I've always been curious about the location where people (citizens or visitors) place the center of a city. You can define it as an area but also at specific points. You have different ways to explore this question: Asking people what is the point they would refer to as the center of a city. Th...
A synchronicity: Design Fictions for Asynchronous Urban Computing
New dispatch: "A synchronicity: Design Fictions for Asynchronous Urban Computing" by Julian Bleecker and myself has just been released. It's a discussion between the two us from the Situated Technologies Pamphlets series, published by the Architectural League. This series aims at exploring the imp...
Lift @ Citilab in Barcelona
Last saturday at Citilab in Cornella, near Barcelona, Fabien and myself organized a "lift @ home" event. A one-day long workshop, this event was called "Hands on Barcelona's Informational Membrane. It was part of a series of seminar about the new practices as well as the visions and issues around t...
Digital traces and tourism
Yesterday in Sierre, I gave a talk about the use and implications of digital traces for tourism services. Slides are on Slideshare. [slideshare id=2312286&doc=etourismforum2009nova-091021135319-phpapp02] The point of the talk was the following: we're seeing the advent of location-based services and...
Ubiquitous obama representations
Following Julian, different forms of Obama representations that I refer to as "Obamania" in my Flickr stream. The "Obama" pizza in Paris: Street graffiti in Saint Etienne and Geneva: An ad poster in Paris: Why do I blog this? these iconic representations are quite interesting in terms of divers...
GPS failed pattern: wrong door
I think it would be good to start a catalogue of weird "failed GPS paths" patterns. The one above could be called "right way, wrong door". The other day I Geneva, while going to a seminar, my iPhone GPS gave me this curious set of information that I liked a lot. I was looking for a building I've n...
Upcoming speeches and workshops
Some events where I'll be speaking at or be involved in as an organizer. Perhaps an opportunity to meet up some readers, I generally do not publicize this but some of you asked me to keep them posted. Next wednesday (October 21st), I'll be the keynote speaker at the Swiss E-Tourism Forum in Sierre...
The evolution of the "amateur" figure
Raw notes from a presentation by André Gunthert at the Geneva University of Art and Design the other say: Amateur photography appeared around 1880, after the transition between silver to silver-chloride... which led to photojournalism and scientific photography such as the work of Albert Londe. Cu...
Science consultants in sci-fi shows
ON Sci-Fi wire, there is this curious description of how science consultants have been called to work in Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica: "former Star Trek writer and creator of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore revealed the secret formula to writing for Trek. He described how the write...
Information convergence
A korean letter box, a great example of a how a certain object acts as a focal point for information flows: letters go in the box and announcements/ads are stuck on the object itself. ...