How to behave if robots rebel

Via nxtbot, How to Survive a Robot Uprising by Daniel Wilson is a funny resource on how to behave in case if robots rebel.

If popular culture has taught us anything, it is that someday mankind must face and destroy the growing robot menace. In print and on the big screen we have been deluged with scenarios of robot malfunction, misuse, and outright rebellion. Robots have descended on us from outer space, escaped from top-secret laboratories, and even traveled back in time to destroy us.

Today, scientists are working hard to bring these artificial creations to life. In Japan, fuzzy little real robots are delivering much appreciated hug therapy to the elderly. Children are frolicking with smiling robot toys.

It all seems so innocuous. And yet how could so many Hollywood scripts be wrong?

So take no chances. Arm yourself with expert knowledge. For the sake of humanity, listen to serious advice from real robotics experts. How else will you survive the inevitable future in which robots rebel against their human masters?

Of course it's humour but we might see this kind of stuff in the future:

DESTROY OR DISABLE EXPOSED SENSORS

Sensors are by far the most vulnerable, exposed parts of any robot. Destroy or disable outward-facing sensors such as cameras. A handful of dirt, mud, or water will suffice. It is hard for a robot to wipe mud from its eyes when it has whirring buzz saws for hands.

My favorite advice is certainly "SEARCH THE HOUSE FOR UNUSUAL ITEMS: Check the robot's quarters for stashed weapons, keys, or family pets".

Why do I blog this? apart from the funny aspects and the fact that I like this kind of drawings, some slogans ('resistance is futile') made me think about Anti-Pop Consortium (scifi hip-hop from NYC). In addition, it's interesting to see how underlying messages about technology and robots like this are beginning to be disseminated in various ways.

Gameplay ideas for the new nintendo console controller

Gamasutra has a good post about the mysterious question : "What genres and types of games do you think will be most suited to the recently revealed Revolution controller?. There are some interesting ideas developers came up:

I thought up ideas like kayaking and being a matador as a joke, but I then realized that I would love those games! -Jeff Bridges, WALB-TV

My big fear is that the Revolution is going to over-popularize shallow physical gaming such that everyone starts doing it and suddenly cooking simulators and orchestra-conducting games are going to be popping up on all formats. -Tadhg Kelly, Lionhead

To me, the promise of the new controller is that it allows new types of games. The question that should be asked is not "How can we do what we've been doing on this controller?" but rather "What does this controller allow that was not possible or not elegant previously?" -Johnnemann Nordhagen, SCEA

The Revolution is likely to become the premier platform for most kinds of avatar-oriented games (first-person, third-person action vs. more abstract genres) because of the detail and immediacy that the wireless controller brings to these kinds of games. Actions like firing guns and swinging swords are fundamentally more complex than what we can represent with our traditional controllers. I would say the interesting part is not what new genres will come about, but how most existing genres will be transformed by this. -James Hofmann

Two words: Light Saber. -Anonymous

Why do I blog this? There is a nice pattern in the answers, oscillating between creating new gameplay or incorporating new ways of interacting in previous games (Duck Hunt, RTS, FPS...). In this context, my favorite is certainly:

I believe that the Revolution controller will not only forever change the way people interact with their gaming consoles, but also the way people interact with every electronic device: say goodbye to mice as we know them… goodbye to infrared television remotes. -Oscar Wojciechowski-Prill, Gerson Lehrman Group

But I don't know whether this might or might not set a standard in tangible computing. This kind of preview is interesting but I am also wondering about the factors that would developers NOT use it (pressure from the marketing department that would like more "normal" gameplay...)

During 3GSM in Barcelona, they put wires in the streets

Maybe it's because there is the 3GSM conference about mobile phones in Barcelona: wires are not very trendy and people leave them in the streets:

Blog best-practices

The very insighitful Stowe Boyd gives a follow up to Robert Scoble's advice about how to raise more attention (and consequently send more important 'snowball' as in Stowe's terminology). I.E. it's w how to for improving one's blog and one's sphere of influence. Some excerpts:

