Slow interaction

I a meeting yesterday Yvonne final outlined some more of what she meant by slow interaction ( not slow computing ). I am intrigued by the concept, partly we need to understand the notion of time and interaction. For example somethings need to be done quickly (My latoptop swapped last night as I used two large packages this didn't help my concentration ).  Other things need time for reflection. 

The first application I've come up with is the timed tash bin. This would be a simple application that works like the trashcan mac Icon. Except that when you drag a document on to it you give the document at time to live (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 1 quarter, end of finance year , 1 year , 2 years , 5 years ).  So then the document has a count down to that point and at that point it deletes completely. 

The reason for this is that people tend to either flush on putting something in or are like me and leave everything in until I need the disk space. The normal mac trash forces you to either make delete to delete or if you have lost stuff and so you don't flush so automatically.  By giving time for recall, consideration and reflection this might be an example of slow computing. 

In fact perhaps this is more about letting your subconscious work on its time scale. 

Naturally this might be more about slow interfaces letting your subconscious work. 

Odd idea about open plan offices

I was chatting with Nadia and mentioned I'm the kind of person who can sit in the lab space with head phones and work (first academic still I ever gained). 

I mentioned I do have to work to vocalless music when writing. I think its hard for me to process speach and make it at the same time (how to translators work?). 

The Naida and a woman in the room she shares both said music was not good but quite speach was good ( not whispering perhaps more like a party conversation ). I suggested this could go on a very long loop. 

Nadia suggested white noise and I thought about the sea shore sounds. 

Makes you wonder if you could do some quick research on effects of different head phone sounds when concentrating on a task ( something like writing).  I suspect diffrent people would be capable to zone out with diffrent sounds. 

web 2 and games.

Had a conversation yesterday with Mike R about looking into web2.0 and games he was intreasted in some ideas. 

Naturally I keep thinking of web2.0 as the seperate slightly secret ultra high speed academic only network that was being used to experiment with new protocols and applications ( like the Laniea merged meeting rooms). Web2.0 in common parlance is the facilitation of online creation rather than distrbution, but it makes you wonder why these on line webpage generators are not included (or is this web3.0 given that the web2.0 is nothing new technologically).

If we are looking at wikis and social-networking as the basis for web2.0 than I would think that user created content would be the basis for web2.0/game research. So what might this be? Well on line tools for the creation of online games. SecondLife has this to an extent and it has generate a huge economy of people making/buying/clothes bodies/stuff. But is this many to many publishing. So what is the research here?

Usable on line game tools simple for 2d and naturally muds/moos have had user creation for a long time. I thought that possibly it would be good to have some mechanism to let people collectivly get rid of/filer the rubbish ( like youtube). With my inclinations the concept of web/java based 3d editor for a game would be good. 

 

Slow computing

Odd conversation on the bus. We where talking about the days in computing when your compiler would take a few mins to compile and you had to pause and reflect. Or the times when a computation would take a day or two to run. There was something about the sense of liberation that begin forced NOT to use your computer but still feeling like you where working gave you. This required big computation and a non multitasking computer. At my university they had a period when all the computers where switched off on Friday the 13th to stop a particular virus. Again it was quite nice to have a day without machine, no email and no guilt. 

I used to get my students to send in essays in text format so I would get my Mac to read them out - while I listened I would tidy my office and desk and wish I had more regular essay deadlines so I could organise stuff more than twice a year.  

Generally you hate waiting though. Apple have announced a new Mac with a 64 Gb Flash drive. Lower power plus I'm told very fast on the boot up, Someone mentioned a Linux lap top that boots in 2-3 seconds and how this changes the way you think/use the machine.   

People take time to boot up as well. I often wondered what would happen if the operating system took a picture of the desktop just before you switched off and then used the image as the start up screen image. Giving you a chance to pull your thoughts together put your mind back in the state it was in - with the image possibly greyed until it was ready for interaction. Moments later the real (same desktop would return). We do need more automatic open window in open application mechanisms ( Safari 3.0 has restore all last windows which I like alot). 

