Thursday, May 06, 2004, Paris, France, Europe

Dear Colleagues,

One of the goals of The Commons is to do our bit to encourage people to
think differently, to use their whole brain when it comes to our
unremitting challenges of sustainable development and social justice.
This is no easy task for any of us, and given the results -- far from
good enough by any fair measure you have to admit -- we will all do
well to look around for new ideas and approaches, including in matters
of perception and communication.

To this end I would like to invite you to have a look at the following
and the website of Doors at www.doorsofperception.com. It will of
course take a bit of time, but unless you are 100% convinced that your
approach is all that is needed, may I respectfully recommend?

With all good wishes,

Eric Britton


======================================

-----Original Message-----
From: desk@... [mailto:desk@...]
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 11:08 PM
To: eric.britton@...
Subject: [DOORS] Doors of Perception Report: May 2004

DOORS OF PERCEPTION REPORT
A quick scan of design and innovation
by John Thackara
May 2004

RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Who is responsible for the unintended consequences of design actions?
Many information technology researchers tell us it's unfair to blame
them for the marketing and innovation strategies of their employers.
Human Computer Interface designers, in particular, often comprise tiny
groups in huge companies. The issue arose again in Vienna last week,
when 2,000 people assembled for a Computer Human Interaction conference
(CHI), the world's most important meeting for interaction and usability
design professionals. In the greater scheme of our technology-filled
world, CHI contains the good guys: their mission is to put the interests
of human beings first in system and device design. The trouble is that
in complex systems, as in society, even the smallest action can have
unexpected consequences. So what to do? Is some kind of research
governance for IT needed, of the kind that is emerging in the health
sector?
http://www.show.scot.nhs.uk/cso/ResGov/ResGov.htm

MEME CHAT
The opening keynote speaker at CHI, Jun Rekimoto, from Sony's
Interaction Laboratory in Japan, impressed the audience with displays of
"augmented surfaces". These will doubtless appear on many smart walls
and tables before too long. He also showed us a system called "Meme
Chat" that enables audience members to chat among themselves in their
own language while a foreign speaker is speaking on stage. Your
correspondent has lectured to wireless-enabled, laptop-toting monads
already - and it's a good discipline knowing you have to compete for
their attention. A less benign invention was "ID Camera" which appeared,
in the video Rekimoto showed us, to be able to "read" the IP number of
devices carried by people walking down a city street. An application
scenario showed the camera being used to read real-time customer ratings
of a restaurant - but the likely clients for camera are likely to be
spooks, not chefs.

QUESTION THAT EMOTION
Is it unreasonable to be suspicious of computer scientists who try to
design software that can detect, model and exhibit emotional states?
Robert Trappl, a charming and eminent professor, told us in Vienna about
his research into "emotional personality agents". In one mid-1990s
experiment, research subjects were shown a video of someone having an
eye removed while still conscious - a gruesome procedure. Most people
watching it were revolted by the video, and some even passed out. But a
small minority showed no apparent emotion. "You might expect such people
to be especially rational and unemotional" said Professor Trappl, "but
when we set out to find out more, it proved hard to make an appointment
with such a person". We felt like saying that these people were clearly
psychopaths and we should lock them up, not try to make an appointments
with them. Prof Trappl's study of these loony tunes was funded by
Europe's Human Machine Network on the Emotions, or HUMANE.

DISHWASHER SHOCK AND AWE
"The goal is simple, ubiquitous, easy and delightful-to-use devices that
know a great deal about one another, the world, and the people in their
proximity". Media Lab's great strength, but also its weakness, is the
optimism of its tech-based vision. A symposium called "Designing Bits &
Pieces" marks the launch of CELab, a new consumer electronics research
program based on a vision of "self-managing device ecosystems". The idea
is ludicrous. The consumer electronics dinosaurs likely to sponsor CELab
are highly unlikely to embrace open standards. A world filled with their
devices will be about as "self managing" as downtown Falluja. 10 May,
Cambridge, Mass.
http://cel.media.mit.edu/events/2004-0510/agenda.html

MACHINES AS ARTISTS
If we were a mischievous God, we'd combine Media Lab's event with
Machinista. Originating from an "atypical Scottish-Russian
collaboration", Machinista seeks to "challenge the societal norms which
govern interaction between wo/man and machine... and to soar above the
banality of automatic everyday life". A deranged email commands us:
"Prepare to have your mind thrust into the outer reaches of feasibility.
You will savour the glorious taste of algorhythmic ejaculata, before
being spat back out into the unfamiliar present of a malfunctioning
dystopia". Machinista's audience will interact with intelligent systems,
become lost in multi-sensory environments, and experience "fascinating
representations of the robotic worldview". On balance, we're not
convinced that mixing together Russia and Scotland is a good idea. 7-9
May, Glasgow.
http://www.machinista.org

