R. (2007). Viewpoint: Slanty design, Communications of the ACM, 50 (1), pp. 21-24.

Future research interview

An interview of foresight research Wendel Bell by himself offers interesting elemeents (although the idea of a robotic interviewer is a bit lame). It was actually published in 2005 in the Journal of Futures Studies 10(2) (November 2005): pp. 113-124. Some excerpts:

"Prediction—or whatever euphemism a futurist may use, such as projection, forecast, foresight, prophecy, or prospective—necessarily enters into what a futurist does. In fact, it is one of the defining features of futures studies. In contemplating the future, we imagine alternative possible futures and we try to assess which futures would be most probable under a variety of conditions, including alternative actions that people might take. We try to answer the "what if" question. For example, what could or would happen if people did this, or that, or something else? But—and this is important—we seldom predict a single future. (...) I am not suggesting that futurists have all the right solutions. But they have been asking the right questions. For example: What can we humans do to create societies that will be sustainable into the far future? What are the conditions under which all people everywhere can have sufficient water and food, modern sanitation, good health, freedom, personal security, and community support? (...) Some answers come from the futurist program of investigating the facts of the past and the present and, based on them, making speculative and imaginative, but presumptively true, assertions about possible and probable futures. Answers come, too, from judging these futures by some scale of values, and assessing their relative desirability. They come also from communication among people about these assessments of the desirability of alternative futures and letting people’s voices be heard by decision-makers. Answers come, as I said before, from gaining foresight into the true consequences of our actions. They come, also, from understanding that all people ought to be included in our community of concern, realizing that our own beliefs may be wrong, and showing tolerance toward the beliefs of others"

Why do I blog this? even though the notion of "futurist/m" seems a bit passé and awkward (long-range design, future research, foresight research sounds better), there are some pertinent things here, a good introduction for his book.

50 game design advances according to Ernest Adams

A very comprehensive article by Ernest Adams in BW about the "50 Greatest Game Innovations". The underlying argument there is how video games are a hotbed for innovation (in other domains than the gaming field). I won't enter into much details about every single design advances presented there, stating only that they cover the following:

"GAMEPLAY INNOVATIONS: By gameplay I mean the challenges that the game poses to the player, and the actions that the player may take to meet the challenges. The vast majority of these actions are obvious: jumping, steering, fighting, building, trading and so on. But some challenges and actions distinctly advanced the state of the art, and provided new ways for us to play.

INPUT INNOVATIONS: Interactivity is the essence of gaming, and in a videogame, some device has to translate the player's intentions into action. We've always had buttons, knobs (aka spinners or paddles), joysticks, sliders, triggers, steering wheels and pedals. But recently our options for input devices have exploded, and a good designer gives careful thought to them before choosing an approach to use.

PRESENTATIONAL INNOVATIONS: Innovations in what the player sees and hears may depend heavily on technological advances, but I still consider them design innovations as well, features the designer can choose to use in their game—or not. I take static and scrolling 2D screens for granted; they already existed in mechanical coin-ops.

GENRES: We borrowed many videogame genres from other game forms, but a few genres would not have been possible before the invention of the computer, and represent real design innovation.

PLAY STYLES: Different ways that people play, and how designers facilitate them."

Why do I blog this? A must read even though it's only a selection among other possibilities

Dassault Systemes 3D modeling initiatives

A very intriguing article in the IHT about how Dassault Systèmes wants to jump on the Web2.0 bandwagon with their new 3Dvia division. They aim at democratizing the usage of 3D so that everybody can use it in its everyday life in a pure "marketing investment" fashion. Their motto is "We have been in the background for 20 years, We want to be visible now. It's our turn":

"With a new division called 3DVia, the company, based in Paris, is targeting ordinary consumers as future clients of its complex three-dimensional modeling software. Visitors to the free 3DVia Web site, which is still in test mode, have designed and "built" chairs, buildings, sailboats, "Star Wars" materials, fantasy characters and numerous other products.

In partnership with Microsoft, Dassault also introduced a free online application two weeks ago that allows users to create 3-D models and put them on the map, sharing them on Microsoft's Virtual Earth and with online communities. (...) Dassault has plans for a "virtual lab" on the Internet that could be rolled out as a service that is paid for by the use. "We believe this is the future," he said, "we want to be the eBay of 3-D. But it's true, we are still working out the business models.""

okay but I am not very sure about this:

"Stephen Lawler, general manager of Virtual Earth at Microsoft, said that teenagers were already intimately familiar with sophisticated 3-D rendering technology from their sometimes-daily exposure to video games. They know what to expect from 3-D computer creations and are comfortable in virtual worlds like Second Life, he said, while people unaccustomed to computerized modeling might need training and exposure."

Besides, playing 3D games do not mean that creating 3D models can be easier. Why do I blog this? Curiosity. In addition, what I am surprise of is the tone of this article that only focused on 3D modeling in a digital environment and did not really tackle something that is more appealing to lots of people (especially kids): rapid manufacturing of 3D models. It's even more surprising hen you consider the Cosmic Modelz system they have which allow kids to print 3D model stuff made with Cosmic Blobs.

Should ants be the next model for urban computing?

Stigmergic Collaboration is a model for the self-organisation of ants, artificial life and swarm intelligence. Wikipedia defines it as "a method of indirect communication in a self-organizing emergent system where its individual parts communicate with one another by modifying their local environment". It emerges from the work of a french biologist who coined the term in conjunction with his research o termites behavior. As described by Mark Elliott:

"Pierre-Paul Grasse first coined the term stigmergy in the 1950s in conjunction with his research on termites. Grasse showed that a particular configuration of a termite’s environment (as in the case of building and maintaining a nest) triggered a response in a termite to modify its environment, with the resulting modification in turn stimulating the response of the original or a second worker to further transform its environment. Thus the regulation and coordination of the building and maintaining of a nest was dependent upon stimulation provided by the nest, as opposed to an inherent knowledge of nest building on the individual termite’s part."

Why do I blog this? Although I won't enter in the big debate about how this model can be translated to human/behavior (ants/termites =! human beings), I think that stigmergic collaboration is a very interesting notion to understand the future of urban computing. Coordination is explained through the use and production of artefacts by the individuals, for example collective nest building, or the production of chemical traces. What is interesting is the notion of "artefact production", humans do not leave and rely so much on chemical traces BUT their activity in the environment leaves traces... especially if you think about mobile phone/bluetooth/wifi interactions.