Julian Bleecker on WMMNA

There is a very dense and relevant interview of Julian Bleecker on WMMNA. The range of topics described there is amazing, some excerpts I like and can be taken as "seed content" of the near future laboratory:

"If the project of the digital age is to make everything that we have in "1st life" available in 2nd life, then I think we're on the wrong path. Laminating 1st life and 2nd life isn't about creating digital analogs. It's about elevating human experience in simple and profound ways. (...) Finding compelling ways to make 1st life legible and meaningful in 2nd life is probably one of the most fascinating, provocative experiments of the digital networked era. (...) to find experimental vectors that move towards a set of experiences and provocations that link 1st life and 2nd life so that there is a kind of effortless divide, so that it is possible to occupy both simultaneously. Not by having a connected phone so that you're wandering down a gorgeous, baroque alley in Vienna while staring at your mobile screen, trying to get Google Maps to figure out where you are — I imagine something much more translucent and less literal. (...) The kinds of experiments that will help us imagine and create a more habitable, playful world are far more provocative than what anyone trying to make their quarterly numbers will offer. These experiments must question conventional assumptions, find ways to encourage and appreciate whimsy, and recognize that pragmatism got us the world we have now. (...) The kinds of experiments I do are ones that tell stories about worlds that may be, or world's I wouldn't mind occupying myself, or cautionary stories about possible near futures that make me nervous."

And this leads Julian to describe a current project we have (Julian and I):

"turn critters — specifically, in this case, a pet dog — into interaction partners in digital worlds. We're imagining what a near-future would be like if the partners with whom we interacted were the other occupants of our world, such as pets. We're making a dog toy for a friend's one-eyed dog that will manipulate the actions of a Dwarf in World of Warcraft. So there you would have a somewhat playful provocation — pets playing in World of Warcraft. The experiment is less about actually creating a pet playable version of that very complex online game — we don't suppose for a minute that a dog can play World of Warcraft in the sense of pursuing the goals of the game or comprehending the through-line. But certainly a dog can control a WoW character to the same degree that they can control and manipulate a favorite rag-doll chew toy. This is a test balloon, floated to begin imagining-through-construction a context of participation between pets and humans in the new networked age."

Why do I blog this? well this not surprising I totally agree with Julian's criticisms and discourse about the hybridation of material/digital environment, 2nd lives and stuff like that; this is essentially things we discussed and we feel as important to push further. The pet dog in World of Warcraft is one of these experiments that might timely lead to presentations (and eventually a report). But, what is important before is maybe to make it more articulate, so let's wait a bit.

Infrastructures: appropriation, empowerment and reflection

Infrastructures and Their Discontents: Implications for Ubicomp by Scott D. Mainwaring, Michele F. Chang, and Ken Anderson, Ubicomp 2004, pp.418-432. The paper is an interesting demonstration of how infrastructures often taken for granted by "users" draws important questions, practices and problems that can be useful to reflect on in ubiquitous computing design.

"To approach the study of infrastructure from an ethnographic perspective, we conducted an exploratory field study of people for whom infrastructure had become visible due to some form of active engagement (rejecting, augmenting, or caretaking). From considering together individuals as disparate as homeschoolers, gated community dwellers, and voluntary simplicity advocates, a number of challenges and opportunities for ubicomp emerged in terms of appropriation, empowerment, and reflection. (...) seeks to understand how an infrastructure is perceived and conceived, emotionally understood, and interacted with from the first-person perspective of its users"

So, what emerged? I tried to summarize the main point and what it means for ubicomp:

