Blackbeltjones/Work “The cosmos is a deeply dangerous thing to think about - into it, vacant minds expand” - Dr. Jonathan Miller

Elizabeth has a great post on her blog (which is rapidly becoming a favourite) about the orthodoxy of ubicomp future visions:

“I love the ways our visions of the future never quite see the real changes to come: who could imagine now a world in which female military officers wear miniskirts? We’re always crucially wrong on those small details—and the larger cultural changes that create them.

But one vision of the future seems to remain constant: the idea that somehow computers will magically read our hearts and minds, then respond appropriately”

My shorthand for this sort of thing:

“There’ll be Spandex jackets – one for everyone”

Then Chris finds this neat counterpoint:

“Aaron Marcus: 12 Myths of Mobile Device User-Interface Design

Developers share many illusions and delusions about mobile-device user-interface design. In the UI development world, there are many assumptions or myths floating around about the future of mobile devices. Myths are useful in civilizations. They summarize inherited wisdom and guide us to the future. Some become obsolete, like the ones about the flat earth and the sun as the center of the universe. Let’s make sure our ideas about mobile device UI design remain fresh and useful.A 35-year veteran of user-interface design pops a few conceptual balloons and puts a few new twists on others.

Myth: Users want power and aesthetics. Features are everything.
Myth: What we really need is a Swiss army knife.
Myth: 3G is here!
Myth: Focus groups and other traditional market analysis tools are the best way to determine user needs.
Myth: If it works in Silicon Valley, it will work anywhere.
Myth: The killer app will be games, er, no, I mean, horoscopes, or
Myth: Mobile devices will essentially be phones, organizers, or combinations, with maybe music/video added on.
Myth: The industry is converging on a UI standard.
Myth: Highly usable systems are just around the corner.
Myth: One underlying operating system will dominate.
Myth: Mobile devices will be free-or nearly free.
Myth: Advanced data-oriented services are just around the corner.”

Myth systems and orthodoxies in design and strategy for technology… Hmm. Kuhn I guess talks about it in science – what about design and technology, which goes through paradigmic change far more quickly I’d assume. Any notable thought and writing on this you know of? Peter?

Filed under: Sufficiently Advanced Technology
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Apologies to John Lennon.

Filed under: Misc.
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Andrew Webb commemorates my old boss (and his now) Mr. Dyke…

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^ A t-shirt design for Tomski, based on one of his favourite phrases, and least favourite films.

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As explored in The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet.

From Eugene Thacker’s review at Rhizome:

“One of the common dissatisfactions with interactivity on the Web is that telepresence is not, well, presence. Certainly some of the more interesting new media projects have deconstructed our assumptions concerning presence and the sense of “really” being there. But, when it comes down to it, we are faced with the experience that you and I in our separate computer-hovels chatting over CU-SeeMe, is not the same as you and I having drinks in a cozy bar. This difference has prompted talk of a qualitative difference between two essentially different modes of communication and interaction, each contingent upon a variety of factors (technology, class, cultural difference, race, geography, language, etc.). The “noise” that often comes through is not just technical, but
can also be social.

Part of the problem of computer-mediated communication has to do with the status of the body in the interaction—or rather, the state of “embodiment.” We all want our communication and interactions to be as transparent as possible, and there is a sense in which physical presence plays an important part in giving us that feeling of authenticity, of transparency. But how do we address the importance of embodiment when dealing with technologies such as the Web?

This is one of the main questions in Ken Goldberg’s new anthology, “The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet” (MIT Press, 2000) Using the term “telepistemology” to talk about how knowledge is transmitted, produced, and circulated on the net, Goldberg has assembled a collection of different perspectives on tele-robotics, as both a technological and a cultural issue

Filed under: Sufficiently Advanced Technology
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Is there any service or site that aggregates and compares just the categories used in blogs?

Filed under: Blog watch
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“To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

Sigmund Freud’s work into the bubbling and murky world of the subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society’s belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man’s ultimate goal.”

A fantastic series, and unfortunately not available on bittorrent… First watched this in parallel to reading The Filth, which was a helluva combo.

» BBC Four: The century of the self

Filed under: Society and culture
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Warren Ellis’ Bad Signal:

“If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain—do you also believe that television shows are made inside
your television set?”

Filed under: Sufficiently Advanced Technology
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The man himself posts in the comments:

“This was too easy! You should have tried a Mongolian goatherd or a Republican Senator instead of me. We’re probably in too-similar worlds.

Steven Johnson mentioned your site to me – so that’s only two degrees of separation.

