Ulla Engeström

Visiting Mediamatic, Amsterdam

I'm attending a workshop on mobtagging at Mediamatic, Amsterdam. On Wednesday 15th, I'll give a lecture on Craft Manifesto, and on Thursday, I'll talk about tagging physical objects.

Just let them speak

originally uploaded by ullamaaria.

I have one thing to say to the organizers of technology conferences: if you want to make sure that you include the "female perspective" to your program, just invite women to speak about the things they're doing. Putting smart people to discuss under a separate "women & technology" category is not doing the job.

LIFT 06

Regards from LIFT 06:

Regine Debatty gave a great talk about "making and faking" in art. She showed how acting or presenting things in an unexpected way can make us think differently about ourselves and about the society where we live. Those who like the Yes Men, also like projects on we-make-money-not-art.

Matt Blackbelt Jones from Nokia opened the black box of play in relation to mobile device development. In Vygotskian psychology, play (in children) is the principal process of learning. Play links with improvising and exploring new things. Currently big corporations are realizing that in order to make their customers play, they have to start playing themselves. Those who are interested in innovation, should also be interested in play.

Bruce Sterling listed six trends that are shaping the future of the Internet:
1. Unique identifiers
2. Geolocation (postitioning systems for physical objects)
2. Powerful search engines
3. 3D modeling of objects
4. Rapid prototyping of objects, "fabjects"
5. Cradle to grave (or was is cradle to cradle?) recycling

The ontology of everyday objects will change fundamentally in the future. In his book Shaping Things, Sterling introduces an interesting concept, "spime", which refers to a location-aware, environment-aware, self-logging, self-documenting, uniquely identified object that flings off data about itself and its environment in great quantities. See Cory's summary.