augmented reality

Everybody knows the story: Computers—which, a half century ago, were expensive, room-hogging behemoths—have developed into a broad range of portable devices that we now rely on constantly throughout the day.  Futurist Ray Kurzweil famously observed:

progress in information technology is exponential, not linear. My cell phone is a billion times more powerful per dollar than the computer we all shared when I was an undergrad at MIT. And we will do it again in 25 years. What used to take up a building now fits in my pocket, and what now fits in my pocket will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.

Beyond advances in miniaturization and processing, computers have become more versatile and, most importantly, more accessible – you can easily sell your computer processor, there’ll be plenty of those interested, everybody needs it nowadays.  In the early days of computing, mainframes were owned and controlled by various public and private institutions (e.g., the US Census Bureau drove the development of punch card readers from the 1890s onward). When universities began to develop and house mainframes, users had to submit proposals to justify their access to the machine. They were given a short period in which to complete their task, then the machine was turned over to the next person. In short, computers were scarce, so access was limited. more...

I should really post a review of this coffee shop. Maybe on Yelp. I could snap a photo of the cool little setup I have going here or tweet about the funny laptop rules at this place. Or I can get meta and type a Facebook update about how I am currently blogging about all of these possibilities to document my experience. While contemplating all of this, Spotify, a music-listening service, published the song I just listened to on Facebook.

Let’s reflect briefly on how we document experience. The first examples I just gave might be called “active sharing” whereas that last example, the Spotify one, highlights how self-documentation is also increasingly passive. And I think this furthers what I call “documentary vision”: the habit of experiencing more and more of life with the awareness of its document-potential.

Much has been made of so-called “frictionless sharing,” the new Facebook feature that automatically publishes updates from partnered sites and services. Sync Facebook with Spotify or the Wall Street Journal and what you listen to or read will be passively published on the new Facebook live-ticker.

This more passive sharing furthers an already established trend: we are increasingly living life under the logic of the Facebook mechanism. more...

Although this short documentary  (full transcript here) feels more like a glorified advertisement for the video game “Deus Ex: Human Revolution,” it does raise some interesting issues we deal with regularly on this blog. more...

I spoke at the wonderful “Digital Ethnography Weekend” conference last month in Italy. There, I furthered my argument about what I call “digital dualism,” the fallacy that views the on and offline as separate spheres as opposed to my support of an “augmented reality” paradigm that views these spheres as always enmeshed and dialectically co-determining.

Because this was a “digital ethnography” conference, I applied the augmented reality framework to this methodology and argued that, instead, we should be doing “augmented ethnography”, an ethnography that takes as its unit of analysis a reality comprised of atoms as well as bits, always dialectically co-determining. Colleague Alessandro Caliandro and I debated these ideas in the question-and-answer portion of my talk (with much-appreciated thoughts from Adam Arvidsson, as well). Caliandro has posted his summary of my talk as well as his criticism here. I welcome this criticism and want to respond to it below.

First, Caliandro’s development of my argument is charitable. I also very much appreciate the thoughtfulness of the critique. However, I do need to make a correction to the way he summarized augmented reality, and this correction will be important for my response to the criticism. I do not think that the differences between the physical and digital are “irrelevant”; indeed, they are quite important and I’ve written about them before (e.g., here and here). Atoms and bits have very different properties (for instance, atoms tend to be scarce and bits more abundant). It is my contention that these very different spheres come together to form our augmented reality. In fact, as I argue here, it is only under the assumption of augmented reality that we can fully explicate the relevant differences between the physical and digital. With this correction in mind, let’s move forward. more...

There has been some terrific debate on my theorizing of what I call “augmented reality.” In brief, I reject “digital dualism”, the tendency to view the on and off line as separate spheres, and instead argue that we should view them as enmeshed, creating what I call “augmented reality.” [I talk more about this here.]

Today, I am posting some of the debate that occurred over Twitter and another post responding to a critique of a talk I gave on the topic.

One criticism has been that the augmented reality perspective somehow obscures the important ways in which the on and offline are different. I agree that the spheres indeed have different properties. I write here and here about, for example, how atoms tend to be more scarce than bits. Further, I write here about how these important differences are best viewed through the augmented lens.

It is this last point which I feel is most important in responding to the specific criticisms given by Zeynep Tufekci over Twitter. It is my hope that future conversations on this topic take into account the points made in that short essay. I’ll post the debate, still ongoing, below.

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Last week I went down to Zuccotti Park out of an overwhelming desire to be a part of something intensely important. One of my professors  compared the occupation of Wall Street to People’s Park in Berkley, California. He also sees strong connections to the ongoing hacktivist activities in Spain. OccupyWallst.org draws their tactics explicitly form the Arab Spring. I have waited so long to write something about my own experiences because, frankly, it almost feels too personal. So, if you’ll indulge me, this post is going to be a little different from the ones I’ve written in the past.

