Earlier this evening I ducked over to the QUT Creative Industries Precinct to see Adam Greenfield talk at the first of NICTA’s Big Picture Seminar Series. I love this photo of him:
Photo: The Good Life by slavin fpo
He’s one of the early internet information architects and is currently the head of design direction for user interface and services at Nokia. To paraphrase his own introduction, his work sits somewhere at the interface of sophisticated technical systems and the people who use them. Given Greenfield literally wrote the book (well, a book) on ubiquitous computing, I figured much of his lecture was going to be around the potential of seamlessly integrated computation into everyday life. I was right.
Essentially, he began with the premise that we are going to see a lot more integration of computer into objects we engage with in our everyday lives (agreed); what he calls “networked urbanism”. But more importantly, that some (if not most) of this will occur without us even being aware of it (agreed). He asked, “Why are we collecting data? Is the likelihood of its utility in the future worth the investment?” A fair point. One to which my reply kept coming back to a resounding “Umm… maybe…” Perhaps the question should be “Should we be collecting data? Is the likelihood of its utility in the future enough to justify the collection?” From this situation a number of (societal, moral, legal) question (will) emerge; around the collection, management and preservation of data, around what objects are collecting and computing data and how, the extent to which individuals will be identifiable through data collection and other privacy concerns, the extent of disclosure and opt out options individuals have around the collection of this data, to name but a few.
He went on to extrapolate beyond mere policy questions; exploring some of the potential ramifications that this kind of techno-emersion might have on urban life. In particular, the talked through a number of ’shifts’ in how we exist in the world that is resulting (and will continue more rapidly) from new consumer technologies. didn’t catch all of his x to y list during the lecture, but thankfully he has them all listed on his blog Speedbird. So here’s my crack at talking through all some of them:
Latent to explicit
There is seriously so much more data in the world then ever before. And it’s ”saving us mega-lifetimes of effort”. But what else is it doing?
In urban areas a number of social ‘truths’ form. To use Brisbane as an example, isn’t it ‘true’ that Bardon is more expensive than Mt Gravatt or that you’re more likely to be mugged in Kingston than you are in Paddington? Sure, we all ‘know’ these statements to be true, but what’s backing these assertions up? There might be some data that proves it, but the average Brisbane resident can’t pull it up at a moment’s notice. What happens when this information goes from inherent to explicit?
Greenfield offers Oakland Crimespotting as an example. It is an online, interactive tool that plots Oakland Police Department’s CrimeWatch data onto a map creating a visualised spread of crime in the Oakland area. On the one hand this can be viewed as a really useful and good tool. It allows residents to make informed decisions about what suburbs they live in, work in and play in. Now asides from the usual criticism about the comprehensiveness of the data (that the datasets are too generic, that not all crimes are reported, etc), which Greenfield touched on, it also does also significantly change how information about crimes in cities is represented. The city ‘truths’ as to which suburbs are safest go from being commonly held beliefs to (allegedly) concrete facts.
Browse to search, held to shared
Expanding on this idea, Greenfield went on to talk about the shift from ”browse urbanism” to “search urbanism”. Tools such as local searching (News Limited’s TrueLocal, local listings on Google Maps), user-recommendations and microblogging, are encouraging people to search out specific things in specific suburbs rather than exploring or browsing them.
Likewise, these tools moves knowledge of those little gems in a city from the the ‘knowing few’ to the collective consciousness. Social media tools are encouraging people to share their lived knowledge of their city with each other. We will continue to see new websites and applications emerge to aggregate and collate this information across multiple sources.
Wayfinding to wayshowing
In a (sort of) extension to the ‘browse to search’ shift mentioned above, new technologies are changing how people navigate cities. Navmans on the dashboard, GPS navigation in the iPhone Google Maps app, mobile device applications such as Exit Strategy NYC tell commuters which carriage to be in depending on which station exit they want to use (even possible Google Latitude), stifle the serendipity of discovery through exploration. Similarly, to paraphrase Greenfield, when the way is shown to you, rather than discovered you don’t develop a mental map for yourself.
Of course, all four of these ideas merge run the risk of “lubricating commerce and sociality”. I’m not against commerce in these spaces, but it does add a number of other issues into the mix.
Passive to interactive
In the future, much more of our urban landscape will be interactive. Using the Galleria West Shopping Centre in Seoul to illustrate his point about the increasing interactivity of urban space. The external surfaces of the Galleria building are covered with the biggest pixels in the world that behave “like a giant video screen”; with a constantly changing surface. Although not as snazzy, recently revamped Stefan’s tower might be considered in a similar vein.
Greenfield when on to propose highly interactive elements of the urban landscape, saying that “everything has the possibility of being interactive displays”. Not so much along the to-one-advertising in Minority Report (2002), but rather multi-user, multi-displays in public places. But this raises a whole range of access questions as to who gets to drive these displays.
Object to service, ownership to use
Greenfield also examined the shift away from ownership of things. In particular, Greenfield uses the changes in car ownership in metro areas to expand his claim. Historically people bought a car, and the ownership of that car would persist with them over its lifespan (or at least for a prolonged period of time). For some at least car ownership was a strong identity factor in their life, but to Greenfield, “this is a luxury we will be able to have in the future”.
Enter the rise of shared network services. Sticking with the car analogy, car-sharing services have emerged in different parts around the world including here in Australia. Services such as GoGet CarShare in Sydney and Melbourne mean private car ownership is not necessary. Imagine cities where almost everyone car shares? The same mobility, less vehicles. Maybe that’s not a bad thing?
Greefield’s full list of the elements of networked urbanism are:
- From latent to explicit;
- From browse to search;
- From held to shared;
- From expiring to persistent;
- From deferred to real-time;
- From passive to interactive;
- From component to resource;
- From constant to variable;
- From wayfinding to wayshowing;
- From object to service;
- From vehicle to mobility;
- From community to social network;
- From ownership to use;
- From consumer to constituent.
Gimme more
Tasty snack: If this blog entry is too much for you to digest, why not start with an hors d’oeuvre of tweets about the lecture?
Things worth exploring: The issues posed by Greenfield dovetail across so many other interesting areas. The idea of everything having an IP address, something Sir Tim Berners-Lee talks about also, ties into the IPv6 protocol . The collection (known and unknown) of data and people’s right to be informed that data is being collected has also been addressed by Berners-Lee (see here and here). It also ties into arguments for net(work) neutrality and open standards.
Follow: You should also follow Adam Greenfield on Twitter, @adamgreenfield.
Tag, you’re it: Search for the hashtag for what others were saying, #AdamGreenfieldLecture.
Lecture notes and thoughts | Speaker: Adam Greenfield | Lecture title: “The City The City Is Here For You To Use” | Venue: Roundhouse Theatre, La Boite, Level 5, The Works (Z2), Creative Industries Precinct, Queensland University of Technology, 6 – 8 Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove (map) | Sponsors: NICTA Queensland Research Laboratory, Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (iCi), ARC Network in Human Communication Science (HCSNet) | Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 4.30 – 5.30 pm
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