[DOORS] News from Doors of Perception: June-July 2003

[desk at doorsofperception.com]

DOORS OF PERCEPTION REPORT 
A quick scan of design events and ideas
June-July 2003

- Are disappearing computers a menace?
- Anthropocentric interfaces
- Anxious about disambiguation
- Hazardous mental states
- Convivial summer school in Rome
- Where did I put my life?
- Chips are down for Benetton
- Did that algorithm squeak?
- Marcel wins a Webby!
- Architects enslaved to the machine
- Travelling heavy
- Don't drive our cars 
- Happy in Shanghai
- Learn to speak goose
- And now: blogservatories
- Reprieve for Tech?
- Visualogue in Nagoya
- Rapacious? Moi?
- Armourous in Asperen
- Intellectuals at bay
- Ambient orb
- Culture-ville 
- Intimacy in public space
- De-centred in D.C.
- Brave new world of sand 
- Power laws of design in Tokyo


ARE DISAPPEARING COMPUTERS A MENACE?
The mission sounds innocuous enough: "to see how information technology can be 
diffused into everyday objects and settings, (leading to) new ways of 
supporting and enhancing people's lives". But a visit to Greece, for the 
Disappearing Computer conference, left us disconcerted - even scared. These 
three stories from Santorini made us uneasy. 

(1) ANTHROPOCENTRIC INTERFACES
One paper looked forward to "anthropocentric interfaces" that, enabled by 
"cognition technologies", will "enhance or substitute for our senses". Context-
aware and proactive systems will "hide overall system complexity, and preserve 
human attention, by delivering to us only information which is rich with 
meanings and contexts". Faced with a "tera-world" filled with "open, unbound, 
dynamic and intelligent systems", we will soon need to "provide them with 
learning, and gracefully evolving capabilities, as well as self-diagnosis, 
self-adaptation, and self-organisation capabilities". Now maybe we are missing 
something, but to us this translates as: build systems that are too complicated 
to understand and then, after they are deployed, find ways to master their 
complexity. Hmmm.

(2) ANXIOUS ABOUT DIS-AMBIGUATION
Greger Linden, a Finnish expert in "psychosocial computing", anticipates that, 
when direct brain-computer interfaces are implemented, "people will be the 
problem. Rather than concentrate on one thing at a time, which suits the 
software, people tend to think about other things. This messes up the results". 
Linden, who leads a large "proactive computing" consortium, is undeterred by 
20,000 years' of human subtlety: he plans to develop models for 
"disambiguating" users' vague commands, and anticipating their actions. Alas, 
poor Yorick.
http://www.aka.fi/proact
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/research/imag/proact/proact.php

(3) HAZARDOUS MENTAL STATES
Other researchers are developing machine vision systems that will scan us for 
"psycho physiological signals" and "sense and understand human actions". Eye-
gaze, pupil-dilation and contraction, gaze direction through time, blinking, 
facial ticks, breathing and heart rates, will all be monitored remotely by 
systems designed to "understand our cognitive and emotional state of mind". 
Serious dangers are often created by individuals who try to carry out critical 
activity when they are "not in a fit state to", said a fresh-faced scientist. 
"Agents will monitor these users and decide on behalf of them for their 
welfare". He mentioned driving cars while under the influence, and drowsing at 
the wheel of a bus - but we see no reason why the system could not be re-
calibrated to detect other impure thoughts.
Tales of the disappearing computer is (are) edited by Achilles Kameas and 
Norbert Streitz at:
http://ilios.cti.gr/DCTales
http://www.disappearing-computer.net

CONVIVIAL SUMMER SCHOOL IN ROME
Convivio, the network for people-centred design of interactive systems, is 
organising a design summer school in Rome on the theme, "mixed realities". The 
School, which runs September 1 - 12, 2003, will be directed by Riccardo 
Antonini, Consorzio Roma Ricerche, and Yngve Sundblad, KTH, Stockholm. As well 
as young designers, Masters and PhD students in computer science and 
technology, psychology and anthropology, industrial design, architecture etc, 
are eligible.
Email: conviviosummerschool at roma.ccr.it

WHERE DID I PUT MY LIFE?
Giles Hogben from the European Commission fears that "loss of sensory privacy" 
can indeed become a nightmare. The Pentagon, blissfully free of such Old 
European qualms, wants to develop a digital super diary that records 
heartbeats, travel, Internet chats, indeed, everything a person does, which 
could lead to powerful software to analyse behaviour. Known as LifeLog, the 
project aims to capture and analyse a multimedia record of everywhere a subject 
goes and everything he or she sees, hears, reads, says and touches. The Defence 
Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has solicited bids and hopes to 
award four 18-month contracts beginning this summer. http://news.yahoo.com/fc?
tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=us&cat=privacy

