Loosely Assembled - Latest Comments

Re: United Together Against Costumes

fekaylius — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 23:23:20 -0000

and your app make it possible! :)

Re: United Together Against Costumes

qwzybug — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 02:47:55 -0000

Okay, that's fantastic.

Re: Retrofitting Geo for the 4th Dimension

Chris Blow — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:57:43 -0000

I appreciate your concept of drift. It is difficult to imagine software which accounts for drift, and it is difficult to even imagine the drift itself. That is, we don't have facility to measure your concept of "drift" but additionally the idea that buildings and continents *actually move* is an undigested fact.

It seems clear that we are in a nascent cute-and-stupid-baby-stage of user experience that will be forced to revisit some of the foundation of our understanding about how the web works. Unfortunately it seems we have been babies for hundreds of years. Chronological illiteracy seems to be an evolutionary feature, not a bug. Our social delusion of a permanent 3D existence is great fun, evolutionarily speaking. The hive mind wants to know everything but learn nothing.

So I wonder how we will adjust? And if the web is an extension of our brain, who is the architect? How will we actually change the way we build the web? Will the web help us understand some things about the world? You suggest that it will be "80%" of an understanding. Who decides which 20% gets cut from my memex?

Most of the decisions are being made by some blundering corporate fiat. Startup culture is a horrible cradle for these baby ideas. We have huge opportunities to craft these experiences almost as an extension of the humanities. Probably the process will be a protracted and painful point of experience for many years to come.

The urbanization experience has likewise begun to unravel over time and technological pressure. Killing 400 geese at Prospect Park, for example. Riots, famine, drought, food islands, poverty belts, are painful architectural groans, all the things we forgot to design for. But at least urbanization has that crazy discipline called "urban planning" -- and on the web, we barely have a concept of time at all.

Time is a missing piece in so much work on the web. Our hive-mind mental-model has yet appreciate the importance of time because we have barely experienced it on the web. Web design is incredibly temporary, to the point of being vapid. It's difficult to imagine how this kind of slow-grind UX problem could have been avoided -- IxD and UX design barely have 10 years of history. Urban planners actually have schools they can go to.

It astonishes me how much more work there is to do in this regard, and how few people there are to think about it. There are entirely missing fields of design. The lack of regard for "Drift" could eventually result in experiences, like so many killed geese, but on a deeper level of systemic failure, a truly horrible place to live. Tiny design assumptions have huge impact culturally.

But the reluctance to "see time" is, I think very deeply rooted in a fear of mortality -- we actually don't want to see the processes of drift that you are talking about. I mean, is it any surprise that Silicon Valley doesn't want to look back a few hundred years? The transformation of this coastine has been a very violent process. Looking forward 300 years also scares people for some reason (hint: they're dead). So, yes I'll skip the 4D retrofit please, I'll take a delusional sense of permanence any day!

Re: Retrofitting Geo for the 4th Dimension

fekaylius — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:50:42 -0000

Specifically I'm talking about the schemas, the relationships drawn and stored between "location" (lat,lon,etc) and the place entity. Perhaps a model more like recording and storing temperature over time is more fitting, resulting in trends, patterns, and histories.

|,,|_

Re: Retrofitting Geo for the 4th Dimension

Tracy Rolling — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 05:33:58 -0000

Maybe the zoom level metaphor could be adapted for time+place. In=future, out=past.

You know I agree that place is a story we tell ourselves. The borders of the place both in space and time depend on how you want to tell the story. What's the point of view? Who's the narrator? What's the driving conflict?

I diverge from you (maybe) in that I don't think it is that interesting to try to tell every story in every way about every place.

Then again, maybe that is not what you are really getting at. In the end, it is a data visualization problem. What kinds of data do you want to use, what sources do you trust, and how do you combine it all to make it readable? Is it possible to build a framework that turns everyone's combined stories into one cogent story? Is it desirable? In some cases yes, in some cases probably not.

On a practical level, I disagree that people who work in the geo space build their tools as if place is permanent. I think the shifting nature of place is well understood, but the balance between keeping up with the change and making sure that if you do make a change to your data it is absolutely sure, is probably a little bit too far on the side of surety.

Re: Stereoscopic GPS

fekaylius — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:43:31 -0000

following you on twitter now, look forward to seeing more work!

Re: Stereoscopic GPS

nikki pugh — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:37:03 -0000

"maybe those GPS traces aren't in the wrong places, but are in the wrong times"

Oooh! Yes! That's a brilliant way of describing it!
On a micro scale, I think the signal reflects off large buildings and that tiny, tiny extra fraction of time shifts the calculated position.
On a macro scale... Wow! It's a fascinating idea!

The extruded lines on the image from Google Earth were just given arbitrary heights. I've not tried working with altitude data in mscape (what I'm using to log the positions), but I assume it exists. I'll have to give it a go and see what happens!

