Smart Mobs

Olive - First cinema quality film shot on smartphone

Gerrit Visser — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:13:50 +0000

Interview with Co-Director Hooman Khalili, Executive Producer, Chris Kelly and Randi Zuckerberg who has a cameo performance in the film Olive taken with a Nokia N8 smartphone.

@FANDORific talked to Hooman about the Oscars & Gena Rowlands.

Olive is the very first full length feature film shot 100% on a cell phone. A 35 mm lens adapter was fabricated to fit the smart phone in order to achieve a shallow depth of field.

The film simply put is about a little girl that transforms the lives of three people without speaking one word.

The movie stars two time Academy Award nominated actress Gena Rowlands (The Notebook, A Woman Under the Influence). The sound design was done by Skywalker Sound.

The financing of Olive was done independently of any corporation. The goal now is to be the first film to not only be shot on a cell phone, but to also be the first independently financed feature film on 2,000+ theaters across the United States without the backing of a major studio.

Research: South Africans most active tweeters

Gerrit Visser — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:23:45 +0000

Young people tweeting from Blackberries and iPhones are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa, with South Africans by far the most vociferous, according to new research published Thursday.

Full article By MICHELLE FAUL | Associated Press

African tweeters are young, averaging 20 to 29 years, compared to 39 worldwide, the report said. And some 57 percent of analyzed tweets were sent from mobile phones, mainly Blackberries and iPhones.

The research analyzed more than 11.5 million geographically pinpointed tweets originating on the continent during the last three months of 2011. That was complemented by a survey of 500 of Africa’s most active tweeters.

The researchers noted how few African business and political leaders were joining Africa’s burgeoning Twittersphere.

“With some notable exceptions, we found that business and political leaders were largely absent from the debates playing out on Twitter across the continent,” they said. “As Twitter lifts off in Africa, governments, businesses and development agencies can really no longer afford to stay out of a new space where dialogue will increasingly be taking place.”

The challenge of living in a non-linear world [3]

Alan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:03:28 +0000

This is the third and final part of a general introduction to the book and project NO Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world

The coming age of the Craftsman
Why is the idea of craftsmanship significant at this epochal moment in time? Because it is about shaping our future and the ‘engaged’ craftsman brings the full power of humanity to bear upon his work. His hand is guided by his eye, informed by his creative mind; his productivity the act of unique creation. Indeed, the master craftsman is adept in using a philosophical framework, as well as tools and materials, to deliver useful things to the world. But more than that, the craftsman must be open constantly to new ideas; he is essentially always in beta. Therefore, we cannot engage with our uncertain non-linear world with the linear and inflexible orthodoxy of logic alone. The craftsman’s critical eye and creative mind is vital to evaluating new possibilities; he must be open to new ideas, information, tools and materials to make things that enable humanity to flourish. This approach is inherently more creative in that it synthesises all aspects of what make us truly human. But the 21st century craftsman does not only exist in the dusty workshop of a forgotten age; a games designer is a craftsman, a Linux programmer is a craftsman, innovative organisations like Local Motors and Ushahidi, which are discussed in more detail in Chapters 3 and 8, embed craftsmanship into everything they do. These are well designed responses to what real life previously perceived as intractable as the plot line in Catch 22.
And so I come to this project with a strongly held belief, that there is an opportunity to bring a way of thinking to many of the seemingly intractable problems that confront us today. But this requires us to think and act as craftsmen and women and apply our critical thinking to understanding our non-linear world, which is in part shaped by participatory cultures, open, complex and seemingly ambiguous systems that are highly interdependent of each other. We need to be inspired to be epic, to seek epic wins - to design for transformation, to make informed choices and co-author innovative new possibilities that can enable humanity to lead a life not constrained by the crushing reality of industrial-age thinking but one designed around the primary needs of humanity. We need to explore our non-linear world, not exploit it.

Connecting to our best possible future

I believe there is much evidence demonstrating the possibility of this society. It exists in philosophical frameworks, language and literacy, legal frameworks, tools and technologies, and real stories of how others have been motivated by a real desire to create new and better answers to what others would call unsolvable, wicked problems. And it has been my mission to bring together these separate component parts to offer to you a vision of the world which is both realistic and eminently possible. But to create this regenerative society requires us to take a voyage of discovery and to look upon the world as Proust would say with fresh eyes. This is the world of no straight lines and this project is how we make sense of this non-linear world, and then act in it.

You can buy the book at (Amazon US) or (Amazon UK) and there will be an epub version available very soon

Education, technology and the almost forgotten skill of craftsmanship (no-straight-lines.com)
6 challenges for a non-linear world (no-straight-lines.com)
The last of the Kodak moments (no-straight-lines.com)

The challenge of living in a non-linear world [2]

Alan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:47:13 +0000

This is the second part of a general introduction to the book and project No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world

The opportunity and the design challenge

Which brings me on to the title and the challenge of this project. Be realistic, imagine the impossible is taken from a poster from the 1968 Paris riots. In making sense of its meaning for our time, I would argue that what we face at the tail end of our industrial society is a design problem. The reason is that we are witness to a systemic failure of many of the institutions that have brought us so much prosperity and it is this convergence of failures that requires us to understand the challenge from a whole systems approach.

