Got back to this interview of Bruce Sterling about robots in 2005 and found some intriguing points: "AM: How do you think robots will be defined in the future? BS: I'd be guessing that redefining human beings will always trump redefining robots. Robots are just our shadow, our funhouse-mirror refle...
Dark data to be set free
A very interesting article by Thomas Goetz in Wired entitled "Freeing the Dark Data of Failed Scientific Experiments". It's mostly about the publication bias: what is published in research paper is only results that are positive or which have dramatic outcomes. The other goes to the lab drawer but ...
Andy Clark's on annexing technology
"Some fear . . . a loathsome “post-human” future. They predict a kind of technologically incubated mind-rot, leading to loss of identity, loss of control, overload, dependence, invasion of privacy, isolation, and the ultimate rejection of the body. And we do need to be cautious, for to recognise th...
Cardinal directions stuck on pavement
Seen last week in Paris, near République: A piece of street art (made out of stickers) that indicates cardinal directions. I know it's not meant to be an urban sign but it's a curious user-generated/DIY city elements. Standing around it for half an hour (I was waiting for a friend there), it was f...
Criticizing Paul Virilio
In Panicsville: Paul Virilio and the Esthetic of Disaster, Nigel Thrift highlights the problematic tone of Virilio's work on modernity (his book City of Panic in particular). The author raises two issues: - Virilio's arguments are more jeremiads than an answer, which reminds me of Adam Greenfield s...
Mini street art
Mini street art seen last week in Amsterdam, a little door+street number plate that we encountered while wandering around. Yet another thing to add in the list of objects stuck on street material. Beyond classical stickers and graffiti, the mini-doors is a quite intriguing move. ...
Game vest to simulate impacts on torso
There is an article in Technology Review about tangible interfaces for video-games by Erica Naone. It's basically about a vest (called 3rd Space) that aims at bringing more realism to the game experience by simulating impacts. It's based on pneumatic cells which produce impacts of various strength ...
Cognitive mapping of various means of communication in 1996
In The social representation of telecommunications, Leopoldina Fortunati and Anna Maria Manganelli explore "common knowledge of telecommunications". In a sense, they try to reconstruct how technologies of information and communication "have been metabolised in the system of social thought, and the ...
P&U computing: Special issue about movement-based interaction
The last issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing is devoted to movement-based interaction. The 7 papers address what is referred to by a plethora of terms such as "physical interaction, embodied interaction, graspable interfaces, tangible interfaces, embodied interfaces, physical computing and i...
Registrations for LIFT are now opened
We recently opened the registration for the LIFT08 Conference. The program is still taking shape, we will announce few things soon (especially the next graphic design ;) ). ...