The famous drawing extracted from “Theory of the Dérive” (Théorie de la Dérive) by Guy Debord. As explained by the author:

“In his study Paris et l’agglomération parisienne (Bibliothèque de Sociologie Contemporaine, P.U.F., 1952) Chombart de Lauwe notes that “an urban neighborhood is determined not only by geographical and economic factors, but also by the image that its inhabitants and those of other neighborhoods have of it.” In the same work, in order to illustrate “the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives . . . within a geographical area whose radius is extremely small,” he diagrams all the movements made in the space of one year by a student living in the 16th Arrondissement. Her itinerary forms a small triangle with no significant deviations, the three apexes of which are the School of Political Sciences, her residence and that of her piano teacher.“

Why do I blog this? Tracing some documents and insights about chronotopic representations.

While discussing the Here and There project by BERG with Etienne, he pointed me on this great New-Yorker cover from 1976 by Saul Steinberg. Entitled “The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue”, is directed towards the West (Europe is absent as if the authors wanted to turn is back to it) with the big-rectangled USA right across the Hudson river and then the Pacific with foreign countries such as Japan, China or russia.

Why do I blog this? There’s a lot to be drawn here concerning the implications of such representation of course (see here). However, I was rather intrigued by this sort of mapping that represents a subjective view of the world, and how this sort of viewpoint could be curious for paper map design.

The presence of patina on mountain rocks is an interesting “footsteps in the snow” sign: the activity of people modify the environment, which in turn reveal relevant cues for other persons. Especially when hiking in a rocky environment. It allows to find your way and avoid unnoticeable crevasse and cracks.

Been stuck into Pacman maps and cartographic representations lately, as the one above (that represents the “strawberry and first Orange” levels. I found the one above at this Unified Resource Locator when practicing random combinations of keywords on the Google (an activity I often carry out with a keen interest).

I do not really know why but they seems highly peculiar and remarkable, perhaps as a seminal depiction of video game levels; in other words, one of the most important (and early) representation of a digital environment based on a metaphorical grid (Not to mention the 256th “split screen” special).

Beyond this map metaphor, what is also intriguing is the solution possibilities, which are based on the fact that Pacman works on a deterministic but not random. What I mean here is that the opponents you have to escape from have very specific kinds of behavior. Each ghost has a specific role (chaser, ambusher, fickle and stupid). As explained on the Wikipedia:

“enabling experienced players to devise precise sequences of movements for each level (termed “patterns”) that allow them to complete the levels without ever being caught. A later revision of the game code altered the ghosts’ behavior, but new patterns were soon developed for that behavior as well. Players have also learned how to exploit other flaws in the ghosts’ behavior, including finding places where they can hide indefinitely without moving, and a code bug occasionally allows Pac-Man to pass through a non-blue ghost unharmed. Several patterns have been developed to exploit this bug. The bug arises from the fact that the game logic performs collision detection based on ghost / Pac-Man occupancy of grid squares, where the grid squares are large relative to the size of the characters. A character occupies (for collision detection purposes) only one grid square (”tile”) at at time, despite its graphic depiction overflowing to another tile. If a ghost and Pac-Man switch tiles with each other simultaneously (which is not a rare phenomenon, because the tiles granularity is large), a collision isn’t detected“

The solution is about finding patterns about the grid and artifacts’ behavior, which is something some players understand and some others never get. At least, some who did, took some time to get it or were told to spot a pattern.

Why do I blog this? Pure curiosity towards this historical piece of culture. There must be something to nail down here about Pacman’s grid (and players’ behavior) as a metaphor/vehicle for discussions nowadays about the advent of augmented maps. We all know the cartographic representations updated in real-time (or in a more asynchronous way) and based on the aggregation of digital traces. Mapping the use of cell-phones for instance to highlight urban activities with a platform such as Citysense.

To what extent the “instant maps” based on the collecting of digital traces will require users to perform the same pattern analysis than Pacman maps? Should it be like them? different? How can we formulate the difference and help users to spot patterns?

But wait. What is pattern anyway and why do we need to reveal them to people in the first place?

In a subway station in Paris (each colors and number correspond to a metro line), in the countryside in South-Burgundy below:

Why do I blog this? it’s always intriguing to compare the various ways signage can be subtly integrated in the environment.

