hello.

Here’s a handy little data source, probably fun for webscraping and visualizations: http://www.worldometers.info/. Thanks to Kristin O’Friel for the link.

Shaping Things Bruce Sterling, Boston, MIT Press, ©2005, ISBN 0-2626-9326-7.
Bruce Sterling’s take on a plausible future in which everything made has a network address, and therefore a documented and documentable history. He takes this vision to its extreme, showing how it changes everything from design to manufacturing to consumption to disposal of material goods. An inspiring read if you’re interested in networks, material or information design, or sustainability.

Technorati Tags: design, environment, law, networked objects, networks, pcomp, philosophy, physical computing, RFID, sociology, sustainability

Johanna Brewer sent this to me. Looks like a fun workshop, I wish I could go.

A Public Inconvenience
The 3rd workshop in the in-between-ness series.

Subterranean, ceramic-tiled bathrooms, plastic temporary urinals or compact, metallic washrooms in transit spaces; public toilets are an often-overlooked space in our urban environment. Technologies designed for the city often try to abstract away from the inconvenient necessities which our bodies require; or, when they are designed explicitly for public toilets, the focus is on supporting the cultural values of hygiene and privacy. What do we miss by ignoring the fact that public toilets are also the site for a variety of social practices?

‘A Public Inconvenience’ will explore the experience and affect of public toilets in an urban environment, in this case Amsterdam. Through observation and engagement we will consider how public toilets are shaped by, and themselves shape, cultural practices, values, and attitudes. And further, how this essential part of the urban fabric contributes to the everyday experience we have of our cities.

‘A Public Inconvenience’ is the third in a series of workshops exploring in-between-ness in urban environments. That is, the places and times that are often on the periphery of everyday life - the journey to work or the time spent queuing in a shop.

To be considered for participation, researchers and practitioners are invited to send us a compelling public toilet story (see The Stories section of the website for inspiration), an optional toilet photograph, a brief biography, and a short rationale outlining your interest in the workshop. This document should not exceed two pages.

Submissions:
Send to karen.martin@ucl.ac.uk by 21st September 2007
Acceptance Notification is 28th September 2007

Further Information:
http://www.inbetweeness.org/apublicinconvenience/

Place and Time:
26th & 27th October 2007
Waag Society, Amsterdam

Organisers:
Arianna Bassoli (The London School of Economics)
Johanna Brewer (University of California, Irvine)
Karen Martin (Bartlett School of Graduate Studies)
Valentina Nisi (Fattoria Mediale)
Martine Posthuma de Boer (Fattoria Mediale)

Technorati Tags: cities, conferences & workshops, design, environment

There’s a new report out from the Social Science Research Council’s Information Technology and International Cooperation program, “Civil Technologies: The Values of Nonprofit ICT Use,” by Ken Jordan and Mark Surman with funding from the Ford Foundation. This report is the last in a series of three major reports on the Internet, governance and civil society that were published by the ITIC program.

The report “explores exemplary instances of nonprofit ICT adoption by civil society groups from around the world, and draws attention to ways the values of civil society are reinforced and extended through their use of digital tools. It is informed by eleven interviews exploring the specific ICT implementations that had a significant, positive impact on the operations of civil society groups. These include: Advocacy Project eHomemakers.net (Malaysia), Fantsuam Foundation (Nigeria), Front Line Defenders (Ireland), Brian Fitzgerald, Greenpeace, Interfaith Project, The Center for a New American Dream, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Planned Parenthood, Ruckus Society, St. Christopher House (Canada). The report is available for download at the Social Science Research Council site.

Technorati Tags: cities, design, environment, infrastructures, networks, sociology

Doors always has some interesting links on design and social innovation. They cover sustainability, health care, social justice, economics, all staring from a design point of view.

Technorati Tags: art, design, social justice, healthcare

Grameen Bank started out as a micro-credit organization in Bangladesh, making small loans to poor women so that they could start businesses. They proved that very small loans paid back regularly in small amounts could make a huge difference. From their website:

“Grameen Foundation USA is empowering the world’s poorest people to lift themselves out of poverty with dignity through access to financial services and to information.

“The Grameen Technology Center is working to eliminate poverty by leveraging the power of microcredit and technology.”

Technorati Tags: development, environment, networks

Urban Atmospheres is a research intiative at Intel Research Berkeley, run by Eric Paulos. From their info page:

“At the intersection of mobile and social computing, we seek to provoke discussion aimed at understanding this emerging space of computing within and across our public urban landscapes – Urban Computing.”

While toting a laptop around a city may seem a like an example of such city computing, Urban Atmospheres research is more deeply concerned with addressing several sub-themes, including (but not limited to):”

Place – What is the meaning of various public places? What cues do we use to interpret place and how will Urban Computing re-inform and alter our perception of various places?”

