The CEMA homepage is showing an image of scanner that has opportunistically been colonized by ants (anyone know which species?). I was present at the offending attack, and I have this to say. I didn’t see it so much as an attack as it was (more perversely) an underanticipated observation that ants had quietly moved into an (apparently) unused and undisturbed piece of late 20th century technology- that of the document scanner.
While this may have been felt by some as an attack on our morals of human-hood and right-living (ants and scanners shouldn’t mix, right…er…right?), to me this was much more the most delicate and profound expression not of nature but of the social world in which we live. The most amazing thing to me is that a colony of ants could have arrived and decided that a scanner would make a good home. Perhaps there were some legacy muffins adding allure to the crystal glass and step-motor, but maybe the ants were looking for something held up in the ambient waves of electrical heat left over from un-nourished scans of students’ faces, buttocks, book chapters, and collages.
No..I think this is exactly where we want to be…where mixes and happenstances converge out of nothing more than the desire to find place, continence in the “other”, and the cheap thrill of being where you aren’t supposed to.
On checking up on their status, they are gone from the scanner…pupae and all. I’m not sure if they left on their own accord or if they were kicked out. Where did they go? The water cooler perhaps? As for next time, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that discovery doesn’t correlate with disentanglement. I’d like to keep my scanner ants…who knows…they may have figured out something that we haven’t.
The compelling section of the report was its recognition of its own limitations, and the kinds of tactics that the intelligence community needs to better understand complexity and difficult social, economic, and environmental issues.
Our analysis could be greatly improved if we had a much better understanding and explanation of past and current human behavior. Continued research to model social human dynamics at the individual and society level would support this improved understanding. This would necessitate the ability to integrate social, economic (infrastructure, agriculture, and manufacturing), military, and political models. Continued research in these efforts—while a significant challenge—could have high analytical payoff. In the interim, assessing the future of a society’s evolution will by necessity be a scenario-driven exercise and an imprecise science. The continued use of outside experts is critical to our success.
It’s somewhat comforting to know that at least the intelligence community is starting to learn that it takes diverse groups of people and disciplinary perspectives to solve difficult problems. Who knows, maybe they will even be willing to seek out non-traditional perspectives from the arts and/or oppositional discourses in their futurecasting.
A letter to this week’s Nature describes a study that reveals an interesting model of human movement patterns. The study is the first of its kind for the simple reason that the researchers were able to objectively track people in the natural environment by using mobile phone locations as proxies for their movement.
location tracking phone
Biologists have been performing similar studies on animals for years, using radio tracking devices and similar forms of locations awareness. However, because people tend to be difficult to keep track of, subject to influence from experimental methods, and resistant to monitoring by others, it has been previously difficult to get this kind of accurate data about humans.
Without recapping the study itself (you can read the original abstract and related news stories from the links below), there are many reasons why these data are interesting and useful. The least of which concern us with how people behave and how their behavior translates into public health practice, urban planning, education and communication. For me, the most interesting questions come when we understand what kinds of heterogeneity exist in populations. Understanding what motivates people to behave and respond differently is curious, especially when it relates to their cognitive capacities, their environment, and their learned behaviors. Thus we can begin to ask questions about how systems like architecture or policy, at very different scales, affect systems at other scales–like human reproductive choices for instance.
This study demonstrated that people aren’t really all that interesting in the movements, which is to simply say that we are predictable. We generally stay close to home or work and move in small bursts around these areas most of the time. Occasionally we make wider forays across the landscape.
There are privacy concerns to be negotiated. Many have been critical of the use of this information for the study. To my mind I don’t find the use of the data in the current study problematic for two reasons: 1) there is no identifying information available in the data, and 2) the mobile phones companies have been collecting this data, often out of legal obligation for billing precision, and using it for proprietary purposes with contractual consent from subscribers. I think it is important that some public good be made of the information, even if it means simply bringing to light the fact that these kinds of data are ubiquitously collected under the terms of cell phone contracts. Furthermore, a sample of people in the study explicitly consented to having their movements tracked as part of a value-added service, associated with navigation or weather for example.
