In a paper called "Trying Not to Build the Same Old Spacecraft: Structural and Political Issues in Design Inheritance" (the pdf article is damaged so see the slides from the talk), Charlotte Linde explores the concept of "design inheritance", i.e. "how people and institutions attempt to plan for in...
Towards grassroots consumer electronics recycling
The digital space is not only made of bits but also of such phenomenon ...expexted to find a new home Curiously enough, my encounters with devices like this (not to mention office chairs, desktop pcs, screen, dishwasher) down the streets in Geneva (among other european cities) makes me wondering a...
Kids and technology
Reading this marketing study from MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft, I was more interested by the qualitative aspects than the quant stuff. The part that I found the most interesting is the following that shows how "Young people are not geeks": ""technology" itself is irrelevant to kids and young peop...
The designer's stance
Paul Dourish about the designer's stance (embodied combuting), described in Where the Action is: "while system designers have control largely over just the representations encoded in the software, the meaning of the system extends beyond simply the software to the whole environment in which the sof...
New departure with Pierre la Police
As a tribute to my first blogpost 4 years ago, let's get back to real things with some Pierre la Police stuff (a french cartoonist that I like): Taken from an exhibit with Marthes Bathori, pierre la police - "sans titre" - 2003 gouache sur papier marouflé sur bois - 46 x 34 cm Perhaps an interview...
New blog platform
As you may realize... Pasta and Vinegar has moved to a new platform/server... hosted by LIFTlab. LIFTlab is actually the umbrella network/company that takes care, among other things, of the LIFT events, consulting work... and the publication of diverse things. Other blogs are gathered under this ba...
Facilitating Serendipity or Encouraging Homogeneity
The following paper supports a claim that always struck me as pertinent and curious to think about: the fact that most (mobile) social software designed for serendipity "create a more homogeneous representation of the city by encouraging users to socialize more exclusively with those they already k...
Arkanoid game facade?
This facade spotted in Lyon this morning looks like a breakout game. Please do photoshop it. ...
How communication and identity play out through "portable objects"
Read this interesting essay this morming: Ito, M., Okabe, D. and Anderson, K. (2007). Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places, In Rich Ling and Scott Campbell Eds., The Mobile Communication Research Annual Volume 1: The Reconstruction of Space & Time through Mob...
Sidewalk edges/curb
The difference of size between sidewalk curbs, first example in Geneva, Switzerland, second in Torino, Italy: There would be a lot to say about the different sort of curbs (insurmountable, rolled, or rounded, surmountable or traversable and barrier) but here I'm only stuck by the difference of si...