BENETTON BOYCOTT?
Plans by Benetton to weave RFID (radio frequency ID) trackable chips into its 
apparel have run into opposition. A group called CASPIAN (Consumers Against 
Privacy Invasion And Numbering) has launched a website, boycottbenetton.org. 
"Anytime you (go) near an RFID reader your identity will be revealed to anyone 
with access to a database - all without your permission."
http://newswithviews.com/Mary/starrett4.htm
http://www.boycottbenetton.org/

DID THAT ALGORITHM SQUEAK? 
Computers may disappear, but they are unlikely to go quietly. Research into the 
"sonification of hybrid objects" proceeds apace. The words mean the use of 
sound to display data, monitor systems, and provide enhanced user interfaces 
for computers and virtual reality systems. A conference in Boston on auditory 
display covers such topics as sonically augmented artefacts, auditory 
exploration of data via sonification (data-controlled sound) and audification 
(audible playback of data samples). A European group, Sounding Object, has made 
an intriguing website. ICAD 2003, July 6 to 9, Boston. 
http://www.icad.org/
http://www.soundobject.org

MARCEL WINS A WEBBY!
Great news! Marcel van der Drift has won a Webby - an "Oscar of the internet". 
If you came to Doors of Perception 7 last November, it was Marcel's mini-movies 
that opened each session. Dutchman Marcel's Webby is for best personal website 
in the world this year. Considering that there are supposed to be one million 
such sites in New York City alone, that's quite an achievement. 
http://www.nobodyhere.com
http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/movies/index.html

ARCHITECTS ENSLAVED TO THE MACHINE
The catalogue of Mobility reaches us from Rotterdam. Mobility's curators drove 
around Dutch motorways in a car. It contained four cameras. Does this mean that 
architects care more about what things look like, than about the processes that 
lie behind them? Having set out "to come to grips with the issue of 
infrastructure," this large project does the opposite. It does not question the 
causes of mobility, still less ponder how to modify its rapacious growth. 
Highways are "the most intensively visited public space in the Netherlands", 
says Mobility; the experience of driving along them should be more carefully 
designed. Nevermind the environment, let's improve the experience, implies 
Mobility - and much vaporous talk about the aesthetics of mobility follows. 
Architects have truly become slaves to the machine. 
http://www.naibooksellers.nl

TRAVELLING HEAVY
Travelling by high-speed train is the epitome of a light, modern, ecologically 
positive way to move, right? Wrong. A total of 48 kilogrammes (about 100 
pounds) of solid primary resources are needed for one passenger to travel 100 
km by Germany's high-speed train, ICE. The energy demands of the traction 
process - actually moving the train - dominates the system's life cycle, but 
the construction of tunnels, and heating rail track points during winter, are 
also a significant cost. Researchers at Germany's Martin Luther University used 
Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) during their 
remarkable study of the construction, use and disposal of rail infrastructure.
They measured everything from the running costs of train retrofitting 
factories, to the petrol used by passengers getting to the station - even the 
provision of drinking water. They add these to numbers for the CO2 emissions, 
cumulative energy demand and so on, to derive a "material input per service 
unit", or MIPS. These guys should have been in charge of Rotterdam's Biennale. 
International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Vol 8 No 2, February 2003.
http://www.scientificjournals.com/sj/php/sjAbstract.php?doi=lca2003.02.107

DON'T DRIVE OUR CARS
Only five per cent of us have embraced sustainable consumption life-styles. 
Messages from governments and green groups are often too guilt-laden and 
disapproving - and don't work. A welcome shift of emphasis, then, from KIA, the 
Korean car manufacturer, whose campaign in the United Kingdom urges people not 
to use cars for short journeys, only long ones. It provides a mountain bike 
with every new car purchased. And it helps organize networks of parents who 
assist in escorting children to school on foot. Three cheers for KIA. 
http://www.edie.net/gf.cfm?
L=left_frame.html&R=http://www.edie.net/news/Archive/6628.cfm

