I'm on it!

Currently reading Paul Dourish's Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, which as you might guess, deals with some of the sociable aspects of computing and particularly how they apply to context.

First, let me say that I really appreciate theories of practice - especially those that are phenomenological or influenced by Wittgenstein. But despite really enjoying the book so far, I still get this sense that sociological theory and method are underestimated. But that's a problem even within my own discipline, so today I won't fault people from other disciplines trying to make do with what we have ;)

Seems I have a double-task ahead of me - convince the sociologists and the computer folks that we can do better than Garfinkle's ethnomethodology...

Hotels on the Move

Cooper Hewitt's New Hotels for Global Nomads - A provocative exhibition that spotlights contemporary hotels as the crossroads of our connected yet nomadic society and underscores their role in cutting-edge architecture and design. (via nsop)

Nice exploration of the sublime and mobility - and hotels as virtual spaces...

The Matter of Convincing Others

Two British scientists are seeking £165,000 ($256,000) to carry out a large-scale study to discover if clinically dead people really have out-of-body experiences.

Fenwick and others are not positing life after death per se, merely consciousness after death. Nevertheless, the implications are enormous. If near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences don't come from the brain, where is consciousness based? "There are two ways to view the universe," says Fenwick. "Our current world model is that everything is matter." In other words, everything that we think of as "real" in scientific terms has a physical form that can be perceived by our senses. But this model, which philosophers call "radical materialism," cannot explain the existence of consciousness, which has no physical essence. So how do we account for consciousness? "There's a little (unexplained) miracle, and consciousness arises," Fenwick says of the current paradigm.

"However, another theory proposes that the basic building block of the universe is not matter but instead consciousness itself. This is described as the "transcendent" view, a perspective shared by many of the world's religions. "This second, transcendent, view of the universe makes it much easier to understand NDEs," says Fenwick, who believes that science will eventually replace the material view of the universe with the transcendent one.

"So will this convince the skeptics? "No, nothing will, but that's OK," says Fenwick, laughing. "It's how science progresses. Any research that says you have to have a major rethink in your world model is always rejected. But it will prove that consciousness is not in the brain."

I think I like this guy! I need to laugh more often when I run into opposition to changing the way sociology is done ;)

Ottawa wasn't always so boring - or maybe I'm just hanging out with the wrong class of people

LeBreton dig unearths seamy lifestyles. A hotel latrine has given up syringes and vials used in Ottawa's 1890s drug culture.

Oh, how I miss excavating treasures from latrines and piles of garbage!

"Dating back to the 1890s, the glass syringes and opiate bottles are part of a cache of artifacts recovered from a latrine at the Occidental Hotel, a raucous bar and inn that served the working-class Flats until the area burned down in 1900. Those vials packed an opiate punch that in late 19th-century Ottawa was legal and widely used by doctors, who prescribed opiate derivatives like morphine for ailments including menstrual cramps, tuberculosis, diarrhea and dysentery. Citizen advertisements for "fine-grade Turkish opium" dating from the same period show the drug was widely available, says Carleton University history professor Bruce Elliott."

"Were the opiates for medicinal purposes? "Not necessarily," said Mr. Daechsel, who speculated the hotel may have been used as a haven for drug users seeking a break from their hard-scrabble lives. "The one thing that struck us about all of the sites that we've been involved with," Mr. Daechsel said, "is that there was just an enormous amount of liquor being consumed on that site -- whether it was wine or harder liquor or beer."

Tell me what you want to say and I'll give you the stats to prove it

From Wired: "Nearly a century ago, Franz Boas, the man known as the founder of modern anthropology, launched a study of cranial measurements of 13,000 people and concluded that skull shapes are determined more by environment than by race. It was a powerfully influential finding, because at the time, skull size and shape were thought to be connected to intelligence. Now, though, a new analysis suggests the distinguished anthropologist got it wrong: Race or, more properly, ethnicity is a bigger determinant than environment."

Whether Boas deliberately distorted his findings is not clear. But researchers think he may have had preconceived ideas about what the data should show. But Jantz and Penn State graduate student Corey Sparks used a computer to re-crunch Boas' numbers. They reported that the data actually show that race had more influence than environment on skull dimensions. "Unfortunately, research design was deficient, and his findings were never critiqued in a systematic way until recently," Jantz and Sparks said in their paper. "We're not sure if it was wishful thinking on his part before he even started the whole thing, or whether he saw these very small differences and said that was enough to prove his point."

But American Anthropologist, the journal of the American Anthropological Association, which Boas helped found in 1902, plans to publish another study in March in which researchers led by Clarence C. Gravlee of the University of Michigan conclude, "Boas got it right."

Imagining Interaction: The Art of David Rokeby

Although the Horizon Zero site is, IMHO, an interface nightmare - Issue 3, in which they take a look at the role of the artist/inventor, has some good content.

Canadian David Rokeby is a visual artist, composer, writer, and designer of software and hardware. His most well-known work is probably Very Nervous System - which is still pretty cool after all these years - and you can learn about his more recent work at the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology.

Mmmm.... pretty and smart

Plumb Design's updated their classic Visual Thesaurus. (via mefi)

Thinking in other languages

I used to be as fluent in Spanish as I am in English, but since I rarely get the opportunity to speak anymore, my vocabulary is starting to fail me. But I still think about things, and dream, in Spanish. I was just going over some stuff I wrote yesterday - for work and correspondence - and in much of it there is a language problem.

