Being interested in technical objects and futures research, I have listed here various approaches that I find interesting (it's not exhaustive). Artifacts from the future (Wired) In each issue of Wired magazine, at the end of the book, there's a page called "artifact from the future" that consists ...
Narrow versus extra-large streets
Two extremes: Montpellier (or... how to drive a car in narrow medieval streets) versus Los Angeles: Be sure to check Zota's blogpost which show that the opposite is also true. ...
Weeknotes 108
The week was short because I took few days off in the South of France to relax a bit, read some books, visit old cities and focus on reviewing projects from my students at the University of Art and Design in Geneva (HEAD-Geneva). They basically had to conduct a short field study about a topic of t...
Making intentions explicit through social media
An interesting diagram by John Battelle found in the June issue of Wired UK (and pointed to me by Rémy) Called "How the check-in extends the great database of human intentions", this categorization describe how user intents are made explicit by various platforms. It shows of social media make them...
Augmented Reality B&W footsteps
How Augmented Reality was portrayed back in the days. The evolution with B&W graphic landmarks: Circa 1992 (Source: T. P. Caudell, and D. W. Mizell, “Augmented Reality: An Application of Heads-Up Display Technology to Manual Manufacturing Processes”, Proceedings of 1992 IEEE Hawaii International C...
Bill Buxton on "The better we do, the bigger the problem we make"
Bill Buxton's column in Business Week are rare but always intriguing. The latest dispatch offer interesting remarks: "what to do when an idea or product gets traction and starts generating a bunch of revenue. First, show restraint on the self-congratulation front. Next, invest a significant proport...
Traffic light impersonation
Seen in Lyon, yesterday. The smiley affordance again... on a traffic light this time. Anthropomorphism with symbols and colors. ...
Lift10 recap
Last wednesday, we did a debrief of the previous Lift10 conference in Geneva, with partners and local guests. It was an occasion to give a very quick and punchy wrap-up of what speakers presented at the event:[slideshare id=4533357&doc=lift10recap-100618032308-phpapp01] ...
Urban futures: from science-fiction to design fiction
Yesterday evening, I gave a talk at the Cinemathèque suisse in Lausanne. There was an event organized by the swiss radio and Les Urbanités about movies and cities and my speech was before "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam. The talk was called "Solar progeria versus renaissance of urban fictions" and it was...
A robot called Gerty
Finally had some time to watch Moon by Duncan Jones yesterday evening. Certainly a good sci-fi movie with different implications to ruminate and ponder. Slow and with a nice music. I found the props quite curious and not necessarily super showy. One of the most intriguing feature of the movie is c...