Community – Who are the people we share our city with? How do they influence our urban landscape? Where do we belong in this social space and how do new technologies enable and disrupt feelings of community and belonging?”

Infrastructure – How will buildings, subways, sidewalks, parking meters, and other conventional, physical artifacts on the urban landscape be used and re-appropriated by emerging technology tools?”

Traversal – What is a path or route through a city using these new urban tools? How will navigation and movement, either throughout an entire city or within a small urban space, be influenced by the introduction of Urban Computing technology?”

The single main research challenge of Urban Atmospheres research is to understand how this future fabric of digital and wireless computing will influence, disrupt, expand, and be integrated into the social patterns existent within our public urban landscapes.”

Street Talk

Urban Atmospheres held a good workshop in the summer of 2004, Street Talk. Links to the speakers’ slides and many people’s notes are available on the site. Of particular interest to me were Ben Hooker’s talk on urban games using cell networks, and Peter Lunenfeld’s closing talk on why everyone interested in social computing should be aware of Jane Jacobs. So many of the others were very energizing too. What made it great was to see work people were doing in urban environments, and to hear the questions they ran across in the process. There are some useful blog reports available on the site as well.

A follow-up workshop, Notes from the Urban Frontier, was held at Ubicomp 2004

Technorati Tags: cities, design, infrastructures, networks

Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs blog dedicated to subjects stemming from his book of the same name. He and other bloggers report on various social/technology items here.

Technorati Tags: cities, design, infrastructures, location systems, mobile telephony, networked objects, networks, psychology, sociology

Anthony Townsend’s dissertation on urban geography and digital networks.

Technorati Tags: architecture, cities, design, infrastructures, mobile telephony, networks

The O’Reilly Emerging Tech conference was great. Met many interesting people, saw lots of good presentations, collected lots of good links. Followng are a few notes. I’ll expand on this over time, as I digest everything.

Chris Heathcote’s presentation, “35 Ways to Find your Location” was the last one I went to. It was great. An overview of location methods and technologies. Very practical, gave the big picture tather than delving into any one technology in depth. From his presentation, you could easily begin to research on your own. Check out the slideshow.

Raffi Krikorian’s collecting links to interesting physical computing and hardware hacking projects, both lower-level tech details and higher-level overall descriptions. Send him some links. He gave a great presentation last year on Internet0, but I missed his tutorial on getting started with microcontrollers this year, sadly.

Tomas Krag gave a good presentation on Wireless Networks as a Low-Cost, Decentralized Alternative for the Developing World. Among other things, he talked very frankly and practically about the limitations of tech volunteer work in the developing world. What he’s up to is worth following, and participating in however you can. He and his company are doing a “Wireless Roadshow to teach local technology NGOs how wireless technologies can be used to bring Internet and intranet connectivity to those parts of the world not included in the plans of the commercial telecommunications companies.”

He also showed a nifty and very small wireless mesh router, a cube about 3 inches on a side. Check out also wire.less.dk, the company he’s associated with.

Joichi Ito, Mimi Ito, Howard Rheingold, Scott Fischer and Dana Boyd gave a great panel on “What Happens to Social Networks in the Untethered Wilds“. They highlighted trends in social behavior resulting from and influenced by cell phone applications. I loved especially the examples Mimi gave, talking about intimate communications and small group communications over text and picturephone. Loved the “New Haircut” shot. Hope they put the presentation files online.

We followed on their ideas in a panel from ITP, “Socially Mobile: Experiments in Social Software Applications using Mobile Phones“. Michele Chang,
Dennis Crowley, Elizabeth Goodman, Alex Rainert, and Shawn Van Every all did a good job presenting their work. Thanks to Alex for putting the slides all in one place.

ITP alums Lili Cheng and Sean Kelly did a presentation on Wallop and other work coming out of the Social Computing group at Microsoft research. Lili covered the history of the social computing group really well, and gave great context and setup for Wallop, an environment they’re working on which maps and organizes relationships between you and the people you care about, through emails, photos, shared work, and other documents.

Rael Dornfest’s Mobile Hacks session was mighty geeky, and a lot of fun. Made me want to upgrade my phone to play with Bluetooth, and with the app that identifies the cell tower you’re connected to.

Priya Prakash’s presentation, “Project Miljul“, was a very nice introduction to how to listen to the people you’re designing for. It’s an essential lesson for all designers. She presented her own observations in several cities in India in very anecdotal and approachable session.

Marc Smith’s keynote address, Catalyzing Collective Action on the Net rocked. Some great notes on why summary visualization of online group dynamics is important, how it gives you the flavor of a group before you enter, and much more.

Technorati Tags: biometrics, cities, design, infrastructures, networks, open source, philosophy, sensors, sociology