My suggestion is that you keep quiet about the fact that I’ve made contact and see if anyone else comes up with a more circuitous and interesting route.”

Heh.

Half-baked thought: the goal of all the ‘Sters is to collapse our social web to a surveyable size, bringing our friends and connections close enough to see beyond them to new people. A little like glancing over the shoulder of someone you’re talking to at a party in order to see who’s coming through the door.

The picturesque and playful exploring of our social connections is sacrificed. The mathematics of coincidence are intruding on the delusions we enjoyed every time we exclaimed to a new acquaintance the reassuring cliche “what a small world!”.

Where’s the business model in social networks? The same as email and other generators of information overload: the new luxury of meaning. I will pay to sustain the space, the silence and the signal. Give me privacy and anonymity, but also possibility. Extend my connections, but don’t collapse them. Jason Kottke’s satirical job advert for such social network concierge services could be answered one day, as he suggests, by an arms-race of web apps or software agents at a price.

The republican senator and the mongolian goatherd that Eno mentions have the same luxurious, unobtainable high-ground at the lip of the connectivity well, for very different reasons.

The money and the privilege give the benefits of access without the overload. Those down in the connectivity well will pay for a short trip up into the weightless, noiseless luxury world of the goatherd/billionaire like we do expensive spa weekends or wilderness trips.

Or when we bore of our “too similar worlds” we’ll swap identities and networks for a while – for picturesque experience of other uncollapsed networks, connections and the possibilities they bring. A student at the RCA based his “identity tourism” project on the statistic that 70% (I think) of us lie about what we do when a stranger on an airplane asks us. Playing dress-up is pretty profitable in the real-world as it is.

But I digress.

The final goal of sitting down for a nice milk stout with the man has yet to be accomplished, but EnoQuest is done; with a nice three-act structure at ridiculous internetweb social-singularity-speed.

Big thanks to Steven Johnson, and everyone who joined in.

Filed under: Social Software
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And I have five leads:

1. Some access to previously privileged knowledge: the name and phone number of his agent from someone who read this blog and has a big red book for agents of the rich and famous.
   
2. A two-degrees connection from someone I work with, perhaps
   
3. A possible two-degree connection from noted flaneur and esotericist Dan Hill.
   
4. A tenuous four-degree connection from Kim P.´
   
5. A tantalising IM me” from Euan.

Some promising stuff, and a lot of background material from others in comments – thanks!

For some reason phoning his agent seems like cheating, and certainly not the stuff that social network visionquests are made of. Plenty of room still for your suggestions…

Filed under: Social Software
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I want to talk to Brian Eno.

Do you know him? Do you know someone who knows him? Do you know someone who knows someone who knows him? In theory, it’s very likely.

I want to sit down and talk to him within the next 2 months.

If I’m successful all of these social software theories will have had some real pay off for me finally – and hey, maybe I can sell the story to Dave Gorman.

I will let you know how it goes.

Filed under: Social Software
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It’s Australia Day, and pictured is one of that country’s greatest achievements: Harry’s Floater pie, from Harry’s Cafe De Wheels. The floater is a meat pie with it’s top taken off, replaced with fluffy mashed potato formed into a crater, and filled with gravy and mushy peas.

Thanks to Eric Scheid of the awesome IAwiki for showing me the pastry nirvana that is Harry’s at Wooloomooloo.

Some other fantastic Australian things:

• The man about town’s choice for fine apparel: Imperfectionist


• Creativity/Machine


• The Avalanches


• SoulPacific


• TripleJ


• Being mauled by the vicious, dumping waves onto the gravel/sand at Bronte Beach and then going for a smoothy and/or a breakfast beer at Sejuiced, Bronte.


• Home of newstainment: CNNNN and The Chaser


• The Standard, The Laundry, The Night Cat Melbourne.


• Back-in-black and almost every record that has sampled it as a result.


• which leads to: duh-nunner-nunner-nuh-nuh… Angus!


• Introducing quantum mechanics to teenagers, it’s the other Angus… Dr. Angus Gray-Weale


• Rolf, who I met when I was about 4.


• and of course, Foe.

Foe has a more poetic commemoration of Australia Day over at her place...

Filed under: Misc.
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Primer a sci-fi film, cost $7000 to make and has won the Sundance film festival.

A quid from each of the BadSignal subscribers could have financed it…

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Warren Ellis on his Bad Signal mailing list [my emphasis]:

“As of right now, there are 5400 people on the Bad Signal.
If all of you went to www.e-sheep.com and paid a lousy 25 cents to read a Patrick Farley comic, he would instantly become the best-paid serial creator in indie comics. If half of you went, he’s still be doing pretty well, probably constituting a pro rate for the work he’s doing. For twenty-five cents, microcasting work to an online audience of less than 3000 people would give him a shot at a living gig. Expand that out. Even 25 cents for an mp3 multiplied by half the readership of Bad Signal would mean that that musician is doing better than 90% of professional musicians—that is, earning more than US$600 a month. Seriously.

