Attributing one's failure to use (or problematic use) of a certain technical object is often refered to in the literature as the "Individual Blame Bias". In his book "Diffusion of Innovation", Rogers gave the following example: "Posters were captioned: «LEAD PAINT CAN KILL!» Such posters placed the...
Street participation
Seen in London last week, a classical form of citizen participation in occidental cities. Why do I blog this? It's interestingly ubiquitous (at least in the Camden neighborhood I was in) and situated. I like the way it frames the question in context. However, although the question seems relevant, ...
Redundancy
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Playulf09 write-up
Went to Playful last week in London. A one-day event about games and play, this conference struck me as fascinating because the organizers went beyond the classical lists of speakers from the video game industry. People on stage came from various background: web developers, hackers, geeks, blogger...
How to use a swiss power plug in the UK
It's not possible to insert this in the power plug/socket, if you try there's something that block the insertion. The trick consists in inserting something (like a key... which is super bad if you remember what you're parents/teachers told you not to do) in the ground/earth connection: ...
Are you ready for the Internet of Things?
Lots of things going on in the Internet of Things world lately. See for example, as pointed out by Marc the other day, Casagras, which stands for Coordination And Support Action for Global RFID-related Activities and Standardisation, has just issued its final report on RFID and the inclusive model...
Paul Valéry on "the conquest of ubiquity"
(The famous "Gaz à tous les étages" sign) Spent some time re-reading this fantastic piece by Paul Valéry called La conquête de l'Ubiquité ("The Conquest of Ubiquity"). Written in 1928, this short text has been quoted by Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art In the Mechanical Age of Reproduction. Thre...
Infrastructure issues for Vélib
The NYT has an interesting article about the infrastructure problem with regards to the Velib in Paris. Some excerpts I found relevant below (I've taken the picture above once in Paris, a nice Velib utterly destroyed in a cardboard box): "With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or da...
"you are here"
One of the most curious "you are here" sign, which simply that "you are here", next to the map. Seen at the Telecom Conference in Geneva few weeks ago. ...
Ben Cerveny at Urban Labs
My (messy) notes from Ben Cerveny's talk at Urban Labs which was organized by Citilab (Cornella, near Barcelona) The talk was entitled "The city as a platform: computational systems for urban society" and the basic take-away was the proposition to see the city as an Operating System. Ben is intere...