In "The Evolution of Game Controllers and Control Schemes and their Effect on their games", Alastair H. Cummings interestingly traces the history of video-game controllers. A good read in conjunction with my earlier post about this very topic. What is relevant in that paper is the second part of t...
welcoming a new device
As seen in Montreal last week, a pun made of the arrival of the recent iphone. ...
When attributes of a city are transfered in another
An interesting pattern I've found here last week during my ventures in contemporary cities: when attribute of a city are transfered in another. 2 examples: the one above shows the famous entrance to the Paris subway system by Hector Guimard. Except that this nice organic and artnouveau artifact is...
buildings as flows and process
Each time I go to north america, I am struck by how infrastructures are more apparent than in continental europe (= home). Pipes, tubes, sprinklers look simply more present to me, perhaps because they're made more visible through colorful signage. See for example this gas tubes in Montreal: Or the...
think before you tag
First comment, it can be understood as "tag" in the graffiti sense but also in the geotag meaning (i.e. linking content such as text/music/pictures to geographical data). Although it's not a common practice in cities, it's intriguing to see such warning from a possible near future. I'm not sure ge...
concise information visualization
Indications of numbers of participants + gender compositions of scenes with basic representations (no other species from the animal kingdom). ...
wake me up by touching the screen
Love that icon, seen at the airport in Geneva. That yawning character is intended to attract the 'user' and invite him/her to touch the screen. ...
Weird toast, apophenia and what makes a thing a thing
This well-known internet meme of Jesus or Mary on a toast struck me as particularly relevant while reading Brains in a vat by Hilary Putnam: "An ant is crawling on a patch of sand. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line that it traces curves and recrosses itself in suc...
Sidewalk playground
Different occurrences of sidewalk employed as a game platform, from European cities (Geneva, Lyon, Paris, Rotterdam) Quite a typology we have here with hop-scotch, tic-tac-toe, table to count point in whatever game, etc. What I've put here are only games that use the surface, for the use of shap...
Things disclose a world, also when they break
In "What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, And Design", Peter-Paul Verbeek writes that: "Things, in short, disclose a world. (...) But that this is so, according to Heidegger, generally appears only when a handy or ready to hand tool or piece of equipment breaks down. When...