Urbanscale – startup founded by Adam Greenfield

"these physical and virtual systems are explicitly biomimetic, says Quigley. "The intent of an active system is to take the built environment and have it perform as if it were natural. We're fundamentally saying that passive systems are unable to do that in an optimal way. In many cases they are unable to do it at all.""

“Soak, Dye in light.” by everyware (2011) is an empty canvas but when you touch it, its elastic surface stretches and gets suffused with projected vivid colors mimicking fabric absorbing dye. Poking and rubbing with hands or resting their body on this spandex canvas allows visitors to soak this canvas in virtual dye and create own patterns.

Dying fabric is a time-honored tradition of humankind. Local materials such as herbs, flowers, rocks, juice of animals or shells have been used through the dying process. Especially in Korea, people have deep affection toward the unique colors and textures of fabric dyed with traditional materials. Now in the age of new media, we tried a whole new way of coloring fabrics with the essential materials of new media, ‘light’ and ‘interactivity’. Also, as a meta-creative interactive installation, ‘Soak’ can be expanded for creating garments with personalized patterns or textile productions using today’s digital fabric printing technologies.
Continue reading.... Soak, Dye in Light [Processing, Kinect]

"we're about to see a precambrian explosion of device-types that span uses, scales, and continents as we collectively stumble around and try to figure out what it means when many people have many devices and they're telling many interwoven stories with them simultaneously. We'll yearn for the clarity when all we had to do was figure out where the pixels went or how to make style sheets render correctly on two browsers. It's going to be very exciting and if it resembles previous such booms, it'll last for about twenty years before the archetypes settle down. During it, we're going to have to figure out the relationship between three interlinked social networks. The one we have as people, the one we have with the devices in our LAN, and the one that those devices have with other devices. … it's going to be chaotic as hell, with as many random successes as there are failures, but at the end of this we will have renegotiated how we define concepts as fundamental as ownership, the value of an experience, the boundaries of objects and how we define what something is made from and what it's for. I think this is a huge change, and I'm very excited to be part of it."

"the paradox at the heart of the web - that internet-based 'digital-only' products are services [that] are both immensely transformative yet easy to ignore, uninstall and move on from. Whereas internet-infused physical products and services may be intrinsically more valuable, due not least to the extra investment and invention required when working with atoms as well as bits. And civic services have an even greater value proposition—to public and civic life, and an overarching long-term responsibility in terms of citizens themselves. There should be more to Gov 2.0 than Web 2.0. Without understanding that, web and mobile services simply skate over the veneer of big, ugly problems like the city, without genuinely engaging. Or, as my colleague Bryan Boyer and I have taken to saying, 'matter matters'. … To put it another way altogether—and perhaps in somewhat glib fashion—it's easier to crowdsource a revolution than a light-rail system. (See related discussion here.) This is because projects like infrastructure are not simply about short-term political capital gain, but also long-term responsibility (and financing models) including the ability to make long-term investments. This requires a far more refined understanding of politics, citizenship and public life than is usually seen in either smart city or 'internet of things' rhetoric. Not understanding this, and seeing the influence of social media in the recent 'Arab Spring' revolutions, have led some commentators to overestimate the usefulness of social media in collaborative decision-making about the city. … government itself may need to re-assert itself post-internet-of-things, rather than be disintermediated. A richer form of governance could be part-enabled by a collaborative, networked platform, but something attuned to shared physical space and shared responsibility—more Brickstarter than Kickstarter—but there's more to it than software. … The great Brisbane-based architect Timothy Hill said, “One third of my job is persuasion.” I feel the same. It’s a truth of being a designer that is rarely taught at school, but unless you’re the kind of designer that sits and waits for the brief to come to you, and then unblinkingly delivers to that brief (and really, what is the point of that?) then you’re involved in persuasion for a huge amount of your time, ideally about a better brief, to begin with, than a better solution, but persuasion nonetheless. This particularly applies in areas on the edge of new disciplines, new ways of living and working, new forms of organising society and culture. Which all of this is."

"It’s sad, and somewhat annoying – especially for Tom – but a better example that these streets are not our streets won’t be found in Britain today."

"...write Python applications from your iPad, phone, smart TV [or even] your computer." - #everyware

"a huge new wave of cheap devices about to invade our lives—a zombie apocalypse of electronics ... As smart devices continue to increase in power and reduce in cost, size, and power requirements, this dynamo effect will continue, driving more technology around our processes than the other way around. ... The zombie apocalypse is showing how new patterns are emerging, ones that will not likely be served by a classic "app on my phone” model. ... the coming zombie apocalypse is revealing new UX patterns that will start to form from the connections and interactions between these devices. Three new patterns come to mind, but I expect more to form as this unfolds ... 1. Fixed cluster ... 2. Personal cluster ... 3. Opportunistic cluster ... The UX community needs to embrace this coming zombie apocalypse not because we need to invent the future, but that our past is holding us back. We'll only really discover this future if we shed our default thinking of desktop computers." via Ajit (Twitter)

"What do we call places where the above things apply? In recognition of the increasing ubiquity, everydayness and unremarkability of the technologies involved, we call them cities."

"Adam Greenfield - On Public Objects: Connected Things And Civic Responsibilities In The Networked City."