"Appropriable infrastructures: Consumers use the infrastructure, but they don’t own it – they cannot appropriate it. (...) Using the infrastructure can sometimes involve actually inhabiting it (...) Ubicomp is often understood in terms of habitable infrastructures, be they smart homes, or urban districts overlaid by location-based services. (...) Purveyors of such ubicomp environments would be wise to market them in terms of life-style and identity, leveraging the allure of being able to plug into completely designed system and magically transform one-self, or at least reinforce desired aspects of one’s identity. (...) Empowering infrastructures: Ubicomp infrastructures have the potential to be similarly powerful, amplifying human capabilities through integrating many mechanisms of sensing, inferencing, and communicating. (...) Reliance on infrastructure, however, creates its own problems and concerns. Our study of discontents illustrates how empowerment in some dimensions can lead to at least perceived disempowerment in others. (...) The challenge, then, as we see it, is for ubicomp systems that seek not to automate or even augment/amplify human skills but to exercise and celebrate them, to encourage active engagement, and provide resources to individuals and communities for continuous change and exercise. Reflective infrastructures: Connecting to an infrastructure often brings with it the risk of noise. This noise may be in the form of nuisance, as when the infrastructure delivers the unwanted along with the wanted (...) calm ubicomp – even calm, secure, reliable, univocal ubicomp -- may not be sufficient, at least not in a context of concerns over temptation and self-doubt in one’s self-control."

Why do I blog this? There are very pertinent ideas here, needs more reflection about how to deepen different investigation regarding space, infrastructures and people's behavior. Also, I highlighted the part about non automating because it rings a bell with conclusion of my research and quite fit with the vision of design I try to propel.

The user experience of infrastructures

(picture taken in Lyon few weeks ago; in english: "eau" is water, and "gaz" is gas)

"ubiquitous computing technologies are ones through which people encounter and come to understand infrastructures. As Star notes, infrastructure is “sunk into” other technological systems and systems of practice. Mainwaring et al have noted that infrastructure may itself be a site for negotiating social roles or for marking social categories, but our concern here is more the ways in which infrastructure manifests itself as an aspect of experience. The presence or absence of infrastructure, or differences in its availability, becomes one of the ways in which spaces are understood and navigated. At conferences or in airports, the seats next to power outlets are in high demand, and in a wide range of settings, the strength of a cellular telephone signal becomes an important aspect of how space is assessed and used. As we develop new technologies that rely on physical but invisible infrastructures, we create new ways of understanding the structure of space"

Williams, A., Kabisch, E., and Dourish, P. (2005). From Interaction to Participation: Configuring Space through Embodied Interaction. In proceedings of the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2005) (Tokyo, Japan, September 11-14), 287-304

On a different note, what about the visibility of infrastructures, how to make flows more explicit? (this is rather a not for myself).

A Digital Future Landscape Terrain?

In the last issue of architectural design, there is a paper by Lorens Holm, Paul Guzzardo entitled "Is There a Digital Future Landscape Terrain?". It's about "lasernet", an interactive installation which aims to be "a model for exploring landscape terrains that establish ‘agora’-like meeting places as a basis for electronic exchange and progression". This part of the paper caught my eye:

"We want to foster participation and criticality. We propose re-mix platforms as the sites for collaborations between farmers, milkmen, managers, constables, contractors, builders, designers, artists, social scientists, even anyone with an interest in the land. We need a social science practice (what we did not have for lasernet) that will survey rural vox popular with the same statistical rigour as we use for soap–sex–war, to incorporate vox in the re-mix platform. We need a future technology that will sensor the environment – imagine crop-dusting the land with microsensors – to monitor environmental shifts in food-chain ecology, in biodiversity, and make visible how these are effected by land use. Without aestheticising them. Make the networks readable so that we can insert our stories into them, and so make them landscape stories. Let the landscape speak, let the landscape become the screen and platform for our stories."

RoboDS

Turn your Nintendo DS into a mobile robot for $99 with roboDS (see video):

"his is a pre-order for RoboDS kit for DSerial2 multiple-interface card for NDS. It is an open robot platform for NDS that can be controlled via NDS Wi-Fi connection using a web browser interface. Install your own wireless camera onto RoboDS and monitor your home remotely! Wire-up your own laser pointer for extra flair, but use it responsibly!"

Why do I blog this? this is the sort of thing I qualify as "intriguing". But why the hell is this interesting? What is funny is the majority of websites and blogs that deal with gadgets never stress why such artifacts have a potential value (apart from their engineering/technical value). So, few points: (1) It raises the question of the "robot" identity? why is robotDS a robot? in this case it's called so because the wheels allows the DS to move around. Well, if a robot is defined by locomotion that's a bit limited and sad; plus it does not account for the current convergence between robotics and ubiquitous computing. (2) Modularity: the idea of turning a mobile device into something more complex through such as add-on is intriguing. Building artifacts or services on top of others artifacts is pertinent and curious especially when done in a DIY way.

