Would this work to reduce the speed of drivers?
Via Daniel Pink
By chronicling a history of responses to technological developments, Vaughn Bell in his article “Don’t Touch That Dial!”, attempts to address anxieties about the introduction of new communication technologies and their effects on cognition. It’s an interesting reminder that we have been worrying about these issues for a long time and the article also makes for some interesting parallels but there are far more differences than similarities between the way we consume information today than in the past.
A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both “confusing and harmful” to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an “always on” digital environment. It’s worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That’s not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press.
Worries about information overload are as old as information itself, with each generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on mind and brain. From a historical perspective, what strikes home is not the evolution of these social concerns, but their similarity from one century to the next, to the point where they arrive anew with little having changed except the label.
I think he’s missed the literature detailing internet addiction and the effects of multi-tasking on IQ and data retention.
Slate: Don’t Touch That Dial!
Enigmatica acts as an experimental platform for the combination of light, sound and space in order to develop immersive synthasthetic environments.
A series of suspended frames diminish in size down the length of the gallery acting as a canvas for the display of surface specific projected visual sequences.
By positioning the frames in a perfect series, and developing visualisations that are isolated to these frames, I aim to create a work that does not exist entirely in one or two dimensions but a form of synthetic hybridized space.
It is this constructed inter-dimensionality and the development of freely flowing abstract visual and sonic sequences that aims to demonstrate the potential for new forms of digital sculpture.
The project explores our relationship with devices and technology by examining the multi-dimensionality of communication and the complexity of social behavior and interaction. In its essence, the project functions as a piece of design fiction, considering the fluctuating nature of our present engagement with media technology and providing futurist imaginings of other ways of being.
Younghee Jung and Joe Macleod (no relation) talk about their work in designing gestural interfaces.
Sun Boxes in Rhyolite Nevada. A twenty speaker sound art piece powered by the sun.
Digital interactions are moving beyond keypad and screens and into sensing, networked products that inhabit our everyday lives. This session will explore how designers can create engaging experiences between physical products and digital services.
How can you increase the immersion of data? The bachelor thesis “Experiencing Abstract Information” by Jochen Winker and Stefan Kuzaj introduces theoretical principles and shows them with some interactive examples.
There are four essential parts in making abstract information experiencable: information itself, relevant senses, fitting emotion and a direct reference of the presentation to the information. With our method you can not only design fitting media, but also check existing media for its potential.
To demonstrate the systematics, we built three interactive installations. By using them you become an interactive diagram in a virtual mirror, cause virtual water-pollution in a water-basin or compare the time you have to work in different countries to buy a big mac or some bread. All of these installations show a different approach of immersive data transfer.
Milan/Rome based Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi are sound artists whose work spans from digital music to electro acoustic improvisation. Unidentified Sound Object is born from the desire to discover new paths and non-linear narrative strategies in both aural and visual domains. U.S.O. is a continuing evolving organism.
Sit back and grab lunch as this is a long one.
February 9, 2007 lecture by Don Norman for the Stanford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar (CS 547). In this talk, Don discusses his latest book, The Design of Future Things, which is about the increasing intrusion of intelligent devices in the automobile and home with both expected benefits and unexpected dangers.
Women & Mobile: A Global Opportunity is a study on the mobile phone gender gap in low and middle-income countries.
Mobile phone ownership in low and middle-income countries has skyrocketed in the past several years. But a woman is still 21% less likely to own a mobile phone than a man. Closing this gender gap would bring the benefits of mobile phones to an additional 300 million women. By extending the benefits of mobile phone ownership to more women, a host of social and economic goals can be advanced.
The Women & Mobile report is the first comprehensive view of women and mobile phones in the developing world. This report, sponsored by the GSMA Development Fund and Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, explores the commercial and social opportunity for closing the mobile gender gap. The report builds off of a survey conducted with women on three continents to show their mobile phone ownership, usage, barriers to adoption and preferences. The report shows how mobile phone ownership can improve access to educational, health, business and employment opportunities and help women lead more secure, connected and productive lives. It also includes ten case studies highlighting the strategies and tactics that both mobile network operators and non-profit organizations across the globe are implementing to increase the usage and impact of mobile phones around the world.
From Stanford’s 2004 ‘Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Speaker Series’.
The Hiptop founders designed the product in the way that was the most appealing to them. They had strong convictions about what the product should look like and the things it should do, which were not necessarily the same ideas the carriers had. However, the innovative design won them over.
R.J. Cutler sums up what he learned about business from Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, during the making of his film The September Issue.
I work in the film business, where schmoozing is an art form, lunch hour lasts from 12:30 until 3, and every meeting takes an hour whether there’s an hour’s worth of business or not. Not so at Vogue, where meetings are long if they go more than seven minutes and everyone knows to show up on time, prepared and ready to dive in. In Anna’s world, meetings often start a few minutes before they’re scheduled. If you arrive five minutes late, chances are you’ll have missed it entirely. Imagine the hours of time that are saved every day by not wasting so much of it in meetings.
Before coming to Taiwan I was largely saved from the meeting culture that seems so prevalent in many organizations here. Hours wasted in meetings that have little to no relevance to you and unpaid overtime to make for the loss in productivity. The meeting culture at Vogue is a refreshing change from this experience.
The doors of perception, electronic style. Tina Frank’s Chronomops opens doors to truly different dimensions: different than digital art’s reductionist studies so common today, different than the serially laid out minimalist images, and different than the omnipresent filtering and layering experiments. Chronomops opens up a shimmering, colorful space that is simultaneously an excess of color, frenzy of perception, and pop carousel. An abstract architecture of vertical color bars is set in endless rotation, whereby the modules and building blocks fly around themselves—and the entire system likewise rotates. The forced movement forms a digital maelstrom whose suction pulls the observer deep into it.
At times I miss home.
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
“Noteput” is an interactive music table with tangible notes, that combines all three senses of hearing, sight and touch to make learning the classical notation of music for children and pupils more easy and interesting.
My daughter gives me a great deal of creative insight & inspiration.
Fostering Creativity, Imagination Play in Kids http://ow.ly/1855x
My daughter and I used to make music with found instruments. The walls, doors, pots, pans and utensils. A noisy house but fun. #creativity #music
Now her learning is more structured but we still make time for silly play (and unstructured time).
Creative ideas are often generated when one discards preconceived assumptions & attempts a new approach/method that might seem unthinkable
Children think the unthinkable.
Creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for innovation; the 1st is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the 2nd.
A great deal of time and money is spent on inspiring creativity in business, design, or research teams.
Much of this time and money would be better spent sitting with your children and getting involved with their activities.
Learning from them and seeing the world through their eyes provides the greatest inspiration of all.
Derek Sivers’ 3-minute TED talk on leadership.
If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:
A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!
Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.
The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.
A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.
Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!
As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.
And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let’s recap what we learned:
If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.
Be public. Be easy to follow!
But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?
Leadership is over-glorified.
Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:
It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.
There is no movement without the first follower.
We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.
The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.
A nice insight into their process and good overview for myself considering my current work involves sewing.