Technologies of Cooperation

Howard Rheingold, Andrea Saveri and Kathi Vian put together a report (PDF) and visual map of technologies of cooperation. They talk about technologies, the power of these tools derives from the social practices they amplify specifically the ways people, machines and institutions can cooperate. They mention eight key clusters:

- Group-forming networks
- Social software
- Social mobile computing
- Self-organizing mesh network
- Community computing grids
- Peer production networks
- Social accounting tools
- Knowledge collectives

Renaissance Geeks

Engineers that only have technical knowledge are vulnerable on the job market. Techies not only have to learn people skills, but also have to become renaissance geeks. They have to understand computing, but they also typically need deep knowledge in multidisciplinary fields. According to NYT’s A Techie, Absolutely, and More the job outlook is brightest for those skilled in the application of technology.

Definition of Pervasive (Gaming)

In What is Pervasive Gaming?, Annika Waern, SICS, coordinator of IPerG, talks about ways to define Pervasive Gaming. He covers more the term “pervasive” than “gaming”. He mentions a design-oriented definition:

Pervasive games are new game experiences that are tightly interwoven with our everyday lives through the items, devices and people that surround us and the places that we inhabit.

… a more technology-oriented definition:

Pervasive gaming integrates the technical approaches of computer gaming with emerging interface, wireless and positioning technologies to create game experiences that combine both virtual and physical game elements.

… and a slogan

Physical presence and virtual experience

I have the feeling that in these definitions, the term pervasive is losing its substance. Ubiquitous or pervasive environments are more than the ones claimed by these definitions. The original meaning of these terms are:
Pervasive: having the quality or tendency to pervade (to become diffused throughout every part of)
Ubiquitous: existing or being everywhere at the same time: omnipresent

The father of ubiquitous computing, Mark Weiser, mentions that ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Currently, the art is not as mature as Weiser hoped. This lack of maturity (will it ever be mature?) and underlying imperfections are an interesting for the user-centered study of pervasive applications.

L'émergence des Créatifs Redessine la Suisse

Dans L’émergence des créatifs redessine la Suisse, Xavier Comtess reprend les idées de Rise of the Creative Class de Richard Florida pour les contextualiser à la Suisse. C’est peut-être un peu trop porter sur la creative economy en laissant un peu de côté les composants non-économomiques de la creative class comme le style de vie et les motivations de cette nouvelle classe. Actuellement la fracture en Suisse qui n’est pas au niveau des langues ou des cultures, mais dans les différences grandissantes du High-Tech Land et du Heidi Land.

Il mentionne les villes européens capables d’attiré les créatifs sans oublier Barcelone:

En devenant des acteurs mondiaux des technologies des télécommunications (Helsinki), de l’innovation (Dublin), de la nanotechnologie (Grenoble), de l’aéronautique (Toulouse), de la culture et des échanges (Barcelone), de la nautique et du tourisme (Valence), ces métropoles ont su attirer la matière la plus rare aujourd’hui: les créatifs.

Counterfeit Maps

Via The Map Room

To save money, some Chinese GPS manufacturers use counterfeit maps instead of official ones; as a result, Shanghai drivers who buy the cheaper units are getting lost.

Some fairly disturbed individuals actually discover cities deliberately using other city’s maps.

The usage of inaccurate maps would actually be an interesting study.

Informal Tringular Collaboration on CatchBob!

Philip Jeffrey from the Human Communication Technologies Laboratory of the University of British Columbia, came to visit Nicolas and I at the CRAFT. He came to planify an informal triangular collaboration around CatchBob!

A first successful step was to share the code of CacthBob! and make it run in Vancouver. People at UBC, plan to extend it to a “Chase Bob” (with one or many moving Bobs). Nicolas and I have plans for a richer task “Clue2Clue”. We will collaborate on setting these environments, sharing datas, publishing and hopefully organizing a workshop.

Main partners would be:

• Philip Jeffrey, University of British Columbia, Human Communication Technologies Laboratory
• Mike Blackstock, University of British Columbia, Human Communication Technologies Laboratory
• Nicolas Nova, Swiss Federal Institue of Technology Lausanne, Center for Research and Support of Training and its Technologies
• Fabien Girardin, University of Pompeu Frabra, Interactive Technology Group

We all share a common set of research interests. During the discussion, I wrote down the main topics covered by CatchBob and that Nicolas and/or want to continue investigating with the system:
- location awareness (impact on collaboration, automatic/manual positioning)
- uncertainty management (impact on the collaboration and gap between the designer and user conceptual models. Communication latency, positioning accuracy, unpredictability of connectivity, sense of trust)
- collaborative map annotation (annotations and the relations of their meaning to the map. ).

Nicolas mentions more…

ArtFutura 2005

ArtFutura 2005, the digital arts and new media festival of reference in Spain, will be an event not to miss on October 27th-30th. In Barcelona, special guest will be Bruce Sterling who will probably talk about Blobjects. Other participants will include Hiroshi Ishii, founder of the “Tangible Media” concept, the interactive systems that regulate themselves via the manipulation of everyday objects.

Place Lab and Google Maps Mashup

Similar to a previous hack of mine “MapMe“, James Howard developed a Google Maps WiFi Locator, that uses WiFi positioning within a web browser. It loads a signed applet to make native calls (Place Lab code) to the WiFi adapter and Google Maps to display the position.

My position in Geneva while writing this… perfect!

IperG Open House Day

I did not intend the IperG Open House Day, but Tobias reported on it in which he says “it was interesting, but not ground breaking”. Apparently Hitcher left very good impressions. Seems like a rather casual, non-intrusive pervasive game. I could not find any map-based pervasive game in IperG.

Drawings and Handwritting in CatchBob!

Examples of drawings and handwrittings in a mobile, synchronous, group, pen-driven map annotation application (CatchBob!):