I just got back from the O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, CA this morning. As someone who attends mostly academic conferences, it was both refreshing and disturbing to spend two days with this group. Refreshing because the group was composed mostly of developers, interested in figuring out how to transform the emerging […]

Categories: placeofmedia · net-locality · mediated urbanism · mobility · cities · web 2.0 · geography

For the last several months, I’ve primarily been working on revising my book manuscript. And I finally feel as though the introduction is reflective of the text. I’m posting the first few pages here to solicit thoughts or commentary.

On the corner of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, there are dozens of […]

Categories: placeofmedia · mediated urbanism · cities · geography

Over the last few days, I’ve refined my thoughts on the concept of network locality. Up until this time, I’ve been thinking about how geographical space functions within the connectivity enabled by digital networks. But as I pursued this idea, I began to realize that starting from geography was not the most productive […]

Categories: placeofmedia · net-locality · mediated urbanism · mobility · place · geography

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

A special issue of Information, Communication and Society just hit the stands and it’s worth a mention here. Yeah, yeah, I have an article in it, but more importantly, it’s a fantastic collection of work on the topic of “Urban Informatics: Software, Cities, and the New Cartographies of Knowing Capitalism.” Here’s the […]

Categories: placeofmedia · surveillance · Media Theory · mediated urbanism · mobility · cities · maps · web 2.0 · ubiquitous computing

The reception for the new Situated Technologies pamphlet series is taking place this Friday at the Urban Center in New York City. I really wish I could be there, but with the end of the semester fast approaching, I won’t be able to get away. This looks to be an amazing pamphlet series […]

Categories: placeofmedia · iDC · augmented_place · mixed_reality · mediated urbanism · mobility · cities · ubiquitous computing

Film is based on an illusion of mobility.  ‘Persistence of Vision’ is the way a number of still frames, when moving very quickly through a machine and separated by a black bar, creates the impression of movement.  Cinematic movement is an illusion that is so successful that we hardly question its authenticity.

 
It’s for this […]

Categories: network · mediated urbanism · mobility · web 2.0 · place

Yesterday, the city of Boston practically shut down because a transit worker spotted a "mysterious device" beneath a freeway overpass.  The Orange Line trains were halted at three stops, highway 93 was shut down, and later in the day, another subway line, two bridges, and a river were blocked.  As it turns out, the transit […]

Categories: mediated urbanism

This wired news post from imomus is a delightfully skeptical take on ubiqcomp (or some variety of the term).  He questions the relative value of these technologies and makes an argument that is reminiscent of Georg Simmel’s notion of the "blasé attitude."  The ubiquity of information-laden objects might, in fact, reduce a subject’s ability to […]

Categories: mediated urbanism · ubiquitous computing

Below is a working draft of the introduction to the last chapter of my book.  It concludes an extended argument about radical empricism in urban spectatorship.
The Digital Possessive:Social Mapping and the Personal Ordering of Urban Experience
In 2006, Time Magazine named “You” the person of the year.  As part of what they called a “revolution” in […]

Categories: mediated urbanism