While the major news outlets try desperately to shoehorn OWS into existing frames, smaller outlets have provided excellent commentary and insight. Jenny Davis was the first on this blog to write about the movement’s use of social media. Since her insightful post, social media has proven to be an effective tool in revealing police brutality and even possible entrapment by the NYPD. The various Twitter backchannels have been instrumental in organizing and publicizing the organization – as well as the results- of major protests. Nathan has also done an excellent job of discussing the relationship of online and offline action. And yesterday’s post by Sarah Wanenchak describes exactly my feelings on the confluence of various forms of technology. There truly is no easy way to describe the feeling you get when you hear the people’s mic for the first time. It is a little difficult to master, but a truly powerful tool.

Having participated in more...

Mass collective action is in the air, on the ground, on the web; indeed, there exists today an atmosphere conducive for revolutions, flash mobs, protests, uprisings, riots, and any other way humans coalesce physically and digitally to change the normal operation of society. [Photos of protests around the globe from just the past 30 days].

Some gatherings have clear goals (e.g., ousting Mubarak), however. there is also the sense that massive gatherings are increasingly inevitable today even when a reason for them is not explicit (e.g., the ongoing debate over the reasons for the UK Riots or the current #occupy protests). For some this is terrifying and for others it is exhilarating. And still others might think I am greatly overstating the amount of protest actually happening. True, we do not yet know if this second decade of the 21^st Century will come to be known for massive uprisings. But if it is, I think it will have much to do with social media effectively allowing for the merging of atoms and bits, of the on and offline; linking the potential of occupying physical space with the ability of social media to provide the average person with information and an audience.

For example, the current #occupy protests across the United States more...

This brief essay attempts to link two conceptualizations of the important relationship of the on and offline. I will connect (1) my argument that we should abandon the digital dualist assumption that the on and offline are separate in favor of the view that they enmesh into an augmented reality and (2) the problematic view that the Internet transcends social structures to produce something “objective” (or “flat” to use Thomas Friedman’s term).

Instead, recognizing that code has always been embedded in social structures allows persistent inequalities enacted in the name of computational objectivity to be identified (e.g., the hidden hierarchies of Wikipedia, the hidden profit-motive behind open-source, the hidden gendered standpoint of computer code, and so on). I will argue that the fallacy of web objectivity is driven fundamentally by digital dualism, providing further evidence that this dualism is at once conceptually false, and, most importantly, morally problematic. Simply, this specific form of digital dualism perpetuates structural inequalities by masking their very existence. more...

[Edit 09/07/11 @ 5:03PM EST]  It has been mentioned in the comments, and elsewhere, that while the Postal Service is facing a solvency problem, that problem is the direct result of Republican-led legislation that burdens them with excessive overhead. I completely agree with this sentiment. The 109th Congress, passed the “The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act” in 2006, which you can read in full here. The law requires that the USPS  pre-fund 75 years-worth of pensions, and prohibits them from selling  goods that are not directly used for sending letters and packages. I suggest you read more about this legislation here and here. I encourage all of you do to your own research and post what you find in the comments.]

Reading the news lately, makes it seem as though the Post Office is giving its final economic death rattle. Post Master General Patrick Donahoe spoke at a Senate hearing yesterday, and according to the Christian Science Monitor:

Donahoe reiterated a list of cost-cutting measures he has been proposing in recent months to erase the agency’s deficit, which could reach up to $10 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing as many as 3,700 postal locations, and laying off 120,000 workers – nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force. (This doesn’t include another 100,000 jobs lost to attrition that the agency does not plan to replace, for a total of 220,000 lost positions.)

These  are  disgraceful solutions to what could be considered an exciting opportunity to innovate. The Internet is being blamed for many of the Post Office’s problems, and it is safe to say that email has put a significant dent in their revenues. But revenues are only half the story. Expenditures are equally important. Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck in their book Suburban Nation relay a conversation with a former (unnamed) Postmaster General who explained that most of our postage goes to the gas for the trucks and vans that carry mail to the suburban fringes of municipalities. Indeed, the USPS has the largest civilian truck fleet in the world. In an era of austerity, we need to look for ways to reduce spending while maintaining affordable services. I just think we need to spend less money on machines, and more on people. The internet can help us do this.

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The annual meetings of the American Sociological Association were held this past week in Las Vegas. More than 5,000 sociologists converged from departments around the world to meet face-to-face in a massive conference hotel. Planning such an event is a massive undertaking with a vast array of logistical issues; yet, one facet of the meeting, Wi-Fi access (or, rather, its inadequacy), sparked a major debate.

First, we should mention that as conference organizers who have run up against the limits of a venue’s Wi-Fi infrastructure, we understand the difficulties in getting people reliably connected. During last Spring’s Theorizing the Web conference, the Wi-Fi crashed under such heavy pressure. However, we were working with a classroom building on a campus, not a massive conference hotel that already has Wi-Fi access built in. It is now the norm for major conference venues to have Wi-Fi available at a price. While the relatively small Theorizing the Web conference might not have a budget for universal Wi-Fi access, ASA could easily spread the cost over the massive number of those paying for registration (or even make a separate Wi-Fi registration fee). more...