In "Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible", Arthur C. Clarke describes these 3 laws that are relevant wrt foresight research: " When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is ...
GPS bottles and people representation of space
"Message in a Bottle" is an intriguing locative media art project by Layla Curtis: "Fifty bottles containing messages were released into the sea off the south-east coast of England near Ramsgate Maritime Museum, Kent. The intended destination of the bottles is The Chatham Islands in the South Pacif...
'Mobilis In Mobili'
... is the motto of Captain Nemo in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne. It actually means "Moving in a Moving thing"... showing how change occur through a changing medium, very well in line with one's behavior in a "worldchanging" environment. ...
"-Ware"
"Urban Computing" is defined by Kingberg, Chalmers and Paulos as "the integration of computing, sensing, and actuation technologies into everyday urban settings and lifestyles". That picture taken last week in Geneva appears to me as strikingly evocative of "urban computing". The suffix "-ware" ad...
Playing PONG against a fish
The idea of "new interaction partners" that we develop at the near future laboratory more and more echoes with projects here and there. For instance, Florent Deloison has an intriguing project about playing PONG with a fish (in french). The system is based on mormyrophone, a device designed by biol...
Verne or Wells
As Jules Verne expressed it about H.G. Wells in "Invasion of the Sea": "We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on very scientific bases. . . I make use of physics. He invents. I go to the moon in a cannonball discharged from a cannon. Here there is no i...
Mechanical TicTacToe
An intriguing Tic-Tac-Toe game played by a robotic system constituted of two mechanical arms, designed by Guillaume Stagnaro: ...
Burglar vocabulary: location-based tagging
Last week in Brussels, I ran across this signs on the wall of that house: It quickly reminded me my parents' house on which we found the same marks. At that time, I remember the discussion with local police who told us that burglars use codes to annotate house. It's generally tags like this, with ...
Protecting one's electricity
Different ways to protect one's source of electricity: Well covered in a french train: With duct tape at the airport in Brussels: Why do I blog this? in a time where we have our pockets full of mobile devices that require electricity, it's always an issue to find a power plug. This is even more i...
Automation, light and door sensors
Last week I had two interesting encounters with gestural interactions. The first one was in the super-fancy double decker train that goes from Geneva to ZanktGallen/Zurich. In that train, there is a sensor to open up the doors between wagons. People, if they're slow or if they don't know that there...