What I notice most is that if I am dealing with raw emotion or ephemeral ideas, my thoughts come first in Spanish and I translate them into English as I write - but this creates some rather sloppy and inarticulate copy. A small example: the Spanish espero means both to wait and to hope (the conflation of temporality and longing is missing in English) and I translated the word as "wait" when I should have written "hope". But if my goal is to intellectualise - to write academically - then I think in English and write accordingly. Although, when I have been reading in French or Spanish, I suspect my writing in English is less articulate.

I find it curious that if I am overwhelmed by emotion, I stumble over words in English. I just don't find the language to be as true to what I am feeling. But if I need to, or am able to, distance myself from my gut reaction, then I think and write in English.

Anyone else ever experience this?

Skater sell-out

From the Village Voice, "The Boom Boom HuckJam is a choreographed action-sports spectacle featuring the top athletes from vert skating, BMX stunt, and freestyle motocross. The BMX and skateboard athletes flow through rehearsed runs on a massive ramp set, while the motocross athletes launch through the air, pulling tricks. Meanwhile, one of several big-name punk bands, depending at which venue the 22-city coast-to-coast tour is stopping, thrashes out a live set to all the action. The sets are at least as complex as those for a Madonna show. What was once a rebel activity is now flush with corporate sponsors plying the crowd with such 21st-century snacks for the whole family as pudding in a tube."

"Tony Hawk has been skating professionally for 20 years, through the sport's constant boom and bust cycles, and he's been the top vert skater for about two-thirds of that time. Today, he is a multimillionaire with his own video-game franchise, plus skateboard and production companies. His annual income has been estimated at $10 million. He is also the father of three boys, and he lives in a large house in a gated community in Carlsbad, California. And finally, he lacks a badass attitude and any visible tattoos. All of which contribute to make Hawk an icon to skateboard fans and, more importantly, to their wallet-wielding parents. Most skaters grasp the vibe about Hawk. Says 15-year-old Luis Orozco, who attended the San Jose show, "Younger kids are coming to this event because Tony Hawk is a good father figure. He's not a punky skater that parents hate."

You know you're suffering from nostalgia when stories like this make you sad ;)

I'm terribly distracted this morning...

but that led me to a site that you'll love, Linda - The Periodic Table of Comic Books. (via xblog)

And damn that Jason Kottke ;) I can't get the following Eminem lyrics out of my head!!

lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it
you better never let it go
you only get one shot
do not miss your chance to blow
cuz this opportunity comes once in a life-time, yo

Woulda, shoulda, coulda...

The Engines of Our Ingenuity

The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. Thanks Dad!

Bits & Pieces

Thanks to everyone who pointed out this latest commercial application of intelligent fibres - it's so nice to have people looking out for your interests! One of the best things about studying emerging technologies is watching their development in real-time. I keep an archive of all the smart fabrics that make it to market - ranging from 'performance gear' for extreme environmental conditions, to anti-bacterial and odour-reducing textiles, to impossible-to-stain pants.

And I'm particularly interested in less utilitarian fashions - more akin to wearable computers - like dresses that can change colour and shape, or clothes that can communicate with each other... My list in this area is still pretty short, so if you hear of anything interesting, please let me know! (Fashion whores are most likely to come across stuff like this - usually a sidebar in women's fashion mags.)

Since this site serves, in part, as my research record, I constantly add new links and update old posts with new information. I've also been experimenting with the Personal Brain to organise my bibliography and all the bits and pieces I write as they occur to me - it's quite flexible as an archival tool, but I can't yet speak to how effective it will be in the long run ;)

On another topic, I've been fielding enough questions-of-a-more-personal-bent lately to have added a small About PLSJ section to the site. I have mixed feelings about such things, but you'll find out how the site got its name, a few things about me, and more complete contact information. Cheers!

How come we don't teach this stuff to kids?

A recent Kottke post has got me thinking about Eminem. My first reaction to all the negative attention he has received over the years is that he must be picking at some scab we want left alone - and that can't be all bad ;)

Not my preferred style of music, I opt to go straight to the lyrics and read. And with the exception of some disquieting subject-matter, they are simply stunning. Oh yeah, I'm one of those folks who thinks this guy has brilliant writing and rhyming skills.

But what I really want to know is who decides that literary "classics" are a better way to teach kids about language, society and history? I'm all for exposing people to our intellectual and creative history, but not at the expense of diversity, contemporary cultural awareness and appreciation.

Teaching first year students makes me think a lot about what we're teaching in high school. Most of these kids arrive in my class unprepared to think and write critically, or to actively engage the world around them. My prep work always involves finding current examples to illustrate the points at hand, and give them something to hold on to. University is sufficiently disorienting to most of them that the least I feel I should do is make it relevant to navigating their current space. And Eminem has helped me - and them - many times.

Smaller, damn it!

(NY Times link) IBM scientists have built and operated a computer circuit in which individual molecules of carbon monoxide move like toppling dominoes across a flat copper surface. One circuit is so small that 190 billion could fit on a standard pencil-top eraser.

"IBM said the new 'molecule cascade' technique enabled it to make logic elements 260,000 times smaller than those used in silicon-based semiconductor chips. They are also smaller than the circuits that IBM has made in the laboratory out of carbon nanotubes, which are extremely strong because of the nature of the carbon bond, and which IBM considers to be a possible alternative to silicon. The molecule cascade circuits were made by creating a pattern of carbon monoxide molecules on a copper surface. IBM moved one molecule to start a one-directional cascade of molecules, similar to the way dominoes interact. The circuits do not reset themselves."