1. True Voice -- authentic and empassioned writing, clearly expressing a consistent and value-based perspective
2. Throw Yourself Into Dialog -- Most great posts are a response to the writing of others.
3. Draw The Line, Over And Over Again -- At any given time, successful, engaged bloggers are pursuing a set of themes or topics. (...) State your position and defend it.
4. The Big Idea -- Every once in a while, work on one of those big posts, that outlines an idea that may have big implications.
5. Sharpen Your Pencil, And Then Write. (...) You should write -- at a minimum -- every day.
6. Courage -- (...) Accept the occasional (or even consistent) vitriol from detractors and nay-sayers. If you stand up and say something is great, or pointless, or the most likely trend for the future, you can be sure that there are others that will disagree, and they will be happy to say so. Fine. But you can't hedge, and middle-of-the-road platitudes or cautious optimism
7. Technology -- (...) Learn how search engines work, and do the obvious things. Expressive titles, especially with people's and products' names help greatly. Tagging with detailed terms helps search engines and people alike. By all means, make your blog visually pleasing, accessible, and easy to read. Use graphics when appropriate, such as screen shots or diagrams. Link to all the people and stories you reference, and include people discussed as tags. [My favorite but hard to follow on a regular basis -nicolas]
8. Timing Matters -- I am not suggesting blowing hot and cold on themes, but rather try to build on stories when they are still new and in people's thoughts.
9. Human Sized Pieces -- People are busy, and so your posts should generally not be 20 page dissertations.
10. Respond to comments -- (...) Engage them when they come. But never feed the trolls.

Why do I blog this? actually I don't aim at following all of these, especially my blog is first a repository for what I keep track of (yes that's why it's a HUGE MESS here) but I found some ideas interesting. I like what Stowe Boyd writes, relevant insights about to improve new media communication.

At the same time, News Scientist has a paper about the opposite: How to keep your site anonymous! :)

Notes after the 3gsm gathering of mobilists

Yesterday at the 3gsm gathering of mobilists organized by Rudy De Waele and Gotomedia, Fabien and I met various practionners in the field of mobile applications/location-based services. Interesting people and various projects like minifizz or my favorite: a Ghost Detector that works on cell-phone (made by Future Platforms who also worked on Twitchr that Matt Jones presented at Lift):

Many paranormal investigators believe that fluctuations in Electro-Magnetic Frequences (or EMF) might indicate paranormal activity. Our application, built for mobile TV specialists WireTown, looks for these fluctuations and interprets them on a mobile phone screen as ghostly presences. It factors in regional issues and variations and compares the reception of users on the same network, flagging up expected peaks and troughs and linking them to a needle-and-gauge readout on the handset. But it's more than just an on-phone novelty: building on the huge success of shows like Most Haunted and Derek Acorah's Ghost Towns on LivingTV, the application lets its users interact with a TV broadcast, producing an always-on link between viewers and a live show for the very first time.

Apart from that Markus Angermeier proposed the idea of mobile hotspots like taxis wandering around in cities offering a free wifi access. Just like mobile phone booth that would offer a seamless and wireless connection (!?). Markus is an accessibility expert, creative director design for Aperto’s, consultant for Plazes (mobile phone demo and brainstorming on proximity-based scenarios).

Alex Kummerman presented us his ideas about location-based/mobile social software that we tried lately and pointed us on Michel Simatic for discussing ideas about games, mobile platforms and multi-user issues.

We continue our discussion with Russell about the issues related to techno-push in the context of location-based services. According to him, phone carriers and vcs are very reluctant to invest in that domain because they saw that it did not work (!) with the project they saw (pure techno-push lbs like restaurant-rating system or virtual post-its or "where is my buddy in the vicinity?"). The reason for that was very often bad scenarios/use cases (not user-centered).

Jaakko Villa, CEO of idean research in Finland quickly described us his user experience company.

Finally, one of the attendant described us the atrocious journey he had from the US to bcn. He had to be rerouted to Milano because his luggage was sent there. This seems to be avery curious moment in which what we discussed at the blogject workshop: object may become first-class citizen in the sense that a human being has change his behavior accordingly with his/her own artifact.

