James Bridle asks how computer networks will affect cultural memories.
Tagged with “technology”
(20)
-
Four Thought: James Bridle
Tagged with bbc four thought technology culture memory twitter:user=jamesbridle
-
BBC - Podcasts - Four Thought: Russell M. Davies 21 Sept 2011
Four Thought talks include stories and ideas which will affect our future, in politics, society, the economy, business, science, technology or the arts. Recorded live, the talks are given by a range of people with a new thought to share.
After the internet and social media, what will be the next technological revolution? Writer, blogger and social entrepreneur Russell M. Davies argues that like the early days of blogging, we are about to witness another flowering of individual creativity. This time, he says, it will unleash "all sorts of interesting gadgety things", and determine our relationships with them. "It’s about making your own stuff, which might be a bit silly and a bit trivial and pointless, but you get the satisfaction of making it yourself," he says. This revolution in individual gadgetry - and designing our relationship with them - will prove "exciting, radical, life-affirming stuff". Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded in front of an audience at the RSA in London, speakers take to the stage to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.
Tagged with bbc four thought russell davies internet technology culture
-
Bruce Sterling: The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole - The Long Now
One reason lots of people don’t want to think long term these days is because technology keeps accelerating so rapidly, we assume the world will become unrecognizable in a few years and then move on to unimaginable. Long-term thinking must be either impossible or irrelevant.
The commonest shorthand term for the runaway acceleration of technology is “the Singularity”—a concept introduced by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge in 1984. The term has been enthusiastically embraced by technology historians, futurists, extropians, and various trans-humanists and post-humanists, who have generated variants such as “the techno-rapture,” “the Spike,” etc.
It takes a science fiction writer to critique a science fiction idea.
Along with being one of America’s leading science fiction writers and technology journalists, Bruce Sterling is a celebrated speaker armed with lethal wit. His books include The Zenith Angle (just out), Hacker Crackdown, Holy Fire, Distraction, Mirrorshades (cyberpunk compendium), Schismatrix, The Difference Engine (with William Gibson), Tomorrow Now, and Islands in the Net.
The Seminar About Long-term Thinking on June 10-11 was Bruce Sterling examining “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole.” He treated the subject of hyper-acceleration of technology as a genuine threat worth alleviating and as a fond fantasy worth cruel dismemberment.
http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/jun/11/the-singularity-your-future-as-a-black-hole/
-
The Digital Human: Crowded
Aleks Krotoski investigates the appeal of the online crowd and whether the influence we exert, and our subject to is something we fully understand.
Tagged with bbc internet technology web crowds twitter:user=aleksk
-
The Digital Future
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks into the digital future. Nick Harkaway dismisses fears of a digital dystopia in which distracted people, caught between the real world and the screen world, are under constant surveillance. He believes we need to engage with the computers we have created, and shape our own destiny. Simon Ings is the editor of a new digital magazine, Arc, which uses science fiction to explore and explain what the future might hold for society. While Anab Jain’s design company uses scenarios and prototypes to probe emerging technologies and ideas, from headsets to help the blind to see, to everyday objects with their very own internet connection. And Charles Arthur investigates the battle for dominance of the internet with Apple, Google and Microsoft struggling to stay on top, and asks what that means for the rest of us.
Start The Week sets the cultural agenda for the week ahead, with high-profile guests discussing the ideas behind their work in the fields of art, literature, film, science, history, society and politics.
-
Emotional Design for the World of Objects
Welcome to the world of atoms. Remember when the mantra was that bits were more important than atoms? That we could dispense with physical things because information was all that mattered? Well, that was nonsense then and it is nonsense now.
The human body is part of the physical world. It savors touch and feeling, movement and action. How else to explain the popularity of physical devices, of games that require gestures, and full-body movement?
Want to develop for this new world? There are new rules for interacting with the world, new rules for the developers of systems. But the new rules still follow the old principles. Let’s not throw away the old lessons of interaction. In fact, these become even more important than ever before. And yes, there are some new things to learn as well, new technologies to master, new words to learn.
Today the need is for complex, rich, emotionally satisfying things. It is no longer just about function and service. Those are still important, but they are taken for granted. Today we must add convenience and comfort, fun and excitement, pleasure. We needed to develop applications that both delivered real value but also was high in emotional value, experience, and engagement.
http://2011.dconstruct.org/conference/don-norman
Dr. Don Norman is the author or co-author of fourteen books, with translations into sixteen languages, including: The Design of Everyday Things, Things That Make Us Smart, and The Invisible Computer. Business Week has called this the bible of the ‘post PC’ thinking. His latest book, Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things marks the transition from usability to aesthetics, but with the emphasis on a well-rounded, cohesive product that looks good, works well, and gives pride to the owner. The well-rounded product, says Don, will enhance the heart as well as the mind, being a joy to behold, to use, and to own.
