Dispersion: A Study of Global Mobility and the Dynamics of a Fictional Urbanism

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Afternoon reading: Diego Barajas Dispersion: A Study of Global Mobility and the Dynamics of a Fictional Urbanism, Episode Publishers, Rotterdam, 2003.

This publication is based on a thesis that studies global mobility and territories in dispersion. Based in Rotterdam, Diego Barajas concentrates his research on the urban dispersals shaped by migration, looking first at the Cape Verdean Diaspora and its territorial structure, and then focused on the case of the 'belhuis' - 'call-house'.

By 'territories in dispersion', Barajas refers to social habitats that are no longer physically contained in geographically continuous areas, but have been spread out and re-articulated by artificial means. The de-territorialized condition created by increased mobility - particularly by migration - had led to an urbanism of artificial re-territorializaton. This is a functional urbanism - as based on mental constructions but tangible - that is manifested in the city as fragments, micro environments of global circuits, each of which establishes its own identity, time, rules and aesthetics - its own atmospheres.

The book is great, full of nice visualization, pictures and good insights about migrants behavior towards communication. A really pertinent study about how mobility and tech are intricately connected. Besides, it's from a different point of view than the reccurent geek/business guy travelling with a laptop; here it's about a mobile diaspora that tries to keep in touch with their roots.

Marketing of High Tech Brands

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Last week, I read La grande mutation des marques high-tech (The great mutation of high tech brands) by Francois Laurent (marketing manager at Thomson. This book is not about ergonomy and interaction-design, it's mostly about marketing. The premise of the book (in french) is that traditional marketing methods are no longer efficient with high tech brands. The reason why they are inoperant is because technology innovation have to face 2 problems:

  • people do not buy so much technology because of the fast obsolescence.
  • the systems are too difficult to use (example: VCR)

After developing on various socio-cultural/economic changes (like the effect of p2p on culture consumption, linux... open source software), the author advocates for a new methology based both on soap companies (focus group and blablabla to better understand the activity/needs/thoughts of end-users which nobody thought about when designing the remote control of a VCR) and on a sociological watch. This is the crux issue: being aware of fast sociological changes in various groups. He concludes with a proposal: doing "Consumer Insight" research (in "Consumer Insights Lab"): to put it shortly it's to understand how people live, their activities... and this should be discussed by engineers, marketing people, interaction designers, ergonomists, sociologists, psychologists. It's also about encouraging people working on developing product to talk to each other (even to people in other compabies and research lab). Well we're in an age of "networked R&D" so the trend seems to propagate even in french books about marketing.

The book is interesting for different reasons. To me, since I don't know that much about marketing, I learnt some relevant stuff (like the differences between high tech brands and soap companies or how a company like thomson does). The description of the sociological changes is nice because it's given from the point of view of a marketing person but it's so classical that I found it a bit redundant with some many other books recently released. Finally the main contribution of the book is great and relevant: high tech products' potential buyers and customers should be taken into account in the developement process so that the failure of WAP or Betamax will not happen again. Of course, from my point of view it's not groundbreaking (because I deal with that issue everyday) but for people who read book of marketing or technology developers, this is crucial. It's clearly a step in this momentum about "end-user" studies. I had pleasure reading it.

technovelgy: where science meets fiction

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A great new resource I discovered lately: technovelgy:

Explore the wide variety of inventions and ideas of science fiction writers - over 775 are available on Technovelgy (that's tek-novel-gee!). Use the Timeline of Science Fiction Invention or the alphabetic Glossary of Science Fiction Technology to see them all, look for the category that interests you, or check Science Fiction in the News and watch sf come to life

Tangible Computing (but not at eTech)

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And now it's Timo's turn to talk about tangible interaction. His presentation is here. It synthetise all the different periods of interaction design and new tangible computing systems that are now... emerged. Nice pictures and good reference at the end. There seems to be a burst about this topic lately, which is good because we are eager to use those devices (at last!).

Ideas for CachBob2

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Constraints for CatchBob2:

  • a more abstract task, less spatial; with inference like people drawing conclusions from what they see/find in various contexts
  • more strategy discussion during the game, less planning/strategy before the game
  • a bit more appealing for gamers: more rewards (like displaying the object...)

