2000, 2001... all these famous years depicted in science-fiction and anticipatory media pieces were so pervasive that they shaped brandings lots of cultures (Peru above, France below). At certain times, 2000 evoked flying cars, neural connections or Mars colonization (and certainly not Y2k angst)....
Crafting stuff to engage people with the future
(Picture taken from Wired Magazine Artifacts from the Future) Peter Morville at findability has a nice short overview of Stuart Candy's "guerilla futurist" research which takes the form of artifacts and experiences "from the future". He basically used "postcards from 02036 and plaques honoring thos...
Externalist, internalists and contextualists
The general attitude wrt to technologies when you read press or overhear café du commerce conversations is that cell phones, the information super-highway, the Wikipedia or the invention of the wheel cause automatic and inherent "impacts". People talk about how X or Z (replace X and Z by whatever t...
"Cities are all about difficulty"
(Photo taken this afternoon on my way home in Geneva) Some good quotes from an interview of Adam Greenfield on the PicNic conference website: "I believe that cities are all about difficulty. They're about waiting: for the bus, for the light to change, for your order of Chinese take-out to be ready....
Internet pervasiveness in Peru
The omnipresence of internet cafés and network game shops is incredible in Peru. Even on the Altiplano, around 3800m, far from tourist footprints, you can get fast internet connections. The vocabulary of these is also fantastic: "speedy internet", "speedy veloz", etc. Coupled with cafés, laudrom...
Old but still with a future
Not that I am interested by car technology but this article in The Economist tackles how the internal combustion engine, a 100 years old technology, is not dead at all and still has a future. That quote struck me as particularly relevant: "Old technologies have a habit of fighting back when new one...
Wifi totem in Geneva
Totem to reveal the presence of open wifi in Geneva. A basic urban item of architecture to reveal the presence of invisible radiowaves. With the gorgeous ((o)) symbol. ...
Defensible space in Peru
Defensible space produced with lower-end means in Cuzco, Peru: shards of glass and cactus as a deterrent to jump over that wall. The next occurence is less complex but also shows the use of glass: See also here and here. ...
Ethnographic outputs for design
Working lately on how a course and a seminar concerning how ethnography can produce relevant and adequate material for design, I read "The ‘adequate’ design of ethnographic outputs for practice: some explorations of the characteristics of design resources" (by Tim Diggins & Peter Tolmie) with great...
Yahoo-like logo
Does that yahoo-like logo seen in Cuzco (Peru) help people to be more confident with the product/service delivered in that shop? The reliance on existing font to promote your brand always amazes me. ...