Still, the study raises questions and begs for further social questioning and negotiating. I think where it starts to become problematic is when these studies begin to impede personal autonomy. Then again, the negotiations are where all the fun is…
This is an interesting report I came across from a UN-Vodaphone partnership designed to provide “research and recommendations on how to use technology and telecom tools to effectively address some of the world’s toughest challenges” (found via THDblog)
The story I was most interested in was Case Study 10: Environmental Monitoring with Mobile Phones (Ghana) carried out by Intel Research. I was struck by this paragraph, detailing the convergence of locative sensing and personal health status:
Another area for further exploration is the ability of mobile sensing to contribute to public health by linking health with environmental factors that have not been available before. For example, even though we know that there is a link between asthma symptoms and air pollution, previously it was not possible to directly correlate an individual’s symptoms with their exposure to air pollutants. Measuring people’s lung performance while measuring ambient air pollution exposure could shed new light on the links between air pollution and asthma, perhaps resulting in better treatments.
Clearly there are many thorny privacy concerns, but that’s the difficult (and fun) part to work out and begin to address.
Still, I think this example is on the mark in trying to link infrastructure, natural or man-made and population health patterns.
I was up this morning thinking about the kinds of spaces, communities and interactions I would like to see. Somewhere between physical computing, synthetic biology, evolutionary ecology, and design is a space where species can speak and be recognized by each other, where urban infrastructure becomes adaptive in the space of days and not decades, where the threshold of difference is lowered to such a degree that new networks between otherwise unrelated groups and individuals can find common ground.
Perhaps for the first time, I am beginning to see how things can be connected for the purpose of builing empathy. Whereas previously, I think the difficult work of etting to know a species was largely out of many peoples’ desires and time banks, perhaps there are now ways of making the opportunities both immediate and resource-efficient.
Rather than always seeking to decouple tightly-linked host-parasite relationships, can we find ways to make new ones…perhaps ones that can grow into mutualisms and symbioses? Is hardwiring a step in the process? What are the costs, benefits, sources and sinks? Can we create or link networks of co-dependence? What models of covariation should we adopt: linear, dominance, epistatic, topological?
Cooperation and mutualism among humans and other species has spanned the landscape for thousands of years. This is particularly evident in the silk industry here in the southern Indian State of Karnataka where almost every woman wears a silk sari. The silk industry in Karnataka is massive. Visitors here will find silk shops on most main streets. The city of Mysore is one very well-known production center for silk (akin to Bordeaux for wine or Darjeeling for tea), and although Karnatakan silk production has fallen in recent years (perhaps due to development and water shortage), it still accounts for almost 50% of India’s total silk output.
This semester a group of my students undertook the task of documenting the silk production process as it occurs in Karnataka. They visited several sites ranging from a rural handloom enterprise to industrial mills and retail outlets. They prepared themselves by looking at precedents from similar art and design students looking at how things are made. They also focused their investigations by first reading the Design for Sustainability Guide. In this way, they managed their engagement for the purposes of producing actionable knowledge to foster sustainable design practices.
One of the outputs of their research is this account of silk production. I found it detailed, well-researched (though I would have preferred more footnotes and cited references), and informative. I think it also illuminates the degree to which these students understand their processes and are willing and able to identify parts of the systems for further exploration.
The Emerging Economy Report is coming! This is a project I’ve been working on over the last few months. It’s been in development for almost a year and a half and represents research in seven countries, all of which have been identified as emerging economies. An emerging economy is a country that is experiencing sustained economic growth as a result of rapid informationalization and limited or partial industrialization. Economic growth in the information economy will continue to be driven by these emerging economies who will benefit from rapid informationalization, innovation, and ephemerilization of the economy, leapfrogging many of the requirements and costs of the Industrial Revolution.
We’ve been working to develop insights into global trends and user perspectives across seven nations including: India, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, Egypt, and South Africa. By examining specific case studies, visual research, economic trends, and user perspectives on (among other things) technology, access to information, heathcare, and economic resources, we have been able to create strategic knowledge for those wishing to do business in these emerging economies.
The 7 emerging economy countries studied in this report account for 46% of the world population. The report offers a variety of innovative recommendations that will help businesses engage with these economies.
Last week I was given the opportunity to participate in a workshop sponsored by the AIDI (Association of Industrial Designers of India). The deliberations of the event were intended to inform the implementation of India’s national design policy. It was a sort of pre-conference workshop held just before the Leadership Through Design conference here in Bangalore (more on that later). Many design professionals and educators came together from across India and the world to develop strategies and actionable recommendations.