Sex and Innovation

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Annalee Newitz at eTech 2005 talked about some interesting facts: how sex drives innovation. The Silicon Valley Watcher gives an account of this:

She starts with the equation: "Everybody wants porn + nobody will admit it + everybody loves tech = innovating ways to look without being seen.". She starts with talking about how yesteryear's vibrators were a kind of camouflaged technology. "I only use it for therapeutic purposes," reads an ad from 1910.(...) One of the driving forces behind VCRs was the porn industry. The VCR became a way of camouflauging porn consumption. Before 1976 you had to go to a theatre -- local people knew you were going to theaters -- a very public experience. Now people could watch dirty movies in their own homes. (...) "Porn built the Internet. It's such an obvious use of the medium; because it's so private and widely available"

Yup, sex, as well as video games and militarty stuff appear to be what drives tech innovation...

O\'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference

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O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference

O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference explores the emerging consumer and enterprise ecosystems around location-aware technologies--ecosystems that increasingly impact the way we work and play. Location-determining technologies like GPS, RFID, WLAN, cellular networks and networked sensors enable an ever-growing array of capabilities from local search, mapping, and business analytics to enterprise integration, commercial applications, and software infrastructure.

It seems to be marketing and techno-oriented, focused on the usage of LBS but not really from the HCI point of view. Might be worth anyway to have a glannce at what is discussed there.

Using PS2 pads to control missiles

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According to Michael Macedonia (CTO of the government-owned U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation), games gains more and more respect for training armed forces. A short column in Gamasutra deals with this issue. My favorite part is the following:

Currently in use is a missile system interface, the design of which is based on the PlayStation 2 controller. According to Macedonia, senior officials polled a group of soldiers about what would be their ideal method of control for missile guidance, and that design was resultant. He maintains that it is important, on both the hardware and software side, to make the technology fit the user, not force the user to fit the technology.

Why do I blog this? Actually, military material is normally way ahead video games (as well as other innovation factors like sex/cybersex) in terms of innovative interface, but here it seems that video games offered the most interesting solution first. It's nice to see that now specific products are based on a standard derived from video games. From an interaction design point of view, this kind of fact is great. I would like to know more about the development process. Well, they certainly did some focus groups and studied how people control things, with.. video games (with all thise buzz lately about serious games and military training, that's for sure). And this raises new questions like how will tomorrow's technology developers/interaction designers take into account today's use of technology. As a matter of fact, if we rely on the idea that today's styles of interaction styles is based on yesterday's way of interactings (knobs, pad...) we can assume that... in the near future... militaries will use gestural/embodied/situated/location-triggered interfaces?????????? Well let's see.

Get high IN virtual worlds

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After ordering pizza and taking picture, virtual worlds (in video games) now allow you to get high, according to the NYT.

In Narc, which is rated M, or Mature, for ages 17 and older, players control one of two narcotics officers, partners who were once separated after one became addicted to drugs. The gameplay primarily involves arresting dealers, whose drugs can be confiscated and used.

A digital puff of marijuana, for example, temporarily slows the action of the game like a sports replay. Taking an Ecstasy tablet creates a mellow atmosphere that can pacify aggressive foes. The use of crack momentarily makes the player a marksman: a "crack" shot. But using each drug also leads to addiction, which can lead to blackouts that cost the player inventory and to demotions or even expulsion from the police force, which halts progress in the game

Vow including drug effects into gameplay, that sounds interesting in terms of realism.

A Faraday cage for your cell phones

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(via), a tool to prevent yourself from being tracked:

The mobile phone pouches "Silver" and "Copper" act as Faraday cages, completely shielding the phone and preventing it from sending or receiving signals. (...) The pouch prevents the user being located or having their movements followed. Even turning off the phone cannot always guarantee this. In the possession of this personal radio blocker, a mobile phone owner can decide whether they would like to be in a spatial data model or not.A simple piece of fabric in the form of a pouch turns off a highly intergrated and technically complex appliance.The constant space-related data exchange becomes identifiable by being interrupted.

And now elephants send SMS

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Nice story on engadget

As part of a campaign by NGO Save the Elephants, pachyderms in Kenya are getting in on the action, as well. They’re being fitted with specially designed GSM/GPS collars that hold what are essentially mini cellphones, which are programmed to send SMS messages to farmers’ mobiles with the latest GPS positions of the animals. The elephants can also be tracked on the web in (near) real time via Animal Tracking System software, which gathers data from the GSM/GPS tags and makes it available via standard web browsers. All we gotta say is, we hope those elephants have a good rate plan

What's the next step?

Odor Alarm Clock

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I was unaware of this kind of technology (I am not so much into odor stuff, maybe I should contact my friends in this domain...). I stumbled across thisscent-based alarm clock.