OUTSIDE IN
Mobile phones, surveillance systems and electronic barriers have the
potential to influence how we spend our time, where we go, and how we
express ourselves. "Major international voices in public art and
graffiti" are going to Outside In, a workshop in concerned with access,
design, and use of public space. June 14-15 Goteborg, Sweden
http://www.outsidein.se/

NEED TO KNOW
We hear from our fellow asylum watchers at Need To Know that the
Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) has aired a cinema advert in
which you stare at a branding iron while a voice intones: "piracy funds
terrorism" and "will destroy society". The Advertising Standards
Authority has ruled that this ad "did not contain a misleading
exaggeration". The ASA should hire the US advertising industry lawyer we
saw ranting on New York television about billboard pollution as
"commercial freedom of speech". Such lovely people can be found in
adland.
http://www.ntk.net/2004/04/23/

DOES NETWORK CAMPAIGNING WORK?
Howard Dean raised a ton of money on the internet, but his campaign
imploded. What have we learned so far about network campaigning? A
think-piece by Paul Miller at Demos says that on issues from the
environment and human rights, to poverty eradication and debt reduction,
network campaigns have confronted some of the biggest and most powerful
institutions on the planet. True, but who won? A forthcoming book from
Demos may answer that question. Network Logic contains essays by Fritjof
Capra, Manuel Castells, Diane Coyle, Geoff Mulgan, Howard Rheingold and
many others.
http://www.demosgreenhouse.co.uk/archives/000368.html

OPEN WIDE
There's a magnificent sound synthesizer at Teyler's Museum in Haarlem,
in The Netherlands. Eight chunky resonators, a bit like miniature brass
water boilers, are attached to electronic tuning forks that are actuated
by clunky copper coils. A keyboard, containing eight white keys, is
mounted on a wooden plinth. The machine is dated 1859. Nearly 150 years
later, it's still less fun talking to machines than to a dog. Microsoft,
IBM and others have spent billions of dollars trying to let us talk to
computers the way people did to HAL, in the movie 2001 - but progress is
painfully slow. Computer scientist Ben Schneiderman says the effort is
misguided because it's hard to speak and think at the same time. The
evidence after thousands of person years of research seems to be that
voice works best when we bark simple orders to a system to carry out a
simple task - such as opening a door, or getting a name from an address
book. Even then, the simplest of tasks can go wrong. Your corre!
spondent once visited the research labs of Sharp, in Japan, where our
host stated "Open!", in English, to a sliding door. It stayed resolutely
closed until he went behind a curtain, and flipped a switch. "Sorry" he
said, "it was set to Japanese".

SMALL, FAST, AND FUN
In his book Leonardo's Laptop, Ben Schneiderman argues that designers
who are sensitive to human needs are more likely to make breakthroughs
that will yield useful applications for new technologies. We wish Ben
luck in selling this insight to the Telco community; he'll need it. His
keynote talk at Mobisys, argues that mobile technologies should be
"small, fast, and fun"; he'll give examples that include digital photo
applications, personal info, healthcare, and e-commerce.
http://www.sigmobile.org/mobisys/2004/keynote.html

AMBIENT IN ASPEN
The last time your correspondent was in Aspen, Colorado, a man with
white eyes gave me a lift to the Caribou Club in a Jeep lined in mink.
But Aspen does not just contain strange rich people, it also hosts a
celebrated design conference. "Software not only changes how design
works, it changes how design thinks" says the invitation. Among the
white-eyed luminaries you will meet are Greg Lynn, Joachim Sauter,
Natalie Jeremijenko, John Maeda, Joel Burdick, Imaginary Forces, Dunne +
Raby, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and GRAFT. 25-28 August, Aspen, Colorado.
http://www.idca.org/2004/display.php?show=speakers
http://www.idca.org/

THAT WAS TODAY
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a design fair to raise
an institute. Until last month, Interaction Design Institute Ivrea was
better known and appreciated outside Italy than at home. But "This Is
Today", its exhibit at the Milan Furniture Fair, seems to have persuaded
Italy to embrace the Institute. 25,000 people came to the event, and the
press was impressed. For Panorama, the Institute is "a point of
reference for the generation of new ideas and a new design culture."
Prestinenza called Interaction Ivrea "a model for the moribund Italian
educational system". And Francesco Gavazzi, in a cover story for
Corriere della Sera, proclaimed that "at Ivrea, students design new ways
of interaction between man and technology".
http://www.interaction-ivrea.it/en/news/press/review

SCARED WITLESS
Googling "homeland security" and "design" yields 435,000 results. Fear
may be good for the design industry, but could it be bad for innovation?
Rob van Kranenburg argues that "if you scare your population, very few
risks will be taken". A fear policy, says Rob, goes directly against the
call for more innovation.
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/kranenburg_chevy.h
tml

NIGHTS AT THE MEDIA OPERA
The Silja Opera ferry - a luxurious passenger liner - is a floating
tropical island with pools, palms, Jacuzzi and retractable glass roof.
Does that sound like a normal venue for clubbing, sound art,
installations, interactive games, and sonic experiments? The organisers
of the International Symposium on Electronic Arts hope not. ISEA2004
will be held in Helsinki, Aland Islands, Tallinn, and on this huge
passenger ferry cruising between them. August 14 - 22.
http://www.isea2004.net

THE CITY IN MAPS
"From Jerusalem, to Broadacre, to Black Rock City, maps have a
particularly strong relationship to cities, which are themselves
expressions of the human imagination. They occupy the threshold between
people and place, suffused with our values and aspirations". The
producers of an upcoming - "Urban legends: The City in Maps" - seek
submissions of finished original work in all media that address the
urban landscape through maps. The exhibition runs August 6-21,
Oaklandish Gallery, Berkeley, CA
http://www.city-space.org/Pages/future1_legends.htm

APPLIANCE DESIGN
Computers of the future will be heterogeneous in form and universal in
presence. So what will all this be good for? Truly compelling
applications of new technologies for everyday life seem scarce. In his
talk at the Appliance Design Conference in Bristol, Bill Gaver describes
attempts to add to their number through designs ranging from
illuminating tablecloths to superstitious houses. May 11-13 2004 at HP
Labs Bristol.
http://www.appliancedesign.org/

HIDDEN MEANING
We set off last week to "The Hidden Interface" and found it in Austria,
not far from CHI. This lively event was organised by the Fachhochschule
Voralberg, in Dornbirn, to foster interactions between researchers and
industry. But the university faces a unique cultural obstacle to its
global ambitions: dialects in the area are amazingly diverse. There are
as many words for stone as there are Alpine valleys; and forty percent
of Dornbirn's citizens cannot communicate well enough to buy a loaf of
bread in Lustenar - which is three kilometres (two miles) away.
http://www.fhv.at/go/uday

WHY FONTS
A broad spectrum of fonts is on display at the Museum for Design in
Zurich. The event demonstrates "the broad spectrum of what fonts can be
and what can be achieved with a specific font". It sounds a tad - er -
dry, but works from Swiss typographers and graphic designers from past
years are included. Until 7 July.
http://www.museum-gestaltung.ch/

NEW CULTURE PLAN: GOOD FOR DOORS, UNCLEAR FOR CONF.
The Dutch Council of Culture (Raad voor Cultuur) has recommended that
Doors of Perception be funded in the 2005-2008 Art Plan (Kunstplan). The
minister is free in theory to ignore the Council's advice, and
Parliament has to ratify her final plan in September, but most
organisations - including this one - regard a positive verdict as good
news. The news means that the vital signs of our not-for-profit work are
protected. This (free to you) newsletter; the Doors website; tactical
events we do with partner organisations; and DoorsEast; all can carry on
for another four years. But the future of the main Doors conference
remains uncertain. Despite attracting more than 1,000 people, and
plaudits galore, Doors of Perception 7 (on Flow) lost money - and the
Culture Council has declined to underwrite that gap. Doors' Board meets
in May to consider the best way to proceed, and we will announce our
plans for Doors of Perception 8 shortly after that.

HUMVEES ARE FOR GIRLS
Oslo has an amazingly fast train from its almost-new airport to the city
center. The train's brutal grey styling made the Humvee we overtook on
the way in look wimpish. Norway has clearly spent an awful lot of its
oil money on teknologi. If it's too late for you to join us in Oslo for
Spark!, you could always come to Breda's Museum at 4pm on 19 May for the
final presentation of Quality Time, our service design workshop on the
High Speed Train Network.

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