“As the devices people spend more time staring at and interacting with–the laptop, palmtop, and hiptop–tend more and more toward mobility, the ways we interact with data and services are changing dramatically. We are taking a leap back from the heavy GUI of the past to lighter-weight, componentized, flexible interfaces such as Sherlock, Watson, and Dashboard. We’re reconsidering the browser interface, and discovering what happens when you turn Web pages back into their underlying applications and data.”

» O’Reilly ET2004: call for participation

Chris Heathcote reports back from Paris on an exhibition at the crossover of maps, information design and art: “Global Navigation System”

This paper by Seth Sanders is being delivered at the University of Chicago’s Digital Genres conference. Snowcrashtastic:

“English speakers generally take the alphabet as a communicative device for granted, but actually the longest-lived ‘information societies’ in history didn’t use it. What difference did that make?

[This] paper will give a very brief introduction to what an alphabet, as a semiotic technology, does (as opposed to other sign systems like the Babylonian Cuneiform syllabary or modern U.S. road signs) and then take a close look at a crucial early moment in the history of the alphabet…

Looking at a single point where several historical paths–traditional law, imperial power, and religious revelation–converged will raise questions about each, and offer some possible solutions.

Decided to try and ferret more of Mr. Sander’s work out… without much success. There are a lot of Seth Sanders in American academia. This however includes an intriging abstract, with a helluva last line [my emboldening]:

“What was the Alphabet For? Textual Artifact, Language Ideology, and Cultural Differentiation in 2nd Millennium Syria-Palestine”

As scribal artifacts, alphabets have complex and reflexive relationships with identity. Indeed, Ugaritic may well represent the first historical instance of the 19th-century nationalist ideal of a single script for a single language, culture and polity. Why? We need to start understanding alphabetic literacy as a second-millennium ideological project.”

“Thought for the day” on BBC Radio4 this morning discussed how the language of business, popculture and war had become interchangeable over the last century. And, how in the recent opening stages of the “war without end”, words from each fuzzily-bordered realm had been furiously-frotting up against each other and cross-pollinating like billy-o.

You know the sort of thing. Fashion reporters relaying the latest on silk tie-up combat pants from their “exclusive position embedded on the front-line of Chloe”. Boardroom-infighting described by jocular nasdaq-backdropped journos as a “blue-on-blue battle” hours after we first heard a military-spokesperson explain the freshly-minted forces slang. “Going kinetic”: could easily be on the battleground or on a basketball court.

Is this the equivalent third-millennium ideological project?

» Digital Genres Conference, Chicago: Seth Sanders : Hebrew and Aramaic as Semiotic Technologies: Toward an Ethnography of Early Alphabetic Writing

At Etcon. At “O’reilly Radar” session. Getting annoyed. Tim O’Reilly saying that watching the alphageeks is how to predict the future and create better things. Alphageeks as the bellweather for progress. Tech-trends are the leading, driving force of society. The Morlocks lead the Eloi. Trickle-down technological determinism. What about the Omega people, those who couldn’t care less about technology in and of it’s own sake. Could studying their needs and and inclusively designing products, services and strategies be a Better Way [tm]

Search maven Martin Belam, and head of BBC info architecture and usability Margaret Hanley are speaking at the next London UPA meet on the 15th April.

(Very) rough notes from last night’s launch of the iSociety report into “mobiles and everyday life” I haven’t had a chance to read the report properly yet but you can get it from there.

I turned up a little late and didn’t catch all of the opening remarks, and this is by no means a complete transcript. The debate didn’t really get going IMHO. It needed another hour or so, and some more aggressive chairing: could have really done with looking into the social aspects of the tech, rather than posturing on the business prospects of the telcos.

The only person representing the user experience side of things, Amy Brampton, didn’t get a fair crack of the whip at all.

My mumblings are in [square brackets] as per usual.
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(very) raw notes… my murmurings are in the [square brackets]
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(very) raw notes… my murmurings are in the [square brackets]
Read More »

Right then. If you had to get someone of guru-status to both introduce and inspire a group of about 100 designers from various backgrounds about the field of interaction design, who would you pick?

[Rule – you’re only allowed to nominate yourself, if you’re, like, Alan Kay or The Coop.]

[1] In a mix-up of gargantuan proportions, everyone registered for O’Reilly ETCON gets sent to the ASIST IA summit, and vice-versa; with resulting cross-community mindbombing. IAs grokking Alan Kay and Eric Drexler, denizens of the tech-cave sucking Stewart Brand and Mark Bernstein’s brains dry.

[2] Someone actually goes and does what Victor suggests.