So sometimes we need speed and hate interruptions - games, while working to a deadline and when having the machine disappear completely and getting a desktop back would be good. 

Like most people I think I was taken by MW's ubicomp paper where he mentioned peripheral or ambient computing a necessity when 1000s of devices are vying for attention  but this appears to be something which hasn't emerged. Doursh had a paper saying this was effectively an economic impossibility - how can you sell a new device that you buy and forget for example mobile phone/ipod. Computing as pumping, heating or electricity, but look at the number of services that have fallen by the wayside - pneumatic air, the failure of widespread garbage disposal in the UK (we recycle/compost). 

Yvonne has mentioned thinking about slow computing - taking things like slow food campaign ( the opposite of fast foot ) which has been applied to slow cities and thinking about what slow computing might mean. 

well thats my 10 mins of reflection over time to get back to doing a paper. 

post demo conversation

The day after the demo day before. 

Had a conversation with Jeff, ended up with the question given we are at such a delicate  time in the evolution of table top technology we must as our selves - what might the killer app for table tops be?  

Object orrientation

I'm having a problem at the moment with trying to find a library routine ( JUST ONE) that can 'Construct a warp transform that approximatively maps the given source coordinates to the given destination coordinates.' 

My opitions are do it from scratch or try to find something in java that does it. The problem is that the only library that does it is 19Mb big with a complex linkage of classes meaning if you add one you have to add them all (practically).  The use of all these helper classes ( my point2d, mymatrix ) makes it all so tempting to try to figure out the code your self. 

Is this a problem with OOP or how we use it. 

pod casting and other things

Yesterday I managed to do my talk at UEL which means I have some people who have done half of the podcasting experiment! 

Worrying meeting with Yvonne looking at what I would say I would do and what I have done (ekk!). 

Meanwhile had interesting conversation with Paul about the flat microphone. I told him I was interested in recording a meeting and using the diagram being made ( or animation there of) as the index into the audio recording. So moving forwards and backwards in time provided the index to the audio in combination with the this is interesting button. 

I also mentioned ( again ) doing interface to the finger drawing program to display the undo que. So if you undo back to a point in time and start drawing again you get a new branch (like a fork) in the display. A new document is just undoing everything, making the root a bush. 

I'm not so sure how to measure what this is doing.... 

On the way home had an interesting idear for a mobile phone. Have a wrist watch with a ring attached ( via small cable ), then if phone rings you just lift you finger to your ear and your wrist to you mouth ( or near to). Use rotating disk on outside of phone to select addresses. Might make picture to show at some point.

Censored by BBC.

I found this news item with a request for your ideas. Most of the ideas on the discussion board were frankly either rubbish or just moaning so I deciced to post some good ones ( just off the top of my head) The BBC will only accept 500 characters and only 2 posts per hour.  So I thought I would put them all hear. 

1.  Central locking for houses (single button keyfob that beeps/lock ALL the doors and windows of your house are closed & locked)
   
