social change

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Natalie Jeremijenko will be talking at OCAD Thursday, February 12, at 6:45 p.m.

February 9, 2009 in design, social change | No comments

I’m very excited about this talk. OCAD is running a great series of speakers who give unconventional perspectives on design, for free! I’ve been reading about Natalie Jeremijenko and I am smitten! She has a though training in many science and engineering practices but finds way to use these skills to produce objects that delight in the way art and design can, and also level the playing feild for individuals who want to understand their information environment:

What I’m most interested in is: how do we characterize systems of which we know very little, and have very poor information? Knowledge is very partial, very incomplete, and yet decisions are made. So, I specifically try to design information systems that measure urban environmental interactions.

For instance, I put a camera in Fresh Kills landfill, just a little networked web cam. It went on whenever the background radiation flipped above the so-called safe level.

What was interesting was that Staten Island has a hospital on it, which was also measuring environmental radiation. Medical facilities are required to do that. So they had their dosimeter, I had my dosimeter. We’re both gathering the same data and it’s not that different.

But mine’s triggering a web cam. So instead of presenting me with information so that it looks like science, like a little graph, it’s clips. Every time the background radiation fluctuates above a certain level, you get two seconds of video.

When you look at that, you start to see things you were not looking for. Seagulls are always going past when this is being triggered. Something happens at sundown, there’s a truck going past. That becomes interesting.

This issue of radioactive seagulls?there’s only one other paper on it. I wasn’t looking for radioactive seagulls. I had no idea about radioactive seagulls, or the concentration of radioactive diets that go on within the gullet of a seagull. It has actually been partially documented by some Greenpeace science groups in England, in Sellafield. But there are no publications on it here.

So, I was seeing something I wasn’t expecting to see. That’s discovery. That’s what I call data mining. Not taking corporate databases, and going through people’s social security numbers, classic data mining. What is interesting is having open systems that can tell you something. You learn something.

- http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001450.html

Another great interview here in Salon’s The Artist as Mad Scientist.

If I go to the talk (fingers cross) I’ll report back here.

Actor network theory and online news delivery

December 16, 2008 in commenting online, maps, mashups, media models, newspapers, social change, visualization techniques | No comments

I seem to have landed in the middle of some exciting, new (to me) theories around online news and network theory.

Last week while in Montreal I met Claude G. Théoret who is part of Exvisu which offers “Strategic Network Intelligence”. What is that? They make maps of conversations occurring on the web, noting the number of links between blogs and reoccurring terms. That’s what I understand at this preliminary phase. They are offering their services to companies and politicians who want to know what the hot button issues among the people they need to please, as well why kind of language is being used to talk about issues. The outcome of this research aims to be similar to what pollsters claim to do. I imagine using both techniques together will produce the most fruitful results.

Claude lent me his copy of Linked by Albert-László Barabási – a well written explanation of how network theory developed and how it is being used by the ‘new cartographers’.

And today I came upon a Dutch site – Issuenetwork.org – that offers tools and information about issue networking on the web. I was particularly interested in this 2004 paper on the way news devlivery will be (is being) transformed by the evolution of network technology and particularly this section “six arguments against news“, a provocative sub heading in my circles, but is meant to cricise mainstream news delivery techniques.

Another article on the same site, The News about Networks 2: Making Issues into Rights - introduces a 2004 workshop where the aim is to get media activists using the Issue Crawler tools  (which in their aims seem similar to the tools used by Exvisu) being developed at the de Balie Center for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam.

Much of the workshop will revolve around using the Issue Crawler, server-side software, developed with OneWorld International (London), Aguidel (Paris) and Recognos (Cluj-Napoca) that locates, analyses and visualises networks on the Web. We also will make use of novel techniques to monitor and analyse the news through Google News and RSS readers. Textual, semantic and other data analyses may be undertaken.

They questions the were asking at the conference were:

  • What are my networks? What is my relative standing within these networks?
  • Which types of organisations, agendas and terms dominate these networks?
  • Do the organisations in these networks recognise each other’s work and issues?
  • Which parts of the networks hold together if one takes out funders? Do they hold together if one takes out other agenda-setters, be it (big) media or intergovernmental organisations?

Examples of data visualization (mashups) with government data

November 17, 2008 in design, maps, mashups, social change, visualization techniques | No comments

This is a really exciting example of ways properly applied visualization techniques can help users make sense and use of government collected data. All DC, USA based. Now we need some Canadian examples.

Do you have any?

Bike Map

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Be the change you want to see

March 21, 2008 in Poetry, design, social change | No comments

I like simple aphorisms that make me happy when I say them out loud. I’m not alone in this. I’ve noticed a few sites in my world that started with a simple but idealistic precept — that individual change can be fun and in aggregate can be funner(tm) — have matured and born fruit over the past few years. One is the self-explanitory site changeeverything.ca. Funded by the best damn credit union/bank in the world, Vancity, the evolution of this online community/blog was guided by Kate Dugas.

Then there is the Learning to Love you More website, associated with a book of the same name, instigated by Miranda July (the writer/actor of that excellent Me You and Everyone We Know film). The exercises suggested by the site are designed to encourage participants to engage in simple but intimate ways with their neighbourhoods, the physical place which includes plants, animals and other people. Trish Mau introduced me to this site and she has been completing some of the exercises judiciously.

Then I went to the Creative Activism show last night which was also the inaugural opening of the Toronto Free Gallery (just down the street from me). I got to make a ‘city repair’ request of Urbane Repairs representative Martin Reis, who was sitting behind a desk typing up request slips, claiming to be able to make the ‘city fun’ and ‘do in a week what takes the city 5 years’. I hope my request for a bike lane and local traffic only on St. Clarens between College and Bloor gets some prompt attention.

And just this morning I ran across this lovely site (again associated with a book) Things I Have Learned in my Life So Far which uses typography and video as a creative frame for recording social/environmental interventions that demonstrate what the site contributors have learned so far. Beautiful, thoughtful videos are the result.

So to conclude, there is a trend here: The pithy aphorism comes off the page or out of someone’s mouth. It becomes action, it touches others, touches a place. Then gets recorded, uploaded. Finally it inspires someone else to try her own hand at a living action and to share what she has learned, adding to the community cultural bank.

A very good model indeed.

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