"IBM is still years from translating the nanotechnology and quantum computing work it has done in research labs into a setting where such transistors could be manufactured and then used in products like cell phones and personal computers. 'The exciting thing is not so much that we're not there yet. The exciting thing is where we've come from,' said IBM fellow Don Eigler."

I didn't plan on doing any thesis writing this morning, but current listening dictated otherwise

Now playing, Buffalo Daughter: I, an album panned by critics but apparently not without some inspirational merit, and Spoozys: Astral Astronauts, which makes me giggle as I work.

More coffee please.

When things are not quite right

I was recently pointed towards the Uncanny Valley - which represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting.

Brings to mind a book I recently read. The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture, "The title takes its name from an essay by Sigmund Freud which deals with the sensation of 'uncanniness' as being strange and familiar at the same time." (with contributions from William Gibson, Donna Haraway, and Toshiya Ueno.)

And for D&G fans, the beauty of machines lies in the breaking down. The aesthetics of digital corruption.

Back to work

and none too soon to save my sanity!

It's been awhile since I've had the luxury of doing nothing but research, and the past few weeks have been a peculiar combination of joy and rage. Recently I've felt rather lonely, but only now realise that was an effect of place. The past week in particular presented a bunch of obstacles and frustrations - and when that happens I tend to increase my efforts. I could whine about academic hierarchies and the challenges to women in male-dominated professions, but prefer to try to do something about it. Justifying one's existence is no small task, and while I'm convinced that I am fighting the good fight - I'm not always successful, and the road can indeed be a lonely one.

So I'm grateful to resume work on a site I'm developing - creating storyboards is providing a much needed break from general academic weirdness ;)

This makes twice recently that I can't go somewhere I'd really like to - because these folks are really doing sociable computing

New Doors of Perception info:

Open Doors is a three-hour presentation of project presentations that focus on new uses of pervasive computing.

Jussi Angesleva (MediaLab Europe) Wireless communication using the whole body
Lizbeth Goodman (Smart Lab) Flutterfly: flow theory and visualisation
Rein Jansma (Zwarts & Jansma) Interactive car parks
Jeroen Kee and Esther Polak (Waag) Amsterdam realtime
Michael Kieslinger (Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) Fluid Time
Shona Kitchen / Ben Hooker (Royal College of Art) Hybrid spaces
Lavrans Lovlie (Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) Tomorrow's services
Gary McDarby (MediaLab Europe) Mindgames
Willem Minderhout (Atos Origin) New Arcania: more room for rivers
Josephine Pletts / Usman Haque (Royal College of Art) Hardspace and Softspace
Casey Reas (Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) Living Surfaces
Pedro Sepulveda (Royal College of Art) Digital Shelters
Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix (Submarine) Crisis, a multi-player game
Victor Vina (Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) Box: design your own Network
J-C Zoels & A Cervini (Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) Mobile Embodiments

+

Companies:
Appliancestudio / BBC / Be9 / BTexact / Canon / Cap Gemini Ernst & Young / Danfoss / Diesel Marketing / Eden Design / Endemol / Ericsson / Festo / Heineken / Hewlett Packard / IBM / Icatt / Ideo / KPN / Lego / LiveWork / Ludicorp / Meru / Microsoft / Motorola / Nokia / Orange / Philips / Ra.nj / Sapient / Submarine / Sony / Tarantell / TBWA / Telecom Italia / Tinlab / TNO / UN Studio.

Research labs and institutes:
Design Council UK / FutureLab Sweden / Glasgow Lighthouse / Interaction Design Institute Ivrea / Interactive Institute Sweden / MAK Frankfurt / MediaLab / MediaLabEurope / SmartLab / Ultralab / Waag.

Universities:
Amsterdam Art Center / Bartlett / Carnegie Mellon / Central Saint Martins / Columbia / Copenhagen / Cranfield / Delft / Eindhoven / Erasmus / Helsinki UIAH / Lapland / Leiden / London School of Economics / Malmo / Madrid / Michigan / Milan / Musashino / Nijenrode / NYU / Oslo / Princeton / Royal College of Art / Simon Fraser / Sorbonne / Srishti Bangalore / Toronto / Trinity College Dublin / Utrecht HKU / Vassar / Westminster / Yale.

Sociable computing, Pt. 2

A little clarification about my basic position:

Systems thinking cannot adequately account for sociality or sociability, so I don't think that notions of social systems are adequate design inspiration for sociable computing.

And yes, there are sociologists and anthropologists who would disagree - so write me if you want to know why I think this way and how I think we can do better.

Sociable computing

Given my interests in sociology, anthropology and technology, I've been following some recent discussions on social networks and sociable computing.

The weird part is seeing an almost complete lack of input from social scientists outside the field of psychology (and related disciplines that focus on cognition) or folks in the humanities and arts. In many cases, designers and engineers are working with sociological concepts that have been revised or entirely abandoned within our disciplines over the past few decades - an all too common effect of working with another discipline's knowledge without having contact with its practitioners and innovators (something that plagues all academics). Also disheartening is the apparent lack of awareness of how much social and cultural theory has evolved in response to, in tandem with, or in anticipation of, new technological developments and their place in social and cultural life. Furthermore, in definitions of the social and sociability deployed by technology developers, the focus still remains on notions of social psychology and philosophy of mind, which are often tangential (albeit informative) to the work of sociologists and anthropologists.

So what's my point? Traditional academic and industry divisions and competitions are impairing our ability to design good products.

Some of the work being done by Microsoft's Social Computing Group is promising, and I am especially fond of the Comic Chat, where "your online conversations are the beginning of an interactive comic strip that unfolds in real time. Comic style balloons display your conversation, and gestures generated by conversation semantics give your character a variety of emotions and movements." But the emphasis still remains on emotion and gesture (interesting psychological categories of inquiry) to the exclusion of social concepts of agency, or what we (are able to) do with the world. For example, no one seems to be working with (and please correct me if I'm wrong) notions of non-human or artefact agency - the ability of things to act in the world, and the subsequent reciprocal construction of people and objects. In other words, most developers are still looking to how we think and learn, rather than how we do and be.

This may seem like a trivial point, or just a semantic argument, but I would argue that the implications are quite profound as they will inevitably impact what we are able to do and who we are able to be - as individuals and collectives. No small consequence is the difficulty in locating accountability - for what we build, how we build it, and how it can be used. And again, this is a bigger issue than the usability of an interface (even when designed around ethnographic principles), or the cultural ecology of new technologies. There are matters of power and control at stake, as well as more "essential" notions of what constitutes humanity and social interaction.

There you have it. Rant over.

Ta Moko

I love solid-black tattoos. Bold lines, solid fills. Like Maori tattoos. For the Maori, ta moko is a rich cultural practice and heritage. Originally carved into the skin (more akin to scarification), ta moko was, and is, much more than a simple tattoo - it's sacred. And they don't particularly like other people inking their history and mythology:

"Pakeha (whites) are distinctly known for not asking, [and] for assuming that how they see the world is [how] others do so also...[They] bastardize our spirituality and culture and claim it as theirs...Non-Maori wearing it as a form of body art are generally considered wannabees, fakes and frauds that show not only a disrespect for our culture, but lie about their own. (How can you respect your own family when you wear the family signature of strangers?) Even if non-Maori do it in a 'respectful' fashion (according to what their non-Maori values dictate is respectful), this is still rude. There is not, in other words, any sense of it being 'okay' for non-Maori to wear Maori Ta Moko."

Harsh. But fair enough. Admiration doesn't require imitation or submission. I'll keep my opinions on the "Modern Primitive" movement to myself for the time being, but as I look at my tattoos and think about the next one, my primary concern is coming up with a solid-black design that can be at home on my skin.

Geeks of many bents

Fairly interesting discussions around postmodernism and computers on Slashdot and Metafilter.

Suffice to say I'm all for inter-disciplinary research.

Blind Faith and the March of Science

Steve Wolfram speaks at PopTech:

"Any system whose behavior doesn't look obviously simple to us is as simple as any computational system," said Wolfram, explaining the principle of computational equivalence. "All processes can be viewed as computations."

"His book is really a bible of computational view," said Jordan Pollock, professor of computer science and complex systems at Brandeis University, who also spoke at this year's PopTech. "Over the last 50 years we've come to view lots of things in the world -- the mind, the immune system -- from the point of view of computer science."

And even those who admitted not fully understanding Wolfram's theory left the session in awe. "I thought it was exactly like fireworks," said Harvey Ardman, program director for PopTech. "It was brilliant, it was fascinating and it was incomprehensible."

Forgive my skepticism, but if everything is so simple, shouldn't people have left understanding what the hell he was talking about? While I can appreciate the principle of Occam's Razor, let's just step back a moment and think about the implications of "reality" being reduced to a set of computational algorithms...

Smart fabrics for the combat soldier

Via Wired News: "Researchers at the University of Southern California and Virginia Tech have developed a fabric woven with conductive wires and a cluster of seven button-size microphones that can be used to detect the sound of remote objects, like approaching vehicles."

"Textile folks and computer scientists have to learn to speak a common language, and that's only begun to happen. They approach problems from very different viewpoints."

"Microphones, radio transmitters, sensors to measure pulse rate and body temperature, GPS -- you can have all of that incorporated into fabric," said Anuj Dhawan, a Ph.D. student in fiber and polymer science and electrical engineering at North Carolina State. The average soldier, then, "doesn't have to carry electronic equipment and his mobility can be increased." Eventually, e-fabric could be programmed to lift up a corner of the material by itself and take a photo, or roll up and move on its own."

Hmm... I might get that magic carpet after all.

Hacked

Via Adam (and the v-2 time-zone advantage): "An unusually powerful electronic attack briefly crippled nine of the 13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic this week. One official described the attack Monday as the most sophisticated and large-scale assault against these crucial computers in the history of the Internet. The origin of the attack was not known."

CNet takes a less alarmist position: "About 4,000 denial-of-service attacks hit the Internet in the average week, according to data collected by the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis. Many of those are aimed at domain name servers."

A Day in the Life

Grad school is a notoriously lonely place. The demands can be so insane that lovers and friends often fail to understand why we keep going.

Truth be told, I don't recall ever making the decision; academic life chose me. And I suspect this is true for a great many of us. But this doesn't seem to come without a price - relationships fail ("Honey, I don't understand why we can't just have a normal life together...") and friends disappear ("Research isn't real work. In my job...") Sometimes it can feel as though you are being punished for something over which you have no real control, and we struggle to explain our motivation in terms that don't strike others as selfish. I hardly choose to be lonely - it's just so difficult sometimes to find people that want to share this space with me.