Critical issues about EEG in gaming

An article in The Economist about brain-controlled devices and games. What is good here is that it shows a critical viewpoint on a topic that it not so easy. It's basically about Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky, two Cal-based companies, which aims at measuring brain-wave activities and turn them into actions in a computer game (using a technique called electroencephalography: EEG). Both seems to get rid of existing problems (lower number of electrodes, no use of gel) and they claim that they can mimic facial expressions. For people who happened to put electrodes on one's head, this seems to be an achievement; back ten years ago it was really a pain to put this dirty gel in people's hair and the possibles actions were quite low. Neurosky even want to have only one electrode!

So what's the connection with games? it might be close to the current market:

"According to Nam Do, Emotiv's boss, those applications are most likely to be single-player computer games running on machines such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. In the longer term, though, he thinks the system will be ideal for controlling avatars (the visual representations of players) in multiplayer virtual worlds such as Second Life."

More interesting are the problems that prevent designers and developers to create such systems:

"First, although human brains are similar to one another in general, they are different in detail, so a mass-produced headset with the electrodes in standard locations may not work for everyone. Second, about one-third of the population is considered “illiterate”, meaning in this context that not even a full-fledged medical EEG can convert their brain activities into actions. Third, electrical signals generated by muscular activity such as blinking are easily confused with actual brain-wave readings. Wink at a fellow player at the wrong moment, then, and you might end up dropping that sarsen you have lifted so triumphantly from the fields of Salisbury Plain on the toes of your avatar's foot."

Why do I blog this? interesting material about the progress concerning the use of EEG in HCI and gaming, there are lots of projects in the field (e.g. targeting "augmented cognition"), things evolve slowly. In addition, this brings me back to my cognitive/neuroscience studies, playing with this sort of material.

Street TV

"Every fine summer night, television sets can be seen outdoors, used publicly, on the busy old sidewalks of East Harlem. Each machine, its extension cord run along the sidewalks from some score's electric outlet, is the informal headquarters spot of a dozen or so men who divide their attention among the machine, the children they are in charge of, their cans of beer, each others' comments and the greetings of passers-by"

Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities".

Street TV is a phenomenon that always impressed me, the only area where I've seen it were ethnic blocks in France and in LA. Why? because it's about my fascination towards entertainment in cities and how such a device is shared in a public space. It's generally even more fascinating when people have put couches or chairs around the set, creating some sort of temporary chillzone down the street. IMO, it's neither good or bad and the picture above (taken in Geneva yesterday) is definitely not meant to show that people then trash their TV set after watching it on the streets (nor that watching tv there leads to such behavior).

How I use s-curves

A definition of technology s-curves drawn from Clayton Christensen (in this paper):

"The technology S-curve has become a centerpiece in thinking about technology strategy. It represents an inductively derived theory of the potential for technological improvement, which suggests that the magnitude of improvement in the performance of a product or process occurring in a given period of time or resulting from a given amount of engineering effort differs as technologies become more mature. (...) It states that in a technology’s early stages, the rate of progress in performance is relatively slow. As the technology becomes better understood, controlled, and diffused, the rate of technological improvement increases . But the theory posits that in its mature stages, the technology will asymptotically approach a natural or physical limit, which requires that ever greater periods of time or inputs of engineering effort be expended to achieve increments of performance improvement. "

Why do I blog this? Given that I use this tool more and more often in talks, workshops and work, it's good to get back to the literature and understand it more thoroughly. In some work recently I mostly used it to describe evolution of certain technologies such as location-aware systems, 3D virtual worlds or mobile gaming. Generally, the point of is to describe a succession of waves starting from an idea as shown on the picture below. For instance, with the "location-awareness" idea, the first wave of mature products was navigation systems (quite often found in cars with garmin and tomtom devices), a second wave concerns place-based annotations systems or people finder (in that case, nothing's really mature in the same sense as the first wave). Besides, I am well aware of the limits of such curves but they offer a relevant way to discussion diffusion of innovation.

