The City of Birmingham, UK is working on a significant transformation in image. As it is described on the Digital Birmingham site, the city seeks to transform its industrial past into a digital future. The initiative seeks to tie together all the digital efforts in the city into one portal. Wi-fi initiatives, […]

Categories: placeofmedia · citygovernment · SecondLife · city · mediated urbanism · cities

I’ve had this question running through my head for some time now: what’s the connection between mobile computing (i.e. cell phones, PDAs, GPS, etc.) and local computing (neighborhood networking, digital civic forums, etc.)? On first blush, these are entirely separate phenomena. But, the more I consider it, the more I see them as […]

Categories: placeofmedia · citygovernment · city · net-locality · Community_Informatics · mediated urbanism · mobility · cities · place

The key is presented to Mayor Menino

The virtual mayor takes the key to the virtual city
The Hub2 kick-off event was a big success. We had a packed room, both in first and second life, and there was an overall positive reception to the work we are doing. Bill Oates, the Chief Information Officer […]

Categories: placeofmedia · boston · citygovernment · city · hub2 · civic_engagement · net-locality

Below is the press release for our event on December 13. Should be a good time. We’re going to say a few words and symbolically hand Boston Island to the service of the City of Boston. There will be a virtual key, and real food.
BOSTON, MA – Hub2 (www.hub2.org), a project […]

Categories: placeofmedia · boston · citygovernment · city · hub2 · gene_koo

Last week I was in Chicago at the National Communication Association conference. I never used to go to this conference, but over the past several years I’ve been attending a pre-conference seminar with this group called the Urban Communication Foundation. It’s an interdisciplinary group of folks who are concerned with the various aspects […]

Categories: placeofmedia · boston · SecondLife · city · hub2 · gene_koo · civic_engagement · cities

In class last week, we spent about 90 minutes arguing over the merits of community networks. The real question was: why would we want network technologies overlaying physical space? Don’t we have enough “connection?” Shouldn’t urban planners and architects help us figure out ways to “disconnect?” The argument I offered against […]

Categories: placeofmedia · boston · citygovernment · SecondLife · city · hub2 · civic_engagement · net-locality · Community_Informatics

For the last four weeks, we’ve been doing some general thinking about how cities, digital networks and virtual worlds might fit together. We’ve talked about the relationship between play and urban spatial practice, and we’ve pondered the general success of the spaces we daily occupy in the city of Boston. Everyone in my […]

Categories: boston · SecondLife · city · hub2 · civic_engagement

Knowledge Politics just released a pamphlet on the topic of “Localism and the Information Society.” This collection of brief essays is motivated by the desire to see better integration of ICTs into neighborhoods and cities. As stated in the introduction:

“new communication tools actually have the ability to strengthen traditional, local relationships. This premise […]

Categories: placeofmedia · citygovernment · city · civic_engagement · net-locality · Community_Informatics

Allen Smith, who works for WHERE, contacted me about my last post with an interesting corrective:
“I always thought about recent phone technology as allowing the
internet to come out into the world and overlay it with information, I
never thought of it the other way around, “extending the idea and
functionality of location into the network.”
I agree that […]

Categories: placeofmedia · city · play · phones · net-locality

Location is the next frontier in computing. The company uLocate has announced a competition for developers to make location-based widgets. uLocate’s new location-widget feature, called simply Where, is essentially a collection of little programs that mash-up data from the Internet with a user’s location. And this competition is intended to facilitate the […]

Categories: placeofmedia · city · play · phones · net-locality