Logging calls and texts durings Friday night's experiment
Shown here is a short video recorded on Friday night when I conducted a small experiment involving my classmates, their mobile phones, and a party we attended.
This is the email I sent that afternoon before making the video:
Dear Party People,
Are you planning on going to the house warming party at
Skabelonloftet? If so, can you all help me with an
experiment for my final project?
What I have in mind is a small game with two very simple
rules:
1. You can not call or text anyone on this email list except
for me
2. You can not receive any calls or texts from anyone on
this email list except for me
I will act as an “operator” by keeping track of everyone’s
dispatches. You can call or text me to leave an update
about yourself, or to inquire about the latest update from
a particular person.
See you at the party tonight (i hope)!
Adam
There was no real objective for doing this other than seeing how the evening would be different when friends could not as easily contact each other. In the end, it really was not any different at all except for maybe people putting in a little more thought about where & when to meet. What was interesting though was that a few people broke the rules which they originally accepted from me. For example, Mimi got on a wrong bus which she perceived as a “little emergency” and felt the need to inform Nina immediately. Meanwhile, Magnus arrived at the party earlier than everyone else and out of discomfort (or boredom) decided to call people directly to urge them to hurry up.
It was also interesting being the hub for everyone, which made me realize just how much back-and-forth communication goes into something like meeting at a party. Keep reading for a transcription of all the SMS and calls I received… Read More »
I don’t know how it started but someone thought it would be fun to play telephone (a.k.a. chinese whispers) during yesterday’s train ride to Malmö. It incited a lot of childishness and made the time fly. This same group of people routinely passes messages along to each other digitally. Can we sacrifice any of the clarity this affords us and bring back some of the random surprises word-of-mouth treats us with?
Another story I arrived late to are the padded lamp posts on London’s Brick Lane. As the story goes, this street, which has notoriously crowded sidewalks, is the location of countless injuries caused by people bumping in to lamp posts and other obstacles while texting. So the city used this street to test a new idea for making streets more safe — padded lamp posts.
This is wrong in so many ways, but you have to love such a low tech solution for dealing with the ramifications of such high tech devices.
UPDATE: There is a software solution! TXT’N'WALK app (http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/23288/txt-n-walk-mobile-app.phtml)
I will continue to post observations, inspirations and anything else that I come across in the city or online which may be relevant to urban computing, one of the domains of my final project
Someone recently showed me this ad campaign by Mini Cooper which uses RFID to target drivers of Mini Cooper cars as they pass by. From a New York Times article on the billboards…
The boards, which usually carry typical advertising, are programmed to identify approaching Mini drivers through a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in their key fob. The messages are personal, based on questionnaires that owners filled out: “Mary, moving at the speed of justice,” if Mary is a lawyer, or “Mike, the special of the day is speed,” if Mike is a chef.
I am not sure if an elevated highway is the safest place to put this but it’s a nice idea nonetheless.
I will continue to post observations, inspirations and anything else that I come across in the city or online which may be relevant to urban computing, one of the domains of my final project
Up until very recently, Hollywood was still releasing films in which main characters did not have mobile phones. And the fact that these characters did not have mobile phones was evident because there was always some pivotal scene in which two people could not get in touch with each other, or someone was running late or an ambulance could not be called. This drove me crazy. I recently thought it would be an interesting exercise to re-edit these films, or slightly older films, as if the characters did have mobile phones. What classic movie scenes could be totally negated? Would it make these scenes less universal?
Anyway, I was reminded of this scene from Saved by the Bell which is probably one of the earliest film/tv examples of a social dilemma happening around a mobile phone (YouTube, you never cease to amaze me).
By the way, if you grew up outside of the US and someone mentions a “Zack Morris phone”, this is what they meant:
Remember Zack Morris from Saved by the Bell and his big ass cell phone? Well, anyone with an old ass phone that is lacking todays features has a Zack Morris Phone Sorry I couldnt get that video you sent me, I have a Zack Morris Phone
At many of the bus stops in Copenhagen is a count down timer to when the next bus will arrive. Actually, I don’t know how this works. But it’s awesome. Why is this only the first city I lived in that does this?
I will continue to post observations, inspirations and anything else that I come across in the city or online which may be relevant to urban computing, one of the domains of my final project
This future vision from Samsung takes the form of a commercial, focusing on specific products for the home that are offered by Samsung. Unlike the last video I posted which uses three short scenarios, System Hauzen follows a single narrative of a family going about their day. Unforunately this narrative is broken and becomes a cheap infomercial when the actors address the camera/audience, and especially by saying things like “this is the future…”.
But what’s most striking about this video is how creepy this ethnically ambiguous family is! A comment on the video’s YouTube page compared it to Horizons at Disney World’s Epcot Center, a future vision built in the 80s. System Hauzen is so campy, cliche and borderline anti-utopian that it immediately becomes a parady of itself.
I will continue to post videos related to future visions and scenarios, one of the domains of my final project