"This clock is essential to a refreshing morning. It begins emitting a fresh morning fragrance 30 minutes prior to the alarm to create an atmosphere ideally suited to waking. Two fragrances—lemon mint and eucalyptus mint—evoke a morning freshness."

Well, just 2 fragrances... it's not enough. I think some pranksters might hack this in a nice way :)

When design takes neuro-stuff into account

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Having a former background in cognitive sciences /neurosciences, I have still some old knowledge to understand when neurostuff pops in my radar. There seems to be new trend lately: the future use of neurosciences/neuropsychology/neurocognition to design and as a news resource to build better user-centered products. A good document of this is Tom Stafford and Matt Webb'sMind Hacks. I think I read something about it but I am struggling right now to find where I've put it. Besides, the IFTF blog about the future of marketing addresses the issue of neuroethics and neuromarketing sources

Tangible Computing at eTech

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Even though I could not make it to eTEch 2005, there are plenty of ways to be aware of what happen there. Chris Heathcote and Matt Jones was one of the talk I would have attended. Both are very interesting people I just know from their blogs. Those guys work at Nokia and their 'recordable and distributable' talk is about Tangible Computing. Their slides could be downloaded here (.ppt). You can also find notes about their presentation here and here. Thank you for quoting P&V! Well, let's talk about the content. They first sketch the picture we have today: Ubiquitous computing is here, not evenly distributed, computers are everywhere, starting to talk to each other. The point is that after WIMP and overlapping windows all went downhill in terms of man-computer interaction. Users needs need new ways of controlling and understanding our digital world. The problem is that digital interactions are intangible because there are no natural affordances (see Gibson). BUT, there are NEW METHODS of interaction based on situations/touch/embodied interactions (= being in the world). THEN, they put a wide bunch of picture of Paul Dourish. They quote Dourish because the guy is one of the embodied interaction gurus. Dance Dance Revolution is a good example. Thus they present various new interfaces (Tablet PC., Smart furniture, All seeing eyes (EyeToy, AR, Human PacMan), Passive information displaye (Smart Object). They also mention NFC, near-field communications, something which I strongly believe in.

But then lies the important question: "what can we do with all that stuff?" It's all about gluing stuff together. If you are a regular reader of Chris' anti-mega, you have certainly stumbled across this glue thing. Basically, it's because computers make it easy to take inputs and manipulate.

I think they gave a proper and relevant presentation of today's situation, we have all this stuff: computers, devices, mobile things and on top of that we have webservices, interoperability, applications layers... so let's use those 2 layers to glue all our computer gizmos. I would just advocate for taking the end-user into account, trying to get what he/she does/needs/wants/dreams of...

RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and ATOM

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If like me you ever wondered about the differences between those different types of standard (usually employed for webfeeds), here is a definition by Ben Hammersley taken from his slides at ETeach 2005.

RSS 2.0 RSS 1.0 Atom
Simple, adhoc, temporary, loosely defined data, very loosely defined standard, many many uses Fantastic for machine readable lists. Useless for anything else Complex, strict, preplanned, strongly defined data, strongly defined standard, burdened with evil buzzword. Fantastic for complex document mining. A nightmare for tiny ad-hoc apps. Simple, strictly defined data, strictly defined standard, with extra architectural loving

Check his tutorial slides (pdf), it's definetely worth reading!

Mapping, GIS and Augmented Reality

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A very relevant take about mapping, GIS and Augmented Reality in O'Reilly.net by Tyler Mitchell (via the goewanking mailing list).

I want to see AR applied to my area of interest - mapping. While certainly AR has some strong ties to locational information in general, it could serve a very specific purpose in various industries using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and mapping. Many of the key data requirements for AR are readily available in GIS data managed by government and industry

Well that's something we discussed this morning in the train with fabien: how the locative/GIS community and the AR people are connected. They do have similar problems to handle but there does not seems so many cross-over. The author advocates for more connections, especially to use of 3D maps in AR applications which is indeed pertinent:

We produce a lot of maps for field crews working in the forest. It would be great if they could have those maps digitally available through AR - projected in front of them. They could find the road turn-off to their work area easier, as it gets drawn as a thick line in their display. They could see the boundaries around their areas without having to hunt for small plastic ribbons tied on trees every few meters. Or, better yet, they could fly over areas in a helicopter and look down seeing their areas outlined in red on the ground. (...) I believe it's time to liberate that data from 2D conventional maps and start getting up front and personal with it in the real world.

The final sentence is ambitious but very true, let's go back to work.