HAPPY IN SHANGHAI
An interesting new magazine, 032C, from Berlin, has the theme "Shanghai 
Desire". It includes photography architecture, technology, and the following 
facts. Fifty per cent of Shanghai's 13.5 million citizens feel "exhausted" - 
but fewer than two per cent of them feel lonely, and only 2.2 per cent find 
life to be meaningless. 60,000 mobile phones are discarded by Shanghaians each 
year.
http://www.032c.com

LEARN TO SPEAK GOOSE 
Having added feral robotics to the engineering curriculum at Yale, Natalie 
Jeremijenko has now started a new project, OOZ - that's "zoo backwards and 
without cages". Ooz is a series of experiments with animal models - geese, 
horses, badgers, and bats - that test our assumptions about social 
organisation, animal cognition, and human-animal interaction. "The human/animal 
interface has two components" says Jeremijenko. "An architecture of 
reciprocity, in which any action you direct at an animal, it can direct at you; 
and an information architecture of collective observation and interpretation."
http://www.verbeelding.nl

AND NOW: BLOGSERVATORIES
Jeremijenko has also coined the useful term, blogservatories. These have been 
added to her on-going One Trees project in San Francisco. One Trees is a public 
experiment that plants pairs of genetically identical trees - clones - 
throughout the San Francisco Bay Area's diverse microclimates and social 
contexts. Because the trees are genetically identical, as they grow they reveal 
the social and environmental differences to which they are exposed. A One Trees 
bicycle conference is planned for October. Participants will use dynamic maps, 
designed by Terraswarm, "for one-hand operation at 15mph while riding a bike, 
visiting trees, watching birds and avoiding traffic."
The maps show, amongst other things, the heat island effect - a problem caused 
by heat reflected off the sealed surfaces of the built environment that can 
make city blocks up to 12 degrees hotter than vegetated areas. Other topics 
include flight paths of the common hawk, and toxic release inventory sites in 
the Bay area. "The goal of this project is a collective one," says Nat. "The 
environment is complex, and if we are to understand it, then we need to exploit 
the distributed intelligence of the larger community." 
http://www.onetrees.org/
http://mucketymuck.org
http://entity.eng.yale.edu/nat

REPRIEVE FOR TECH?
"Technology for everyday life and culture," is the theme of a seminar at 
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy. The state of interaction design is 
analysed by Bill Moggridge, co-founder, IDEO (Palo Alto), Joy Mountford, IDBias 
(Palo Alto), and Nathan Shedroff, experience designer (San Francisco). A second 
seminar, on how future-concept projects spark innovation, features your 
correspondent John Thackara, Kazuto Mugura from Sony Design Centre Europe, and 
Peter Hohmann, Senior Designer, Hitachi Design Centre Europe.
http://www.interaction-ivrea.it/en/annualevent/

VISUALOGUE IN NAGOYA
The organisers hope - we trust not too optimistically - that 1,400 designers 
will attend Visualogue, a congress on visual design that takes place in Nagoya 
this October. A strong line-up includes media artist Masaki Fujihata, 
information architect Richard Saul Wurman, and designers John Maeda, Armand 
Mevis, and Stefan Sagmesiter. A special session features designers from 
Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, 
and Singapore. October 8 to 13, Nagoya.
http://www.visualogue.com

PREDATORY AND DESTRUCTIVE? MOI? 
Although human knowledge will very likely continue to grow, and with it human 
power, "the human animal will stay the same: a highly inventive species that is 
also one of the most predatory and destructive." So concludes John Gray in a 
remarkable book, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Animals. Gray reminds us 
The days when the economy was dominated by agriculture are long gone, he 
writes. Those of industry are nearly over. Economic life is no longer geared 
chiefly to production. To what then is it geared? "To distraction: Humans have 
always sought relief from their lives. Many of their oldest institutions are 
tributes to the need for make-believe."
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Animals, is published by Granta, London.

DESIGN FOR OUR FUTURE SELVES
By the year 2020, close to 50 per cent of Europe's adult population will be 
aged 50 or over. This statistic reveals one of the most profound social changes 
of our time. In addition, the 40/40 contract - 40 hours a week for 40 years - 
is breaking down in society. Business change is ending the idea of jobs for 
life. New thinking is also emerging around the possibilities of seamless 
integration of public and private, personal and communal forms of travel. 
Awards for design inspired by this agenda - Design For Our Future Selves - are 
announced June 30, Royal College of Art, London.
http://www.hhrc.rca.ac.uk