Criticisms towards 3D VR in 1998

Kaplan, F., McIntyre, A., Numaoka, C. & Tajan, S. (1998). Growing virtual communities in 3D meeting spaces , Proceedings of the First International Conference on Virtual Worlds, pp. 286 - 297. The paper describes essential or desirable features needed for community formation in "3D virtual world systems" and discusses how the requirements are met in existing text-based and 3D environments. IMO the paper, though old, is still relevant when it comes to criticizing different dimensions:

An attractive 3D interface is assumed to be sufficient to encourage the emergence of a community. (...) The promotion of 3D virtual world systems for this use appears to be motivated by the assumption that the ’familiarity’ of the world – with its physical spaces and embodied avatars – will make it more accessible and intimate than more abstract environments. (...) is the ’meeting place’ model of community necessarily the most appropriate one for exploiting the potential of 3D virtual worlds? If we adopt this model, what can the 3D world contribute in terms of improved interaction quality which can justify the extra cost of the client? Are there other techniques we could also use to promote community-building in our virtual worlds?

The paper goes on by identifying "some essential or desirable features needed for community formation – Identity, Expression, Building, Persistence and Focus of Interest". For each of them, it criticizes how the virtual worlds available in 1998 perform and propose improvements. Though the problems they raise have been solved (identity or building are now well taken care of), some are still present:

"Expression support in 3D virtual worlds is problematic. Gestures and facial expressions are often exaggerated, and do not necessarily map well to different avatar types (if your avatar is a fish, how do you convey surprise or happiness?). Moreover, it appears that users do not easily mix text and graphics. (...) observation suggests that users are likely to be more tolerant of the limitations of a tool if they have a valid external reason for using it. If we want people to use our 3D virtual worlds instead of the simpler, swifter channel of IRC, we need to look for applications in which the use of a 3D virtual world provides an added value, rather than merely an encumbrance. Finding suitable applications is a wide-open research area. One possibility would be to move away from the ’meeting space’ model towards the ’role-adopting’ model, and use the power of the 3D world to create a compelling context for interactions"

Why do I blog this? gathering some elements for a presentation about the evolution of 3D digital worlds (to provide some context for a seminar about SL). The last point about ’meeting space’ versus ’role-adopting’ model is quite relevant (see WoW versus SL... although Habbo works pretty well with that model).

"Hybrid World Lab" workshop

People interested in the hybridation between the material world and digital representations (virtual environments? second lives?) might check the Mediamatic workshop called Hybrid World Lab. The event is scheduled for May 7-11 in Amsterdam.

Mediamatic organizes a new workshop in which the participants develop prototypes for hybrid world media applications. Where the virtual world and the physical world used to be quite separated realms of reality, they are quickly becoming two faces of the same hybrid coin. This workshop investigates the increasingly intimate fusion of digital and physical space from the perspective of a media maker.

Some of the topics that will be investigated in this workshop are: Cultural application and impact of RFID technology, internet-of-things. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) and ambient intelligence: services and applications that use chips embedded in household appliances and in public space. Locative media tools, car navigation systems, GPS tools, location sensitive mobile phones. The web as interface to the physical world: geotagging and mashupswith Google Maps & Google Earth. Games in hybrid space.

(Picture Fused Space - SKOR - Wachtmeister 2)

Why do I blog this? I am going to be a trainer/lecturer at that workshop, along with Timo and Matt Adams. Right on spot on some current near future laboratory explorations! It's going to be a good opportunity to gather some thoughts and work on them with people. People interested can have a lookhere and register there.

A very curious plug

(Via j*b), this Plug project by Josh Lifton. He defines it as "A power strip imbued with sensing, computational, and communication capabilities in order to form the backbone of a sensor network". The artifact looks pretty nifty:

An example of data that can be extracted is presented:

The text that follows on their website describes the picture in a more comprehensive way:

"Data taken from the snack vending machine on the third floor of the Media Lab the night before TTT. There three distinct events. First, someone walks by and hits the machine (see vibration graph). Second, two people in conversation buy a snack using a dollar bill. Third, the change from the dollar bill is used to buy the same snack. For each purchase, there are two current spikes, one for the exchange of money and one for the actuation needed to dispense the snack. Conversation ensues throughout. Note that the current and voltage plots are low-passed, peaked versions of the actual AC measurements. All data have been scaled appropriately for ease of viewing."