There were a handful of breakout groups, each dealing with a different focus area. These were: Education (Srishti was a partner), Design Parks (these are intended to be urban design “hubs”), Branding and Communication of Indian Design (ahh, identity politics), Culture, Environment, Social Development & Effective Public Spending (the ‘everything else’ category), and Competitive Advantage by Design (my group).
All in all, it was interesting to gain a sense of how this is being approached. India is, after all, partially concerned with having a dialogue about such things. Could you even imagine a national design policy in the United States, much less a dialogue about it?!! So in that respect, I have to give those that have put in heir time and energy a LOT of credit. Mind you that this policy is seen as a partial solution to India’s competitiveness on the global scene. My impression is that by having a national design policy, India can put it’s financial, intellectual, and social capital resources into creating better solutions and opportunities…at least that’s what one would hope.
Designing for Competitiveness Our group was fairly well mixed with Indian-based designers, design managers, and even two professionals from major U.S. design firms. Needless to say there was a lot of expertise willing to put their heads together and try to identify how India could become more competitive in design and design thinking. I hate to say it, but I do think we were hampered a bit by our group facilitator. Given the combined problem-solving techniques that the group had at its disposal, it was a bit disheartening that we took as long as we did to develop heuristics to accomplish the task. Every time we got something going, our facilitator would step in and question the approach, needlessly diverting our efforts. Nonetheless, we took it on and made a lot of progress in the end.
We started by brainstorming challenges and ways to build India’s competitiveness in design. Each of these was placed on a post-it and then one of the group members got the process going by verbally grouping them into common themes (my favorite which got lost in the end was ‘Design for Corruption’). That seemed to work because it got us to the next stage which was to develop further those ideas into specific strategies. We decided to split up into two groups because we were short on time and we had ten themes to work through. At the end of the day, each of the main groups got up and presented their deliberations. I’ll list them at the end, but before I do I want to address two things that really bothered me and that I want to avoid in future interactions like these.
Group Dynamics The first was that one of the other groups (Design Parks) spent a lot of time deliberating around the issues. I am close friends with on of the participants from that group and he told me that the recommendations that were presented were not actually the ones discussed! It seems that the leader had actually prepared a powerpoint before the day even started with his recommendations and then presented that to the entire assembly. I do remember that the presentation looked way too good, but I didn’t ask. I guess the lesson is that we have to aim and ensure that the deliberations around these kinds of things are genuine. I’m not saying that his were bad ideas. I just don’t know why people’s time was wasted if their work wasn’t going to be represented. I didn’t participate in the group so I really don;t know what happened, but it certainly sends the wrong kind of message.
The second was that we “americans” really did create an imbalance in the conversation. I don’t know if it had to do with language (I doubt it) or what, but our Indian colleagues really backed off. This bothered me. I couldn’t tell if they were following our lead or that they just felt uncomfortable. Not all did of course. When we split into two groups though, one of the groups was entirely composed on people who either were from or worked in the U.S. I don’t think it was intentional, but it certainly was cultural in the sense that I wanted to just get to work and the group that just started doing it seemed to nucleate. Then again, I can’t really say how the other group formed. In any case, I was disappointed because group level diversity is something I try to implement, especially when approaching roblems like these. I don’t know how important it was in the end; you can judge by the recommendations. Can you guess which is which? I’ll give you a hint. One group did five themes; another did four.
Networked Design I am convinced that two of the themes our group proposed are critical. ‘Human Power’ (or social capital) and ‘Designers and Opportunities’ seem to be the key distinction in terms of what it is that designers actually do. By bringing together concerns, ideas, methods, and interactions from all over, designers leverage their own social capital to bring something into existence. Designers (like artists) do this because they can sense opportunity, much like entrepreneurs. How we develop our abilities to sense these opportunities is what will make new innovation possible. Bringing that innovation into existence only happens when good ideas are encouraged and allowed to form from the opportunities that social capital provides.
Here is an example of how new opportunities could be realized. Hidalgo, et al. (see below) argue that “The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations”. The authors use a network analysis of the relatedness among products to show that more sophisticated products (such as those exported by industrial, developed nations) are more closely connected. Their assumption is that “the ability of a country to produce a product depends on its ability to produce other ones.” They measure this in part by using the overlap among markets (read: concerns) for exported products. This has definite implications for the artist-designer that seeks to build relationships between people, services, and things as a design strategy. By creating and making dense connections, designers have a greater chance of developing new hybrids or artifacts that satisfy multiple concerns (cute and cuddly, for example). This is the essence of interdisciplinary strategy and approach.
