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Rob van Kranenburg: The Internet of Things. A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID
On October 28th Rob van Kranenburg’s book The Internet of Things A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID will be launched (5:00 pm, Waag Society, Amsterdam) A pdf download is already available at the Institute for Network Cultures website. The main point of Kranenburg’s essay is that: Cities across the world…
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Interview with Adam Greenfield on designing for urban computing
Adam Greenfield is one of the most interesting thinkers on many of themes that we regularly address at The Mobile City. He is head of design direction for service and user-interface design at Nokia, and is currently working on a book called “The City Is Here For You To Use: Urban form and experience in…
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Announcement: workshop in Edinburgh “Placema(r)king:Brands v. Tags”
James Steward sent us an email announcing the following workshop, which might be of interest to The Mobile City readers: “Placema(r)king: Brands versus Tags” 16-17 October 2008 placemarking – placemaking: brands versus tags This workshop pits brands against tags and explores their respective roles in facilitating or hindering social interaction and meetings between people. A…
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PICNIC ’08: The Visible City session
Wednesday Sept. 24 I went to one of the sessions at PICNIC ’08 called “The Visible City”. This session was about ways of visualizing mobility patterns in the city. From the announcement: What if an entire city could be visible from above, like we see it from an airplane? Not simply buildings and squares, but…
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Gait analysis by satellite
source: http://technology.newscientist.com Here’s a new project in the surveillance race: gait analysis by using satellites that can identify people’s shadows. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California are working on developing this technique that should be a next step in fighting terrorism. ‘Normal’ gait analysis is done by CCTV (closed circuit television). Where camera’s must…
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The Big Sort, The Uses of Disorder and mobile media
I just read two books – written almost 40 years apart – that signal the same urban problem: cities and towns in the United States are becoming increasingly segregated into monocultural lifestyle enclaves – like flocks to like. This made me wonder what role locative and mobile media might play in this process. In his…
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ISEA 2008: Locative Media Core Works & Classifications
Is there a number of crucial or core works in locative media? A corpus of best practices? At the International Symposium on Electronic Art it seemed that there might be; many presentations referred to the same set of examples. Some other presentations came up with ways of classifying locative media in different categories. Here is…
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ISEA 2008: Visualizing the Real Time City
At the end of last month, I attended the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA), that was held in Singapore. Although the juried exhibition of art works didn’t involve that many works on the themes of The Mobile City, the ISEA seminar had quite a few sessions on media technology and the experience of place…
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Scott McQuire’s The Media City
I just finished reading the highly interesting book The Media City by Scott McQuire. It is a philosophical approach to the role of media in the experience of the city. I found two insights worth sharing here. The first is that McQuire sees media not as a means of representation, but rather as a technology…
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The Mobile City @ ISEA2008
I will be heading to Singapore next week to attend ISEA2008 (I’ll be there from July 21st until 30th). I will be presenting some of my own research (very much work in progress) on Urban Culture and New Media. If you will be around as well and would be interested in meeting up to discuss…
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Just out/upcoming: some interesting summer reading on the mobile city
I wanted to point our readers to three interesting (forthcoming) publications, that have been announced lately. Friday July 11th Anne Galloway will defend her dissertation titled A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FUTURE OF URBAN COMPUTING AND LOCATIVE MEDIA. I am very much looking forward to reading the whole book, and Anne has been so kind…
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Virtual fashion from The Sims in physical H&M stores
Dutch marketing blog Adformatie writes that an outfit designed by a player of virtual life game The Sims will be sold in almost 1000 H&M stores in Europe, starting July 6 2008. The outfit is the result of a design contest in which all Sims players could participate. The challenge was to design a piece…