Why do I blog this? understanding the story behind data/interactions, that's curious and very apropos when thinking about the hybridation between 1st life and 2nd lives.

Dream-inspired algorithms and robots

Speaking about replay tools and information gathered in the past (see previous post), this paper entitled "What Do Robots Dream Of?" (by Christopher Adami) features this curious bit:

"How would dream-inspired algorithms work in terra incognita? A robot would spend the day exploring part of the landscape, and perhaps be stymied by an obstacle. At night, the robot would replay its actions and infer a model of the environment. Armed with this model, it could think of--that is, synthesize--actions that would allow it to overcome the obstacle, perhaps trying out those in particular that would best allow it to understand the nature of the obstacle. Informally, then, the robot would dream up strategies for success and approach the morning with fresh ideas."

This inspiration from dream is based on the discovery of cognitive processes that occur during sleep:

"There is now strong evidence in human sleep research showing that performance on motor (1) and visual (2) tasks is strongly dependent on sleep, with improvements consistently greater when sleep occurs between test and retest. This is generally believed to be related to neural recoding processes that are possibly connected to dreaming during sleep (3). However, when one considers human dreaming, it is not a simple replay of daily scenarios. It has complex, distorted images from a vast variety of times and places in our memory, arranged in a random, bizarre fashion (4). If we are to model such activity in robots, we would need to have some form of "sleep" algorithm that randomizes memory and combines it in unique arrays."

Why do I blog this? gathering some thoughts about histories of interaction and the usage of asynchrone data to foster more adaptive behavior.

dataSpaces

Just had a meeting with Marc Hottinger about his dataSpaces project. Marc mapped the interactions stored in his mobile phone (communication with antennas, sms, phone calls) on a representation of Lausanne. What is interesting is the notion of "calendar" as represented on the following picture:

Not only the system gives the whole path and the list of events but it also replays day-by-day what happened (well it's difficult to show this dynamic with a picture):

Why do I blog this? because of my interest in replay tool and of course "geoware" (now that I learnt that word), I find there is an interesting metaphor here, in terms of showing the asynchronous location awareness of people in a different way than Plazes or Jaiku. In my experiments, I have always been amazed by how people can tell interesting things based on this sort of information. Their path of the path of their partners often foster intriguing discussion and it's quite pertinent to use these "informed opinions" when studying people's experience of places or certain artifacts,

Field research values

Some elements that struck me as very pertinent in Jan Chipchase's slides (from a presentation called "Always-On: An Introduction to Design Research for Everyware" delivered at Ideo, Palo Alto, 5th March, 2007). The elements that interest me are the ones that concern the transfer from field research to design, a recurrent topic in my work.

"Where's the value?

Best case: inform and inspire the design process about what (and what not) to design, supported by rich, relevant real world examples, challenge given assumptions, guide strategy, spot weak signals, and generally raise awareness across the company on a particular topic. Generate IP.

However the data inherently doesn’t have value... unless we are constantly re-evaluating the information that people need. The value comes from the conversations that happen day, weeks, months or years after the research has taken place. How do you design a study so that data from that study can be accessed long after the study, and the team members have left? The value comes from this continuous re-evaluation of what we know.

Your report is just another piece of data that people need to consider. People are smart – give them the ammunition to be smarter. Your deliverables compete with: their assumptions, reports from other sources, pre-conceptions about your research methods. Pick holes in your own research results, and give clients the ammunition to make an informed choice.

Start by delivering what people expect you to deliver. Then figure out the value added - the stuff that happens around the edges of what you’re looking at."

Why do I blog this? some good elements to think about and definitely food for thoughts for current projects.

