A Sustainable Train of Thought

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

I recently interviewed Anna Lappé for TreeHugger.com, and I wanted to share one of her responses that bears a striking similarity to the above quote from Mahatma Gandhi.

I asked Anna about her suggestions for dealing with the feelings of futility that a lot of people experience when exposed to some of the more daunting problems of our day and age.

I like to remind people that the more apt metaphor for our feelings of futility would be that we feel we’re drops in the desert: the water dissipates before even touching ground.

If we were really to picture ourselves as drops in a bucket, we’d of course realize that buckets fill up, and can fill up quite fast. (Who knows, your drop may be the one that pushes the water over the edge.)

I think it speaks of the gap that appears at times between action and perception: small things can contribute to much larger results, even if their effects are not immediately apparent.

The question, I suppose, is whether making the effects of such small inputs visible will help to change behavior. My sense is that doing so can help, but first the will to change must exist.

Critically, however, just as will must exist before action, the tools for action must be available for use once that will is formed: futility can arise from a sense of powerlessness in the face of large problems, but it can also stem from the lack of clear direction and appropriate tools. That is, I want to change, but I have no idea how.

While much effort is spent convincing people of the problems we face—a necessary task if ever there was one—it is extremely important that we continue to build the tools and platforms to enable change once that will is formed.

I’m trying to do my part.

I’m a little unimpressed with Google lately. I signed up for Google Checkout, and at the end of the process this is what I received instead of a confirmation of having signed up for the service:

So was my sign-up successful? I’ll never know…

Pseudo live-blogging of a presentation by Maurice Cox at the GSD.

You can complain about the building codes, or you can get involved and change them…

Premise: there are some urgent matters, and some issues which can be weeded out which are not urgent. What you do has incredible relevancy when applied to matters which are truly urgent.

Two cases: one where you have the authority to make changes, and one where you’re leading, but nobody has given you the authority.

Maurice Cox grew up in Brooklyn, saw the decline and disinvestment within the community as it turned into a low-income neighborhood, and this influenced him to explore what influenced these changes and he as an architect could do to reverse this trend.

Thomas Jefferson equated design with happiness.

How to develop an architecture of trust when the public understands the implications of the tools architecture uses—typically planning and architecture are instruments of power. (discussed while showing how the downtown of Charlottesville, VA was razed and rebuilt with the “downtown of business” in mind.)

Using design for its transformative power. Thinking about the risks involved (political and otherwise) related to change.

Charlottesville: why grab adjoining tax base when you can create your own. Look at the entire city as an organism, a whole. Finding a way to strategically increase density.

Design thinking is applicable to problems which may seem political or social.

After defeating plans for a maximum security prison near their town, the community came together and leveraged their capacity for action and design to redevelop and rebuild their own community.

The development process of six years was one of matching their values to reality. Within the community, learning the tools and developing the capacity for transformation—there must be a sense of urgency behind it.

Richmond, VA – a ten-year process of change, zero-displacement, mixed incomes. Involves over 15 different stakeholders.

New Orleans, LA – How to respond to the grass-roots, citizens desire to rebuild.

The Global Green Competition – rebuilding with a focus on green, sustainable designs. How to integrate services (childcare), hydroponics on the roof, and solar panels and louvers.

Moss Point – reached out to Maurice Cox to learn more about the redevelopment process. Engaging in a door-to-door survey to understand the concern of the community prior to resolving problems and designing.

Biloxi, Mississippi – FEMA’s new Flood Elevations and its impact on architecture. (Structures must be 12 feet above flood level—leads to houses on stilts with many stairs.) Design constraints…so how do you challenge those constraints? Through a design fair (sponsored by Architecture for Humanity), architecture models presented to the community and engaged in a dialog with the designers. They began to express preferences and make choices.

(Unfortunately, several slides were missing from his presentation due to some problems with Powerpoint)

QA Session: need to pace the changes at a rate people can absorb them.

Visual communication skills are the most effective tools in the process.

Haiyan pointed out a blog post about a reputation network that’s in development by monkeymodulator for World of Warcraft, an online Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG).

What you get to rate is player behavior and characteristics, such as reliability and fun-ness. This would have been nice to have when I was playing StarCraft a couple of years ago. When you’re playing a multiplayer game online, the quality of the other people you’re playing with impacts the game as much as the game mechanics. I’m talking about quality of playing—because a bad player or newbie can make you lose an otherwise winnable game—but I’m also talking about the character of the player (in the real-world sense), taking into account whether he or she is interesting, fun, intelligent, etc.

Talking about games brings up an interesting point: tracking reputation within a game is relevant to the game experience, but is it relevant to real-world activities? What is the relationship between in-game reputations and real-world reputations? In essence they’re all reflections of you, so they’re all relevant. The difference, however, is that real-world transaction take place within one construct and set of rules, and game transactions take place within a different construct and set of rules. By entering a gaming situation, you are entering a world where the rules may be drastically different from those of the real world.

Ultimately, the hinging point or the difference between reputation in the real world and reputation in a gaming situation lies in consequences. Real-world consequences are inherently different from those of the virtual—one example, perhaps the most obvious difference, is that in-game characters may have unlimited lives. Therefore, while in-game transactions may mimic real-world transactions, because of this difference in valuation (and by valuation I mean the assessment of the consequences related to a particular action), reputation within one system (in-game) is inherently different than in another (real world). My assumption is that humans will respond differently to different rules and consequences. Therefore, a set of actions within one rule system will not necessarily reflect actions within a different rule system. For example, in many video games you kill other characters and creatures. This behavior does not translate into real-world behavior, for obvious reasons. (People who are confused by the disjunction of realities—in game and the real world—may have trouble distinguishing one rule-set from another.)

But what if one rule system were imposed in another rule system? One situation that springs to mind is Diablo II by Blizzard. One of the online gameplay modes is “hardcore mode”. As Blizzard explains:

Hardcore mode is a more challenging style of game play on Battle.net, recommended only for experts. In Hardcore mode, you live only once, meaning that if you die, your character can no longer be used.

Clearly, the addition of this rule system changes behavior simply through the addition of consequences: your hard work in developing a character can all be lost in a few moments. Suddenly, the situation shifts: reputation is meaningful because it provides important information that may mean the difference between living and dying (in the online gaming environment, of course).

This notion of consequences is one I explored in my thesis project Thimble, where I found that the notion of consequences was important to lending weight to ratings. In the case of thimble, consequences arise from your relationship with others in your local, physical community: you can’t hide from your bad behavior.

One of the most amazing things I’ve encountered in recent days (if not months—this thing is really amazing!) was presented briefly at the Situated Technologies symposium I recently attended.

Waaaaay back in 1980 (!), a project called Hole in Space linked New York city to LA via a satellite video conference setup. Life-sized television images connected Lincoln Center in New York to a department store window in Century City, Los Angeles, California. Passersby could view, listen to, and speak with one another in real time through the setup, which was presented without any indication of who was responsible for it.

Amazingly, even though there was absolutely no promotion of the project, the crowds grew so large by the third day (simply through word-of-mouth, later reported on television) that it had to be shut down. Random people chatted with one another, family members reconnected—the fact that people had to travel to the installations was not an obstacle.

It blows my mind that in an age of Skype we don’t have this today. Amazingly, a woman at the time (1980, remember) was quoted as saying “Why didn’t we have this 20 years ago?”

I wrote a little more for the previous post which I ended up cutting, but the general point of the excised text was that the internet currently tends to act like a vast echo chamber, not only in terms of the views and opinions expressed, but also to whom they are expressed. That is to say, those who make up the online communities: people with access to a computer, internet access, read/write english (typically). It’s not like I can contact a refugee from Darfur, although I wonder what would happen if I could.

One phenomenon during the Isreal-Lebanon war just recently was the ability of citizens on both sides to talk, argue, and debate with each other via the internet. Their governments weren’t their mouthpieces: they themselves were. And what it came down to was that people on both sides had the opportunity to realize they were all human beings.

And it occurs to me that Hole in Space provides the same ability for individuals to converse as blogs ostensibly do: direct communication without a filter. War may be seen as an abrogation of direct communication between individuals in favor of communication (base though it may be) via figureheads and organizations. Television could be seen as the same: our news is filtered through CNN, whether by reporters or by news anchors. I don’t think it’s conspiratorial to think that the reason something like Hole in Space is exceptional rather than the norm is because these organizations don’t want us to communicate directly. Livelihoods are at stake in the case of television anchors; control in the case of governments.

Just imagine for a moment what the implications would be should another Hole in Space be set up between downtown Baghdad, Iraq and Main Street in Kansas City, Kansas.

I just attended a conference in New York City where it became immediately apparent to me that I didn’t fit in. Not that it’s a bad thing or a good thing; I simply realized that my priorities and focus over the years have changed significantly. While I enjoy a stimulating conversation as much as the next person, I’ve also developed a point of view which now includes Charles Eames’ observation that “Design is a plan for action.” And I must admit, I didn’t see much in the way of action at this conference. A lot of talk about concepts and theories and definitions, but very little in the way of concrete contributions to a cause.

Maybe I’m biased because my entire thesis year was spent looking for ways to make concrete contributions to a cause. But my observation from this weekend’s events is that a common cause might prove useful in harnessing all of this intellect and creative energy and focusing it towards real change.

Perhaps a step back is required to explain my position. In my first thesis presentation (way back in 2005) I proposed that the challanges posed by the climate crisis hold the potential to unify us towards a common goal, just as the Apollo missions captured the imagination, attention, and enthusiasm of the American people forty years ago. We have an opportunity to define real goals, produce real results, and instill real change. And this opportunity is nothing less than an opportunity to bring meaning to many peoples’ lives.

Now before the two people who read my blog get all upset, I use “meaning” as a framing device for actions and decisions. So just as a larger goal of buying a house would probably frame the choice of whether or not to max out your credit card, the climate crisis (and the other attendant ills that humanity faces as Jared Diamond so comprehensively presents in Collapse) provides a framing device for decisions and actions by both society and individuals.

So let’s talk about something controversial. I think most of the so-called “social networking” stuff out there is suspect. Sure, it’s fine if you want a diversion, it’s fine if you want to make money selling Google adwords, it’s fine as a commercial enterprise. But what has “social networking” really accomplished for society? What is its lasting contribution? How has it helped humanity to take a step forward?

I’m not saying that “social networking” is useless. Rather, I’m saying perhaps the energy behind its current application is misapplied. Look, we have more computing power available to us through the personal computer and the Internet than at any other time in the known history of man, and the best we can do is MySpace?

As I’ve said many times before, we face a multitude of very real problems and we have a very real opportunity to instigate change, to gather and focus human enterprise and enthusiasm towards a compelling, worthwhile, and meaningful goal.

Read the following passage from this Salon.com article, Calculating the global warming catastrophe, and tell me that current “social networking” sites are addressing these very real issues of community…what I would term social sustainability.

The technology we need most badly is the technology of community—the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done. Our sense of community is in disrepair at least in part because the prosperity that flowed from cheap fossil fuel has allowed us all to become extremely individualized, even hyperindividualized, in ways that, as we only now begin to understand, represent a truly Faustian bargain. We Americans haven’t needed our neighbors for anything important, and hence neighborliness—local solidarity—has disappeared. Our problem now is that there is no way forward, at least if we’re serious about preventing the worst ecological nightmares, that doesn’t involve working together politically to make changes deep enough and rapid enough to matter. A carbon tax would be a very good place to start.

While this passage makes the point that our lack of community has made it difficult to pursue change politically, I think the more important point is the lack of community, period.

Think about that for a moment.

In a time when, theoretically, anyone can contact and connect with anyone else in the world, we are experiencing a lack of community.

Does anyone else find this curious and frustrating?

Questions: Negotiation not in the favor of the weaker party.
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Toward an Archival Approach to Digital Identity Management
Fred Stutzman, Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina

Transitive states of identity is called into question…it’s all recorded or can be recorded
Document states of identity

States of identification:

Verified: credentialed and verified, uniquely identifying
Pseudononymous: non-verified, uniquely identifying
Anonymous: lacking verification

Identity control – agency control, source control, network control

OpenID, MicroID

http://www.ibiblio.org/fred/
http://claimid.com/
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Selling Your Self: Examining the Ethics of Identity 2.0
Alice Marwick, Culture & Communication, NYU

Difference between identity and identification online

Liberty Alliance

Identity 1.0 drawbacks: Multiple logins/passwords, Identity context (myspace vs friendster vs flickr), Data collection (data aggregators, behavioral tracking, search engines), Identity fraud (theft phishing)

Identity 2.0 pros: – Single sign-on – Identity providers – user control – choose which identity to present when and to who – decentralized

User agency – does software five users control over their own information? – multiple personas? – software choice? – opt-out?

Openness
-open-source/open-standard – developer/uiser/citizen/participation

User-friendliness

Data protection

OpenID – opensource standard – url-based standard. store information on your site in microformats

ClaimID is using it, livejournal

the strength lies in openness and participation
the user-friendliness of single-sign-on is good, but the implementation is bad,
data security of the site that’s storing information is a problem
the more sites you visit, the more valuable this technology is

CardSpace – Microsoft’s Identity Metasystem – tied to a single computer.

more ambitious that OpenID, but problematic because infocards are issued by identity providers and tied to a physical computer

nothing to prevent Amazon.com from abusing information

conclusions
Solution to ID 1.0 problems?
Facilitate new forms of data gathering and aggregation
Interplay between user-provided data and monetization needs continued scrutiny
Disconnect in thinking about “identity”?

http://www.tiara.org/blog
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Managing Identities and Moral Identification
Noemi Manders-Huits, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
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The Emerging Age of Who
Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO, Sxip Identity

Identity is a sense of continuity.

Identity and personas – personas change over time

past behavior predicts future behavior (?)

packaging identity (driver’s license)

Infocard

federation model – circle of trust

Agents: trusted sites, portal, school, bank, government, trusted application like Microsoft CardSpace.

Relying party trusts the issuer, and the privacy aspect lies in the acquisition of the claim is separated from the issuing of the claim

one central place for authentication
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Demonstration: TrackMeNot
Furman 210 Helen Nissenbaum & Michael Zimmer

Obfuscating your search queries through periodic submittal of false queries.
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Identity within Social Networks: The Creation of freeFormed.org
Megan MacMurray, Nanna Halinen, Catherine Colman, Jungmin Oh and Yonatan Kelib,
Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU

Enabling people to place their contacts within particular groups. Much more granular application of filtering/sorting.
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Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8
Danah Boyd, School of Information, University of California – Berkeley

Who counts as a friend?

Take cues for behavior in social networks based on those who brought you into the social network.

Motivations: – You are friends/acquaintences – socially inappropriate to say no – attention, popularity – fan of person, band, celebrity – identity signal – expand visibility (Friendster) – Bulletin and blog access (MySpace) – To see a private Profile (MySpace,FB) – As bookmark – Easier to say yes than no

People started gaming the social network…”9,000 closest friends” aren’t your closest friends, but people that you want to pay attention to

My Top 8

Change of context within MySpace and Facebook – used to be just the people you knew in a particular context, but now the contexts are mixed: Burning Man, your professor, your mom.

Stokely Carmichael – when speaking in person to different groups could addresses them “appropriately” but when appearing on television had to use a single voice, had to make a choice.
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The Cost of (Anti-)Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites
Ryan Bigge, Communication and Culture, York/Ryerson University, Toronto

Henry Jenkins – “The early discussion of the digital divide assumed that the most important concern was insuring access to information as if the web were simply a data bank. Its power comes through participation within its social networks.”

Neo-luddites

Against Technology – Steven E. Jones – “Many people who identify with the term “Luddite” just want to reduce or control the technology that is all around us and to questions its utility—to force us not to take technology for the water in which we swim.”

Protocol is to control societies as the panopticon is to discipline societies…

Two-thirds of Facebook members log on at least once every 24 hours, and the typical user spends 20 minutes a day…

“Participation as a form of labor – they are not so much participating, in the progressive sense of collective self-determination, as they are working by submitting to interactive monitoring.” – Andrejevic 2004

subcultural capital – hair cuts, clothes, shoes, etc.
sociotechnical Capital – Paul Resnick

“If you don’t have a facebook profile, you don’t have an online identity.” – Chris Hughes

isolatr
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Question to Jason: Is there a niche for, say, credit cards, that don’t share your personal information or otherwise take steps to protect your privacy?

Question to Jason: Rewards programs: how is that information shared between companies?

In Canada, limited sharing of information. Opt-in to have information shared. Geared towards the notion of “give us your information and we’ll solve your problems!” Companies play it up as a trusting relationship, that it’s to your advantage as a consumer to give us this information.

CLTV – customer lifetime value – how much are you worth and what level of service will companies offer you?
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Space 2 B me: A thesis on teen identity construction in instant messenger
Evelyn Grooten, New Media and Digital Culture, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Identity as a set of characteristics as shown in computers that we don’t have control over

Online disembodiment theory

No race and ethnicity online? Is the body important? Identity is shaped by a combination of appearance, words, thoughts, expectations, et cetera.

Define identity: Emile Benveniste, Judith Butler, Justine Cassell, Erving Goffman, Jos de Mil, Stuart Hall

Other ethnographic studies: Lori Kendall, Annette Markham (humorous writer), John Edward Campbell

Identity is the set of identifications you have.

Instead of using static names in IM, defining themselves via events or via relationships with others.
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The rewards of identity: Pursuing and targeting consumer surveillance
Jason Pridmore, Sociology, Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada

Loyalty programs:
“They represent a glimpse of life when some version of our reputation travels with us wherever we go.”
John Deighton – “Consumer identity motives in the information age.”

Loyalty marketing – First: reward loyal customers – Second: gather consumer information

CRFM, KDD

Retailers desire to tie transactional data directly to each customer
Use of: – phone number requests at register – warranty card survey – promotions and contests – loyalty and rewards cards

Frequent Flier Programs – supplement hotel, car rental and supermarket programs

Points as a new form of currency

Approximately 41% in the US carry at least 1 loyalty card, 76% of all Canadians carry one
Air miles – 69% of Canadian households
Shoppers Optimum Card: 50% of Canadian Women
Air Canada’s Aeroplan: 27% of Canadian households, with 92% of business travelers

122 million in the US & 25 million in Canada

Internal definitions of self (personal identity)
External impositions of classifications (institutional and quasi-institutional identifications)

Corporations pay the consumer for their loyalty – consumers “get something for nothing” but the nothing is identity and it has some value.

“points get you something”
“we can serve them better”
“we are going to learn more about you and be better at solving your problems”

development of a customer relationship – relationship based on a continual analysis of consumer data, and the consumer’s “identity” is subject to a number of “overlays” – means of identification

Enrollment data – Transaction – Third Party information (geo demographics, based on your ZIP code, they know something about you) – Market Indicators

Corporations thus suggest this provides a “total” or “360 degree” view of the customer

Corporations see this as a process of managing people and changing their behavior

Consumption as the focus of “systematic management” – process of overlaying data creates value but also creates distinctive consumer catergories – categories of risk and profit

Reduction of the consumer to a set of statistically relevant points that fit into a predictive model – consumer is seen as malleable

These forms of identification have particular effects

”...as consumers we appear to be directed down certain predetermined routes of consumption which ensure that consumerism is ultimately as constraining as it is enabling”
Steven Miles “Consumerism – As a way of life”

Recognize use of cards: – as expressions of personal identity they are indicative of desires and lifestyle, yet these forms of identity always have to be confirmed – facilitate forms of categorization and establish institutionally-defined definitions
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Fitting identities into preset boxes: reflections on the case of medical records
Valentina Lichtner, PhD, Centre for HCI Design, City University, London

Interpreted, Represented, Recognized

Considering the case of collecting information from people who “preserve their rights” by presenting a limited view of their identity.

Staff may add information to the description based on their judgement

Receptionist: What ethnicity are you?
Patient: African British
Receptionist: Doesn’t work… [doesn’t match the pre-set categories]
Patient: It does, you see, most people are mixed.

The representation of a patient’s identity will differ depending on the structure of the record, the information required, the needs of the system.

Traditional Muslim naming system – the surnames don’t necessarily match up. Proposal to change the surnames to match the system’s needs.

Western databases impose a Western identity to people from different cultures.
We’re not necessarily the same as the information about us.

Comment: Nation-states imposing the requirement of having names.

The second day of Identity and Identification in a Networked World

Gotta run, but will be back tomorrow with the second half of this conference…

Some grad students are presenting projects:

Alex Cameron

Eddan Katz

Lorraine Kisselburgh – geolocational privacy

Olivia Nellums
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First up: DRM and the Automation of Virtue – Ian Kerr – idtrail.org

Norman Rockwell’s “Triple Self Portrait”

Lunchtime at the Grocery – colossal supermarket: serve yourself

Information wants to be free: Stewart Brand – information wants to be free. information also wants to be expensive. this tension will not go away, and it will get worse with each generation of devices.

DRM: adding a 4th layer of protection – in the US it’s covered by the DMCA (digital millenium copyright act)

beginning with the first layer: copyright law -> contact law (eula) -> digital locks (drm) -

We’re always up to something interesting here at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea!

In a few weeks we’ll be exhibiting work during the Salone del Mobile, the biggest furniture exhibition in the world. Over the years, Salone has turned into an opportunity for young designers to show their work after-hours throughout the city of Milan. Known as the “fuori salone” these small exhibitions are where the really exciting stuff happens. Last year we exhibited work alongside Tecno as part of Strangely Familiar Future.

This year we are part of a joint exhibition with Domus Academy. Our working prototypes will be shown alongside a selection of production pieces by Domus Academy graduates. This is the last year of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea’s existence, and it should prove to be an interesting and stimulating event.

Please find the official invitation attached. I’ll be showing three pieces, two of which were made in collaboration with Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and one which was made in collaboration with Haiyan Zhang and Alexandra. We are currently very very busy prepping the projects for the exhibition, writing our thesis reports, documenting the last Applied Dreams project (which just finished last week), and working on our thesis projects. In other words, business as usual.

For photos and updates, check out the following resources…

I’ll be posting photos on Flickr.

Keep an eye on my thesis blog for more updates.

and check out http://milano.interaction-ivrea.it for more information as the event draws nearer.

After Salone, the next big event will be our graduation in June…