Video Games usability evaluation

The last issue of the journal of usability studies has recently been released. Among other papers, there is one about usability evaluation and game development:Do Usability Expert Evaluation and Testing Provide Novel and Useful Data For Game Development? by Sauli Laitinen (Journal of Usability Studies, Issue 2, Vol. 1, February 2006, pp. 64-75)

In sum, game developers were then asked to rate the findings of a usability test and give other feedback about the methods used and the results gained. Some results:

Practitioner's Take Away Traditional usability expert evaluation and testing provide novel and useful data for game development. All the usability specialists who participate in the usability expert evaluation of a game do not necessarily have to be double experts. When designing a game usability test it is important to notice that thinking aloud and interrupting the player are not always possible. Design the test so that there is a mixture of think aloud and uninterrupted play. The game developers are interested to learn about the user experience. Use post-test questionnaires and other survey methods to study the user experience. (...) In addition to the usefulness and face validity of the methods it was studied whether the usability experts participating in the game usability expert evaluation should be double experts. It was found that there was no significant difference in the number or the rated relevancy of the problem the gamer and non-gamer usability specialists found.

Why do I blog this since I work on user experience evaluation of video games (sometimes involving usability testing), this paper offers some thoughts about it. The field of usability testing in games seems to be more and more formalized lately. However, I have doubts about some of the issues the author raise. For instance using post-test questionnaires and other survey methods to study the user experience. I find way better to use interview (first open interviews and then semi-structured ones with probes); I also finf very useful to have self-confrontation of gamers to a replay of what they did. Of course, the cost of doing that is high but I found more valuable data from this kind of verbalization, coupled with both logfiles/games data and videos of players. Maybe, this is because we had enough time to do it and because I tend to favor the mix of both qualitative and quantitative data (in research and R&D projects but also testing).

Shelter capsules to relax

I'm in Barcelona (for this) where I just discovered this Flotarium concept: a spaceship-looking sensory deprivation capsule full of water and salts to create optimal buoyancy so that people can float and relax.

The design is impressive. And few minutes after discovering this, I ran across this amazing napmosphere (via): a modular system meant to be like a cocoon - providing a place of shelter.

This seems to be an intriguing trend.

High tech, kids, interactive toys and the "why" question

Yet another article about how toy makers push high tech for tots, nothing so new there but it tackles some issues related to this phenomenon:

"The cool thing about that is that kids are role-playing what they see around them, and they see their siblings using digital cameras and using digital phones," Rice said. "They see their parents using those, and so that's what they want to role-play with." (...) Newborns may be too young for plug-and-play TV games, but that doesn't mean they're left out of the digital revolution. VTech, for example, has a high-tech toy aimed at newborns, the Explore & Learn mat -- where infants are introduced to numbers, letters, colors and shapes as they touch various parts of an electronic but machine-washable play mat. (...) The toys are popular not only because they help impart cognitive and emotional intelligence, but also because they involve parents in the process.

"When kids are that little, parents are one of their favorite playthings, so having their parents' time and interacting with their parents is great," Rice said.

It also underline a very important trend:

"Today's kids understand computers and the technology from the get-go. It's part of their world; it's like the air," he said. "They don't question it; it's just there."

Why do I blog this? I am wondering about this would impact the relation society has with technology. Anne discussed the issue of the "inevitability" of technology from the designers point of view; in this case here it's a bit different since it's a reflection of what market researchers perceived from kids' behavior towards technology: as a natural component of their world.

Chips under the skin to control an ipod

Curious chips that go under the skin as explaines by the ACM Technology News:

Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) presented a chip that is implanted in a user's forearm to function as an audio signal transmission wire that links to an iPod. Many of the presentations featured devices that conserved power, though this chip goes a step further, harnessing the human body's natural conductive properties to create personal-area networks. It is not practical to wire together the numerous devices that people carry with them, and Bluetooth connections fall prey to interference, leading scientists to explore the application of the human body as a networking cable. The Korean scientists augmented an iPod nano with their wideband signaling chip. When a user kept his finger pressed to the device, it transmitted data at 2 Mbps, at a consumption rate lower than 10 microwatts. Researchers from the University of Utah also presented a chip that scans brainwave activity by wirelessly streaming data through monitors in the hopes of creating prosthetics that quadriplegics could operate with their brain waves, though both projects are still in the preliminary research stages. (...) These chips are not something that will be included in one of Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs' Macworld keynotes anytime soon.

