Live blogging from Futuresonic Mobile session
Live blogging from Futuresonic Mobile session
Adam Greenfield - The City is Here for you to use
Head of Design Direction Nokia
Was at razorfish and used to build enterprise scale websites - focus on user experience and watching human beings dealing with this. Bad design does more damage than you might imagine. Every decision has an impact. Measurable and real.
Now interested in “Networked Urbanism” - concentration on human settlements and dwellings as manifested in cities.
Now interested in “Networked Urbanism” - concentration on human settlements and dwellings as manifested in cities.
But what’s generating the traffic? Networked devices such as mobile phones - they’re not technology anymore there much more than that. Sharing devices.
Networked buildings will be very important. Sensors everywhere.
Networked vehicles will form a ‘mesh’ of community services. The vehicle becomes a network node. Also transit systems have rfid enablement. Like Oyster in London.
Networked institutions are emerging very rapidly. Looking at restaurant healthcodes for example. But there are prices to making everything visible.
Example of using cabs to track how the city functions and where people are. There are political textures and contexts.
Networked 'weather' - everything that impinges on us - in cities drives experience (and behaviour) #futr09
Archigram: When it's raining in Oxford Street:
bit.ly #futr09
Loneliness is wasteful and hard to deal with.
Now talking about exclusion and Metcalfe's law.
"The value of a network rises exponentially with the number of nodes"
Metcalfe's Law:
bit.ly #futr09
'In the air" visualisation of Madrid
infosthetics.com
Life in cities: more choice, more control, more convivial, richer, #futr09
Making Bridges Talk by Tom Armitage - Tower Bridge can twitter
The Big Now - @
towerbridge getting a plug #futr09
When all devices and services combine you get a deeply networked environment where there is the creation of a new kind of 'possibility space'.
local, on demand actionable sense of what's to happen before decisions made. people, objects, buildings constantly update status #futr09
As urban infrastrucutres develop, we need to see them as 'public objects' and they should have Open APIs. Access to opn data and use it for mash-ups.
Greenfield says that we need to get governments to accept that "The data is ours". It's a narrow and geeky question now - but it won't be in future.
There are downsides though and they are serious issues. Data visualisations are compelling - seductive and powerful but not entirely 'honest'. It's only as good as the data that feeds it.
The 'patchiness' of the data means that the wrong conclusions can be drawn fro the data.
Oakland Crimespotting:
bit.ly #futr09
Aggregation of differernt types of data in visualisations (crime maps for example) can actually reduce the honesty of the presentation.
Will Adam G's networked world network out surprise? #futr09
Access to the network means that the systems, if too 'open' can be vulnerable to attack
Richard Sennett - The Uses of Disorder:
bit.ly #futr09
Emergent behaviour - is also an issue. As systems get more complex, we could be vulnerable to emergent behaviour and if these systems cause damage to humans then that can be very risky.
The systems are 'inevitable' in the developed world. Needs a clear conversation about what the systems are and how they are being developed and used.
We need a way to deal with the issues as designers, and the desirable outcomes come from Breton's "The Street"
'Most of these systems are inevitable.. design knowingly with awareness and compassion and aim for conviviality and quality of life' #futr09
Greenfield presentation has just shown example of traffic bollard (Mcr style) which speared a cr and resulted in the driver's death #futr09
Now questions. From Alfie of Moblog re GPS.
Ans For the first time a map shows us where we are on it. This is a massive shift and we haven't seen the impact or where it's going.
Reputation and challenges from really big ideas - it's very scary and exciting - we don't know how societies cohere in such a data rich environment - how do we deal with this. No one knows?
Wow! Bombshell at the end. Adam Greenfield doesn't believe in sustainability. Efforts are futile. Make the best of now. Gulp! #futr09
Stefan Agamenoulis Distance Lab - The Communications Burger
Now suggested that 'fast' and 'slow' communications and using burger analogy. Showing video. [From MediaLab days]
V biased views and opinions of fast food used as metaphor for fast comms #futr09
A project called the isophone - flotation tank and phone combined
www.rca.ac.uk
Moving on to look at intimacy. Example of a distance intimacy project.
www.distancelab.org