“By looking at the satellite image we extract ourselves from our particular point of view, yet without, bouncing up to the bird’s eye view; we have no access to the divine view, the view from nowhere. We go from our bounded view to a sliding view that will carry us from a labyrinth of transformations to the general frame in which our daily action is set – and that will never be more than a few square centimetres big. The frame has the same dimension, in a sense, as the object it frames. The big is no bigger than the small“

“Paris ville invisible” by Bruno Latour and Emilie Hermant (1998).

Why do I blog this? writing a piece with Julian about urban computing leads me to revisit this nice book by Latour.

Map incompleteness is something that I am very intrigued about. As shown in the example above taken in Paris, the city itself is well represented but as soon as you leave the “périphérique” (the highway-like infrastructure that surrounds the french capital), it’s a blank grey void as if no one leaves beyond this limit. It’s a phenomenon you also encounter with weather maps as you can see below: weather forecast generally stops at the border (clouds don’t go through the customs, do they?). You can see the swiss map as if it was a stand-alone territory (lots of countries do it anyway).

Why do I blog this? Map incompleteness is understandable in terms of information design: the use of “white space” can be relevant to “balance composition and induction properly”. Designing maps and signage is a matter of simplification so that people could easily grasp the situation at hand. However, in both situations above I am often bothered by the simplification; not that I need to go across the border and would be happy to know the temperature, rather because it discretized phenomena that should be represented as continuous.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, our TGV is running at its maximum speed at 300 kilometer per hour” as announced by the train controller. Revealing the company’s (and country’s) pride? Informing passengers of service quality (assuming that speed is quality)? Telling consumers that they’re taken care of by recurring feedthrough information?

A picture I took yesterday morning in Geneva. It shows an interesting (and sad) trend lately in the city: the disappearing of mom and pop’s shop which are now so expensive to rent that it’s more valuable for certain luxury companies to use the shop as a billboard structure. In the case depicted above, the former DIY shop on the right has been turned into a billboard for a watch company (but of course some cool graffiti-makers attacked it). The portuguese restaurant showed on the foreground (left) has also recently been turned into this kind of surface: the wooden structure will soon be covered by crappy watch ads.

In the end, we have an empty volume with this super-expensive surface.

Why do I blog this? this quick thought (”surface more valued than volume”) while walking around there yesterday led me to think about how spatiality is a complex issue. It’s kind of weird to think about this sort of practice.

In the last issue of Vodafone’s receiver, which is about “space”, there is an interesting overview of the geospatial web (aka GeoWeb) by Sean Gorman. The article examine how these technologies allow to understand spatial and social phenomena. Starting by a quick overview of the field and how it shifted from cartographers and geo-scientists to hackers and programmers, Gorman describes the different possibilities enabled by such technologies: from mash-up to mobile application (unfortunately using again the sad restaurant-rating example).
Why do I blog this? useful material to write a chapter about the history of location-based services. The article by Jonathan Raper is also pertinent as it uncovers principles about what “digital geography” can offer.

In the CatchBob! project, the location-based game I used for my PhD research, players often reported the encounter with other persons puzzled by the presence of running people with TabletPCs. The general reaction of passers-by seemed to range between ignoring the game to asking players about how to participate in trials. However, the physical environment is an overlap of lots of activities carried out by different groups and individuals, which can be conflicting. In one trial, two players tried to visit one of the campus library and the janitor forbid them to enter the building carrying out the game TabletPCs. This kind of phenomenon unfortunately undermines the engagement of players in the game, turning the experience into something less fun to achieve.

This problem has been investigated by researchers, as shown by this warning quote from one of the deliverable from the European iPerg project entitled “Designing Pervasive Games“:

“Pervasive games introduce an important problem: when a game is expanded, the bystanders do not always have the means to distinguish game events from the non-game events. However, regardless of whether they know or don’t know about the game, they perhaps should have a choice pertaining the mode of attendance, i.e., they should be given chance to play, or ignore the game and appreciate it as an art artefact, or view it as a morastatement. Otherwise, the game is can lead to ethical and practical problems.
(…)
Whether unaware or aware of an ongoing game, bystanders have no intention or opportunity to participate in it or at least no opportunity to do so. Here, we probably find the most challenging effects of social expansion. Socially unexpanded games are typically completely insulated from bystanders: they are not affected by the game (even if aware of it) and they have no influence over the game.“

Why do i blog this? The presence of bystanders in some pervasive games or ARG is interesting as it shows how the notion of “user” in ubiquitous computing is flawed. Unlike face-to-face (so to say) interactions with a desktop computer, ubicomp/pervasive computing/internet of things can lead to situations where people experience non-intentional participation in services/events they did not want to be engaged in.