Positions available at our lab

We are looking for two postdoc positions (post-phd) at our lab: 1) Three year position on the development of interactive furniture that augments learning in small groups. One of the projects will be about tables that reflect group interactions . 2) Three year position on the development of learning technologies aimed at students who rarely sit on a chair: apprentices working most of the week in a company and going one day at school. These technologies have to be more integrate in their physical environment (context aware devices, ambient displays, ...) Contact: pierre dot dillenbourg at epfl dot ch

RepRap: Replicating Rapid-Prototyper

RepRap: Replicating Rapid-Prototyper.

The RepRap project is working towards creating a universal constructor by using rapid prototyping, and then giving the results away free under the GNU General Public Licence to allow other investigators to work on the same idea. We are trying to prove the hypothesis: Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor. (...) A universal constructor is a machine that can replicate itself and - in addition - make other industrial products. Such a machine would have a number of interesting characteristics, such as being subject to Darwinian evolution, increasing in number exponentially, and being extremely low-cost.

A rapid prototyper is a machine that can manufacture objects directly (usually, though not necessarily, in plastic) under the control of a computer.

An experimental prototype at LinuxConf Australia 2006:

Check the work in progress on the reprap blog.

The quotes gives some ideas of the scenarios:

I have no need to buy a spare part for my broken vacuum cleaner when I can download one from the Web; indeed, I can download the entire vacuum cleaner. Nor do I need a shop or an Internet mail-order warehouse to supply me with these things. I just need to be able to buy standard parts and materials at the supermarket alongside my weekly groceries.

Kids, toys, interactivity and the next big thing

The NYT gives a list of digital electronics between adult technology and children's play:

Fisher-Price, synonymous with Elmo and Power Wheels, will introduce a digital music player and digital camera for children ages 3 and older that will be sold during the 2006 holiday season.

Tek Nek Toys will show off a small digital music player with built-in speakers and flashing lights, called CoolP3 Fusion, for children 4 and up. Emerson Radio will introduce a SpongeBob SquarePants speaker system for MP3 players and SpongeBob SquarePants digital camera.

In perhaps the most extreme example of the trend, a company called Baby Einstein will introduce a baby rocker with an MP3 adapter and speakers. (...) No wonder, perhaps, that last year Hasbro introduced a digital video camera for children ages 8 and older and Disney introduced an MP3 player for children as young as 6.

Executives at Fisher-Price, a division of Mattel, said the company's MP3 player and digital camera, both priced at $70, are specifically designed for young children, with a rugged design that can survive repeated four-foot drops and big easy-to-use buttons that simplify the technology.

The Kid-Tough Digital Camera, for example, has two view finders — much like a pair of binoculars — rather the single window found on the adult version; two large handles to steady it before shooting a picture; and a two-step process for deleting unwanted pictures verses the four- or five-step version on a typical camera.

That's what happen when toy companies marketed digital electronics to "tweens". The article describes how toy designers took kids' skills into account as well as the need for a ... hum.. "contextual help":

Because not all preschoolers can read a song title before hitting the play button, the Digital Song and Story Player relies on easily recognizable icons to symbolize each song, like a star for "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" or a barn for "Old McDonald."

Both products take a minimalist approach. The digital camera has only five buttons. "We analyzed what kids did with these products and what appealed to them and threw out what they didn't need," said David Ciganko, vice president for product design at Fisher-Price. (...) With both technologies, however, it is mommy and daddy who will have to do some of the accomplishing. A parent's help is required to download new songs on the digital music player and upload photos to a computer before printin

Finally, it describes one of the most important concerns:

Marianne Szymanski, creator of Toy Tips, a research firm based in Milwaukee, said that for the most part digital electronics promote a solitary pattern of play, for example, a child sitting alone listening to music on headphones.

"I am not saying tech is bad, but we need toys that encourage social interaction in the preschool years, not those that don't," she said.

Why do I blog this? It's interesting to see this trend of having more and more adult features in toys. Now I think the next step is to introduce more interaction on top of those interactive toys, just as it happened on the web with social software. The next big thing is definitely social software for kids (expanding the idea of myspace, cyworld...), like having some object-centered social software to share your neopets, your game scors, habbo hotel design...

Julie Mehretu's paintings: futuristic environments

(via), Julie Mehretu - Psychogeographic paintings:

The twelve paintings in Julie Mehretu: Drawing into Painting, curated by Douglas Fogle and originated at the Walker Art Center in 2003, are densely layered works that describe a futuristic environment capturing the sense of our time in history. (...) Mehretu’s works draw from those traditions yet her image of the urban environment depicts a post modern city. Her paintings are built from the juxtaposition of different styles of marking, each with their own character, identity and history. These dense compilations of marks create overlaps and transparencies. The resulting layered compositions exude an energy that is consistent with contemporary society. She depicts a world that is in constant motion, a world that draws from the past as it looks toward the future.

Check this one: Julie Mehretu, “Excerpt (Suprematist Evasion),” 2003, ink and acrylic on canvas, 32 x 54”.

Why do I blog this? I like these representation of (data? artifacts? vehicles? city?) flows. Wouldn't it be a nice metaphor for a physical representation of what we used to call cyberspace, a la hertzian tales? I like this concept of "invisible topographies" (see here or here).

Similarity in on-line communities

In two interesting papers, Ludford and others discuss the importance of similarity in on-line communities:

In face-to-face interaction, people become friends with others who have interests and demographics similar to their own. This notion, supported by empirical sociology research, has not yet been widely explored by researchers studying online communication. If the same principles hold in the online world, the results could improve online communication forums. New technology could funnel those with similar (or complementary) interests to places where they could exchange ideas online.

"Studying the Effects of Similarity in Online Task-Focused Interactions", Cosley, D., Ludford P.J., Terveen, L.G., GROUP 2003 conference

"Think Different: Increasing Online Community Participation Using Uniqueness and Group Dissimilarity", Ludford, P.J., Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., Terveen, L.G., Ac, CHI 2004

Why do I blog this? I use this kind of material in a report about on-line communities creation and maintenance I am writing currently.

Technology forecasting strategies

This morning in the train I skimmed through a neat report called ""strategies in technology forecasting and roadmapping" by Corporate Executive Board (this doc can be bought here). The document summarizes approaches to implement roadmapping practices to evaluate technological developmentopportunities with respect to internal capabilities and external conditions. Some excerpts I found relevant:

Firms utilize technology roadmaps to process information gathered from forecasting activities and create a visual depiction of internal capabilities, future objectives and how they may be reached in terms of existing market and competitor conditions.

APPROACHES TO FORECASTING

1. Extrapolators believe that the future will represent a logical extension of the past. For this group, large-scale, inexorable forces will drive the future in a continuous and reasonably predictable manner. Thus identifying past trends allows for a rational prognosis of future trends.
2. Pattern Analysts believe that the future will reflect a replication of past events. This is based on the assumption that trends and events occur in identifiable cycles and predictable patterns.
3. Goal Analysts believe that the future will be determined by the beliefs and actions of certain individuals and institutions. Thus the future is best projected by examining the stated and implied goals of these trendsetters and decision-makers, i.e., the longer-term implications of their goals.
4. Counter-Punchers believe that the future will be a result of actions and events that are essentially unpredictable. This thought process approaches the future by monitoring technical and social changes then identifying a range of possible trends and events. Flexibility is inherent in this approach.
5. Intuitors believe the future will be shaped by a complicated mixture of factors – trends, random events and the actions of key trendsetters and decision makers. This group sees no rational technique for forecasting the future, therefore it is best to gather as much information as possible and rely on information processing to handle change as it occurs.

Reference to find:

Vanston, John H. and Lawrence K. Vanston. “Planning Tools for Informed Decisions: Technical Trend Extrapolation.” Technology Futures, Inc. White Paper.

Why do I blog this I am currently trying to formalize a bit my activities related to technology forecasting, that's why I am reading/blogging these sort of cases... The report also describes a methodology to do technology roadmaps (still have to work on this part).

Projects review for the Cluster of Digital Entertainment Companies

Tomorrow I have to go to Lyon, France. I was asked to be part of the scientific committee of the "Pêle de compétitivité: Loisirs Numériques" (i.e. Cluster of Digital Entertainment Companies). Video game companies and research lab worked in the past month on common project about Research and Development issues that they could work on together. The idea is that one project is proposed by at least 2 companies (developpers or editors) and one research lab. Project have to be submitted to get some funding (States + Regions) for Feb 15th and tomorrow is more giving some ideas, thoughts, comments, critiques so that projects would be better suited for this deadline. The final choice is of course up to the state + regions joined into a kind of "state innovation agency".