The mapping of playing objects from one game to another

A very intriguing patent filed by 3DO eleven years ago: Networked computer game system with persistent playing objects (William M. Hawkins, Oren J. Tversky, Nick Robins, Stewart K. Hester):

Abstract: The mapping of playing objects from one game to another. In one embodiment, generic attributes of an object may be mapped to game-specific attributes. The mapping may either change or maintain the look and feel of an object. For example, a fast but lightly-armed starship in one game may be mapped to a quick but weak warrior in another game. (...) In one embodiment, the playing objects have an existence and value outside of any individual game. (...) Modification of a playing objects either inside or outside a game may be done by mutation, replication, recombination, etc.(...) In yet another aspect, playing objects are persistently modified over time. Such modifications can arise either through game play or by on-line acquisition of improvements, or by another mechanism.

Look at the examples they give:

"could be used in other programs such as screen saver, or as audio/visual addressing in e-mail messages (...) they may be viewed in a browser or traded in a marketplace. They may be represented by cards, action figures or other physical items"

Why do I blog this? There is more to read in the patent description but this is interesting for various reasons: (1) the concept of moving objects (and characters) form virtual worlds to others is relevant in terms of the user experience of how digital environments can intersect, (2) to see WHO has the patent (for the record 3DO is a defunct company), (3) the continuum between virtual spaces and physical instantiation is present, which is quite in line with current trends.

About Tufte

The Stanford Alumni has a great overview of Edward Tufte's work (written by Fran Smith). Some excerpts:

As Tufte sees it, what makes evidence beautiful isn’t artistry. “It’s all about discovering and telling the truth,’’ he says. (...) AFTER AN ENCOUNTER with Tufte’s ideas, people can never again look at a chart, a map, a scientific table or a PowerPoint presentation quite the same way (...) Like the earlier books, Beautiful Evidence isn’t an instruction guide but a statement of Tufte’s design principles: Show comparisons. Show causality. Show data in their full complexity. Document and display your sources. Above all, respect the intelligence of your audience and tell the truth. “Serious presentations,’’ Tufte often says, “rise and fall on the quality, relevance and integrity of the content.’’ (...) it’s not a single image that makes Tufte’s work memorable; it’s the mix and multitude.

Contextual note

Typical contextual advertisement drawn from the physical environment. Lots of people thinks this would appear on you mobile device (cell phone) when passing-by. If there is a digital equivalent what would be attention required: receiving a vibration? an sms? a call? The two last options already go further the attention we put on the sort of note shown on that picture.

Spatiality in Habbo Hotel + designing for open-ended play

Some notes taken after viewing the LIFT07 talk of Sampo Karjalainen (Sulake Corporation): "Open-ended play in Habbo" (video). Sampo described how Habbo is a virtual hang out for teenagers, an open environment in which you can do things, no clearly explicit goal. A bit like Second Life but browser-based (more accessible) and not in 3D, it targets teenagers. Figure are quite amazing: 7millions unique users every month, medium age: 13y.o. gender distribution: almost 50/50.

What I found pertinent is the spatial aspects of Habbo Hotel. Sampo differentiated the following "spaces".

1) Public rooms: designed by Sulake, most of the users go here, chat online with existing friends, meet new friends and "be together"+ Games inside Habbo Hotel compete/cooperate: gaming rooms, kissing booth, photobooth (polaroid-like), changing room (exchanging you clothes as quickly as possible) with the rules of the games usually explained as sticky notes on the walls.

2) User-created rooms: the most intriguing aspect and the one that makes users come back:: user's own room: every user can create their own room (design, furnitures, pets, rare items bought with habbo credits) and people express themselves. So there are also wharehouse in which people store collected items (so that the value of the items then goes up). Some activities emerged: virtual horsetable (people dress up in brown, black... play the horse and the other ones take care of them... they type in chat what they are doing "I am burshing you...", they kind of roleplay, we did not provide any items to support this but they do it), adoption houses (rooms in which you can get adopted by another user and people the role of mothers and child).

3) Activities expand outside habbo: - traders go to online auction like ebay or in schoolyards, - community websites (writing articles about what is going on, values of items, some user-created games). Sulake tries to support this: helping people to set their own webpage

Then he described some guidelines to have this "open ended play". His point is that users do create lots of interesting content for other users. It is a source of new stuff every hour every day and Sulake would not be able to create so many things. The strategy was rather to provide tools for people. How can we design to support this type of play? what is needed to support it?

