Monthly Archives: April 2013

Science Fiction

living in dystopia, so you don’t have to

I read a lot of SF as a kid, then for some reason slowed down a lot. Reading text books and factual books took up more of my reading time. I have though gotten back into reading SF. Some new, some old. Of the old works, it has been a pleasure to return to some stories I have read before but also to explore many that I have never gotten around to reading.

At school I won the prize for ‘Control technology’ twice. A book token was the prize, the bookshop in Tavistock was a wonderful little place, the person who owned it friendly. I spent many a saturday in town with an hour or so just looking at the books in there, it was a small section marked Science Fiction & fantasy but so many books came from there.

The two books I picked as prizes, one was J.G. Ballards ‘The Day of Creation’, the other was ‘Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction’ by Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove. Both books I loved and still have with me today. Reading a Trillion Year Spree, though, was always an adventure as I knew there was so much out there that I was yet to read.

Now, excitingly Gollancz has the SF Gateway. They are publishing the long tail of science fiction, as eBook editions. So many stories that would normally be out of print are now accessible again.

Next year, in 2014, the WorldCon, the World Science Fiction Convention is back in the UK, being held in London. This year they are holding the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, again, the last time I attended either of these was back last century when they were last held in the UK.

Its exciting to go back to spending time with Science Fiction.

 

Smart Cities

noisy city

“Smart Cities’ is the thing right now. Conferences and investment all over the place. Its been a long time coming as well, there is no shortage of academic thinking about cities and digital.

As of right now I have a small problem with the whole discussion as it currently has a very singular direction. It is being championed by large corporations, Philips etc and like the Big Data movement can be very dehumanising.

In Big Data, everyone pays lip service to the idea of Big Brother, but then its right on as we were, there is a lack of critical dialogue on what is happening in this space. Lots of people are doing good and clever things in examining this information but equally many of the externalities are not yet examined, let alone mitigated.

The same is true of the Smart City movement, as really this is the process of turning an environment into a repository and producer of realtime big data. How are we doing this? Sensors strewn across the city scape, all interconnected all bleating their piece of information and sponsorship.

As of right now there is a strong DIY and grass roots movement in place, the Internet of Things is not yet owned by the technocrats in power. Those that already own and barter the existing public service networks from the last centuries do not yet fully own the sensor and data networks that make up the instrumented city.

But events are being held that already appear less edgy and critical than they appeared to be last year. It could be that because of potential government investment the organisers and participants are already self censoring their ideas. A pot of initial investment in an idea is a valuable thing.

These ideas are going to make life different in the city and hopefully they will make them better but this will only happen if there is also the critical element in place, the ability to question the data, check the provenance, recalibrate and review.

James Lovelock wrote about building his own instruments for his science experiments that produced the data that enabled him to build the model of Gaia. How it helped to prove the damage we were wreaking on the ozone layer. He writes about how important it is to both build (and therefore fully understand how it works) your own tools and instruments and also the importance of actually going out and viewing the environment and collecting ‘actual’ data rather than relying on models.

Not everyone is going to be able to build their own sensors, not everyone is going to set up their own rig of data capture and broadcast around their homes, places of work etc. Yet, just as we need to make aure people understand how the digital is impacting their lives already, we need to make sure that the instrumentation that is collecting and sharing the data that will shape our interactions with the city fabric are true and unbiased.

Until then, we just risk building the noisy city, with the data of no real social worth to anyone except the corporates and power structures already in place.

 

Events, Hack Days, Pop-up

emergAgency how the hackathon could evolve, step 0

I have used that name before but we have been starting to give it some focus. In recent weeks I have been speaking with Hub Westminster. They have an idea to create a go-to entity for companies, government departments, charities whomever to approach when they have a problem and they want to get some different thinking on it.

Of course, they could approach existing agencies, open up rounds of pitches or any number of other avenues to get new ideas and thinking into their patterns. Recently though there has been a vogue for the Hack Day or Hackathon.

The hack day though is already a possibly flawed and damaged product. What had started as way to get together a group of coders and work together on a problem for a short, time boxed period. Now, you can find hackathons or similar most weekends, across the world and for all kinds of ‘problems’. Whilst great fun us had at many of them and I am sure individuals get benefits from attending, new connections in their network etc. Overall they do not appear to contribute back into the community.

This is not the fault of anyone, just an observation of the structure as it is now.

What does come next? To examine this we need to understand what outcome we want because maybe there isn’t a next at all. Maybe the few of us who are frustrated by Hack events should just avoid them.

So, what do I want to see happen?

1. Attendance of other disciplines. Extend the reach and participation of these events, get product designers, industrial designer along as well, for example.

2. More focused problem definition. What is the goal of the event? To develop a block of code, to create a flow of information?

3. Document! Write everything up, share it so that it can be built upon.

and that leads to

4. Build on code.

Now this does change the whole dynamic, its not an event where you turn up, get some free food and some company where you can knock together something to show at the end of the time.

What we have here is more of a process, starting with a vague problem, honing this down into something more defined or maybe a set of more defined problems to be examined and then setting some people at those problems, within a support infrastructure of facilitation and documentation.

This is closer to what Hub Westminster want, to be able to take to these entities that have problems a new path to generating possible solutions.

So where does emergAgency fit into all of this? Well my pitch was to hold regular monthly events where the theme was plucked from the news, what was interesting, big that month. The actual theme would only be set a week before the day/evening of the event.

It isn’t a hackday, it is what I have described as a ‘pop-up think tank’ where an issue can be examined that the outcomes from that event, they are the next steps that feed into the later ‘hack/development/prototyping’ events.

Beyond that back when I was last using the moniker emergAgency I was thinking more around a pop-up agency to examine a problem. Take the problem space you have been approached with, put together a pool of talent to examine it and prepare possible solutions.

Which leads me onto another thing, there are lots of groups of people who get together to work on ideas, chat, network, create and learn from each other. This vast resource is something that can (and often is) put to good use in approaching problems.

What would be interesting would be some kind of point of contact, some assigned and recognised group/board who can bring in these larger, vague problems and help direct them to the groups, people who might be best placed to help solve them.

They would act as custodians of an ever growing repository of problems and directions for solutions.

It could act as a route for innovation, new ideas that would hopefully come out of this ‘process’ that could become self sustainable, new companies, new products or services. Some owned by exisiting organisations, others new start-ups.

Some of the ideas may just linger in the repository until the right people and team come along and can see how to take that initial idea to the next stage.

By being open, yes clear on attribution then this can become a route for the creation of new ideas as well as new opportunities.

All groups and people who sign up to the ‘foundation’ would get to vote for the panel who work at the top of the filter, the ones getting in and distributing the problems. The foundation should also support the events, discussions and hacks. A continuity of repository, supplying facilitation and documentation support.

It is this infrastructure that stops the current model of hackathons from being an ongoing source of new innovation, of contributing to knowledge.

So, this is just a set of vague ideas. Sign up at the emergAgency mailing list and lets shape these ideas into something that new.

CSM, DAC, SRvD

Slightly academic

This is a short post to introduce something that I am currently up to. I have taken a part time role at Central St. Martins as part of the Socially Responsive Design / Design Against Crime research centre.

I have worked with them before on a few projects over the years and known Adam Thorpe since I visited the first Vexed Generation shop/installation, oh so many years ago.

Its an exciting opportunity to both help on the digital dissemination of current projects within the team but also to do my own work.

The current role is as Digital Communication and Engagement Designer but hope to apply for a research fellowship later in the year.

It is part time, so if you need any consultancy, technical project management or development on any projects, do get in touch :)