I am looking forward to see (and comment) those projects!

Bruce Sterling's talk at LIFT06

Here are my notes from Bruce Sterling presentation at LIFT06: Spimes and the future of artifacts by Bruce Sterling. Some exceprts which are very insightful in terms of what would be a "world-with spime", the point of his next novel:

so... now the challenge for the year is to try to describe in a novel what its like to wake up in a world of spime, i try to get this cultural experience down on paper, i will have characters on paper that will be surrounded with spimes

what different does it make between the world i describe and the world with spimes: the primary advantage of a spime world is inside my head because i no longer inventory my positions in my head, i don't care about what i own, there are all inventoried to other magical inventory-voodoo, a spimming process for which searchin/sorting works with a hosted machine

so i no longer remenber where i put or find things or they cost... an so forth I just ask and then I am told, with instant real time accuracy... we have an internet of things with a search engine so i no longer search for my shoes in the morning, i just google them and as long as machines can crunch complexity, this interface makes my relationship to object much simpler and more convenient that today! in a way that it never was before and if it does not it will never be adopted, it is not stable not a universal system, everyone will have their own reaction to spime with extreme conditions, conditions of catastrophy, of extreme poverty... and complete material lost... evacuation camps, prisons... the ultimate versions: clean room, lifesupport systems in hospital, true bohemian madness, complete collamity between people and objects

where do i expect it to come from: from where it's like now, there won't be big decisions, but a natural evolution from the world of digital devices people already carry: laptop, mp3 players camera phones, wands and the wifi, broadband that are serving them in location and the global internet and this big social generated objects, social applications

and now I am trying to write a novel where somebody wake up in the moning unexcited about this, not excited, unexcited... new things saying hello, all things dying off, ghosts, shopware, possessions are waiting creation or their shipment to the junkyard

Some of the questions also address how it's going to be like:

- daniel k.schneider asks: "a preview question: in your novel what would your characters encounters as major problems, because a novel needs problems"

it may be dramatic to have a book without problems, it's not a utopian system, it will be in 30 years, will last liek 20 and then would be replaced by another society.., so my characters would have 2 types of problems: the legacy of the past they will try to reform with their spiming systems and the difficulty of this new protocracy, other things coming in that will make their system tearing apart... there will be new problems due to this technology... i expect them to have protocratic problems: objects will work and other not, state of the art means break down next month, cutting edge will mean borken down last week

- alexandra deschamps-sonsino: do you expect people to have different emotional responses compared to today's objects?

yes of course, i suspect people will have an emotional response which departs the object per se and kind of bleeds over into your records over the departed objects and your plans to have another objects. I have a very similar emotional response to anovel manuscript because I began my career on a manual typewriter so i can recall when a holographic manuscript with sweated blood over was like absolutely vital and valuable "i have got the original manuscript!": that's gone, there is no original manuscrit there is no even orignial file! you're lucky if you have a file that you can send to the publisher and everybody comes back "wow this "bruce sterling treasure dot pdf" BUT it does not mean that i care less about my book but rather that i care about where i got the book, where the book is moving... so my book becomes less physical and more relational, the more like a social process and you feel very differently.

imagine tableware or cars or appartments, things you bought at ikea... yes the construction of emotions change radically and may become more intense like the teddy bear you had when you 6 months never really leaves you, you can get another one, an absolute physical replica and if you could do that would you really want it? if you have the perfect record of the teddy bear and can make another one that is practically identical do you need the teddy bear ot is the teddy bear just a hardcopy of a teddy-bear supports system? and if thats' the case, isn't it the support system that you are nostalgic about? i remenber how ive got that bear on ebay and then i saw it on amazon and here is the record on the paypal transaction and not you! your child! it's as truggle and that's why I am paid to write novels!

Pervasive Games and CSCW

New uses for mobile pervasive games - Lessons learned for CSCW systems to support collaboration in vast work sites by Matthew Chalmers and Oskar Juhlin, paper for the workshop about gaming at European CSCW in September 2005. The paper brings forward the idea of advances in pervasive games research (mostly location-based games) as of benefit for specific mobile work where a vast site is both topic and resource to get the job done. They discuss how place-based annotations and information sharing could possibly improve individual work, collaboration as well as learning.

recent research in pervasive gaming demonstrates principles and lessons that can be applied more generally in CSCW systems for mobile work in vast work settings. There are similarities between many pervasive games and mobile work in vast settings since both have locations as resource and as topic, and more general issues to draw on with regard to how a large unfamiliar space becomes a place that one has experience of; that one understands in a social and practical way, and can interact in.