ARMOUROUS IN ASPEREN
About one minute after Sars broke out in Hong Kong, citizens were seen wearing 
face masks printed with Louis Vuitton logos. Now fashion forecaster Li 
Edelkoort has curated a design exhibition called Armour on the theme, defence. 
Belgian designer Walter van Beirendonck contributes a combat suit. Job Smeets 
has made white designer porcelain swords. Marina Abramovic has made a film 
called The Hero. Rare body armour from the Stibbert Museum in Florence 
completes an intiguing event. It's at Fort Asperen, which is part of the 
historic Dutch water defences and located close to the city of Leerdam. Until 
September 2.
http://www.armour.nl/

INTELLECTUALS AT BAY
Is intellectual life in terminal decline? Ideas can define and transform 
society, but how healthy is intellectual life today? A weighty bunch of 
speakers will debate knowledge, the university system, media punditry, the rise 
of think tanks, the demise of peer review, and the rise of public experts. "In 
a period when Big Brother refers not to George Orwell, but to a reality TV 
show, and when bright young things are developing gameshow formats rather than 
scribbling essays, is intellectual life in terminal decline?"
June 20 to 22, Goodenough College, London. 
http://www.instituteofideas.com/Events/current/docs/intellectual2.html

AMBIENT ORB
If so many eggheads in one place are too much for a summer's day, try Ambient 
Orb instead. It's a frosted glass ball, about the size of a grapefruit. You 
plug it into any power outlet, set it on a desk or bookshelf, and it glows any 
colour to give you a glanceable view of data: weather forecasts, pollen 
forecasts (good for allergy sufferers), instant message status - and (soon) 
traffic, email accumulation, and more. The orb's creator, David Rose, president 
of Ambient Devices, is speaking at TEDMED. 
http://www.TEDMED.com
http://www.ambientdevices.com

CULTURE-VILLE 
A former industrial area producing gas, Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek has re-
invented itself as a cultural district - the procedure is called brand 
extension. A new designer park, opens in September, so they are staging an 
international conference, 'Creativity and the City',that features best-of-class 
projects to do with the redevelopment of industrial areas and cultural 
enterprise. September 25 and 26, Amsterdam. 
http://www.creatievestad.nl

INTIMACY IN PUBLIC 
Beyond Media considers the impact of publishing, television, cinema, satellite 
devices, information and mobile communication networks, control and 
surveillance instruments, on public and private space. This year's theme: 
"intimacy." October 2 to 5, Florence.
http://www.architettura.it/image

DE-CENTERED IN D.C.
We're not convinced that Washington D.C.counts as an edge city, but don't hold 
that against this year's Supernova conference. It's about the decentralisation 
of communications, software, and media. Speakers include Jonathan Schwartz, 
software supremo at Sun; Joichi Ito, blogger and venture capitalist; J.C. Herz, 
CEO of Joystick Nation; Tom Hawk, general manager of grid computing at IBM;  
Marko Ahtisaari, Insight & Foresight eminence at Nokia; Mena Trott, CEO, Six 
Apart (the company behind Movable Type personal publishing systems - ie blogs); 
Nikolaj Nyholm, Founder of "name technology provider" Ascio; Gigi Sohn, of 
Public Knowledge, the advocate of an "information commons". July 8 to 9, 
"Washington DC Area".
http://www.pulver.com/supernova/index.html

BRAVE NEW WORLD OF SAND 
Amsterdam is full, so the city has built a new town for 45,000 people. IJberg 
sits on seven islands, freshly made of sand. At last weekend's open day, 15,000 
people - most of them seemingly pregnant, or carrying infants - admired the 
engineering and architecture, built sandcastles on the recently unloaded beach, 
and ate execrable hot dogs. It felt like a breeding farm for Hollanders, but at 
least it's well-designed. If you're feeling broody, check out:
http://www.ijburg.nl/

POWER LAWS OF DESIGN IN TOKYO
"Under our old design rules matter and energy costs are not calculated; things 
and "tech" are more important than services; and people are regarded as a cost, 
to be eliminated. New "power laws" are needed to inform the ways we design 
things, places, communications, and contexts, in an era of networks and webs". 
To find out more, go to Tokyo for John Thackara's lecture on July 4, 1600-
1900h, JIDPO. To reserve a Tokyo ticket, email: tadanori at musabi.ac.jp
Or book the speaker: 
http://www.thackara.com

BACK IN SEPTEMBER
Don't panic or lose faith in life when you do not receive a Doors of Perception 
Report in July or August. We are not sending one out. We'll continue to post 
news and other new content direct to the website: 
http://www.doorsofperception.com