Les internets à ciel ouvert, temporary visibility of infrastructures. "Infrastructure is both relational and ecologicalâit means different things to different groups and it is part of the balance of action, tools, and the built environment, inseparable from them. It also is frequently mundane to ...
"A theory of wondering why"
Attribution theory is a subdomain of social psychology that looks at how people explain social behavior. It's quite interesting and I had to deal with it in my PhD research but it might be pertinent to look at how it can be applied to nonhumans (i.e. objects). Let's look for instance at the "theory...
Value profiles of objects
In his paper entitled "Everyday robotics: robots as everyday objects", (Proceedings of the 2005 joint conference on Smart objects and ambient intelligence: innovative context-aware services: usages and technologies), Frederic Kaplan defined the notion of "Value Profiles" to describe how the experie...
Julian Bleecker on WMMNA
There is a very dense and relevant interview of Julian Bleecker on WMMNA. The range of topics described there is amazing, some excerpts I like and can be taken as "seed content" of the near future laboratory: "If the project of the digital age is to make everything that we have in "1st life" availa...
Infrastructures: appropriation, empowerment and reflection
Infrastructures and Their Discontents: Implications for Ubicomp by Scott D. Mainwaring, Michele F. Chang, and Ken Anderson, Ubicomp 2004, pp.418-432. The paper is an interesting demonstration of how infrastructures often taken for granted by "users" draws important questions, practices and problems...
The user experience of infrastructures
(picture taken in Lyon few weeks ago; in english: "eau" is water, and "gaz" is gas) "ubiquitous computing technologies are ones through which people encounter and come to understand infrastructures. As Star notes, infrastructure is “sunk into” other technological systems and systems of practice. M...
A Digital Future Landscape Terrain?
In the last issue of architectural design, there is a paper by Lorens Holm, Paul Guzzardo entitled "Is There a Digital Future Landscape Terrain?". It's about "lasernet", an interactive installation which aims to be "a model for exploring landscape terrains that establish ‘agora’-like meeting places...
Critical issues about EEG in gaming
An article in The Economist about brain-controlled devices and games. What is good here is that it shows a critical viewpoint on a topic that it not so easy. It's basically about Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky, two Cal-based companies, which aims at measuring brain-wave activities and turn them into a...
RoboDS
Turn your Nintendo DS into a mobile robot for $99 with roboDS (see video): "his is a pre-order for RoboDS kit for DSerial2 multiple-interface card for NDS. It is an open robot platform for NDS that can be controlled via NDS Wi-Fi connection using a web browser interface. Install your own wireless c...
Street TV
"Every fine summer night, television sets can be seen outdoors, used publicly, on the busy old sidewalks of East Harlem. Each machine, its extension cord run along the sidewalks from some score's electric outlet, is the informal headquarters spot of a dozen or so men who divide their attention amo...