-
Beyond Usability: Mapping Emotion to Experience
Addiction or devotion? The complexity of our relationships between connected experiences, devices and people is increasing. Stanley Kubrick once said a film “should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what‛s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later”.
Design ethnographer Kelly Goto presents underlying emotional indicators that reveal surprising attachments to brands, products, services and devices. Gain insight on designing user experiences that map to people‛s real needs and desires.
http://2011.dconstruct.org/conference/kelly-goto
As an evangelist for ‘design ethnography’, Kelly Goto is dedicated to understanding how real people integrate products and services into their daily lives. Goto is Principal of gotomedia, LLC, a global leader in research-driven, people-friendly interface design for web, mobile and product solutions for clients including Seiko Epson Japan, Adobe, NetIQ, WebEx and CNET. Her book, Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow That Works, is a standard for user-centered design principles. Goto is also the editor of gotomobile.com, a leading online publication on mobile user experience and serves on the national board of the AIGA Center for Brand Experience.
-
Letting Go
Design (or if you prefer—user experience) is at a crossroads. In our globalized, hyper-connected world, users no longer need to wait for us to create experiences for them. As we debate the value of design thinking, the usefulness of the next API, or strive to craft the ultimate cross-platform experience—users are sorting this out on their own, using whatever service or technology is “good enough” for them at the time.
Strategies and scenarios that made sense mere months ago, are disintegrating as technologies shift, business models crumble, and we watch with dismay as users exchange tips to disable JavaScript on their Kindles, or access multiplayer Flash games on the iPads.
What happens to your brand, your product, and your bottom line when users choose “good enough”, over your carefully crafted product or service? Is it a sign of failure, a missed opportunity, or a chance to dive head first towards a new reality?
http://2011.dconstruct.org/conference/bryan-stephanie-rieger
Bryan Rieger is a designer, writer and reluctant developer with a background in theatre design and classical animation. Bryan has worked across various media including print, broadcast, web and mobile; and with clients such as Apple, Microsoft and Nokia.
Stephanie Rieger is a writer, designer, and closet anthropologist with a passion for the many ways people interact with technology. With a diverse background, Stephanie’s expertise lies in marrying design, technology, and business goals to craft simple, elegant experiences.
-
The Full Stack of Entertainment: Storytelling, Play and Code
Forget transmedia. Forget alternate and augmented realities. Forget multimedia magazines, tablets, phones and puzzling QR codes. Our challenge lies in figuring out the full-stack of entertainment, designed from the bottom right to the very top: for phones, physical objects—part of the Internet of things or otherwise—tablets and conventional computing devices, where art, code and design mesh together perfectly with directorial vision.
These teams producing our next generation of entertainment are right at the heart of Steve Jobs’ placing of Apple at the intersection of liberal arts and technology. Where did they come from, how are they evolving entertainment and how are they making storytelling, play, code and technology sing?
http://2011.dconstruct.org/conference/dan-hon
Dan Hon is a Creative Director at Wieden Kennedy in Portland, OR, where he works on the intersection between storytelling, games, play and code. A former lawyer, he’s worked for Mind Candy helping to build their first product, Perplex City, and co-founded Six to Start, an award-winning entertainment production company in 2007. He’s most known for being passionately for, and against, ARGs. He does not play World of Warcraft anymore.
-
The Transformers
When you think of a city, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Most likely it is the stuff that it is made up of: its streets and buildings, its parks and squares. But what sets a city apart, aside from its architecture, is how all that stuff is put to use. A city’s nightlife, a city’s cuisine, a city’s culture. In other words, what people make of the space they live in when they are at play.
Play isn’t limited to the ‘soft side’ of urbanism. In fact, it turns out a building isn’t some prefixed structure capable of doing one thing only. Adaptation and reuse continuously transform what a city’s architecture is for, often from the bottom up. In this way, a city’s people shape their homes as well, quite literally.
What is at work in this process of city transformation, is nothing less than play. In cities, just as in games, people and the space they inhabit shape each other. Thus, in our Western cities, where reuse is overtaking construction of new space, we are all becoming architects.
In this session Kars looks at how game culture and play shape the urban fabric, how we might design systems that improve people’s capacity to do so, and how you yourself, through play, can transform the city you call home.
http://2011.dconstruct.org/conference/kars-alfrink
Kars Alfrink is ‘Chief Agent’ of Hubbub, a networked design studio for applied pervasive games. Hubbub works with organizations to create games that take place in public space, engage people physically, and are socially relevant. Amongst other things, these games are used to encourage good citizenship and to facilitate cultural participation.
Besides this, Kars teaches at the Utrecht School of the Arts, where he mentors students who are pursuing a Master of Arts in Interaction Design or Game Design & Development. He is also the initiator and co organizer of ‘This Happened’ — Utrecht,a series of lectures dedicated to the stories behind interaction design.
In his spare time, Kars practices a traditional Japanese martial art, and tries to keep up with geek culture.
Page 1 of 2Older