On the other hand, relationships with fellow grad students and other academics can be extremely satisfying. Not only can you talk about your research without fear of boring them half to death, they actually want to hear about it. And so I was thrilled this afternoon to meet David, a new PhD student in our department. He's studying public attitudes to gun control in the wake of recent gun violence and terrorism. He was explaining how difficult it is to get people - even other academics - to think of gun culture as something other than a bunch of raving lunatics. It seems that while we are quick to acknowledge heterogeneity in many sub-cultures, when it comes to politically volatile activities, we still resort to notions of homogeneity, "us" and "other."

My father is a gunsmith, and I was raised in a house with firearms. I can intelligently discuss the extraordinary mechanics of revolvers, and competently shoot a 9mm. Sure, I've met plenty of people who probably shouldn't own a gun, but I've met more people whose quality of life would genuinely decline if they could not own a firearm. And what this boils down to is that I understand that there is no such thing as gun culture - its members, practices and attitudes are as diverse as the guns they own.

And so for an hour, a stranger and I came together and truly listened to each other - which consequently, if only temporarily, eased each other's sense of loneliness.

On philosophy and cultural theory

Christopher Robinson & Joseph Duemer do a great job reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. I'm a big fan of Wittgenstein's later works and am currently trying to work through those, some Merleau-Ponty and de Certeau.

Lessons in creativity (and ownership)

And again from the Times, The Inquiring Minds Behind 200 Years of Inventions.

Speculating on the state of innovation over the next century, several inventors said the future lay in giving children the tools to think creatively:

"Inventing is an art," Dr. West said, "Our tools are not brushes, canvases and paints. Our tools are mathematics and physics, and we have to teach children how to use them. And that points to the role of strong mentors to encourage and guide them. For the United States to succeed at invention in the competitive world, it must encourage the ingenuity of minority groups and women." Dr. West, who is African-American, noted that the conclave of 37 inventors was overwhelmingly white and male, with only two women present."

Patsy O. Sherman spoke of the need to "prepare" curious minds. "The prepared mind notices when something doesn't go as expected, and curiosity is piqued by observation," she said. "You can encourage and teach young people to observe, to ask questions when unexpected things happen," Mrs. Sherman said. "You can teach yourself not to ignore the unanticipated."

and the motivation to invent:

"We are always just at the beginning of invention and innovation," Mr. Russell said. Aside from supporting research, the government's greatest role in assuring continuing innovation is promoting a strong, modern patent office. "Unless we can protect intellectual property, we will not have invention."

Virtual proximity and the craving for surveillance

NY Times article Using Technology to Add New Dimensions to the Nightly Call Home outlines how members of the professional class stay in touch with loved ones while away on business.

"Technology gives me the ability to have life be seamless," said Ms. Aspinall. She was away on a business trip, and the boys faxed the grades to her hotel and then called her to discuss them. "It was an important milestone, sharing your end-of-the-year report card. It's just a feeling of belonging, a feeling of being together, whether you are or not."

"Mr. Kabbash, who travels about half of each month, tried videotaping himself reading bedtime stories, but found the routine cold and sterile. Now he faxes and sends his stories by e-mail to his 10-year-old and 6-year-old, along with digital photos of the stories' exotic settings. Then he reads the tales over the phone at night. "It's bridged the gap extraordinarily well."

"Donny Wancho, manager of the business center at the Four Seasons Pierre Hotel in New York, installed three types of instant messaging on computers at the center last spring at the request of travelers wanting to connect with home. "They ask if they've had their breakfast, if their work is done from the night before, and ask them to do chores," said Mr. Wancho, adding that during the holidays, children fax wish lists to parents."

Writer's block...

leads to stream of consciousness surfing:

Social Design Notes to Stayfree to the Prelinger Archives to Bad Subjects to C-Theory to First Monday to Voice of the Shuttle: Cyberculture.

Guilty as charged

This afternoon I was reprimanded by my Chinese doctor, who looked me up and down when I walked in and said "You've spent too much time lately in front of the computer drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes." And then after examining my tongue, said that I haven't been eating and sleeping regularly or diligently taking my herbs. Damn her super spidey-sense!

And so I promised to go home, make some Pad Thai, drink my tea, take a bath and go to sleep...

Feminine cleanliness

Dirty Linen, an exhibition exploring women's uneasy and at times obsessive relationship with cleanliness, opens September 28 at the Women's Library in East London, running until December 21, 2002. (via plep)

And the awesome Museum of Menstruation has tons of stuff on "feminine hygiene," including old Lysol douche ads that promised marital bliss through vaginal disinfection. Ouch!

Rules for a Complex Quantum World

Michael Nielsen unravels an entangled world at Scientific American.

Perfect music for a dreary Sunday spent writing...

Some Mingus Big Band and Hal Willner Presents Weird Nightmares: Meditations on Mingus.

The Emma Goldman Papers

A couple of birthdays ago, a dear friend gave me a copy of Goldman's 1910, Anarchism and Other Essays and it is brilliant in much the same way as Hakim Bey's work. It disrupts and disturbs. Plus, the woman herself was fascinating:

(via plep) The Emma Goldman Papers:
"Emma Goldman (1869-1940) stands as a major figure in the history of American radicalism and feminism. An influential and well-known anarchist of her day, Goldman was an early advocate of free speech, birth control, women's equality and independence, union organization, and the eight-hour work day. Her criticism of mandatory conscription of young men into the military during World War I led to a two-year imprisonment, followed by her deportation in 1919. For the rest of her life until her death in 1940, she continued to participate in the social and political movements of her age, from the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War."

Although I admire her on many levels, I am most taken by her ability to be in the world.

Despite providing a superb reference of her life and work, the site's excerpts from Anarchism and Other Essays do not include her feminist writings, which were so far ahead of the time, and well worth reading.