In fact, to support four artists you like, all you’d have to do is put aside an entire dollar a month to buy their art. And tell your friends.”

I guess this is the telling my friends part. Warren makes a good side-point about the use of tribe.net or other social-network services as markets for what he calls “microcasting” of creative work. There’s probably something to be learnt / crosspollinated from the creative networks around MMORPGs, but I’m not sure what. Anyway – go give Patrick Farley some money…

Filed under: Comic Books
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^ Seen on a platform crane, Covent Garden, London.

Filed under: Interface innovations
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Ashley Highfield, head of BBC New Media:

“Our aspiration is to make it really simple – we have got to make the web as easy as just pressing the red button on interactive TV and I think that is something we can do.

“Clearly those people who have already got broadband are the early adopters and I am not sure they are the people who will tip it for the majority.”

The BBC is also working on other ways to increase consumer interest in broadband. Mr Highfield is considering “broadbanderising” the BBC website, which gets 10m visitors a month.”

“Broadbanderising?” Apart from it being an abomination of a word worthy of Dubya – has this man never heard of Loosemore’s Law? Make the web like TV? I know the BBC is meant to provide stuff the market cannot, but when the market walked away from interactive TV, they might have been on to something. Didn’t he learn anything at his previous companies?

Gah! Why am I letting the BBC still stress me out! I have no words. So I’ll take someone elses:

“He who prides himself on giving what he thinks the people want is creating a fictitious demand for lower standards which he will then satisfy.”

Lord Reith would have made people love the command line, bless ‘im.

Filed under: Interface innovations
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Which is probably the title of an ‘R’-rated Finnish film.

Anyway – Chris has the best review of Orkut I’ve seen (especially on the lack of nuance and innovation) and David Galbraith also has some good insights as you’d expect.

I’m going to try and find how to remove myself from it now.

Filed under: Social Software
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So, the conversation went a little like this:

[Foe]: “I think Amazon would come up with a better social network service than Google would”

[Me]: “Haven’t they done that already?”

[Foe]: “What do you mean?”

[Me]: “Well, they’ve got straight to the part where the social interactions of thousands of people get them more cash, without having to deal with all that troublesome dating business”

[Foe]: “Heh… Yeah, I suppose… but what I mean is something where you see what your friends are buying and reading and wishing for, and that activity is what prompts connections and conversations”

Which got me thinking. Amazon already have incredible features for harnesses our connections and social behaviours, but they are all fairly anonmous, unlike the wave of social network services. Could Amazon benefit from some of the UI features of those sites?

(more…)

Filed under: Social Software
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and nonsense:

• Apple announces “AtticAuthor”
  
• Howard Dean = The Grateful Dead
  
• Strictly Kev’s “raiding the 20th century” mix must be listened to in order to believe it.
  
• The Helsinki Zoo International Open Ice Sculpture Competition
  
• Fastcompany: If He’s So Smart…Steve Jobs, Apple, and the Limits of Innovation
  
• Ben Hyde: Friends of Moore’s Law
  
• “I Like!”
  
• SPEECH ACTS: Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
  
• “Design in a VC [Virtual Community] can actually be performed using speech acts that in-real-life wouldn’t perform any design. We call these acts `design speech acts’.”
  
• Lee Smolin and Loop Quantum gravity: “Nature is a unity. This pen is made of atoms and it falls in the earth’s gravitational field.”
  
• Foe’s books arrived from the shipping company – time to reread Walter Benjamin “Unpacking my library”
  

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Like many others I had a few emails inviting me to join Orkut this morning. I had first heard mention of it yesterday afternoon when some colleagues found it, and started snickering about it’s mission statement to make people ‘come together’.

It turns out that Orkut is finnish slang for orgasm.

Other than that what to say? It’s YASNS, it looks terrible (pastel colours and wierd faux deco drop-caps? urgh!) but actually has some pretty nice interaction design going on. I think it’s actually the most usable out of the SNS so far, and I suppose this will have to be a trend – new social-network-services aiming lowering barrier to particpation and transfer of networks as you weren’t the first.

It flows pretty intuitively, but with some funny quirks like only giving you access to some rating/karma features when it decides to. It’s affiliated to Google so I guess that’s worth thinking about.

Filed under: Social Software
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