{ 2003.10.15 } The Media Lab Europe Human Connectedness research group has exactly the right manifesto: "Humans have a fundamental need for contact with other humans. Our interactions and relationships with other people form a network that supports us, makes our lives meaningful, and ultimately enables us to survive. A variety of personal factors, such the need to travel or live in a different place apart from family and friends, threaten our ability to form and attain balance in the kinds of relationships that we want and need to have with others. The impact of customs and trends that exist at a societal level, such as the widespread use of certain technologies that may have isolating effects, is a subject of increasing study. These conditions put our mental and physical well-being at risk and, in turn, jeopardize the health of our communities and civilizations as a whole.

"The Human Connectedness research group explores the topic of human relationships and how they are mediated by technology. Our mission is to conceive a new genre of technologies and experiences that combat the effects mentioned above and allow us to build, maintain, and enhance relationships in new ways."

Their list of projects is no less impressive.

{ } Fantastic Media Lab Europe project: TunA [via Purse Lip Square Jaw] is "a mobile wireless application that allows users to share their music locally through handheld devices. Users can 'tune in' to other nearby tunA music players and listen to what someone else is listening to". What's more explicit in the paper (TunA: A Mobile Music Experience to Foster Local Interactions [pdf]) - and what I really like - is that it's targeted to a. build social capital through micro [subtle, non intrusive] interactions, and b. strengthen existing social links instead of just forming new ones. This is spot on -- technology is rarely built to work better with friends than indiscriminately with friends and strangers unless there's a technogical limit that forces the issue (eg buddylists cause IM to work better with friends).

We've talked about the tech side of this idea before so it's wonderful to see it being done. Backtrace: Dan Hill on wireless, pervasive music sharing (and glowing jackets) refs Chris Heathcote on instant psychogeographic radio refs Philip Greenspun on transparently sharing music libraries.

{ 10.13 } Oh yes. I've been accepted to present Glancing at O'Reilly Emerging Tech 2004 (here's the proposal). :D

{ } Clay Shirky's essay, File-sharing goes local covers a really interesting progression. Firstly, "The RIAA is now attacking these networks using a strategy that could be called Crush the Connectors. A number of recent books on networks, such as Gladwell's The Tipping Point, Barabasi's Linked, and Watts' Six Degrees, have noted that large, loosely connected networks derive their effectiveness from a small number of highly connected nodes, a pattern called a Small World network. As a result, random attacks, even massive ones, typically leave the network only modestly damaged. The flipside is that attacks that specifically target the most connected nodes are disproportionately effective." Then Shirky highlights the reaction to this attack: from a global sharing system (Napster), decentralisation is introduced (Gnutella is client, server and router) but this has the effect of defining a subjective space: for performance reasons a search horizon is introduced. Next this horizon calcifies into a social membrane (the system adds a firewall to each application which requires an invitation to get through) and the fabric organises into social cells, each with its own filesharing ability.

1. It's a shame we can't build something online that really does subvert distance so completely that there's no search horizon, no social cells.
2. But I guess distance is always acquired from somewhere, like knowledge. I'm still never going to be able to download music I like if I don't know what it's called, or I don't know that I like it.
3. Social cells, semi-permeable membrances? An optimal size for internal environments? Sound familiar? Organisational cells within a sea of free market activity. Factory-like cells exposing interfaces to the outside world. The limit of the kinesthetic sense and the boundary step change of sensory data. What lessons are there? How should the inside of the social cell be organised; how should information migrate across the boundaries; what interfaces should be exposed?

Tom Coates remembered Microsoft's music-sharing-for-groups app Three Degrees the other day: Get into a group with your friends, share music by dragging it into a shared playlist (with shared controls); an icon (that appears the same on everyone's desktop) acts as a well to chuck around photos, and (what's more) winks -- little animations that go to everyone in the group simultaneously and just say "hi!". This is the way to go, certainly. Define a space that breaks up the global domain; within a local group get rid of space entirely and disallow direct person-to-person communication (unless the group has visibility of that connection). That's like rooms (real world rooms), like pub tables, like the way the world works. (Too much to say!)

{ } "Tibetan Buddhists believe that saying the mantra (prayer) Om Mani Padme Hum, invites the blessings of Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion. They also believe you can produce the same effect by spinning the written form of the mantra around in a prayer wheel (called 'Mani wheels' by the Tibetans). The effect is said to be multiplied when more copies of the mantra are included, and spinning the Mani wheels faster increases the benefit as well." But because your hard drive spins, it becomes a Digital Prayer Wheel: "Right now, your hard drive is serving as a Mani wheel, because there are several copies of the mantra 'Om Mani Padme Hum' on this page, and they are all stored on your hard drive in the cache for your browser." [via boingboing]

{ } The Semiotics of SimCity [via Tesugen]: "When does a game cease to be a game? Is it when the computer feels like an organic extension of your consciousness or when you may feel like an extension of the computer itself? This paper explores SimCity and its significance as a simulator not only of reality but consciousness. Computer gaming is essentially process of demystification, discovering how software is organized for a certain set of goals and actions."

{ } "And do you remember how you felt the very first time you entertained the notion that you and your universe are constituted by language -- that reality is a cultural construct, a 'text' whose meaning is determined by infinite associations with other 'texts'?" (Jenny Jones, on the Perils of Theory.) "It was impossible for me to experience life with any emotional intensity. I couldn't control the irony anymore. I perceived my own feelings as if they were in quotes." [via Erik Benson]