For those who read the Michel Houellebecq's latest novel, there is this intriguing quote "computer motherboards, which, when filmed without any scale indication, evoke odd futurists citadels"... which immediately made me think of this wall observed in a shop in Lisboa, Portugal. In French: "les ca...
Upcoming speeches in Lyon, Torino and Basel
October is a busy month, here are the blurbs of 3 talks I am going to give in the near near future: Citic (Lyon, France) - October 15 I'll be on a panel about how the usage of digital technologies and the hybridization of the digital and the physical will influence our relationship to space. SHARE ...
My super quick notes about William @greatdismal Gibson's "Zero History"
As discussed in his speech at the Cadogan Hall, few days ago (see write-up here), William Gibson's work is grounded into three interesting principles: His approach to science-fiction is not about trying to predict the future, it's rather about the present. He doesn't write about a distant future a...
Deconstructing Gartner's "hype cycle" myth
Using this sunday afternoon to work on a book chapter, I was brought back to this peculiar tool created by Gartner called the "Hype Cycle"... defined in Julian's comments the other day on the near future laboratory blog as: "The Gartner Hype Curve, where whatever the future is, it is sure to be ov...
Scouring dot come era tech magazines in search of product ideas
(pic by Mando Gonzales) An interesting story from an old issue of Wired that I found on my shelf this morning: "Morgan had become convinced that there was plenty of gold left behind when the rush ended in 2001. The idea took root in fall 2003, while he was reading The Victorian Internet, Tom Standa...
Feedback viz in public space
There seems to be growing and conspicuous increase of feedback indicator in public space, based (or not) on PPT metaphor. Seen in London last week. Why do I blog this? documenting the circulation of artifacts from one space to another, and how public space is influence by this. It's funny to see ...
"Ethno-mining": combining qualitative and quantitative data in user research
Jan Blom told me yesterday about this approach called "ethnomining", a mixed methods approach drawing on techniques from ethnography and data mining. It comes from Intel and you can get a description about it called "Ethno-Mining: Integrating Numbers and Words from the Ground Up by R. Aipperspach, ...
Playful10 talk about game controller evolution
[slideshare id=5291045&doc=playful2010-nicolasnova-100926125947-phpapp02] Here are the slides from the talk I've giving at Playful 10 in London last Friday. The talk was a quick overview of the project Laurent Bolli and I are conducting about the evolution of game pads. Btw, this project has its ow...
My (quick) notes from Playful10, London
Gameification. Points. Badges. Gamepocalypse. External rewards. Every day the headlines about games remind us that there must be more to games than these keywords. The game industry has sometimes a bad navel gazing habit... which is why it's good to attend event such as the playful10 conference in...
Micro-transport devices
This kid suitcase with wheels and a leash encountered last thursday at London Heathrow airport perfectly echoes with this weird "suictase blade": Why do I blog this? documenting peculiar means of (micro-)transport. ...