Genève, rue du Diorama. Certains magasins se doivent de signaler que les produits vendus engagent la responsabilité des individus qui les utilisent. Les armurerie doivent ainsi développer un argumentaire à cet effet. Cette affiche en fournit un bon exemple. En quelques mots, on voit ici ...
"Six approaches to empirically research algorithms"
An interesting read this morning:Kitchin, R. (2014). Thinking Critically About and Researching Algorithms, The Programmable City Working Paper 5, Available at SSRN.As indicated by its title, this paper address the ways to investigate algorithms and the difficulties in doing so. Based on a...
Datahotels are the new datawarehouses
A billboard encountered at Haneda Airport in Tokyo this week. I find it interesting to observe the criteria chosen by the cloud company: we understand here that the service should be easy and that a reliable support might exist (24 hours). This looks quite common in the tech industry. Howev...
Energy Babble: networked radio broadcasting internet content
A series of figures presented in the NORDES paper about Energy Bubble. Matthew Plummer-Fernandez – who leads a workshop at ECAL this week for the IIClouds project – pointed me to this intriguing project he was part of, with fellow colleagues at Goldsmith (Tobie Kerridge, Liliana Ova...
"Real Prediction Machines"
Real Prediction Machines (Auger-Loizeau with Alan Murray and Subramanian Ramamoorthy, 2014) is an intriguing design project about prediction and anticipation based on the explosion of digital data. As explained by Auger-Loizeau:"This project explores how data and algorithms could be reclai...
New book about 8-bit reggae
Photo by Ferdinand Dervieux. A new dispatch from the Near Future Laboratory: this book that documents the curious collision between video-game culture and reggae music. It's called "8-Bit Reggae: Collision and Creolization" and it's co-published by Volumique (Paris) and the laboratory. T...
The Internet of Things at the flea market
I think it's William Gibson who said that part of his speculation process was based on thinking how a piece of technology might end up on the dusty shelves of a pawn shop. That thought came up this morning while running across these two boxes of the Nabaztag. It's intriguing to see "the se...
Green background for VFX?
A blank billboard seen in Paris. The green (and sometimes blue) blank billboards in the corridor of the Paris subway are always fascinating to me. It feels like the sudden backdrop for virtual effects. I guess there's a reason for this but this possibility leaves me curious about its pot...
Futures? An interview with Sophia Al-Maria
After the interviews of Warren Ellis and Bruce Sterling for my book about the disappearance of "big futures", design fictions, the role of science-fiction, etc. here's the discussion with Sophia Al-Maria on Gulf Futurism:Nicolas Nova: Gulf Futurism, as I understand it, corresponds to a cl...
"Computational journalism"
This idiom is new to me but I guess it makes sense these days. It's also an event ("symposium") with a live coverage here. The material in there is impressive and curious, see for yourself:"Journalists and computer scientists increasingly are working together to develop innovative methods of r...