2. Device that sets up hundreds of accounts so you can fill on line discussion boards with the same dull message (eg bring down this dull, badly dressed, politically biased government) again and again.
3. A device that filters out unrelated whinging and moaning from discussion boards.
4. A mixture between solar cloche and a clothes dryer so you can leave cloths outside to dry without having to make green house gases to get convenient drying.
5. A gadget that would be an interface to all other gadgets that would simplify their use.(my family cannot make the DVD player play)
6. A gadget that would interface with our programable thermostat that would make it simple to program ( another CO2 saving).
7. A gadget that would eliminate having hundreds of user ids and passwords for lots of websites ( like this one) without having the security compromise of having the same pass word for all of them.
8. A visa card with my picture on that would email/text me every-time money was spent on the card.
9. Computer controlled taxi’s on special routes to solve both global warming and congestion ( like the new system at terminal 5 Heathrow opening this year)  
10. A device that knows your where you are in a city and can summon a taxi to your position. The taxi would be routed by a central computer and statnav to share part or all of your route ( if possible) with 2-3 strangers to reduce the cost/CO2.
11. A diesel based electric hybrid as alternative power train for taxis.
12. A gadget that would identify you and only you on line together with your age. Must have for all child centric websites or any e-commerce.
13. A Drop box (in only) chained outside your house big enough to accept large parcels/objects in standard sizes which digitally signs a electronic receipt to say they have been delivered. ( I hate having to wait in for stuff to be delivered after convience of ordering on internet)
14. An invisible or semi invisible wind turbine to keep the 4x4 county toffs from objecting to every wind farm proposed within 100 miles of them.
15. Mandatory solar panels for all council sponsored swimming pools (average pool heating costs of £180,000 per year should be cut in half + CO2) ( the solar panel is the gadet)
16. A device that shows when/where and how much electricity is being used in the home and by what outlet. Interfaces with other
17. A decent electronic book ( bookpod?)
18. Earrings or head set that reminds you of peoples names.
19. A device that measures both your movement and guesses at the calorific value of your food intake that indicates what you have to do to stop from getting obese. Or just a general device that constantly monitors your body and indicates all kinds of behaviors and sympotms such as stress.
20. A way of controlling your tv/dvd/video etc by gesture ( hand up palm open for stop/quite) so you don’t have to keep hunting for remote controls.
21. Ski lift like devices for the big hills ( they have them for ‘sporty’ people to go skiing why not help the port commuter cyclist).
    
    Just say if you want another 21!
    

Yesterday’s tomorrows:Genevieve Bell Æ Paul Dourish

I'm reading an paper called '

where paul dorish says 

The first possibility is that the ubiquitous computing

vision can never come to pass. The proximate future is a

future infinitely postponed; when we are continually

about to enter a new age, when we are continually

anticipating what happens next, and when our attention

is continually directed over the horizon, then by definition

ubiquitous computing is never about the here and

now. Indeed, within this particular model of a technological

future, it is hard to imagine how we could ever, as

a community, say, ‘‘There. It is done.’’

The second possibility is that ubiquitous computing

already has come to pass. Clearly, of course, we do not

live in ‘‘Sal’s world,’’ as described in the scenario outlined

in Weiser’s paper. But perhaps ubiquitous computing

is already here, but took a form other than that

which had been envisioned. Arguably, and as we will

explore at more length below, our contemporary world,

in which mobile computation and mobile telephony are

central aspects not just of Western commercial endeavors

but also facets of everyday life in the developing

world, is already one of ubiquitous computing, albeit in

unexpected form

Which is kind of irritating. Clearly there is a third possibility that the general view of ubiquitous computing has become too vague and nebulous to permit any thing to be clearly seen as a success or failure. That is if the original paper carries through a nice feeling about what would like to see but in such a permissive way that practically any interpretation goes. At this point it becomes impossible to point to a particular technology as an exlampar of the success or failure of the technology. 

Secondly while there have been a few attempts at what might be clearly inspired by ubicomp ( the orb tech and the rabit thing) you actually need a large number of attempts to create a business to get it right. 

That is just because a business fails you cannot blame the technology ( Pan Am failed and I don't think this proves the failure of air flight, Tower records failed and this does no prove the failure or record or CD, Enron failed but this does not prove that electricity and gas is an irrelevant technology). 

Personally as an outsider I think that ubicomp as a paradigm has failed to deliver any useful technology in exactly the same way that say virtual reality failed. That is not enough people in the field where inspired enough to get the backing to form a company and make sure that the customer got something they would find value in. To get this right takes a large number of start-up people with the right connections, time, commitment, even then most will fail ( think of the number of early computers with only the Commador Pet,Sinclar spectrum and Apple II as profitable survivors. 

Surely this says more about the inability of human computer interaction people to get the design of new technology right (useful or rewarding) than the failure of the vision of ubicomp per-say.