Archive for technology
February 20, 2008 at 9:14 PM · Filed under Design, interaction, teaching and learning, technology, visualization
I’m leading a lab this semester where two groups are developing new and interesting models for user interfaces and interactive experiences. One of the groups is looking at toys as a model for engaging intimately with science. The other day, we started thinking about toys as knowledge-networks and what that might mean for the design of interactive, tactile systems.
They’ve been using SCRATCH as a platform for development, but they’ve also been moving beyond. The team identified a few core values that they hoped to embody in the toys:
1. Astonishment
2. Play/ Tactile/ Haptic
3. Access
4. Information – Knowledge
5. Relatedness of things
6. Engagement – Belonging
Sounds like they’re off to a great start!
February 20, 2008 at 8:57 PM · Filed under interdisciplinary, making it public, proposals, teaching and learning, technology
Sometime this evening (Bangalore standard time) HASTAC and the MacArthur Foundation announce the winners of the digital media and learning initiative. Last October, CEMA submitted a proposal designed to create knowledge-networking at the intersections of art, science, and technology. You can read the main part of the proposal below. Things like these always seem a both awkward when you’ve been distanced from it for awhile, but it’s surprising just how closely the proposal matches our activities these days. In upcoming posts, I’ll be writing about and sharing images from some of those activities.
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The IDEOGRAM project proposes the development and implementation of epistematic architecture for knowledge-networking at the intersections of art, science, and technology. Epistematic architecture is information technology that scaffolds our ability to create new knowledge. We intend to make visible the connections, activities, and characteristics of the Leonardo/ISAST network and its affiliates, to learn from them, and to recontextualize this knowledge into solutions for doing informal science. Our goal is to connect the benefits of digital media and learning to underrepresented communities, provide creative mechanisms for redressing their concerns via informal science, and incorporate these concerns into the epistematic architecture project.
We propose to situate the project in the CEMA lab in Bangalore, India (see below). This will facilitate additional perspectives as we implement social frameworks and technologies to reach our goals. In this manner, we hope to more closely involve local individuals in India whose disengagement with science and technology can stimulate creative interactions and help bridge knowledge-networking gaps.
The Leonardo network is composed of 8000+ individuals and organizations from across the globe and whose engagement of science and technology characterizes their creative work. Using existing and lab-built technologies, we intend to make the network’s creative activities available as a medium for understanding how science and technology are leveraged in the cultural landscape. For example, what are individuals looking at, searching for, reading or doing? Do the metaphors used to couple knowledge vary with age? We will connect these semantic patterns to inform tactical media projects and recontextualize digital media and learning for local situations. Tactical media solutions could involve anything from creative visualizations and physical computing to social technologies.
Combining the characteristics of digital networks with local epistemologies and embodiments creates scaffolds for positive interactions among groups typically isolated for reasons of geography, age, or educational level. Scenarios for these interactions include:
- Artists, philosophers and space scientists from six countries working to provide data feeds for informal science during an upcoming mission to the moon,
- Retired scientists and policy makers working with cultural entrepreneurs to find new opportunities for engaging the public over health issues,
- Artists working in tissue culture create a meatless steak from one’s own cells, thereby providing a personal protein alternative for vegetarians, or
- Engineers and artists developing an inexpensive and portable science lab for schoolchildren to informally explore their world in and beyond the slums of India.
The exciting thing is that aspects of these scenarios are already being carried out. However, because the information/epistematic architecture linking these activities is solely the result of volunteer work, they have lacked the financial and institutional support necessary to bring them to a critical level of exposure.
Contributions to the field of digital media and learning include some of the methods we will use to accomplish this goal.
- Recognizing identities, behaviors, artifacts, and environmental influences that characterize knowledge-networking at the intersections of art, science and technology.
- Identifying objects that permeate community boundaries and coordinate diverse concerns.
- Creating new relational and interactive opportunities.
- Using individual and community characteristics to suggest opportunities for building connectivity across educational, national, income-level, and disciplinary boundaries.
- Semantic networking and making individual concerns visible can suggest emerging trends, paradigms, and models of cultural introgression.
- Questioning model knowledge-networkers to assess their relative roles as translators, naïve participants, and/or catalysts.
- Antagonizing new models of scholarship and peer-review to make use of digital media and create opportunities for underrepresented scholars.
January 24, 2008 at 11:23 PM · Filed under complex systems, Design, design ecology, ecoregionalism, interdisciplinary, proposals, technology, visual culture
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.
Visit emergingeconomyreport.com to find out more.
November 23, 2007 at 5:56 AM · Filed under boundary objects, Design, ecology, ecoregionalism, interdisciplinary, network entrepreneurship, technology
How do you take into account the diverse factors that contribute to a product or service’s ecology? How do you determine which factors are more relevant than others? One of the ways to begin this process is by mapping these interactions at a conceptual level. Then, we an begin to map them in individuals, societies, and real-world environments.
July 24, 2007 at 8:37 PM · Filed under Design, interaction, technology
Yeah, it looks good. I’m usually not one to comment on these things, but as you’ll see below it took on a personal touch. I have to admit that I am very attracted to the iPhone, and as technology goes it’s simple and portable. This weekend an Apple store opened in Ann Arbor. I just happened to pass by during the opening while looking for a new pair of glasses at the mall (I ended up sticking to contacts).
I really like the idea of being able to access the web from anywhere or even just from WiFi hotspots. That the big deal for me. I like the idea of not having to pay a cell provider for access to the web even more. The iPhone is smaller and slimmer than I had envisioned from the pictures. I was surprised at just how easy and intuitive the interface was to use. Apple’s big breakthrough, the “finger zoom” I guess you could call it, works pretty well.
I did not like the high incidence of “false positives”, that is, times when I would go to zoom or move a zoomed-in page and accidentally click on an ad or some other link (lucky for Google). This seems to suggest some rethinking of web design for these smaller devices. It’s not that anything is smaller per se, but when your pointer goes from 2 pixels to 20 (your finger), you have to make icons instead of arrows and numbers for navigation. You might also have to have parts of the page that are link-free, going against everything the New York Times stands for with its “every-word-is-hot-linked” approach. Typing is also difficult, but I suspect that, like texting, it may be possible to overcome the limitations of extra-small keys on the touchscreen.
Still, I didn’t even begin to grasp the possibility until talking with my grandmother this weekend. We’ve been trying to find a solution for her to be able to access the web and send mail. Getting her a full-fledged computer is overkill, and she’s definitely a minimalist with not intention of having a big clunking box on her antique desktop. We got to talking about her new phone and how she never uses it, in part because the many functions make it difficult to navigate and simply enter her friend’s phone number. I asked her who her provider was, and then it dawned on me: The iPhone might solve her interaction problems. Leave it to Apple to make interaction interactive (..now about that whole sustainable environment thing…Steve).
I tend to typically assume that new technology and interfaces are more difficult to use and not easier. This is usually because some marketing department has gotten too invented in the design, trying to sell features and products that nobody needs or wants. The iPhone is actually pretty simple, and the icons make doing simple things like entering a phone number easy because you can see the navigational menu structure. Calling is the same as selecting a full name. I like the idea of Grandma being able to operate her computer form a small and portable device. She’s been wanting to surf the web, and she still needs an operable phone. Perhaps the iPhone is it, but she’ll have to be the judge.
I’m still waiting for the semantically important switch from iTechnology to uTechnology, but that’s me. I wonder how these things can help us collect data in the field and otherwise do science 2.0? Then again, Naoki hacked his pda a long time ago to enter info about his flowers and their levels of inbreeding.
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