Take a look at these graphs from the Hidalgo, et al. article*. On the far left are all nations combined along with a key. India is in the middle and the US is on the right. The thing to notice from this comparison is the distribution of the squares versus circles. Circles are the overall network. Squares denote the “revealed competitive advantage” for the product for that country. Thus, squares are where the country has an advantage. As you can see products which are more closely related (such as those that form dense clusters) are those that give the U.S. a competitive advantage. In India, the square tend to be at the periphery (in textiles and garments, for instance). The point is that so-called innovation is happening in these dense clusters. If designers begin to form networks and social capital among these disconnected hubs of innovation and expertise, then they may be able to leverage these as opportunities for innovation. Maybe that small metal cluster between garments and textiles needs to be remixed. Bronze kurtas anyone? Better yet, take a look at the electronics cluster and maybe we’ve got electric saris on the way!
*The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations. C. A. Hidalgo. R. B. Klinger, A.-L. Barabasi, R. Hausmann. Science 317, 482-487 (2007)
One of the questions that’s been nagging at me is if the CEMA lab that we’ve been building is an applied testing ground for Science, Technology and Society (STS) Theory and Practice. Wikipedia describes Science and technology studies (STS) as:
the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these in turn affect society, politics, and culture.
My interpretation is surely unidimensional, and I’m sure there are many examples of experimental media arts and technology spaces where critical questions are being addressed. Are there programs that take a specifically empirical approach to the propositions that come from STS and its metaview of science as it is practiced? Many of CEMA’s projects look at how technology and scientific enterprise are embedded in society and politics. Because we specifically implement creative art & design practices in the process, we seek to generate multidimensional perspectives that can further stimulate the ways in which artifacts are designed, situated, and discussed in culture and society. One of these outcomes may be so-called innovation. My curiosity leads me to wonder if the structures that STS identifies can be tested.
A recent article in Design Issues looked at how products and practices are linked under actor-network theory. The authors, Jack Ingram, Elizabeth Shove, and Matthew Watson, suggest that their concepts have the potential to bridge design and social theory. Studying processes of acquisition, specialization, scripting, appropriation, assembly, normalization and practice can lead one to recognize how artifacts, processes, and principles are tightly linked. These linkages may or may not lead to what Malcolm McCullough calls ‘deskilling’ – where individuals and their environment become increasingly estranged as infrastructural bias accumulates.
I suppose this is why I am excited about one of our students’ projects. Prayas Abhinav has created Not Alone, which is more or less the Indian implementation of TXTmob. TXTmob was successfully used during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions for protesters to actively coordinate their movements and demonstrations. One of the interesting questions to come out of this is how the implementation of this very socio-political technology will fare in India. What concerns and questions need to be addressed? I think Prayas is taking an interesting tactic by formulating the distribution of Not Alone as a form of social intervention designed to aid those in need.
What’s interesting to me is how technologies and scientific structures can be compared across landscapes to reveal how large-scale ecosociopolitical trends shape the differences in how technology and science are practiced and interpreted. Shelia Jasanoff took this approach in her book, Design on Nature, when she compared different conceptions for when life “begins” in the US, UK and Germany. By showing how the differing legal and political approaches led to the formation of different definitions of life, she showed how abortion issues reproductive rights are scripted and normalized (my interpretation).
So I’m thinking about all of this because I have long been interested in male-biased infection patterns which are especially prevalent in affluent countries. I started thinking about these patterns and how they might relate to Malcolm’s description of ‘deskilling.’ Are biological relationships like those between host and parasite affected and influenced by infrastructure and artifacts degrading or biasing over time? Is this a ratcheting effect and, if so, is it at all similar to the ratchet effect experienced by asexual populations as they diminish genotypic variation each generation through selection? Do landscape effects like the differences in infrastructure in the U.S. versus India contribute to this? hmmm…
Cooperation and mutualism among humans and other species has spanned the landscape for thousands of years. This is particularly evident in the silk industry here in the southern Indian State of Karnataka where almost every woman wears a silk sari. The silk industry in Karnataka is massive. Visitors here will find silk shops on most main streets. The city of Mysore is one very well-known production center for silk (akin to Bordeaux for wine or Darjeeling for tea), and although 
One of the outputs of their research is this 
