« Spike and Howl: Less is more, and zeroconf is a lot more |
Main
| Orkut spams in your name »
April 30, 2004
What I Did Next Summer
Posted by Clay Shirky
Intel is doing another project on urban interaction this summer, following on the successful
Familiar Strangers project last summer that resulted in the production of
Jabberwocky *, a Bluetooth phone app for extending the Familiar Stranger pattern.
This summer, they're doing an
Urban Probe project, and the current info page lists an interesting set of questions it invites people to ask about particular spaces.
Select a location that is public (i.e. there is no restricted access to it). You must be able to observe this space by co-existing within its confines (i.e. you cannot watch it from a distance). Remain within the space for 15-30 minutes.
Perform the following activities and describe your experience:
- What are the boundaries of this place? What is the "entrance" and "exit"?
- Describe the urban ecology of this place
- Excavate or reveal the existence of at least one human trace within or across this place and interpret it
- Expose a public secret that is concealed within this place
- What one question would you ask this place?
- In this place, what is most "beautiful"? Most "disruptive"?
- What single word captures the aura of this place?
- In a single sentence, what is the meaning of this place?
Create a hypothetical digital, physical artifact to introduce to this place (i.e. handheld, mobile, fixed, etc). It can perform a task or be entirely impractical. Explain an envisioned use of your artifact within this place.
This might be a useful brainstorming exercise for urbano-technologists generally. Given the interest Familiar Strangers generated, this will be worth watching.
----
* Like most phone apps, at least in the States, Jabberwocky is an argument for what good apps could be like if the phone were a real platform, but isn't itself a good app yet, since the phone isn't a platform yet, since the US is so dreadfully behind in mobile infrastructure.
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: social software
- RELATED ENTRIES
- › Spolsky on Blog Comments: Scale matters
- › "The internet's output is data, but its product is freedom"
- › Andrew Keen: Rescuing 'Luddite' from the Luddites
- › knowledge access as a public good
- › viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
- › Gorman, redux: The Siren Song of the Internet
- › Mis-understanding Fred Wilson's 'Age and Entrepreneurship' argument
- › The Future Belongs to Those Who Take The Present For Granted: A return to Fred Wilson's "age question"
TrackBack URL:
http://www.corante.com/cgi-bin/mt/teriore.fcgi/1557.
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference What I Did Next Summer: