Tuesday, April 28. 2009
By Joe Fletcher on April 27th, 2009
Over the last few years, social computing has been relegated to asynchronous websites like FaceBook and Twitter, where users connect with many people and their collective information is harvested for the larger group. However these are still largely individually actions, not synchronous… yet we call it “social”. I would like to expand that definition.
Think of a computer where you sit down and work simultaneously with your friend. Imagine you and your friends all playing a game or solving a problem at the same time on the same computer. This has been one of the key aspects of our vision at Microsoft Surface. As I’ve presented over the last year on Surface, I’ve talked a lot about the aspects of social computing. Initially when I started on the team I was skeptical of social computing as Surface defines it: multiple people working around a single computer. Since that time, I have seen some of the great innovations and situations that Surface style social computing allows. With its vision system (instead of capacitive or infra-red), Surface can recognize 52 simultaneous points of touch, as well as physical objects, making it a computer for a truly social environment.
Social computing is described as the intersection between social behavior and computing systems, and often in somewhat ambiguous computational terms. I question how much of what happens on social sites like FaceBook [et al] is really social (I don’t often come to work sharing a list of 25 personal oddities about myself). The only real social aspect is that you’re sharing items with other people in an easy way across geographic divides. Although the web seems like a macrocosm of that definition. I’m not sure why things like instant messaging are not considered social computing, but they are more social than most sites bearing that label.
I would like to implore readers to expand their definition of the term social computing and realize it can apply to many more situations than it currently is; those being actual social situations. I would describe that as what Surface is aspiring to be, the first true social computer. It provides context and use for multiple people, on all sides. Although true social computing can be done with a single computer and two or more people, it may not be optimal. Below are a few of the ways I’ve come to think about social computer usage:
- Driver as a presenter: this happens when you’re showing someone a YouTube video
- Driver (w/ an influencer or back seat driver): this happens when you’re searching the internet for someone and someone is telling you what do type in
- Turn taking: passing a laptop back and forth to share information
- Simultaneous: both playing a game on Microsoft Surface. I’ll call this synchronous social activities. Very different from the three above it
Of course none of what I describe here is the current way we define social computing, which is why I’m asking people to expand their thinking. Perhaps there is another word to describe these situations? Whatever happens, it’s become clear to me that the computer cannot simply stay as the personal device it has been and designers should begin to think about social proximity activities and behaviors. As technology becomes more pervasive and cultures become more acquiesced to computers, there will be a need and desire to continue and expand the social aspects.
As an aside, while I bring up Surface several times in my posts, please don’t take that for blindly selling the technology. I am very aware of its flaws and issues, and part of my opportunity at Microsoft is to make those better. For those interested, here is my talk from MIX09 on Surface and touch computing where I discuss both my love and discomforts on those topics.
-----
Via Johnny Holland Magazine
Personal comment:
Je trouve intéressant, à un moment ou tout le monde fonce dans le tas du buzz "social computing", de questionner ce terme. Ici, le point intéressant est qu'on signale le caractère asynchrone de Facebook et Twitter (bien que Facebook prétende vouloir aller vers le temps réel avec le flux de chaque "Wall" --mais je ne serai pas étonné d'apprendre qu'ils sont en réalité revenu en arrière car cela s'avère assez indigeste et s'approche du spam--). Il y a quelques années, tout le monde ne jurait que par le "synchrone" et les "réseaux sociaux" étaient plutôt appelés des "multi-users" (chat, réalité virtuelle partagée, IM, jeux partagés, etc.). Il fallait du "temps réel", de l'interaction entre personnes et en direct.
Une fois la folie des réseaux sociaux passées, je ne serai pas étonné de voir resurgir le "temps réel" et peut-être que l'avenir des réseaux sociaux sera alors dans une hybridation synchrone-asynchrone, avec capacité de parfaitement "tuner" cette question des flux et du rapport au "temps réel" ou au "temps différé".
The recently presented academic paper at the WWW 2009 Conference from a group of computer science academics from Cornell University investigates the collection of roughly 35 million geotagged photos collected from Flickr, uploaded by more than 300,000 users. Their approach used in Mapping the World's Photos [www2009.eprints.org, PDF] combines content analysis based on text tags and image data with structural analysis based on geospatial data. While individual users of Flickr are simply using the site to store and share photos, their collective activity reveals a striking amount of geographic and visual information about the world.
For instance, their findings show that the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, which opened in May 2006, is more popular than many other well-known tourist sites such as St Paul's Cathedral in London, the Reichstag in Berlin and the Washington Monument in the US capital.
Interesting visualizations include diagrams for Manhattan and the San Francisco Bay area that illustrate the movement of photographers by plotting the geolocated coordinates of sequences of images taken by the same user, sorted by time, for which consecutive photos were no more than 30 minutes apart. "The figures are striking in the amount of detail they reveal about these cities. For example, one can clearly see the grid structure of the Manhattan streets, caused by users traveling and taking photos along them. The Brooklyn Bridge, in the lower center of the figure, is clearly visible, as are the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges just to the north. One can even see the route of the ferries that take tourists from Lower Manhattan to the Statue of Liberty".
Another figure shows maps of representative images for the top landmarks in each of the top 20 North American and European cities. It raises the intriguing possibility of an online travel guidebook that could automatically identify the best sites to visit on one's next vacation, as judged by the collective wisdom of the world's photographers.
See also World's Eyes. Via Sydney Morning Herald.
-----
Via Information aesthetics
Personal comment:
Intéressant évidemment de constater que l'on tire de plus en plus d'informations à partir de site regroupant des données (ici Flickr, des photos "taguées"). Les traces qu'on laisse ici et là sont analysables, etc. On connait désormais la litanie.
Toutefois, quand par exemple ici les auteurs croient un peu aveuglément dans leur analyses (par exemple que l'Apple Store de la cinquième avenue est plus populaire que le Reichstag ou la cathédrale St Paul), je me dis qu'ils devraient pondérer leurs résultats par d'autres facteurs, socio-ethonologique. Par exemple que les personnes qui vont visiter un Apple Store (ce qui en soit est assez inquiétant) sont peut-être plus nerdy, équipés en enclin à prendre celui-ci en photo et le poster sur Flickr que des personnes qui visitent la cathédrale St-Paul.
Tout ça pour questionner un peu ces "trouvailles" ...
Monday, April 27. 2009
Today we're pleased to share an exciting new project that taps into the power of YouTube and Google Maps to spread the word about the state of our planet. Luc Besson's and Yann-Arthus Betrand's 90 minute full-length film "Home" will exclusively be available online on YouTube for English, French, Spanish and German–speaking countries beginning June 5 — just in time for the 37th World Environment Day.
Through stunning displays of aerial camerawork, the film will give people from all corners of the world a glimpse of our planet like never before and visually demonstrate the urgency for preservation efforts. In addition to its Internet premiere, "Home" will be shown in movie theaters and outdoors on big screens at key locations around the globe. It will also air on TV stations around the world. Using this unique distribution model, one with a massive online and offline effort, the film creators are able to reach the widest audience possible. So whether you'd prefer to head to the theaters, watch it under the stars, or just stay put on the couch — the way you view "Home" is up to you.
And starting today, YouTube channels in English, French, Spanish and German will feature behind-the-scenes looks from the making of the film, as well as interviews, and extras. To add even more dimension, Google Maps is featuring specially created layers that shed more light on some of the material covered in the movie. You can also use Maps to find a theater location near you.
To get a preview of what you can expect on June 5, check out some of the spectacular footage in the Home YouTube channel, like the video below of the Arctic world and its wild terrain that's essential to preserve. Or this one of Los Angeles exclusively seen from the sky, giving us a new perspective of the cityscape at night. And please respond and react to the film via video responses, comments, and ratings and share links via email with your friends.
Posted by Mats Carduner, Head of Google France and Southern Europe
-----
Via The Official Google Blog
Personal comment:
Exclusivité Youtube - Google (maps) pour la "world première" d'un film (sur le climat). Pas question de télévision, de festival de cinéma ou autre ici ... Uniquement une distribution massive, mondiale et gratuite (sponsorisée - "googlisée" -) par le web.
Mimi Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Ken Anderson have an interesting chapter in the edited volume by Rich Ling & Scott Campbell (2009) “The reconstruction of space and time: mobile communication practices” which recently came out. The chapter is called “Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places”. The authors explore how people use portable objects to ‘interface’ with urban space and locations. Up to now, the authors say, the dominant focus has been on conceptualizing the mobile phone as a personal communications technology. The emphasis in such studies has been on how interpersonal communication has been made possible “anytime, anyplace, anywhere”. To a much lesser extend the mobile phone has been conceptualized as a device that is tied to local situations. In this approach the mobile phone is seen as an interface to urban space. Mobile communication infrastructure intersects with the physical infrastructure of the city [1].
Ito et al do not look at the mobile phone on its own. Instead, they take the phone as but one of the portable objects that are ‘interfaces’ to the city. These include media players, books, keys, credit and transit cards, identity and member cards. Together these comprise “the information-based ‘mobile kits’ of contemporary urbanites” (p. 67). So the mobile phone, instead of being studied in isolation, is part of a larger assembly of objects that people use to navigate the city, as well as to sustain social relations with other people [2]. Next they discuss three kinds of urban interfacing, which they have labelled cocooning, camping, and footprinting. Cocooning is the practise of people shielding themselves off in public settings. For instance by using portable media players, books, doing stuff on their mobile phones, etc. They create an invisible bubble of mobile private space around them. Camping is the practise of finding a nice spot in town - often in coffeehouses - and doing information related work there with laptops, mobile phones, etc. This can be both for work and private affairs (and often intermingle). Camping can co-exist with cocooning when people shield themselves off from physical social interactions through portable media objects. Footprinting describes the various customer transaction and loyalty schemes through which people leave traces in a particular location. It is “the process of integrating an individual’s trajectory into the transactional history of a particular establishment, and customer cards are the mediating devices” (p. 79). The authors have done fieldwork research in three big cities: Tokyo, Los Angeles, and London. Interestingly, they conclude that behaviors vary only slightly between these cities.
I find this approach very interesting for a number of reasons. First, the conceptualization as ‘urban interfaces’ focusses on the locative qualities of mobile media. The paper gives a nice categorization of the various ways in which mobile media act as interfaces between ‘the digital’ and ‘the physical’. Second, the mobile phone is not studied in isolation but as part of a larger array of informational objects that people carry along with them to manage and deal with urban life. Consequently, the image of the mobile phone shifts from an intrusive addition to an imagined once upon a time of ‘real’ public space, face to face interactions, spontaneous encounters and serendipitous discovery, etc., to a more pragmatic view on the mobile as an everyday necessity of urbanites. Third, Ito et al connect changes in the urban experience to changes in displaying identity in public spaces. This point receives scant attention in the chapter but is very important indeed.
I also have some points of critique on this conceptualization and approach. First, Ito et al predominantly focus on the interaction of people with the physical localities and infrastructure of the city (p 71-72). They take infrastructure as a collection of ‘dead’ objects (roads, public transport entry ports, toll roads, etc.) making urban life possible. Location in their view refers solely to a point in Euclidian space, a coordinate on the map so to say. The authors leave out the human aspect of location and infrastructure. In their own words “it becomes even more crucial that mobile communications research look at these more infrastructural and impersonal forms of social and cultural practise” (p. 72 - my emphasis). Yet locations and infrastructures are only abstracted ‘ideal’ or ‘categorical’ concepts of their phenomenological equivalents in lived space. They are the abstract counterparts of places and routes (or trajectories). I would say we should look at the human side of infrastructures as crossroads of experiences, in the vein of what geographer Doreen Massey has called the “throwntogetherness” of place as an event [3]. Of course many locative media projects exactly tried to visualize this human aspect of infrastructures and locations (e.g. Christian Nold’s biomapping).
A second critique on this approach is that it considers only one side of the hybrid relation between physical space and digitally mediated space. This conceptual framework gives prevalence to physical space over digital space. The main focus is on how the digital ’seeps’ into the physical and alters pre-existing situations there. But how does the physical seep into the digital realm? It is one-way, departing from the assumption of what Lev Manovich has called “augmented space” as an overlay of physical space [4]. This suggests that digital space is an extra layer to reality. As De Souza e Silva has argued, this idea of augmented space gives prevalence to behavior in the physical realm, rather than the interactions that take place in both types of spaces at the same time [5]. Instead, she argues, we must look at digitally mediated social behavior as taking place in ‘hybrid space’ [5].
Thirdly, important other location-based uses of portable information objects are being left out, such as navigation and wayfinding in (unknown) cities. The focus seems restricted to urban practises by people who actually inhabit or at least regularly frequent the city. In addition, footprinting is depicted as taking place solely in the commercial realm through customer loyalty cards. There is an abundance of locative media project that use geotagging as a way of leaving digital footprints or graffiti in the city (e.g. Dutch project Bliin). And the mobile device itself increasingly becomes the interface to footprinting. Many new high-end devices have automatic geotagging built in their photo camera, and come with various uploading services. Some devices already have NFC technology for micro-payments. It seems logical that more and more portable informational objects will converge into the mobile device. Will it ever come to the point that The Mobile City becomes “the city in our mobile”?
[1] It should be noted that in most writings on ‘locative’ aspects of mobile media there is an almost exclusive focus on the city as the locus of action. This is understandable since in the city many of the networks that make up present-day ‘hybrid space’ are present in much greater density, and arguably with much greater consequences. In what ways rural space is changing under the influence of mobile media is understudied, I guess, and probably just as important. Especially if we consider that according to Claude Fisher (1992) who studied early fixed line telephony certainly in the beginning the telephone has been more important for rural living than for urban living.
[2] A similar point about the research bias towards studying single technologies is made by Julsrud & Bakke in chapter 7 of this same volume (p. 160).
[3] Massey, D. B. (2005). For space. London; Thousand Oaks: SAGE. p. 140.
[4] Manovich, L. (2005). The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada. 1-15. Retrieved from http://www.manovich.net/TEXTS_07.HTM
[5] De Souza e Silva, A. (2006). From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces. Space and culture, 9(3), 261-278. Retrieved from http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/resolver/1840.2/80
-----
Via The Mobile City
Personal comment:
Un livre à la thématique pas vraiment surprenante, mais qui va dans le sens des concepts que nous utilisons tels que "relations spatiales médiatisées", "spatialités médiatisées", etc.
One of the oldest terms to think about the influence of both transport and communication technologies on the experience of time and space is “time-space compression”. This notion expresses the sense that the experience of time passing by is accelerated while the importance of distance diminished. Geographer David Harvey made the term famous, although it has been in use much longer. Sociologist John Urry quotes an anonymous English commentator who in 1839 says that the new railway system were “having the effect of ‘compressing’ time and space” and that “distances were thus annihilated” (Urry 2007: 96). This latter expression is made famous by Karl Marx who talked about “the annihilation of space by time”. At the same time commenters (e.g. Nigel Thrift) have noted that the immensive speed-up of transport and communication technologies not only lead to shrinkage but also to enlargement and widening of space and time, since people could now get a sense of other worlds beyond their previously known local one and simultaneous presence with people elsewhere.
Recently I stumbled across two examples that explore its very edges. The first is a fascinating map of the remotest place on earth.
The maps are based on a model which calculated how long it would take to travel to the nearest city of 50,000 or more people by land or water. The model combines information on terrain and access to road, rail and river networks. It also considers how factors such as altitude, steepness of terrain and hold-ups like border crossings slow travel. Plotted onto a map, the results throw up surprises. First, less than 10 per cent of the world’s land is more than 48 hours of ground-based travel from the nearest city. What’s more, many areas considered remote and inaccessible are not as far from civilisation as you might think. In the Amazon, for example, extensive river networks and an increasing number of roads mean that only 20 per cent of the land is more than two days from a city - around the same proportion as Canada’s Quebec province.
(image source)
The map is created by researchers at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, and the World Bank. It is part of a research that measures urbanisation from the new perspective of travel time to 8500 major cities. Key findings are:
- we passed the point at which more than half the world’s populations live in cities around the turn of the Millennium (2000) - much earlier than the 2007/8 estimate;
- more than half of the world’s population lives less than 1 hour from a major city, but the breakdown is 85% of the developed world and only 35% of the developing world;
- 95% of the world’s population is concentrated on just 10% of the world’s land; but
- only 10% of the world’s land area is classified as “remote” or more than 48 hours from a large city.
The map beautifully shows just how incredibly connected the world has become - not only via telecommunications but also by physical mobility - and how even the remotest regions are now closely tied to the urban sphere. The fact that 10% of the world is more than 48 hours from a large city raises questions about the definition of ‘urban’, as states the news release. More nice maps here.
A second example is the Reuters news that a Nepali telecom firm is planning to expand its mobile phone service to the top of the Mount Everest. The Mount Everest is one of the busiest high mountains. Each year hundreds of climbers attempt to reach the summit. Until now they were dependent on expensive satellite telephones to call family and friends from the top. Now even the highest peak on earth will become connected to the worldwide communication networks.
The question of course remains whether this potential for mobility and connection to ‘the global’ actually contributes to a worldwide “imagined community”. What this map does not indicate is that mobility and connections are unequally divided. Doreen Massey has called this “the power-geometry of time-space compression” (see article). While for global and digital ‘neo-nomads’ the world may indeed seem one homogeneous ’smooth space’, for others it remains firmly divided by barriers and obstacles.
-----
Via The Mobile City
|