Ubicomp, everyware, spimes and clipes

[imomus]

Journalism 2.0! It's more interactive, more participatory, more collectivist! Gone are the days when a solitary hack in a trench-coat pursued a story with perhaps just one treacherous deep-throated insider feeding him leads. Today's journalist is closer to "death of the author" theory than death threats! He's probably out there right now, Mr Journalist 2.0, brainstorming his next Wired column with a bunch of cronies on his blog! Hey, a powerful global conversation has begun!

Okay, so I want to write a column about stuff around this techno-dweeby buzz known as everyware, ubicomp or the "internet of things". Basically, it's what Bruce Sterling is talking about here and Adam Greenfield speculated about here.

We all know what a computer is. It's the object sitting in front of you, with a keyboard, a screen, a mouse, a trackpad, whatever. But we're going to be living soon in a different sort of world, a world where computers have been smashed to smithereens and scattered all around us. Computers are about to fade into -- well, everywhere, actually. Those smithereens, at least initially, will take the form of RFID chips. They're intelligent barcodes, little radio stations, radio frequency ID tags transmitting information about location, temperature, price, quantity, status, identity, you name it. As they get more intelligent and verbose, these little clipes -- these spimes -- will create an "internet of things". In other words, the real world of objects will come to resemble the internet world we know now. It will be searchable, able to be quizzed, surfed, interrogated. The privacy issues are terrifying, the military uses staggering, the artistic possibilities astounding. Ubiquitous computing will be -- already is -- a way of enhancing our senses and tying into other people's superior knowledge of any given terrain. As Greenfield puts it, "some of the most interesting ideas current in interaction design are being worked out at the scale of the city".

Ubicomp-everyware is already in operation. Walmart demands chips on all deliveries from its top suppliers. In Japan, IC chips are embedded in escalator hand rails to tell you more about products you're interested in (just swipe the little pattern), or tag the whereabouts of schoolkids. When I first came to Berlin, one place I showed everyone was the Automaten Bar in Mitte, which tracked who was there at any given point by uploading to the internet information about who had swooshed the door open with their membership card. "Hey, Jim's at Automaten (and Joe isn't), I think I'll drop by there myself!" Well, the Automaten Bar is now gone, replaced by a clothes shop. But maybe replacing a computer-laden cyber-bar full of clunky big vending machines with a clothes store is quite appropriate, really. Clothes may well be where computers are headed.

Right now a pilot project is going on in Ginza, the Tokyo Ubiquitous Technology Project, which will see little transmitters planted around key streets, sending local information which can be picked up by normal cell phones. Presumably later on we'll all have wearable computers sewn into our clothes, heads-up displays superimposing RFID information on what we see with our eyes, or brain implants. We'll be able to pass through any environment as we currently pass through the internet, gathering incredibly precise information, leaving a paperless papertrail behind us.

Later today I'm interviewing a Japanese curator who's written and made shows about the artistic uses of ubicomp. But right now I want to interview you. What do you think of this stuff, this soon-come scattering of the computer into billions of tiny radio stations, each one telling you stuff about a specific object -- your pet, your child, the toilet, a sniper, the wheelchair access ramp? Do you welcome "the internet of things"? Do you want to be able to google the world?

There really is no going back. It's already too late to stop this. It all started with language, I guess. We named things, and by naming things we labeled them. Now we're giving the labels electronic voices in the form of tiny transmitters. Is it good, is it bad? Are you happy, are you sad? What will this world be like? No more "computers", just ubiquitous internet-like information, total recall scattered everywhere. Who will hack the system, how will we make art for it? Above all, how will we write Journalism 2.0 articles about it? Your comments please, ubi-journalists!

Comments

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Most art that utilizes or criticizes ubiquitous computing is pretty dull. You know, attach locative devices to strangers and you can create an image of the city! Wow, people walk around cities. Yawn.

The world will not become better or worse, but maybe I'm feeling more optimistic. Information is difficult to ignore right now, so people are a little overwhelmed. When information is truly, truly everywhere, it will become obvious, and invisible.

Music will be really fun, if it can break away from ironic, cynical "mash-up" culture. I'm fearing some performer creating an orchestra of advertising chips that hawk a product at his demand. Like, synchronized "hey Mike, by a car!" Or, a short film about a comical white man who is embarassed when the advertising chips all think he's into weird sex products.

Drone music or mantras will likely be common, and that's something I look forward to. The pitches and timbres could be calculated from the endless flow of information, and then controlled by the performer.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

(http://www.amazon.com/Rainbows-End-Novel-Foot-Future/dp/0312856849/sr=1-1/qid=1169549617/ref=pd_bbs_1/105-3499959-6365229?ie=UTF8&s=books)

Sterling is saying now he doesn't expect it to really come about for another thirty years. I don't know.

There are profound insurance implications for this technology.

[(Anonymous)]

Most art that utilizes or criticizes ubiquitous computing is pretty dull.

Most art that uses the Internet is dull, period. The Internet has been excellent for disseminating (certain types of) art and information about art, but I think it's interesting that so far its technological possibilities have yet to be used structurally within art in a satisfying manner. Compare it for example to moving image technology at the start of last century, which quickly gave birth to a whole new artistic medium, cinema, structurally distinct from theatre, literature, photography etc. The Internet has yet to do anything like this. There have been attempts to use it to develop new forms (interactive novels using hot links etc.) but they've failed to take flight. YouTube? Again, fantastic for disseminating short films, but has it given birth to any new forms or genres? My suspicion is that the Internet probably will give birth to new art forms, but not for a long while, not for another 15 years or so. Still it's interesting that it hasn't yet done so.

[(Anonymous)]

The other strong ubiquitous force – xenophobia, won't let any of this happen yet. Driven by what is superficially a fear of spam (and genuinely driven by a fear of the other), the world of computing is undergoing a significant change. Huge social networks will spring up and decide who gets to have an opinion and who gets to play the game.

What all these whitelists, blacklists and systems of quantified social capital will do is to allow a small elite (you will be one of them) to become informational superstars, affecting the world around them wherever they go in thousands of interesting ways.

Us anonymi will be stuck in a read-only world and ultimately forced to create a world of our own. The two worlds, the "genuine" world ruled by the social networks and the imitation created by those with no names will drift even further apart as ubicomp disconnects us from what we used to call the real world. Perception will finally be all there is and the promises of postmodernity will be deilvered upon. As the rift between the two worlds widens, they will cease to acknowledge each other. The bubbles won't touch.
Until they do..

There will be a great war.

We will win.

[(Anonymous)]

(We will win because we don't proofread anything and leave run-on sentences and syntactically awkward crap everywhere :D)

[(Anonymous)]

Games?

[(Anonymous)]

It's an interesting concept that all the interactive stuff will be going on in private clubs like Myspace or Livejournal, where you have to join and have a profile, and where the anonymous experience will be read-only. In other words, maybe the Internet will not only enable us to become media representations of ourselves, it will force us to become media representations of ourselves. We will all have to be a silly avatar. I think there's something similar going on with cellphone ringtones. Back in the old days of landline-only, the ringtone was a given, common to everybody, like a school uniform. It was image-neutral, from the individual perspective. But in the age of the cellphone, there's no "image-neutral" ringtone. You're forced to choose something, and that something will in turn say something about you. We're forced to create some sort of impression, not allowed to remain neutral.

[(Anonymous)]

But are games artforms? They may turn out to be, but they aren't at the moment. The real world analogy to computer games is maybe board games like Monopoly or sports like football. Not really novels or movies or stuff you find hanging in art galleries.

[(Anonymous)]

How are they not? I mean, if art's only defining characteristic is "it hangs in art galleries" I don't see how it's fair to expect the internet to give us art at all!

Playing computer games may not be an art form, but the creation of the game itself certainly is. It even leaves behind a cultural artifact, how traditional is *that*?

[(Anonymous)]

Do you think football is an artform? If so, then your definition is going to end up encompassing all forms of human activity and be too broad for meaningful discussion. If not, then why not, if computer games are?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think art is a good term for discussion in the first place. It's loaded, primed to create conflict and not even remotely precise.

To me, there is no clear line between a novel and a computer game like, say, the newest Zelda game. There's just so much in between (choose-your-own-adventure books, text adventure games, early graphic adventure games etc. etc.) and without a clear place to set a line between the two, I can't see how one can be art and the other not. Unless there are degrees of art, in which case I'd like to have some way of measuring the "artiness" of something.

[(Anonymous)]

The fact that people talk about art and write about art means that the term has utility in our social discourse and therefore it 'means' something. There may be no clear line between a novel and a computer game but that's merely a function of the innate fuzziness of semantic categories in our language, rather than proof that the category 'art' doesn't exist. Sure, there exists a continuum on which both computer games and art could be placed, so what? That's the case with just about any two concepts.

[(Anonymous)]

If you're right you should be able to tell me a little bit about what it means.

[(Anonymous)]

As if I could be bothered... have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

Subjective concepts such as art only mean what most people in a common culture think they mean. And I would hazard a guess that although most people would accept that the creation of computer games involves a fair amount of artistry, the games themselves are not an artform like cinema, sculpture, music etc. Off the top of my head I'd say art is something to do with aesthetics and games are something to do with winning and losing.

[(Anonymous)]

If you don't think modern computer games are concerned about aesthetics, you're way off. This is like saying art has something to do with aesthetics and novels are all about getting to the last page.

In any case, even if I were to accept that games are not art (going along with your appeal to majority), my original point still stands – I don't think it's very fair to expect computing to bring about a new kind of art if we're excluding 90% of what computers *have* given us.

I also wonder what you think about stuff like Second Life and other virtual worlds. They have a lot in common with computer games, but there's not winning or losing to speak of at all.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

i see this as related to the tyranny of choices issue... cheapness of manufacturing will soon make it cheap enough to allow every object to perform the functions of a high-powered computer, including internet hookup and sensory input, if not full blown cognitive awareness (shut up coffee mug)... but what if we don't want eyes in our tampons? ultimately if avoiding surveillance means avoiding consumption, it's possible the market will stabilize things and prevent a full-blown surveillance culture. however, if we all accept that this culture is inevitable (which I think a movie like Borat has indirectly made its project) then the only thing we can do is smile for the cameras and flash a few snaps of our own.
the question: is there something stifling about having to behave as if you're being watched at all times? shouldn't we get used to that feeling if we're ever to take part in an emergent hiveminded consensus? i believe our ultimate purpose is to become a dancing ball of light.

[(Anonymous)]

Aesthetics permeates everything, certainly including games, whether they be played on a computer or a football field. I dunno, it seems reasonable to me to categorise the experience of playing a game differently from the experience of seeing a movie/reading a novel/doing the galleries, even though there are overlaps. And I think it would seem reasonable to most people. And since language is nothing other than how people use it, that seems a fair starting point for discussion. I'm not arguing for some fundamental ontological difference between games and the arts, simply pointing out what seems to be the usage in our culture, and using that as a starting point.

[(Anonymous)]

As for Second Life, yes this virtual worlds stuff seems different, not quite a game, not quite an artform, I think the originality that the Internet will ultimately bring to the arts might eventually stem from something like this.

[(Anonymous)]

To me the difference between the experiences of reading a novel and going to a gallery is greater than the difference between watching a movie and playing an adventure game from the 90s.

(Some game experiences are closer to a gallery experience :p)

It seems like the umbrella of art encompasses a lot these days, and I think that's the reason I don't see why games aren't included more often as well. If a traditionalist (?) view of art as sculpture, painting and drawing had been more common, I'd probably gladly accept a border between games and art.

[(Anonymous)]

(This thread is getting rather hard to read)

[(Anonymous)]

"As one could easily foresee in theory, practical experience of the unbridled accomplishment of commodity rationality has quickly and without exception shown that the becoming-world of falsification was also the falsification of the world."

Guy Debord.

[(Anonymous)]

It's the year 1807 and someone is telling me that eventually we'll be able to listen to musical "recordings" any time we want, travel across the world in a day, pay for electrical toys with "computerized" currency.. and I'm thinking this all sounds great. How much better our lives will be!!

Fast foward to 2007 and I'm pissed off at how long the check-out girl is taking. I drive home and the traffic lights are poorly timed. I can't get any cellphone service in this one area. I sit on my sofa and watch 5 hours of TV and then goto bed. Yea, my life sucks but when these new technologies come around in a few years, how much better our lives are gonna be!

[(Anonymous)]

(but I'm kind of intrigued as to how narrow Livejournal will let it get...)

[(Anonymous)]

(narrower still, it seems)

[(Anonymous)]

(and yet narrower)