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Towards a Starbucks-urbanism?
Over Christmas I reviewed some literature on locative media, and came across a handful of texts that addressed the changing role of the coffee house in our urban culture. Perhaps we are seeing a paradigm shift here: away from a BLVD-urbanism of public culture and towards a Starbucks Urbanism of a networked culture? Kazys Varnelis…
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The local beat in Africa – brought to you by mobile phone
In Africa, according to the International Telecommunication Union, the opportunity for new media developments is mainly on the mobile platform. Mobile phones now outnumber landlines 5-to-1, and 9-to-1 in subsahara Africa. With many of these phones outfitted with cameras and videorecording, this will of course impact the representation of African Cities. Will mobile phone-based citizen…
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Local knowledge and subcultural capital
Airroots has a beautiful post on the architecture of luxury in Tokyo. ‘40% of luxury goods sold throughout the world every year are bought by the Japanese’, they state, ‘That’s a lot of yen. So how does that translate onto Tokyo’s urbanscape?’ Of course there are many examples of starcihtect flagshipstores in Ginza and Harajuku.…
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The iPod as an ‘urban centering device’
Just received an e-mail from Michael Bull in which he announced his new book to which I was looking forward: Sound Moves. I met Michael at the Transmediale two years ago and then did this podcast interview about his research. One of his conclusions at the time: while a lot of contemporary theory focuses on…
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Jane Jacobs, bloggy neighbourhoods and cell phone sidewalks
In a recent post on Planetizen Anthony Townsend refers to two very different takes on the concept of The Moblie City. Both – although the second one doesn’t mention her – can be easily associated with the work of Jane Jacobs, in which the experience of the sidewalk is central to the formation of local…
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Is Google Watching Us?
Yesterday, Google launched the My Location function for Google Maps on mobile phones – an auto-customized You-are-here pointer for virtual maps. Or to put it in the discourse of ‘seamless experience’ that is often used for these product innovations: ‘Just press the button and the phone will tell you where you are.’ Interesting is the…
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Society of micro-control
Yesterday Dutch navigation systems company TomTom announced (in Dutch) a new service: users can subscribe to a live traffic updates (every three minutes) that will tell them exactly how long the trip will take under the present road conditions. The service is marketed as a way to ‘regain control’ over daily practicalities such as navigating…
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Chinese cities and Web 2.0
Many hi-tech corporations like Intel and Microsoft have been opening up research labs in China over the last few years. So it should be no surprise that this conference about Web 2.0 takes place in Beijing and is organized by Orange Labs, in cooperation with the Dynamic City Foundation (with whom I once cooperated in…
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Surveillance City
Trampoline is a Nottingham (uk) based platform for new media art. Like many others they have picked up on the important theme of the privatization of the public sphere. Both physical – as in the emergence of semi-public regenerated down-town shopping experience-zones – as well as in the virtual realm: As developers buy up our…
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Situated Technologies Pamphlet series
The architectural league in New York is setting up a series of very promising lectures on Situated Technologies. This fall the League launches a nine-part publication series–co-edited by Mark Shepard, Omar Khan, and Trebor Scholz–to be published over the next two years, exploring the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture. Born out of the three-day…
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The social web and the public sphere
Trebor Scholz is an interesting thinker and cultural critic on all things web 2.0. He is currently teaching a class on The Social Web, which addresses issues such as social networks and the public sphere. Although it is mainly about life online, many of the issues are also very relevant for scholars of the mobile…