Re: Stereoscopic GPS

fekaylius — Mon, 17 May 2010 11:52:44 -0000

oh wow, i didn't see the extruded images till just now, those are really wonderful!
is the extrusion based on altitude data? or just arbitrary for visual effect?
nice either way.

Re: Stereoscopic GPS

fekaylius — Mon, 17 May 2010 11:46:31 -0000

Thanks for the links Nikki,
By temporal drift I mean that GPS is predicated on the notion of perfectly synchronized timestamps, I don't know *exactly* how it works, but my understanding is that the GPS satellites send out a beacon signal that includes a satellite ID and a timestamp of the moment that pulse was sent out. The receiver can deduce distance to the satellite by subtracting the reception time from the transmission time. If the receiver can do this with 3 or more satellites, it works (of course the receiver needs to know the positions of the satellites as well, and I'm not sure if that data comes along inside the transmission, or if it's looked up). The distance calculations are based on known and stable velocity of the transmission in a straight line, but if anything interferes with this transmission (not sure if this is even possible) that could delay or alter the known values, the whole equation suffers. Specifically I'm thinking about perhaps variances in the magnetic field around the earth, or interference with other kinds of transmissions, or solar flares, etc. I'm not a physicist, so these questions may just be off base. But the core of my question is something like, maybe those GPS traces aren't in the wrong places, but are in the wrong times.

Re: Stereoscopic GPS

nikki pugh — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:32:33 -0000

Here's a photo of the traces from the 3 walks I did for Territorial Play: http://www.flickr.com/photo... (one at 9.30 am, one at 12pm and one at 2pm) It's unlikely that time is the only factor to have changed, but I'm walking the same route to within a metre each time and holding the machines in the same hand each time I walk. Is this what you mean by spatial drift? (Doesn't all drift have to be temporal!?). Each line, however, is representative of a moment in time, so the drawings can only show drift at certain levels...

The overhead positions of the GPS satellites changes with time, so it's natural for signals to change. Also, my experience with GPS devices is that they're kind of jittery on a much shorter timescale too: http://www.flickr.com/photo...

I like the 3D walkthrough idea. The closest I've come so far is this sort of thing in Google Earth: http://www.flickr.com/photo...

Re: Stereoscopic GPS

LO — Sat, 15 May 2010 08:35:22 -0000

INVIGILATOR:MALVERN
Splacist Trace Print http://post.ly/g6Fh Nikki Pugh

From: Invigilator:Malvern Conneally & Pugh 2009

Re: Frienemy vs Enemigo

fekaylius — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:05:05 -0000

it has something to do with this image
http://fekaylius.tumblr.com...

Re: Frienemy vs Enemigo

fekaylius — Wed, 05 May 2010 02:37:11 -0000

I really like hearing about the germanic vs latin roots and the relationships that brought about our current use of one and the other!

Reading up on these ideas you present Tracy, I'd pitch the tent of this article closer to the linguistic relativism line, where the language and the culture are intertwined, feeding and looping around one another in a kinetic knot of cause and effect. But I think in general this is post is also just using language as a jumping off point to compare various ways to create and describe 'opposite' ideas, whether they are described or conceptualized as being built with the same stuff or with completely different stuff, and how this evolution either does or doesn't leave room for future terminology in the middle.

One amazing looking item from your links is this book about a 'man without language', it's even hard to imagine what thought would be like without language, definitely on my list to read.
http://www.worldcat.org/tit...

Re: When Cities Apologize for Buffing Graffiti

Tracy Rolling — Sat, 01 May 2010 06:47:57 -0000

Excellent post. Blog more.

Re: Frienemy vs Enemigo

Tracy Rolling — Sat, 01 May 2010 05:08:01 -0000

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media...

Haven't read this article yet, but the skimming says it's got some good stuff in it. It's a critique of the idea of linguistic determinism.

Re: Frienemy vs Enemigo

Tracy Rolling — Sat, 01 May 2010 05:00:48 -0000

There is no stronger linguistic relationship than opposition. Opposition is definition. One is only understood in relation to the other. Without the opposition, the word doesn't have meaning. You can't have one without the other.

The existence of the word frienemy is proof that it's a concept spectrum, not two distinct nodes. And this is such a sweet spot in the spectrum that it sprouted a neologism.

Friend is a Germanic-root word and enemy is a Latin-root word. We get this in English because of the Normans, who had stopped being Vikings and had turned into French people by the time they invaded England. The peasants in England spoke a Germanic langauge. The feudal lords spoke French and Latin. The French and Latin in our language comes mostly from them. This is why an animal has a Germanic name when it is alive and a French one when it is dead. The Germanic-speaking peasants raise the cow, but when it gets slaughtered the meat goes to the castle to be eaten by people who call it boeuf. English poetry is heavy in Germanic-root words. English scientific papers are heavy in Latin-root words.