The similarities are:

• Many forms of mobile work include collaboration and a focus on the geography both as a topic and a resource in the work. The size of a work site influence the way work is done. A vast work site has the consequence that, workers have to move around to handle tasks, finding colleagues to enable collaboration is difficult, organisational procedures are difficult to relate to specific local objects, movement in vehicles negatively affect possibilities to communicate with locally available colleagues, and mobile workers become more solitary than co-located workers.
• Coordination is then achieved through negotiations between different localities that take into account the changing situation in each locality

The articles gives example of collaborative activities for which space and others' location is important: snow clearance in airport + road + bus driver's.

The authors then argues that

games do not just support the use of locations as resource in mobile game play, but also establish collaboration on finding and marking locations, and building up experience and understanding of those locations fit into a larger picture of social and technological interaction. (...) Some of the games above support context dependent gesture recognition. It includes two dimensions of context dependence. (...) We see strong and useful parallels with the situation of workers who create their work within organisational rules but also within their wider technical, social and environmental setting. The challenge for future research is to allow such design potential to be realised in ways that build on current work practices, and yet let people change those practices for the better as they use our technology to go about their work in their way in their work community.

Why do I blog this? this is very close to what we think too :) Our take is rather to study how players collaborate using these games so that we can understand how collaboration might be affected by location information (this is actually my phd thesis). This paper is very relevant to my phd word since it fills a kind of missing link about why using a pervasive game to inform CSCW practices.

Moving Pictures: tangible manipulation of videos

Moving Picture is a project by Cati Vaucelle and others at the MIT Media Lab, Media Fabrics group.

Moving pictures: Looking Out/Looking In is a robust, tangible, multi-user system that invites young users to create, explore, manipulate and share video content with others. The Moving Pictures concept consists of a video station containing a set of two cameras, a number of tokens, a screen and an interactive table. Moving Pictures enables a meaningful, spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing. The station supports multiple input devices and group interaction, encouraging collaborative creation.

DIGITAL MEDIA / SPACE AND TIME QUESTIONS

We look at how pre-teenagers learn cinematic language, (reverse, reaction, different shots, notions of space and time) and we focus on the issues that resulted in the design: how do pre-teenagers cut a movie so that the audience thinks there is temporal continuity or so the audience is conscious of a jump in time spatial- how do pre-teenagers cut a movie so that the audience gets a strong sense of the arrangement of 3d space temporal and spatial - how do pre-teenagers match cuts in a movie (an action happens and they cut to another view right in the middle)

About forecasting, intelligent fridge and emotions

In the BBC article The business of future gazing by Spencer Kelly, there are some pertinent elements about forecasting ideas:

"So if I'm tracking what people are starting to do research and development on today, by going to conferences and reading technical magazines and stuff, I've got a fair idea of what's likely to be around, and I can guess fairly accurately how long it's going to take before it comes. (...) "Then using common sense you can discount the ideas, like internet fridges, which are never going to take off. [Ian Pearson] The idea of incorporating a computer, which has got a lifetime of about a year, into a fridge which has to last 10 years just doesn't make any sense, so you can say there's probably no real mass market for internet fridges." [Of course I like that, the 'internet fridge' has always seemed to be dull IMO]

In fact, the intelligent fridge is just one of many inventions we were promised, which failed to take the world by storm. Of course it is much easier to explain why something did not work, than trying to predict what will work in the future. (...) But even while laughing off the internet fridge and the flying car, today's futurists continue to make outlandish predictions. (...) "You can get really focused on technology and the latest innovation, but the fact is the future is about emotion. It's about how people feel about technology, it's about how people actually want to live, and that's what really makes the difference." [Patrick Dixon] (...) The futurologists are not trying to make them happen, they are just considering the implications of them happening.

As Adam Greenfield says on Anne's post about forecasting and design, it's rather heading towards being a "critical futurist, exploiting some of the potential you're diagnosing in the current, scenario-based futures planning model."