Weather stations, weathervanes, cuckoo-clocks and ubiquitous computing
In a tiny street of Bern, Switzerland, I stumbled across that machine yesterday:
Why do I blog this? As it says in german, it’s a “weather station” with time, temperature, pression, etc. Beyond the interface that I find amazingly retro-like, I find intriguing to have this sort of device on the street. It’s actually an example of an ubiquitous computing device (so to say) that would make explicit invisible/implicit phenomena (such as temperature) to city dwellers. That machine is actually translating information about the state of the world to passers-by.
Of course, weather station comes from a long tradition (especially in Switzerland), with analog devices such as thermometers or manometers. Perhaps the oldest analog device would be the weathervane. I was thinking about this a sort of metaphor of information-pull device. Which is obviously opposed to information-push device (to which the ultimate stereotype would be the swiss cuckoo-clock as Frederic Kaplan stated in a talk I attended last week).
It’s only two metaphors for how information can flow from source to “users”: (a) Information Pull, where a user takes (or is given) the initiative to get it, (b) Information Push, where a supplier takes (or is given) the initiative to deliver it. It might be a bit limitative, what are the options in between? What can we learn from weathervane or cuckoo clock behavior? Is there any manual about designing cuckoo clock or weathervane?
January 30th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I’m not sure if this is a specifically “German” thing, but these kind of weather stations have been popular in German-speaking countries for ages - in fact, long before digital technology existed. I grew up in a health resort (in the Black Forest, as it happens), and for as long as I can remember there was a similar combination of (analog) barometers, thermometers and hygrometers on display along one of the more popular promenades - a hybrid of local and “educational” data to give people some “proper” information to talk about. There’s also a very succesful market in weather stations for home use (usually miniaturized and somewhat unsophisticated versions of what you pictured here).
As for cuckoo clocks, there are of course some important design principles - the Wikipedia article has some information on this. What I found interesting here is how in the 19th century designing the clocks became a very conscious effort of mixing information with marketable and folkloristic images of the regions of origin, whereas earlier versions seemed to focus more on the mechanical mysteries and the artificiality. In weather vanes, the traditional rooster design adds a religious and mystic dimension (the Biblical reference to Peter’s betrayal, of course, but also the rooster announcing the break of day and the disappearance of bad ghosts), thus linking the informational purpose to the building where it is usually displayed (and thereby sanctioning the curiosity, I’d say).
A similar device is the so-called “weather house” (Wetterhäuschen): This is a traditional form of hygrometer, and in a way a mashup of the informational purposes of a weather stations and the folkloristic feel-good factor of the cuckoo clocks (with a “sun woman” in traditional costume announcing good weather and a “rain man” signifying bad times).
January 30th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Thanks for this precisions. And yes I assumed some sort of german cultural specificity in the wetterstation