[-empyre-] yes, but, well, and...

Thu May 10 23:55:17 EST 2012

Jon - The citation you don't make is http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,243,740.PN.&OS=PN/6,243,740&RS=PN/6,243,740
If I assume the assignee (Xerox, though it could be PARC, Inc at this point) is paying attention, then so far there isn't enough money being exchanged in these joinings of experience to warrant attempts of enforcement. Will there ever be? 

Andrew - One of the things I think the work Jon, Margaret, Scott and I did as well as the work Anne, Mark, Scott, and I did were moves in the direction Matt Jones called "From introverted to Extravagant Computing" in "Journeying Toward extravagant, expressive, Place-based Computing," interactions Volume 18 Issue 1, January + February 2011 (paywallled, unfortunately) where he laments, 
"So, perhaps, the job is done. The 
infrastructure and interaction 
ideas are in place for a world that 
will be fully indexed, where every 
curb and every tree in every park 
will be mapped, documented, and 
accessible at the stroke of a seductively sleek smartphone. We will 
never be lost; we will be guided 
away from wandering or wondering 
and will no longer need to guess or 
take a risk. 
While these services are 
undoubtedly useful and used by 
increasing numbers of people, as I 
gaze onto a “streetview,” I am left a 
little cold. Where is the “streetlife”? 
I am left pondering the dangers 
these innovations pose to the joys, 
surprises, and even discomforts 
of exploring our cities, hills, or 
beaches. "
...
"systems that are “always beside us, 
to guard and guide us…all around 
us, all the time, not too obvious, a 
quiet supporter.” Hymn-style, this 
presenter invokes a world that is 
made safe, calm, and solid by pervasive intelligence. Look through 
the lens-life: reality augmented to 
guide, guard, and provide for your 
every need."

Our use of mobile devices was very much to enhance the discovery of a place and to some extent the place's discovery of you.

Dale MacDonald
Technology Manager
Annenberg Innovation Lab
University of Southern California
http://annenberglab.com

On May 10, 2012, at 5:19 AM, Jon Winet wrote:

> Andrew =
> 
> On the fly - great comments.
> 
> I think the mobilization and often miniaturization of networked
> devices | communications bring into sharp focus, as it were, the
> continuing power of large electronic displays in public spaces -
> [Tokyo's Shibuya -
> http://crab.rutgers.edu/~seduffy/Japan2007/shibuya.JPG | New York's
> Times Square - http://dguides.com/images/newyorkcity/attractions/times-square.jpg
> ] and the roles still waiting to be played out as the two are joined
> to create collective and individually electronically-mediated
> experiences.
> 
> The joining up operation of the mobile device and the Big Screen is
> taking a lot longer than we expected - see link to antique 1997
> website documenting "Sunset," a project Scott | Dale | Margaret and I
> produced on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood during that year's edition
> of SIGGRAPH [ http://www.concentric.net/~jonwinet/documentation/9.html
> + http://www.concentric.net/~jonwinet/documentation/10.html ]. The
> occasional experiment or cell-phone triggered polling in a stadium
> aside, large scale public displays remain read-only for the most part.
> Greater interactivity and the challenges and opportunities afforded
> await us in the near future, and the work Scott | Anne | Dale | Onomy
> Labs undertook suggest some of the most humane, and surprisingly
> intimate possibilities.
> [http://www.onomy.com/blue/gallery/interactive-09.html +}
> 
> I'd love to see a list of your top picks for books | readings on
> mobile devices and public.
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 5:17 PM, Andrew Schrock <aschrock at usc.edu> wrote:
>> I've been greatly enjoying the discussion thus far, and hope I'm jumping in
>> at an appropriate time. [super quick intro: I'm a USC Annenberg Ph.D student
>> working with Anne at the public interactives research team/PIRT, where we're
>> working on a digital book on tinkering called Ways of the Hand. My
>> perspective comes out of mass communication, micro-sociology, and media
>> studies, which have many resonances with Anne's work]
>> 
>> I would be curious, following from the mention of Arab Spring, to hear
>> responses from the group about the role of interfaces as they shift towards
>> mobile devices. Scott raised the question about mobilities and mixed-reality
>> interfaces. When I hear "public interactive" I think of public layers that
>> can be punctuated with everyday devices and afford new visibility. Mobile
>> devices are increasingly adopted in developing countries and present a
>> primary mode of going online. So it seems that many concerns raised under
>> the guise of public interactives shift towards different types of devices,
>> even though they are so visibly and functionally different. And even though
>> it is (as Dale reinforces to me) mobile devices are a fundamentally
>> different experience than large screens and other forms of public
>> interactives where people can come together; we shouldn't forget the
>> collectivity question.
>> 
>> Beyond mobilities lies the "cloud computing" that enables it. Back to Anne's
>> statement of "Our data will move freely, but we will not" (maybe all trapped
>> in megacities.... from home to the coffee shop to work and then home
>> again). The question seems to come back to one of power, reproduction vs.
>> production. It's interesting to me that several recent books on mobile
>> devices in public spaces, although they provide very rich descriptions of
>> relationships with mobile technologies and initial forays into this area
>> over the last decade in the arts, do not coherently address
>> power. Consumer-facing advertisements for "the cloud" paint it as an
>> unencumbering force to take away all the worry of thinking about data -- "To
>> the cloud!" But shouldn't we learn to think about data? To be literate? I'm
>> worried we are getting apoplectic about copyright, but whether a
>> middle-class American can use Oasis as a soundtrack to family videos on
>> YouTube is not the big battle.
>> 
>> There is a fellow named Curtis Fletcher in the STS cluster at USC who I'm
>> working with on a workshop tentatively titled "The Fate of Interpretation in
>> the Era of Big Data." By which I take to mean, what does it mean to claim
>> that we can capture data and essentially extract questions from it? Be
>> guided by data? Lev Manovich's latest turn is similar, essentially
>> advocating for data to speak for itself and work with computer scientists,
>> not those in the humanities. So "beyond" lies claims of the death of ways of
>> knowing outside of concrete empiricism.
>> 
>> A
>> 
>> 
>> On May 7, 2012, at 11:39 AM, Scott L. Minneman wrote:
>> 
>> I don’t remember there being much mystery about where things were headed
>> with the potential for collecting lots of information about us and inferring
>> ad nauseum for purposes of advertising and such.  We saw the advent of
>> recommender systems (and applauded when we discovered a movie or a new band
>> via these mechanisms) and marveled when a search engine seemed to make good
>> sense of the drivel we typed their direction.  Folks jumped at free services
>> in exchange for surrendering their info and eyeballs.
>> 
>> These days, the algorithms are seemingly trying too hard, or
>> maybe….well.…perhaps they just don’t know me as well as they think they do.
>> Amazon seldom suggests a purchase I’m interested in, and I actually wish for
>> a switch on Google so it would just stop trying to be clever.  And I’m
>> sorry, friends, but I think I can count on a single hand the number of times
>> when the “personal results” portion of a Google search have yielded
>> anything.  I can no longer tell you to click the third search result…odds
>> are it’s not the same for you.
>> 
>> As we begin to see bigger corporations (including the biggie) looking
>> seriously about how to directly augment our experience with mixed and
>> virtual stuff, be it with glasses or tablets (or eventually contact lenses
>> and brain stimulation), the slope gets disturbingly slippery.  The world,
>> even if we’re in the same place, at the same time, starts to no longer look
>> the same.  You’re hungry, so you’ve got the “food specials” layer turned on
>> (if you even have control of it, perhaps your Nike “Fuel Band III” has
>> detected that you need some calories and switched on that overlay for you).
>>  The person next to you is a tourist, so they’re subscribing to a
>> “historical landmarks” layer, and their son is playing some mixed reality
>> first-person shooter.  Your views of the world are much different.
>> 
>> […and all of them have their peripheral vision blocked by banner ads and
>> never see/hear the bus that runs them over – physics still doesn’t care.]
>> 
>> I’m seemingly not as worried as Mark about what the powers that be are
>> learning about me.  I’m more worried about how poorly it all works, and
>> about how much stock they seem to be putting into their lame inferences.
>> What they think I was asking becomes more important that what I really
>> asked.  And then they infer more from our reactions to the junk they put in
>> front of us.  Complicating matters is that our whole culture is highly
>> dependent on shared experiences, and those are in flux and becoming
>> increasingly scarce.
>> 
>> Not sure where I’m going with this, but I’ll toss it out into the public
>> interactives and interactive publics ring (oooh….there’s a name for a book
>> Anne and I should write).  Hopefully Google won’t re-write it for each of
>> you, in an attempt to relate my text to your recent searches for tips on how
>> to get 3-Stars on the 27th level of Angry Birds Space (or whatever).
>> 
>> slm
>> 
>> Scott L. Minneman, PhD
>> Professor and Industry Liaison – CCA
>> Principal – Onomy Labs, Inc.
>> onomy.com & slminneman.com
>> 415 505-7234 - cell
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Andrew Schrock
>> USC Annenberg Doctoral Student
>> Twitter: @aschrock
>> Email:  aschrock at usc.edu
>> Phone:  714.330.6545
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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