If pervasive games can take this into account and not affect people’ life, other ubicomp applications can be less careful about it. What am I thinking about? perhaps applications which tracks individuals and propose them services without any consent form the user (to be tracked or to receive services s/he does not want to receive).

The ever-growing need of relying on server infrastructure caused by cloud computing is an interesting recombination of space and technology. The Economist has a good piece about “where the cloud touches down”, i.e. where to locate data centres and server farms. The fact that these facilities spring up in unexpected places such as old bunkers or shopping malls is an interesting indicator that their whereabouts is a serious concern and less an afterthought at it use to be.

“Now this haphazard landscape is becoming more centralised. Companies have been packing ever more machines into data centres, both to increase their computing capacity and to comply with new data-retention rules.
(…)
with demand for computing picking up in other parts of the world, the boom in data-centre construction is spreading to unexpected places. Microsoft is looking for a site in Siberia where its data can chill. Iceland has begun to market itself as a prime location for data centres, again for the cool climate, but also because of its abundant geothermal energy.
(…)
So will all data centres end up in remote places like Quincy or Iceland? Not necessarily. For many applications (…) firms want to have access to trading data in real time, which explains the high density of data centres near New York and London. And fast-moving online games must be hosted near their players.“

As described in the article, the criteria that companies use to pick a site keep evolving. It’s not only market economics but also local incentives (e.g. tax breaks). And we’re heading to more complex recombination of technologies and space:

“In future the geography of the cloud is likely to get even more complex. “Virtualisation” technology already allows the software running on individual servers to be moved from one data centre to another, mainly for back-up reasons. One day soon, these “virtual machines” may migrate to wherever computing power is cheapest, or energy is greenest. Then computing will have become a true utility—and it will no longer be apt to talk of computing clouds, so much as of a computing atmosphere.“

Why do I blog this? a sort of fascination towards the friction between the digital (allowed by such infrastructures) and the physical. In a way, this is a concrete example of how technologies physically reshape the material environment through new building typologies and new places colonized by technological facilities. This notion of “cloud computing” is intriguing as there is a clear paradox between the ethereal idea of a “cloud” and its very fixed geography.

Some sort of side urban computing issue that has lots of relevance anyway. Or perhaps given the remote location of some data center site, it’s an example of “countryside computing”

Read in The Psychology of Waiting Lines by David Maister (1985):

“the example of ‘the well-known hotel group that received complaints from guests about excessive waiting times for elevators. After an analysis of how elevator service might be improved, it was suggested that mirrors be installed near where guests waited for elevators. The natural tendency of people to check their personal appearance substantially reduced complaints, although the actual wait for the elevators was unchanged.“

(An example pointed by Sasser, W.E., J. Olsen, and D.D. Wyckoff (1979), Management of Service Operations: Text, Cases and Readings. New York: Allyn and Bacon)
Why do I blog this? made me wondering about the affordances of space, the design of a particular place and how it can accommodate people’s behavior.

Two app that I like lately, for their entertaining potential:

It’s a bit old but I am still fascinated by this “If I dig a very deep hole, where will I end up?“. It’s a very basic google map app where you can choose to dig up somewhere and see where you go to arrive on the other side of the Earth:

“Are you concerned about where you go to arrive if you dig a very deep straight infinite hole on Earth? Your problems are solved! Surf on the map below, choose where you will dig your hole and click there. After this, click on “Dig here!” and you will see the place where, one day, you will (believe me) put your feet.“

And of course, flickr vision is also compelling. It shows realtime, geolocated Flickr photos on that globe:

Why do I blog this? Those are fascinating and ludic spatial application that I find enjoyable, no more, no less. There are not perfect of course but they reflect some interesting aspects as well as intriguing motivations (following people’s photo streams, digging the earth, etc.).

Privacy concerns spotted in Geneva over time:

And the answer as proposed by this huge sticker hat encourage people to pay attention to digital cameras: