“He had brought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.
“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!
Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank”
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!“

Lewis Carroll, The Bellman’s Map (from The Hunting of the Snark, 1876).

The map is an ocean chart that allows the characters of the book to cross the ocean, hunting for “the Snark”. The fact is that is only shows the ocean without any further details.

Why do I blog this? Stories about maps are always intriguing, this blank sheet of paper with navigational cues (N,S,E…) is very mysterious and may represent humans clueless about where they were located. But at the same time, a map that we can all understand.

More seriously, this is also about granularity, in the middle of an ocean this map is quite exact and accurate if there is nothing in the portion considered. Blank maps can be very often found when changing the granularity of online map applications, leading to this nonsensical situation.

Seen in Milano this morning, some annotations shared on the metro map.

Stephen Graham, in his essay entitled “Strategies for Networked Cities” has some very convincing arguments against supporters of “ICT-based end of city visions” who ignore the very material realities that make the supposedly “virtual” realms of “cyberspace” possible:

“in their obsession with the ethereal worlds of cyberspace – with the blizzards of electrons, photons, and bits and bytes on screens – end of city commentators have consistently ignored the fact that it is real wires, real fibers, real ducts, real leeways, real satellite stations, real mobile towers, real web servers, and – not to be ignored – real electricity systems that make all of this possible. All these are physically embedded and located in real places. They are expensive. They are profoundly material.
(…)
Because the material bases for cyberspace are usually invisible they tend only to be noticed when they collapse or fail through wars, terrorist attack, natural disasters, or technical failure.“

Why do I blog this? some good points there to keep in mind when designing ubiquitous computing applications (which need electricity, access to a network, etc.), material to be quoted in presentations to come.

Dourish, P., Anderson, K., & Nafus, D. (2007) Cultural Mobilities: Diversity and Agency in Urban Computing, Proc. IFIP Conf. Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT 2007 (Rio De Janiero, Brazil).

This article is a comprehensive critique of mobile computing in the city that has been construed quite narrowly. the authors criticized urban computing applications, and the underlying vision of urban and mobility they convey. Some excerpts:

“The narrowness of both the site and “the users,” we will argue, has meant that mobile and urban computing have been driven by two primary considerations. The first is how to “mobilize” static applications (…) The second is how to provide people with access to resources in unfamiliar spaces, the “where am I?” approach, as manifested in context-aware applications (…) While these applications clearly meet needs, they fail to take the urban environment on its own terms; they are based on the idea that urban life is inherently problematic, something to be overcome, in comparison to the conventional desktop computing scenario.“

The view on mobility they propose is oriented by 3 principles that can help opening up the design space for urban computing:
(1) Mobility takes many forms (different type of journey, different means of transport)
(2) Movement in space is more than going from A to B
(3) People move individually but collectively produce flows of people/goods, etc. that serve to structure and organize space

As described in the conclusion:

“To that end, our criticisms of much (certainly not all) of conventional urban applications of ubiquitous computing are that, first, they construe the city as a site for consumption, organizing it in terms of available resources; second, that they reflect only very narrowly the breadth of urban experience, focusing on particular social groups (generally young and affluent); third, that they focus on individual experience and interaction, rather than helping people connect and respond to the larger cultural patterns and urban flows within which they are enmeshed. “

They also present 4 areas of research into mobile computing: mobility as a disconnection (i.e. how to get a mobile access to information), the problem of dislocation (i.e. wayfinding and resource location), disruption (i.e. how context-sensitivity might provide contextualized service/filter) and locative media. While the first three categories focus on “mobility as a problem”, locative media is more appealing to them because it takes “mobility as an opportunity”.

Why do I blog this? This is the sort of remarks/principles that I like being expressed because it resonates a lot with my own thoughts about urban/mobile computing, and the underlying issues propelled by designers of these applications.

Lately, I’ve been amazed by the street art work of dwaesha, especially these “Braille Graffiti” (2005):

Why do I blog this? I already dealt with podotactility here, in this example, things are different (although it looks like vertical podotactiles). What is intriguing is the idea of touching graffitis… Remember something? Very curious practice indeed, but still.

Graham, S.D.N (2005). Software-sorted geographies, Progress in Human Geography29, 5 (2005) pp. 1–19.

The central claim of the paper is that computerized systems act as “ordinary” mediators through which people encounter the world, hence the term “software sorting”:

“Software-sorting is the means through which such selective access is organized (Graham and Wood, 2003). Such processes operate through a vast universe of what Michel Callon (1986) has termed ‘obligatory passage points’. These are particular topological spaces within sociotechnical systems through which actors have to ‘pass’in order
that the system actually functions in the way that dominant actors desire.
(…)
Crucially, however, the links between software-sorting and geographical inequalities are inherently complex, ambivalent and ambiguous. (…) While they are inherently multitudinous, diverse and ambivalent, and operate at multiple scales, the predominant dynamic of contemporary software-sorting innovations seems to be linked closely to the elaboration of neoliberal models of state construction and service provision“

What I also strikingly interesting for my interest in this paper is this:

“attention has turned away from discussions suggesting that such technologies offer access to some ‘virtual’ domain which is somehow distinct and separable, in some binary way, from the ‘real’spaces and places of cities and material urban life (Woolgar, 2002). In their place, much more nuanced and sophisticated approaches are emerging. These stress that new technologies are intimately involved in the fine-grained and subtle transformations, or ‘remediations’, of place- and space-based social worlds (Bolter and Grusin, 2000; Haythornwaite and Wellman, 2002; Graham, 2004a; 2004b). Far from being separated domains, then, such perspectives underline that the coded worlds of the ‘virtual’ actually work to continually constitute, structure and facilitate the place-based practices of the material world (Dodge and Kitchin, 2004: 198). Castells (1996: 373) calls this the shift from ‘virtual reality’to ‘real virtuality’(see Dodge and Kitchin, 2004).“

And I also liked that one:

“In addressing this wide research, policy and activist agenda, the challenge is to maintain a critical and informed position without falling foul of dystopian and absolutist scenarios suggesting that software-sorting techniques are somehow limitless, completely integrated, and all-powerful. As Koskella (2003) suggests, ‘urban space will always remain less knowable and, thus, less controllable than the restricted panoptic space’“

… given that technologies are not seamless and perfectly working, software-sorted geographies can fail.

Why do I blog this? lots of reading lately from the geography field, certainly because I discovered how that domain address ubiquitous computing from a very relevant angle.

Kids compulsively tagging their zip code in other cities.

I could have taken other examples but I quite liked that one: 1026 is from a village in the countryside close to Lausanne (which is ranging from 1000-1007, 1010-1012, 1014-1015 & 1017-1018). The use of “zip code” tagged on walls is a recurring practice in occidental cities, often showing how people express their (local) identity, using a very formal identity: the zip code fixed by the State.

An intriguing example of a spatial practice, generally done by teenagers exploring Cities and feeling the need to express their feelings.

Reading (again) Lefebvre this week-end, I ran across this quote about the notion of “user” that I liked:

“Let us now turn our attention to the space of those who are referred to by means of such clumsy and pejorative labels as ‘users’ and ‘inhabitants’. No well-defined terms with clear connotations have been found to designate these groups. Their marginalization by spatial practice thus extends even to language. The word ‘user’ (usager), for example, has something vague - and vaguely suspect - about it. ‘User of what?’ one tends to wonder. Clothes and cars are used (and wear out), just as houses are. But what is use value when set alongside exchange and its corollaries? As for ‘inhabitants’, the word designates everyone - and no one.
(…)
The user’s space is lived - not represented (or conceived). When compared with the abstract space of the experts (architects, urbanists, planners), the space of the everyday activities of users is a concrete one, which is to say, subjective. As a space of ’subjects’ rather than of calculations, as a representational space, it has an origin, and that origin is childhood, with its hardships, its achievements and its lacks.“

Why do I blog this? I know that challenging the notion of “user” is now more and more common, but still it’s relevant to see how thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre questionned it.

Graham, S. (2004): Excavating the Material Geographies of Cybercities, In Graham, S. (ed.) The Cybercities Reader, Chapter 18, Routledge, London.

This chapter addresses the “material geographies of telecommunications hardware and equipment” built in the ICT boom of the late 90s showing how the so-called “death of distance” rely on material grounds. The “fabric of cyberspace” is indeed a lot more physical than the immateriality people promote, involving “the messy, complex and expensive construction of real wires, servers, and installations”.

Although this claim is now very common in geography/architecture papers (as well as starting to be taken into account in the field of ubiquitous computing), what is very relevant in this chapter is how the authors describe “examples of the recombinant infrastructural spaces that invisibly underpin cybercities. Some excerpts highlight this point:

“These electronic superbanks are not skyscrapers but groundscrapers [interconnected by optic fiber networks]: “huge nine-to-eleven storey buildings with immense floor plates” to accommodate the remarkable IT needs of global financial institutions today
(…)
Telecom hotels are anonymous, windowless buildings and massive, highly fortified spaces which house the computer and telecommunications equipment for the blossoming commercial Internet, mobile and telecommunication industries. (…) server or ‘co-location’ farms are housed in highly secure building complexes located in the major global cities of the world. (…) The physical qualities of the chosen buildings (high ceiling height, high-power and back-up electricity supplies) need to be combined with nodal positions on fibre networks
(…)
isolated and ultra-secure spaces are currently being configured as spaces for the remote housing of computer and data storage operations. There are several elements of this process. In the first element, a variety of offshore small island states
(…)
old disused sea forts and oil rigs are now being actively reconfigured by e-commerce entrepreneurs, in attempts to secede from the jurisdictions of nation states altogether. (…) the self-styled Principality of Sealand (…) Since September 11th many of London’s financial and corporate head quarters have installed massive servers in the platform’s concrete legs to improve their resilience against catastrophic terrorism in the City of London.
(…)
But perhaps even more bizarre is the third part of the process : the reconstruction of old
cold-war missile launch sites and bunkers to offer the ultimate in security against risks of
both electronic and physical incursion“

Why do I blog this? while I am unsure about “sea forts and oil rigs” (Sea Land has some troubles lately), this enumeration of “recombinant” examples is very intriguing. Surely some material to keep in mind for further investigation about urban computing.

The Digital Invisibility of Broadband and its Representation in the Modern City by Peter Dobers, Paper presented at 97th AAG Annual Meeting, Session “The Invisible City”, February 27 - March 3, 2001 in New York, USA.

The paper addresses the issue of the concreteness of IT/digitality, especially in urban settings. The “invisible” character of technologies have always been highlighted: the infrastructure of the Internet is invisible to the observer, since dug into the ground and the information transported on these nets is invisible. Based on these premises, the author illustrates how broadband and digits are represented in concrete and socially infused, indeed personalized, ways, discussing “the dialectics between abstract invisibility and concrete visibility and how each is represented“. He then gives different examples of “bits” in “very mundance, everyday
human siutations” from swedish commercial and Telia movie clips. These are very pertinent to show “how digits are infused with anthropomorphous qualities to enhance our understanding and attachment to digital technology“. The idea of having “bits on strike” is kind of hilarious for that matter.

Some excerpts that I find inspiring:

“the digits and bits themselves, are rather incomprehensible and therefore invisible to users. (…) Those digits are translations of a situation to which there are no actor that can speak up by themselves (…) [these examples] gives voice and meaning to an invisible part of the modern city, to a situation otherwise incomprehensible.
(…)
To describe something intangible and invisible as digital information and fast broadband access to the internet, we need to make reference to something else. In this case, something else of the digits of the digital world becomes represented in our world by human beings. These metaphors of humans give sense to a senseless and invisible digital world.
(…)
Data by themselves can be based on digital rather than analogue media. However, since we live in an analogue world, full of atoms and not full of bits, eventually we need analogue information to reach our senses.
(…)
It seems that to grasp the invisible, you have to make it visible, and to grasp the abstract, you have to make it tangible and concrete.“

Why do I blog this? These aspects are very interesting, from the “hybridization” of space standpoint. It also reminds a talk By Yo Kaminagai (urban designer) about the fact that digitality takes lots of room, and really materialize in space through cables, servers, wiring.

Today participating to the Urban Networks and Network Theory at the University of Lausanne. The seminar addresses two issues: 1) The transition from a network/networks of actors, individuals, firms or institutions to the coherent development of a city or system of cities, 2) The potential transfers and links between the various disciplinary and methodological interpretations of the concept “network”. Some notes below about the highlights (raw notes, not well formed).

(Picture taken yesterday in Zürich)

Introduction by Géraldine Pflieger and Céline Rozenblat

There are a variety of scales and aspects which intersect, connect or overlap, and function like networks. The central issue for research on urban networks is to identify, from a transdisciplinary perspective, how each of these networks function and interact in and through the urban space. This will be the central focus of the present seminar.

This will require an examination of the transition from networks of actors to networks of cities through the interlinking of different types of network:
- technical set-up: this refers to the actual physical presence of cities, their morphology, density, topology and topography;
- technological and organisational innovations and their dissemination in urban practices;
- social networks and functional spaces linked largely to the legacies of history but which play an active part in the dynamics of the internal and external networking of cities.

Space of flows: networks between global and local by Manuel Castells

There are interactions between space of flows and ICT. We know that technologies are not a determinant but a mediator. Contrary to futurologists, no demise of cities but we are seeing the most important urbanization phenomenon we have ever seen (we crossed the 60%, 2/3 in 20years).

The most important aspect is the emergence of a new space of flows: of capital, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds and symbols. This leads to a new urban form: the metropolitan region (peter hall+kathy payne use the concept of polycentric metropolis). In most cases, there is not institutional unit in this metropolitan region (even the greater london authority is not sufficient). It’s interesting to observe how people call their metropolitan region? You don’t say the “SF Bay Area” because San José is bigger than SF. A solution Manuel takes is to use the term employed by TV new: in Los Angeles, it’s not LA but “southland” (but south of what?), it’s a reference to an area we know it’s there.

To Castells, networks explain the concentration in places (you don’t grow first and attract). What is important here:
- micronetwork of decision making/initiative = face 2 face (you have to be in financial places, knows who is who, what is who)
- micronetwork of implementation = through electronic media, the network of implementation is macro

This explains the concentration : once these mechanisms is in place, the rest can be explained: infrastructure of communication, services… it develops because there is something to communicate, creation of opportunities because there is money, there is a market… facilities and… jobs… which attracts globally (hence hubs for immigration, multi-ethnic places)… + economies of synergies (2+2 = 5): being in a place where you interact with others leverage innovation

Cities remain the source of creation value, power, social selection and quality of life has nothing to do with it. It’s entirely subjective (”can you imagine more boring places than SV?, these people don’t go to SF bars, are they here for quality of life? no they’re hypnotize by creativity”). As he said “cities become trendy only when they have the power to launch the trends, the rest is consulting for mayors”.

When this multi-layer of global network coincides, in a way, then:
- economies of synergy takes place into that node (academic research+tech…)
- this becomes a mega-node: london, NYC (but not Boston)

Elements discussed in the Q&As:
this node concentrate more and more power and wealth
global networks also exclude other dimensions
dissociation between the space of flows and the space of places
power is constructed in the space of communication
the key positions are switchers between networks (politic, business, media…)
the more you connect to the internet, the more you talk within the company

Designing connections: people, places and information by Federico Casalegno (Mobile Experience Lab)
design/communication perspective
goal of the lab: rethink the relationships between people, places and information using cutting edge IT

First part of the talk is about how you can think to map forms of communication (map flow of communication and communities), especially people using mobile phones. How the content of the communication flows between users.
“it is not down on any map: true places never are” Hermann Melville
map use of mobile phone conversations
3 levels: micro/tribal/macro
- micro: conversation+txt+undeground/secret communication (teenagers do not need to talk, they just beep the partner in order to appear, name on the cell phone). This forms an aura of communication: “the womb”.
- tribal: one person expert in the tribe about a certain topic publishes about it to the others
- macro: rave parties, someone got the information that there is a party somewhere, send a message to others that you have to meet at a certain place… word of mouth… and you start exchanging content (what style of music? what dj?). you start to have a level of communication. Then everyone gets in the same place

There are different forms of communication, different metaphors: the womb, jellyfish, butterfly, intimate daisy, etc. they are way to understand social networks of mobile phone users

Two projects to rethink communication, place and people:
1) The Electronic Lens (eLense) creates talking landmarks and radically rethink the interactions between institutions, citizens and places. People will point telephone to physical building and get information (magnifying glass), access to information by pointing to an object. Application that recognizes buildings + post voice messages about buildings + start to design communities/group of users that can access to information.

2) Urban garden: rethinking bus stops (with french company RATP)
One node in the city: the bus stop, what is the future of bus stop?
Started to design a prototype: parametric design, integrate and support the urban environment
They also describe the future of the bus stop as a self organized landmark with user-generated content.
Internal interactions: people can see when is the next bus, if there are problems information but also “urban garden” where people can post messages/recommended places/looking for a bass-player in a music band (!).
External interactions: physically reflecting the richness of the local communication on the outside messages posted but also sensors and cameras that measure the traffic/noise production/air pollution that can have negative impact on the “tree” representation.

The whole point of these projects is that technologies as mediators between individuals, local activities. These concepts are prototypes, some aspects will be implemented (la ligne 14!).

Conclusion: framed into the history of cities:
pre-industrial cities consisted essentially of skeleton and skin
then cities in the industrial era had physiologies (water/electric supply systems)
electronic systems are now nervous systems where technologies are embed in the urban fabric

Why do I blog this? This sort of multi-disciplinary meetings is very insightful, it gives context and perspectives to what I’m doing (as well as provide data for foresight work). Ta to Géraldine for the invitation to participate.

The last issue of IEEE Spectrum is about “megacities” and how to solve some of the big engineering challenges we face as the world’s cities multiply. There is a good bunch of articles about various topics. Some notes about the one I’ve been interested in:

How to See the Unseen City By Sandra Upson
That paper is about the density and complexity of subterranean networks which mirrors the congestion wealthy cities experience at their surface. What is interesting from a human perspective is that quote

“To many city dwellers—and even to many city officials—underground infrastructure is both out of sight and out of mind. When inspecting pipes, the city commonly uses electronic listening equipment as its first line of defense. Maintenance workers dangle a microphone down a manhole and attach it to a water main to assess whether flow has been disturbed by a leak. More detailed checks are conducted from within a pipe, using what is essentially a video camera on wheels.
(…)
Fixing a break in a line, whether pipe or wire, also entails finding it—and knowing what else might lie above it. Although individual utilities each have approximate maps of their own infrastructures, few have coordinated closely with other agencies. (…) Those who dig a hole also run the risk of unearthing a bone or two. To reclaim valuable real estate, many cities had to exile their cemeteries, which moved their headstones outside city limits but often left the bodies behind. (…) Vertical cemeteries by no means indicate that the underground frontier has been fully conquered.“

How to Fight Crime in Real Time By William Sweet and Stephen Cass
Rapid data retrieval that accelerates investigations in NYC is a topic tightly connected to ubicomp and foucauldian concerns. The articles describes how works the central computerized control room, the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC), which focus is “simply to speed up police reactions in emergencies, where seconds can be a matter of life and death.”

“Standing in the RTCC with Onalfo and D’Amico on a quiet spring afternoon, facing a theater-size display divided into six or seven changing rectangles, the lead author of this article gets a briefing on how the system works. To the lower left, there’s what’s often called a ticker (though it does not really resemble a list of stock quotations), showing a list of crimes reported in emergency calls to 911 or by officers to dispatchers. A red dot alongside an entry indicates the crime is in progress and deserves priority attention; yellow dots mark resolved situations. Another system of red and yellow dots shows whether police cars are immediately available for action.
(…)
Access to the data warehouse is granted only with passwords backed by the biometric ID cards that all NYPD employees carry, and every query is logged so that any suspicious entry into the system can be investigated“

Articles about garbage in megacities and electric infrastructures black-outs are also important to things in context. See here as well for a whole outline of the special issue.

(Picture taken yesterday in Geneva)

Why do I blog this? these papers gives some context about the reality of urban computing, all of them give a good overview of different aspects regarding urban issues.

BW on SL and alternatives. The claim of the author is that “companies are thinking twice about the popular virtual world are finding more security and flexibility in alternatives”. Why? some excerpts helps to describe the reasons:

“the Web-based parallel universe is a messy marketplace where you’re as likely to see a bare-chested, rabbit-headed avatar trolling for adult-themed entertainment or vandalizing a digital store as a corporate suit leading a training session. And some companies want to target age groups younger or older than the average 30-year-old denizen of Second Life.
(…)
Starwood Hotels & Resorts discovered avatars don’t need to sleep, and so a virtual hotel didn’t make much sense in the long run. Unlike Adidas or General Motors (GM ), which sell digital versions of Reeboks and Pontiacs in the online world, Starwood didn’t have goods to sell—and found itself unable to sustain avatars’ interest.“

So, some companies are adopting diverse solutions like creating their own world.
Why do I blog this? curiosity towards the buzz about 3D virtual worlds. I don’t understand why these articles never refer to past experiences such as There or Active World.
People who want to ponder the arguments developed in the BW piece might have a look at csven’s blog.

Slides from my Reboot talk are here (pdf, 1.1Mb).

The presentation I made, entitled “Hybridization, fusing, melting, coalescence and salmagundi” was about hybridization. I basically gave an overview of what I find interesting in projects about hybridization of the digital and the physical, a sort of compendium of the consequences (from the cognitive to the architectural) and the implications. Take-aways of my talk are:
- hybridization of the digital/physical are coming in a large variety of ways
- leads to changes from the cognitive to the architectural levels
- revisit false ideas: do not oppose the digital and the physical, less utilitarian future, digital takes room.
- reality is complex, need to study situations (not just technologies)

Thanks Thomas for the invitation!

Arrived in Copenhagen today, for Reboot.

Picture taken this afternoon, technology of access marked by a heart drawn by a passer-by.
Love+access, there was surely some good motivations because there are no precise affordance to draw this shape around this key hole..