Doors of SxSWeTech

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Finfangfoom

A March of craziness commences.

I’m going to be in Austin for SxSW Interactive from the 12th-14th. It’ll be my first time, so I have no idea what to expect or what to do. I do know I will miss the Bruce Sterling talk and his legendary party but hopefully I can peg him for 2 minutes chat on Spime-design somehow by virtue of pointing to my runner-up status in a Viridian design competition. But other than that… What do you recommend for a SxSW n00b?

I’ll get there too late for the kick-ball, but it doesn’t sound like a contact sport, therefore no fun for Welsh people. Otwell‘s promised me tex-mex brex, so that’s one thing taken care of.

Then I’m off to ETech/Etcon/whatever for the 14th to the 18th March – where I’ll be acting as Chris Heathcote‘s glamorous assistant for a talk on Tangible Computing – handing him RFID-enabled bunnies to saw in half, and ranting about embodied interaction – that sort of thing.

The good thing is our talk is on the first day of sessions, and early – so get to relax for the rest of what has shaped up into a rather good line-up since I slagged it off.

All apologies for that earlier apoplexy – and congrats to Rael and the team who have put together the final roster. A lot of my wishes came true (Natalie J and her feral robots, check; Neil Gershenfeld, check) –  although I still think that changing the event from an annual occurence to maybe once every two or three years would be an improvement. But now I don’t think I’ll be grumpy in the corner – much – I don’t think I have time to grow a Tony Stark ‘tache anyway.

Finally, after stopping off in Helsinki long enough to pick up some new pants and for Foe to remember what I look like, I’ll be heading to Doors of Perception 8 in Delhi with some other Nokians to get the TechnoUtopianism (© O’Reilly) smacked out of me by all and sundry.

Looking forward to some thought-provoking sessions on co-creating services and infrastructure in South-Asia from both visitors and locals that leapfrog the ‘developed world’ in both technology and sustainability.

There’s still time to get a visa and cheap flight to Delhi to join in, so the blog says.

If you’re at any one of the above ideafests, then drop a comment below, and let’s see if paths cross in the corridors.

—-
p.s. yes – Fin Fang Foom is there as another tedious Iron Man reference. Sorry – but I love FFF. Bonus link – the Barbelith take on the Warren Ellis’ Tony Stark is priceless.

IA Summit and the IA of personal mobile devices.

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5 Lessons
Originally uploaded by emalone.

The wireframing power-elite are gathered in Montreal, and reading the flickr-tea-leaves leads one to believe a lot of fun and a lot of discussion of hot issues such as ‘folksonomies’ has occured.

Was also interested in what Jeff Veen posted about companies exposing support material and manuals on the web and the influence on purchasing decisions.

Not sure whether there was a lot of discussion about mobile devices.

I know from chatting at DesignEngaged that Thomas Vanderwal is obsessing on them at the moment between inventing buzzwords that get publsihed in sunday newspapers.

The IA of personal devices as they incorporate multi-gigabyte mass-storage of personal and paid-for content is a huge design challenge and opportunity.

Anyone who was there in Montreal – Is it getting any collegial thought in the IA-sphere?

Giveitaway, Giveitaway, Giveitawaynow

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From Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm, on the rebroadcasting of ideas:

"The cartoon phase is what happens as the ideas are repurposed to serve
the goals of actors further down the supply chain. What Paul Krugman
calls the “Policy Entrepreneurs.” Here’s a typical sentence that
illustrates how he finds this species distasteful ” am also unable to
pretend to respect ‘policy entrepreneurs’, the intellectually dishonest
self-proclaimed experts who tell politicians what they want to hear.”
These actors are no different than the rest of us; they are looking of
a place to get some positive feedback. If you frame an idea in certain
ways you get a commercially viable product. Frame it another you get a
fat book deal. Frame it another you a durable notch in the belt of your
reputation. Frame it as a open source project with sufficient
worse-is-better affordances for other people to play and you create a
bloom of activity that is really fun to watch."

But, perhaps all of those are necessary to support each other cf. Google Answers posts on Vonnegut’s "Bluebeard", which I suspect are to a question posed by Webb, who first brought the passage to my attention a few years back when arch-cartoonist Gladwell’s "The Tipping Point" was causing a fuss:

"Catching up on some reading which had gotten by me I came across a passage in Vonnegut’s Bluebeard wherein one of his characters (Slazinger) has written a book titled "The Only Way to Have a Successful Revolution in Any Field of Human Activity."  Supposedly extracted from a study of history this ‘only’ method requires a team of ‘mind openners’ to break people out of their current mindset, regardless of how unrealistic or dumb that mindset may be.

This team of ‘mind-openners’ consists of three people:

1)An Authentic Genius: a person with seemingly good ideas not in general circulation.  He adds "A genius working alone. . . is invariably ignored as a lunatic."  (copywrited in 1987)

2)A highly intelligent person in good standing in the community who will stand up and attest that the genius is not mad.

3)A person who can explain anything, to anyone."

I’m guessing from Krugman’s remarks that it’s not that often that types (1) and (3) get along, as (3) gets the big book deal…

Architecture is frozen speed metal

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Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker on ringtones:

‘An architect in her mid-thirties said, “I spent three days of
productive work time listening to polyphonic ringtone versions of speed
metal, trying to find exactly the ringtone that expressed my
personality with enough irony and enough coolness that I could live
with it going off ten times a day. In a quiet room, in a meeting, this
phone’s gonna go off—what are they going to hear?”’

I think I must know this person.

[via the excellent 3 Quarks Daily]

Cheating, play, trangression and art

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Other players: narrative subversion 
Originally uploaded by salvital.

Joystiq reports that people who introduce "3rd party programs" hack and ‘cheat’ in World of Warcraft (which I’ve not played yet, but peer pressure is building…) will be "permanently removed".

This made me think back to some of the people I met during my work on Play I did last year, and some ‘grief-play’ fun I had with them at a games theory conference…

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Losing my edge

moleitau

"I’m losing my edge.

I’m losing my edge.

I can hear the footsteps every night on the decks.

But I was there.

I was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices in a loft in New York City.

I was working on the organ sounds with much patience.

I was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band.

I told him, "Don’t do it that way. You’ll never make a dime."

I was there.

I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids.

I played it at CBGB’s.

Everybody thought I was crazy.

We all know.

I was there.

I was there.

I’ve never been wrong.

I used to work in the record store.

I had everything before anyone.

I was there in the Paradise Garage DJ booth with Larry Levan.

I was there in Jamaica during the great sound clashes.

I woke up naked on the beach in Ibiza in 1988.

But I’m losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent.

And they’re actually really, really nice.

I’m losing my edge.
"

L.C.D. Soundsystem, "Losing my edge"

The tennis ball hack

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Tnfb

Think back to the 80’s…

Konami’s Track and Field performance-enhancing hack using a tennis ball to pummel the buttons faster than any unaided human would find possible.

Often talked about this in the pub with wistful tones, but can’t find any evidence on the web. Do you have an action-shot of someone playing Track and Field with a tennis ball?

Thanks!

—-
See also: from 2002, Anders Hansson on Track and Field Game Mechanics at Gamasutra (reg. reqd.)

"I wanted to keep the original button mashing control method of earlier  track and field games. Some games have, in a misdirected attempt to evolve the genre, abandoned the classical brutal control method in favor for more sophisticated (in a superficial sense) methods. In my opinion the physical quality of the original control method involves the player to a much higher degree and is much closer to the spirit of the sport that it tries to simulate."