Faster Pussycat, Faster!!

And be still my beating heart, a stunning collection of old pin-ups, magazines and paperbacks for sale on e-bay.

A fine resource

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has some damn fine information, but I'm a little puzzled and disappointed that the ravings of my favourite French intellectuals are missing.

Playing with Umberto Eco

In a New York Times article, Eco discusses the love letters in his latest book, the making of history and truth, memory and the Internet:

"It is a real epistolary exchange of love letters that was discovered recently." Mr. Eco then took these genuine letters and made his fictional hero, Baudolino, their author. "That was my idea," he said, "to invent enormous lies that produce something true."

"If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous," Otto, Baudolino's learned tutor, says to him at the beginning of the novel. "But you must act with restraint."

"The problem with the Internet is that it gives you everything, reliable material and crazy material," he said. `'So the problem becomes, how do you discriminate? The function of memory is not only to preserve, but also to throw away. If you remembered everything from your entire life, you would be sick."

Meet the Pugs

Can't get enough of the Pugs and their only album available outside of Japan, Bite the Red Knee.

Sweet!

A Cultural Ecology of Nanotechnology

Short essay by Bonnie Nardi. (via blackbeltjones)

The March of Time

via tranquileye: This photo essay is beautiful.

Reflexivity and transparency

The anthropological turn to reflexivity drew attention to the writing of culture, or the contexts in which knowledge is produced. But qualitative methodology and academic publishing conventions still provide insufficient means to render this transparent. A classic example is the differences between Malinowski's famous (published) ethnographies on the Trobriand Islanders and his (until recently unpublished) field notes or diaries. In his personal writings, we find evidence of his biases and desires, including those of the ethnocentric variety that draw attention to relationships of power between subjects and objects in anthropological inquiry. Now, the question is if these views are relevant to his interpretation of the Trobrianders, or more generally, if it is relevant that a researcher holds particular opinions of, or commits particular actions in, the world (be they offensive or not). My immediate response is that of course it is relevant, but the challenge remains to explain how so.

If we read an ethnography - or any account - that presents a world and way of life as it really is, we are not given the opportunity to evaluate the contexts in which these conclusions emerged. Maybe we could start publishing field notes with all formal ethnographies, but that would surely undermine the researcher's claim to authority on a subject. We tend to want to keep our discomforts and uncertainties to ourselves - otherwise anybody could be an anthropologist.

One of my classmates once referred to blogs as "reified confessions," or a type of exhibitionism. But I tend to use my blog, and this site in general, as a way of keeping field-notes. I highly doubt that anyone reading my papers is interested in my taste in music or socio-political views, but maybe they should be ;) After all, my research - the production of "official" knowledge - takes place in these broader contexts. A small, but potentially interesting example, stems from my father's position that it is my privilege to have the time and means to ask, and attempt to answer, so many questions. The vast majority of people have no such luxury. But do I really exist in such a separate space? As much as I think they'd hate being reduced to such, my close friends have always been my ties to the "real world." Left to my own devices, I would pretty much exist in what I call head-space, or the place of mind. And a little self-awareness tells me that is not entirely good; I don't want to be a brain-in-a-vat. Long story short, I think this has something to do with my concerns over locating the body in the data.

So here is the record for myself, and anyone else who wants to know how I work through ideas - and how, or even if, I am able to carry them through to my embodied existence in the world. In part, this is a question of experiential or phenomenological knowledge: am I describing something abstract or tangible, and what difference does that make?

Seamfulness - or, "Where did that joint go?"

I was recently pointed towards the fascinating work of Matthew Chalmers and a concept for ubiquitous computing he is working with. The disappearing or invisible computer has so far been identified with seamlessness - a notion largely equated with physical and material reality, but somewhat poorly adaptable to articulating human interaction with computers. Weiser and Seely-Brown called for a focus on calm computing, or a way of interaction that centres on peripheral engagement. The basic idea is that we may not be explicitly attuned to matters on the periphery of consciousness, but they nonetheless profoundly shape our everyday interactions with the world. As such, computers may be more "effective" if they are able to work in the background.

I believe the main problem with seamlessness - or the relative inability to distinguish computers in the world - is the subsequent difficulty in locating agency and accountability. So I was thrilled to learn that Chalmers proposes the notion of seamfulness, an intelligent and informed attempt to expose users to the points and spaces of interaction with the machine. He is interested in "relating contemporary semiology/philosophy to computational representation... drawing on work in linguistics, architecture, neurophysiology and philosophy, trying to understand the similarities and differences between the different fields that deal with the human use and interpretation of information." Cool. And his Equator project focusses on "going beyond the traditional and naive way of treating digital and physical media as separate 'worlds'. Human activity continually interweaves them and makes them interdependent, and so Equator intends to treat them as two halves of the same world. Equator works on the borderline between the two." Still cool.

So here are my questions: First, are interwoven and interdependent fields understood to be (actual) self-contained parts of the same world? Then, what kind(s) of space might constitute(s) the borderline between fields? And perhaps most importantly, what sort of movement occurs between fields? In other words, what and who are constructed in our representations of these spaces of interaction?

I would suggest that there are no such "things" as closed fields - and I am interested not in how these fields interact with each other, but rather in how these fields and interactions emerge as such. I guess this means that, ultimately, I am concerned with the limitations of representation and how we may therefore account for emergence.

