Dan is trying out the new version of Urban Tapestries, but finding it hard to fit in some serious digital flaneur action:

“I haven’t been able to spend much time Urban Tapestrying … I haven’t wound it into my daily life of objects; I just haven’t had urge to use it much. I guess I’m struggling with the device’s mixture of latent utility and idle browsing pleasure. The ‘drift’ alluded to (presumably drawn from the Situationist notion of derive) generally doesn’t fit into a busy multitasked life as a plausible activity – the real drift is more of a side effect of activity than an activity in its own right. Given that we can’t all be Guy Debord. Thankfully.”

Reminds me a little of the quote Rodney Brooks made at Nextfest on what robots could be usefully relied on to do was anything that was a by-product of their semi-random movement through an environment.

Aside from actively annotating space, there are passive ways emerging such as Christian Nold’s Biomapping project; which use our biological robot reactions to paint a map of the city.