These Norman feudal dudes certainly understood the true meaning of enemy and they had plenty of them. They also understood the diplomatic cloak of friendship barely concealing the dagger that is true frienmity.

This is word for something that you normally in history would not say aloud. It would simply be known, If you acknowledge this relationship explicitly, you transform the relationship into plain old enemy. What is new may be that our friend/ennemy relationships have become so mundane and watered down that there is no real danger or risk in acknowledging the thing with a word.

About the general concept behind the article--does language change the way we think--I tend to really argue against it. If lingistic relativity (or linguistic determinism or the Sapir-Whorf Principal) exists, it is damn subtle. Not only is it subtle, but it is only one of a myriad of influences that make people think differently one from another. And all of these influences are constantly influencing each other, to boot.

This idea in its present form originates from Whorf's work with native American languages (especially Hopi) and from what I have read, that work is pretty shaky. It's also got at least one root in a repulsive nationalism. Just one more bit of evidence that the "other" is so different from us that we couldn't possibly communicate with them. Basically, I think the idea is mostly bullshit.

Anecdotal evidence has shown me personally that it is just as easy to find two native English speakers whose world views are so different that they basically can't really understand a word the other one says as it is to find a native English speaker and a native Chinese speaker who feel like they really get each other. Not until I landed in Europe and started hanging out with my motley crew of expats (Russian, Iranian, Isreali, German, Dutch-but-grew-up-in-Kenya, Morrocan, American, British, Irish, and so one all mixed together) did I suddenly felt that I had found my people at last.

Wierdly, this conversation has come up a few times lately. The idea is really appealing to people somehow. I'm a big fan of Steven Pinker on the subject of linguistics. Here are some videos of him giving talks:
http://www.google.de/search...

If you haven't already, you should definitely read The Language Instinct.
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.e...

Re: Portland’s Non-Profit Incubator Future

fekaylius — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:37:43 -0000

Hi Bret, sorry for the delayed reply here.
If the core of your statement is that a lump of non-profits huddled together in one semi-isolated venue could limit the long term efficacy, I can see that being the case for some types of organizations with certain types of missions.

Many non-profits are locally viable because they draw support from, and deal with issues centered in, a real physical location, a city, a neighborhood, a region. These kinds of entities do require a more integrated relationship with current and future supporters. They could end up suffering, as you suggest, a form of social elitism, by entering adding several layers of glass and concrete, plazas, and social pretense, between them and the people they are meant to work with.

There are though other kinds of organizations that have centralized offices, or that do not share the localized integration issue mentioned above, who could enjoy continual benefit from the campus like insulation of such a location.

I guess it turns on the needs of the organization, the long term needs. Sometimes, the short term wants can feel like long term needs, and the creation of such a venue would certainly be a shiny distraction and promising temptation to many an outfit.

The proposal was not what I'd call totally serious, but was rather a small gesture to perhaps inspire a higher bar of expectations for Portland.

Re: Portland’s Non-Profit Incubator Future

Bret Bernhoft — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:43:00 -0000

While I would completely agree with you that there is a need to have a much "cleaner" or substantial system for the incubation of Portland area, even National, Non-Profits, I would disagree with your suggestion for turning the Memorial Collesium into a facility for that. For there to be an effective linkage between Non-Profits and their longterm success there must be a smaller, but firmer network of facilities around the city. I will be very interested in your response to my comment.

Re: Calma Village

Tracy Rolling — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:00:23 -0000

The village canvas is an interesting idea. I wonder if he starts to feel like the house exteriors belong to him in some way. I wonder how he would feel if another local artist started painting some of the other houses. Cool project. I like that the work is narrative.

Re: Opposites Are Also True

fekaylius — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:46:19 -0000

is this affiliate spam?

Re: Shantytown Labyrinths of Abandoned Online Identity Shadows

fekaylius — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:41:35 -0000

interesting article about facebook's potential role in the identity marketplace http://www.businessweek.com...

Re: Digital Media Free Pile

fekaylius — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:13:47 -0000

thx stranger, hey did you get email from diann about lego mindstorms?

Re: Opposites Are Also True

jakeo — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:43:18 -0000

Reminds me of my daughter's book:

http://www.amazon.com/Oppos...

Re: Digital Media Free Pile

Tracy Rolling — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:06:21 -0000

Great post, Jason.

Re: Playful

fekaylius — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:29:11 -0000

i know, all the coverage comes after the fact, and keeping the momentum from years past enthusiasm is pretty tricky with so much happening. That's why a global 'enlightenment' DB would be nice :)

But maybe the existing *event* directories can handle the cause? (although, do any of them actually do a good job?)