Many of you are familiar with the popular scientific press on networks and emergence (such as books by Steven Johnson or Albert-László Barabási), or if you want something more hardcore academic, Greg Smith's recent paper, Notes on Interaction. Within this larger body of work is the notion that "real time systems cannot be modelled as algorithms for 2 reasons: the TM [Turing Machine] formalism is independent of time and it is required that an algorithm eventually halt whereas a real time system need not. [And accordingly] both concurrent and object oriented systems are not formalisable as algorithms."

Smith continues to explain that "Applied to design, this means that emergence occurs when an agent perceives or explains some property in a working design that it would not have been not capable of computing given it's current knowledge and bounded rationality.... Supervenient properties are those which can be explained in a reductionist manner, and emergent properties are those which cannot." According to Wegner, "interactive systems are grounded in an external reality both more demanding and richer in behavior than the rule-based world of noninteractive algorithms," which Smith continues, "makes explicit the notion of interaction: the agent perturbs its environment and then looks to see its impact before deciding on another action... Interactive agents can make nonenumerable distinctions about their environments. It is this ability to make determinations not predictable before environmental interactions have occurred that enables emergence."

Okay, I know that's a lot to absorb, so let's put it back in social terms. If society is a bounded entity, then the performance of the social or sociality (and of virtual spaces) is unbounded, emergent and unpredictable. So how can we represent - and design for - that sort of space and interaction? Social and cultural theorists, architects, designers and artists have been asking these questions for a long time, and my first reaction is to move towards what is called "non-space," defined through notions of mobility and movement. In this sense, it is not the place that is of interest as much as what moves through the space. Airport lobbies, motels, nomads, vagabonds, ships and cars can all be seen to embody the simultaneous movement of people, objects and ideas. Their very hybridity and instability make them difficult to represent through static models and maps, which at best represent partial truths. This leads me to question how we can even know these movements - and I worry that there is no "external reality" to which we may look for answers, and that the computational notions described earlier rely on our ability to recognise and understand intention or motivation in (linear/real) time and space.

Now here's the killer for those of you with the patience to have followed these half-baked ideas of mine: for the fully-baked version we will all have to wait for me to finish my dissertation. And since that's still a long way off, I only hope you'll hang around for the ride.

The joys of teaching

I spent two hours in my office at the University this afternoon answering questions from students, only to get home and find another 32 super urgent messages in my Inbox...

I really love what I do, but I admit that it tests my patience when students expect me to do their research for them. Or when I have to explain why it isn't okay to beat up their little brother in public to observe how people react to abuse. Plus, I want to scream when they tell me that in an academic research library they couldn't find anything on gender socialisation. Not to mention that it doesn't seem to occur to them to ask a librarian.

All I want to do tonight is eat the coconut rice and dumplings that are steaming, and enjoy being alone in the house...

Oh those wacky Buddhist monks

For some reason I just thought of something from my vacation in August: in northern Cape Breton Island, one of the most isolated places I have ever been in the industrialised world, there is a Buddhist monastery. The captain of the whale-watching boat we were on was also a fisherman, and ten years ago the monks bought a good chunk of his crab catch (cheaper than lobster). And the monks set out in a boat to release them back into the ocean, but unlike lobsters, fresh crabs do not need to be kept in water. After a complex hour-long ritual, the Buddhists dropped all of the crabs in the water, only to watch them float belly-up. Understandably devastated, each year since has involved the purchase and release of the lobster catch - creatures guaranteed to still be alive when the time came. Also - according to the locals, young monks venture out from the monastery every so often to enjoy a good hamburger - and to be fair, the locals visit the monastery just as often to partake of the lentils. Fascinating little village.

Cheaper video games

FairPlay: Campaign for Cheaper Prostitutes. "There isn't a single reason that hookers couldn't be sold at £20, or even less." Yeah, and I can just imagine how annoying it is to have to pay that 13-year-old crack whore $5 for a hand job! She's got some nerve charging that!

And this is supposed to be funny? Apparently I've given gamers too much credit over the years.

(via nosenseofplace)

Weird Laws

(via metafilter) Dumb Laws gives you exactly that: American and international laws that the editors think are stupid. Of course, I check out the list for Canada, and am amazed to see they find our Canadian content broadcasting laws dumb. Now I admit that Canada has some pretty strange, and more than a little restrictive, broadcast rules - but just try to imagine what it is like living next door to the world's largest producer of entertainment media and how that impacts our cultural heritage. Since we tend not to repeal laws, and simply let them fall out of use, or mutate through precedent, they could have turned to our many obsolete or absurd rules instead.

Small pleasures and sadnesses

My boyfriend just left for a ten day trip to do museum stuff in the Great White North. Now who's going to remind me that, contrary to my opinion, coffee and cigarettes do not constitute a breakfast of champions, or that the bedroom is a better place to sleep than my office? On the upside, I get to leave my clothes on the floor and listen to Japanese and Chinese punk rock as loud as I want ;) But now I'm just debating whether or not to go back to sleep...

Feedback requested please

Being so comfortable laying it on the line at academic conferences, it surprises me that I am so nervous about entering a new arena!

I couldn't sleep last night, and ended up doing a bunch of writing, including a draft of my proposal for the IA Summit 2003. I know it's not due until December, but I would like to put my ideas out there now so that I don't make an ass of myself later ;)

Now, I've never been to one of these conferences and have no real idea of what to expect. But I think that I have worked in isolation from the larger community for far too long, and it's time for some feedback. I've been working on what I think is a really interesting project, and would very much appreciate some input on whether anyone else thinks it would be of interest or use to other information architects.

I have no real ego invested in this, so please feel free to take a kick at the can ;) You can find the case study proposal here and please feel free to send the link to anyone you think might be interested. Thanks!

Should have gone to the UK for my doctorate

Much annoyed yesterday to learn that I am a half-course short for my degree requirements (you'd think someone would have noticed this earlier!). You'd also think five courses were enough - and so for about the millionth time, I wish I had gone to the UK where I wouldn't have to do coursework and could just focus on my own research. It's just so damn hard to get funding to go overseas, and all this despite being born British...

Determined to make the best of this, I have requested permission to develop one of two proposed courses for a new program at Carleton:

Design and Presentation of Information: "Inquiry into the social construction and social impact of information as manifested in its presentation and representation. Issues of verbal, graphic and virtual representation."

Knowledge Spaces: "The cross-cultural transfer and global-local translations of knowledge and information in various media, art forms and organisational systems. Examples will include catastrophes, social exclusion and the mismanagement of knowledge and information."

Great potential here...

Dangerous times

Canadian Kim Rossmo has been called in to help the Americans with the wacked-out sniper terrorising the DC area.

He has developed a method called "geographic profiling, and it attempts to discern the "where" of serial killers in the way psychological profiling seeks the "who." Dr. Rossmo uses a computer to generate three-dimensional coloured maps, like topographical maps. But the peaks on his maps, shown in red, indicate something else: probability. Dr. Rossmo came up with the technique when he was a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University 10 years go. His advisers, criminology professors Paul and Patricia Brantingham, had developed an algorithm to predict where a criminal would commit crimes based on where he or she lived, following what psychologists refer to as the least-effort principle. Inverting that model, Dr. Rossmo found he could zero in on 5 per cent or less of the "hunting area" covered by crime sites and superimpose a street map on it."

"In 1998, when sex-trade workers had been disappearing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Dr. Rossmo, then a detective inspector with the department, suggested to his superiors that the community be warned of a serial killer and singled out a pig farm in Port Coquitlam and one of the farm's owners, Robert Pickton, as suspicious. His warnings were ignored and the resulting friction within the department earned the 20-year veteran a demotion, pulling the plug on the fledgling geographic profiling unit. In February, Vancouver police searched that same pig farm and have charged Mr. Pickton with the murder of 15 of the missing women."

The moral of the story

Via elegant hack:
Google's claim that it offers "a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention" is misleading, at best. What about the programmers who wrote the algorithms? What about the designers and architects who structured and organized the templates? What about the thousands of reporters and editors who wrote and selected the articles?"

I get concerned when technologies are seen to be separate from us, passive and value-free. Christina astutely points out that computer algorithms hardly function without human intervention, and I would add that as long as we continue to believe that they do, we will not be able to locate any sort of accountability. Find the bodies in the data!

Propaganda for the people

Center for the Study of Political Graphics offers up an archive of 35,000 historical and contemporary guerrilla-style graphics of dissent. Very cool. (via dublog)

The Globe and Mail takes on RIAA

10 rules of e-business failure, a list inspired by the recording industry's imaginative approach.

Be sanctimonious: Claim to be more concerned about the artists than about your profits. You are selfless; your only interest is paying the musicians, without whom you would be nothing. Pray that nobody remembers countless rockers who signed away their souls on recording contracts and were dumped the moment their sales started slipping.

Kill it: Hollywood failed to make the VCR illegal, but you're going to succeed with peer-to-peer technology. Spend millions on lawyers to sue Napster and Scour into oblivion. Sure, paying lawyers has suddenly become more important than paying your artists, but so what? Hedge your bets by setting up your own Web site, offering songs that aren't selling well in stores. When your e-business proves to be less than a thundering success, blame it on the pirates — meaning all your customers.

Make government your accomplice: Demand exemptions from criminal prosecution by the U.S. government for your hacking and denial-of-service attacks. You're doing this for a Higher Cause, after all, which is paying royalties to your artists (remember them?). Drag Verizon Communications, an Internet provider, into court demanding it surrender the name of one of its subscribers allegedly sharing 600 music files, so your expensive lawyers can crush this kid's little skull. Then get the Canadian government to impose a levy on all recordable media sold here, whether it's used for burning pirated music or archiving corporate data or storing pictures of the kids. Make mortal enemies of Apple and Sony because the levy adds something like 20 per cent to the retail price of their portable jukeboxes, pricing them out of the market. Collect more than $30-million without disbursing a single cent to your artists — after all, you're Fighting the Good Fight, and you're going to have to tighten the artists' belts for them if you hope to win.

Girls in the comic world

Sequential Tart is for you, Linda. (via boingboing)

Latest additions to my research bibliography

Eugene Thacker on State Biophilosophy and the Fukuyama-Stock debate.

Eric Monteiro on the Purity and danger of information infrastructure.

Nitin Sawhney and Chris Dodge on physical and ambient interfaces that form representations of evolving processes rather than temporal descriptions of data.

Ever wanna buy something just because you think it is perfect?

The Leica Digilux 1.

What's in a name?

Being ineligible for scientific research funding, I didn't notice that NSERC (the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada) recently changed the name of their main funding program from "Research Grants" to "Discovery Grants."

"Response to the new name, which we first proposed last year, has been extremely positive," said NSERC President Tom Brzustowski. "Discovery is the object of basic research, which is what this program supports, and the use of that term in the name makes that very clear." "By branding this program more carefully, we can better explain these awards to the public and their political representatives, as well as take advantage of new communications opportunities," said Communications Director Tim Nau.

Hmm...