Some practical ideas: 1) you need something to play with, some type of objects/type of environment. Not necessarily huge amount of items but rather the possibility to combine them in various ways. (Examples: Mii, Legos, chats) 2) intuitive interaction: if you enable the user to move and rotate/edit, it supports the play much better than what we have in classic interaction with a browser. It's also good to keep the user interface very invisible (to not cut the flow of play). 3) set up a mood for play: nobody will laugh if you do sth stupid, it should be less utilitarian 4) foster all kind of user-create goal. traditional games tend to have one dimensional goals but here it's much more interesting if the user select what he/she wants to create. The range of things that can emerge is then higher 5) still define and test likely use-cases: you need to have some ideas of things you expect to see, and test them 6) the shared social setting: it becomes much more interesting when people can comment on things created by others (for the creator and the others).

Why do I blog this? Working on some future project ideas, these insights from Sulake are very relevant in terms of studies that concern spatialities in virtual worlds. It makes me think of practices in MOO back in the 90s.

code/space by Rob Kitchin

My notes from a talk I attend at the "Digitality and space" seminar CHOROS lab: "code/space" by Rob Kitchin (National University of Ireland, Maynooth). The presenter started by this quote from Thrift and French: "[M]ore and more ... the spaces of everyday life come loaded up with software" (2002, p.309). The point of this talk was to show how, over time, the spaces of everyday life have become increasingly reliant on software (space is being virtualized, in the sense of Manuel Castells). And so much so that many spaces and the life they support would malfunction. For instance, an airport cannot work without "code"/software.

He then described the forms of code embedded in everyday life in 4 ways: - coded objects: non-networked objects that use code to function or permanently store digital data that cannot be accessed without software: "internet of things", "blogjects" as described by Julian Bleecker (automated, automatic, autonomous) - coded infrastructures: networks that link coded objects and infrastructure that is monitored and regulated, either fully or in part, by code: computing networks, communication and entertainment networks, transport and logistics networks, financial networks... - coded processes: the transaction and flow of digital data across coded infrastructure. Important when they access, update and monitor relational databases that hold individual and institutional data... can be accessed at a distance and used to verify, monitor and regulate user access: bank accounts, crime, utility usage, mortgage... - coded assemblages: they are where several different coded infrastructures converge, working together—either in nested systems or in parallel, some using coded processes, others not—and, over time, become integral to one another in producing particular environments, such as office complexes, transport systems, and shopping centers.

Some examples that has been described to exemplify this: - Home: task and routines of everyday home life are augmented, mediated and regulated through computers - Buildings: parts of infrastructures are mediated by software such as lifts and doors... building management systems ("you sometimes need to reboot the lift, if the software fails, the lift fails, it's not longer a physical artifact") - Utility infrastructure (water, electricity...): might appear dumb but are all controlled and managed using software - Road infrastructure: traditional regulatory technologies (conventional signs, traffic lights) are complemented with "smart media" (automatic altering of traffic light sequences, updating of road speed signs, automatic logging of vehicular congestion, variable toll charges, cameras designs to discipline behavior...)... aim to monitor ad regulate the transport system in real-time. See for instance GCM travel - mobile telematics infrastructures: cars and the highway communicate with each other to adapt traffic management. State and emergency vehicles will generate data with respect to other traffic (vehicle speed, location, heading), weather (wiper operation, lights on/off) and transmit this information to a central control... analysis of the generated data is then used to deploy road and maintenance crews and communicated to other drivers: highways message signs, 511. - rail: various rail systems are reliant on code for its day-to-day operation - airport: ticket purchase online (even there), check-in is verified by your code, baggage is route through barcode and tags... the plane itself is a fully software entity... - communication: most communication takes place via coded infrastructures, facilitating time space compression, convergence by allowing instantaneous communication across distrance, reconfigure where people live. - work places - retail and consumption: intertwining of the coded assemblages of financial services, logistics and shop leisure facilities

(More about it in the following paper: Code and the Transduction of Space by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin)

So, what's the difference? about software and everyday spatialities:

In thinking through the work that software does in the world we have found it useful to rethink of the concept of space. So Kitchin stepped back and described the evolution in the space/place research. There has been an evolution: Involves a shift from ontology (what something is) to ontogenesis (how things become). From space to spacing. This is part of a longer process of conceptualising space: implicit then absolute then cognitive then relative (materialist, metaphorical: virtual) and nowawdays performative. Spacing is not ontologically secure, space is always the process of becoming, it is always a process of taking place. Space in these terms is a practice; a doing; and event; a becoming - a material and social reality forever (re)created in the moment. Space gains its form, function and meaning through practices and it ceaselessly emerges.

How does it emerge? through what Kitchin described as "transduction of space" = technicity is the unfolding or evolutive power of technologies to make things happen: agency (Mackenzie, 2003). Software possesses technicity (a cell phone can link people across spaces). Software helps solving problems or even automate the solving of a problem. Space is constantly being bought into being "as an incomplete solution to a relational problem". Where the relational problem is an encounter between people and environment and the solution, to a greater or lesser extent is software. Relational problem include undertaking domestic tasks, traveling between locations, conducting work, practicing consumption.

The 4 objects described at the beginning of the talk (coded objects, infrastructures, processes and assemblages) beckons new spatial formations into existence. Kitchin differentiated two notions: - "Code/space" are spaces dependent on code to function - wherein the materiality of everyday life and its attendant virtual coding are mutually constituted. The relationship between code and space is dyadic (without code, the space would no be transduced as intended: hence "code/space" rather than "code space"). Old non software means of doing things have sometimes disappeared. - Coded space is a transduction hat is mediated by code, but whose relationship is not dyadic. Software mediates the solution to a problem, but it is not the only solution

Code/space are non-deterministic and non-universal. How code/space operates and is experienced is open to rupture: it's an embodied process, through the performances and interactions of the people within the space (between people, and between people and code). It should be seen as a complex system in state of becoming, with emergent properties, it then needs to be analyzed as complex systems with emergent properties. Kitchin is currently exploring this issue in airport.

The regulatory environment of code/space is increasingly that of automated management (in the sense that it is enacted by technologies that are automatic/autonoumous in nature). Rather than an external surveillance system working to self-discipline, capture is an wholly internalized feature of an activity (Example: buying a ticket is the way you're surveyed: it's internal to the system). There is a move from oligopticon to panopticon or surveillance versus capture.

Conclusion: software will increasingly reshape activities and how we perform them + the material functioning. Code makes a difference in part because it alternatively modulates space. We need to develop appropriate tools for conceptualising the relationships between software and space.

Why do I blog this? This way of establishing a new typology of relationships between space and software (technology) is very intriguing. There seems indeed to be a need to address the topic of 1st life/2nd life connections. Some personal remarks: - Good to see that the blogject meme also spread enough so that geographers start to feel this will change the way we inhabit space. - I am not that familiar with geographers work but it seems that there is a good overlap with stuff I am interested in (studying how technology reshape spatial practices). Some work to use in further projects about spatiality! - From a cognitive sciences standpoint, the metaphors used by this field seem to be very well in tune with situated action and ethnomethodological way of describing human action (this is not apparent in my notes, it was rather due to the examples the speaker employed).

Space and coordination of actions

Some elements to be added to my blogpost serie about space and cognitive interactions (which startd here and end there): The term “space” does not only refer to the topological and geometrical constraints of the environment, nor to the elements that constitute a place. Spatial features like distance between people or the repartition of objects in the environment are affordances to structure actions and interactions between partners of a team. They indeed act as visual markers of possible interactions with a person or an artifact, cues to draw inferences or information to rely on to make a decision.

This has led researchers and designers to insist on the importance of taking space into account in CSCW (Spinelli et al., 2005). Coordination of action is indeed shaped by the environment in a various ways: - environmental constraints (such as corridors and doors) leading to ‘channelling’ and harmonisation of activity; - conversely, the complexity of the environment (enclosure, lack of a clear view, physical obstacles and dead-ends) providing impediments to regular and coordinated action (such as moving in a straight line); - familiarity with the environment and its configuration providing cues to coordination (e.g. well-known landmarks); - ability to display aspects the environment through external representations such as maps and routes, providing an essential background to a location-awareness tool (a map for annotation) and aids to group coordination.