Many of the institutions, organisations and systems that we still use were designed and built for a less complex world, the increase in the complexity of our world is placing an unsustainable load upon those institutions, organisations and systems. One could argue our industrial world has reached the edge of its adaptive range. Consequently, fault lines are running through our society which present a trilemma based around interlocking social, economic and organisational tensions and questions. The design challenge involved in resolving these questions comes because the non-linearity is causing a comprehensive restructuring of society at large, breaking old models of organisation, and the trilemma heralds the coming of the age of uncertainty. All three tensions are in flux, and cannot be addressed without considering the other two. So each and every part of this story reflects upon and relates to this trilemma: the relationship of the individual to companies and other organisations and forms of power, economically, socially, politically.

Now is the time when we need a way of evaluating of what comes next, when we face a world that has gone in a very short period of time from seemingly linear (simple) to complex and non-linear (chaotic). When we move into a world that is inherently more complex, the result is concussive, its disorientating effects surround us, and our responses either individually or at an organisational level result in reflexes and perspectives that can be dangerously corrosive or inappropriate. And yet, this chaos seems to be, if anything, accelerating. At this very moment, great debates are raging. The spanners are in the works, defined by 9/11 (we now talk about asymmetrical warfare) and the near collapse of the world banking system (and its asymmetrical impact on every single one of us). And, as the global centre of economic gravity moves east, this has set off a series of events that are having significant asymmetric economic effects on societies around the world. These are but three examples of fault lines creating battles, ideological or otherwise, that are exploding and imploding at the same time. They all surfaced in a single decade. Though it is important to add that their gestation period has been much longer and is indeed multidimensional. These challenges are highly interlinked and interdependent, so a one-size-fits-all response just won’t do. There are no longer simple problems; what we face is the trilemma of a complex world. This book does its best to face them, because we are in more than just an economic crisis; it is equally political, educational, spiritual and moral.

The cultural challenge

The biggest challenge we face is cultural. How we contextualise (make sense of) the world around us determines how we engage and what action we take. Those actions then determine the outcomes we must live with and this requires a change from our industrial mindset and behaviour to one that is more cognisant of what is now seen as a non-linear world. This is where I want to return to the idea that what we face is a design problem, where answers exist not at an unattainable theoretical level but on the floors of our factories, in the streets of our towns and cities, the classes of our schools, the waiting rooms of our hospitals. These answers will manifest themselves as true acts of creation, originating new ways of getting stuff done, informed by the decisions we collectively take. So in re-designing the world, we need human creativity in the sense of the capacity to ‘make’, we need visionary leadership in the sense of making a difference. And we seek the craftsman’s critical eye, steady hand and creative mind. It is this process of seeing – realising new pathways to success, by bringing two ‘unlikes’ (new information, tools, processes etc.) together in close adjacency – that we create, and make new things. Then we can meaningfully apply that capability.

The Challenge of living in a non-linear world [1]

Alan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:33:05 +0000

This is an excerpt from the book No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world

What do these have in common?

A car company built around a global community as an organisation, enabled by combining flex manufacturing techniques, open source platforms, open legal frameworks and social communication technologies premised upon cooperation, fuelled by the desire to be a great company and green; that can build cars 5 times faster at 100 times less the capital costs. A crisis management platform and organisation born out of the Kenyan post-election crisis of 2008 that can record critical information of events unfolding on the ground via a blend of location-based data, eyewitness accounts and mobile telephony, from often hard to reach places which visualises those unfolding events so that others can act and direct action at internet speeds. And now utilised for free in many parts of the world. Or, the largest organic diary farm in Britain, that has evolved a methodology that allows it to remain autonomous, profitable and sustainable in a market that is acutely volatile, because large-scale agricultural farming is mostly run on an oil-based economy, plus diary farmers are at the calculating mercy of the marketing needs and whimsies of large chain supermarkets.

A new social / organisational / economic model
They are collectively representative of a new reality of living, working and organising. These organisations or companies have quested to find a means to serve humanity better, to search for meaning in the work that they and others do, and offer up new viable alternatives for the ways that, in the past, these things were done. They seek an outcome that is more distributive of wealth, ideas and resources. In fact, one might argue an outcome that is more humane and community centric. Rather than premised upon the extraction of wealth, and resources, whether they be physical, mineral or otherwise, these very different initiatives represent both moral courage and a collective purpose, if you will. And why is that important? Because it does not matter if you are an employer, a worker, VC fund, an NGO, an organisation, a local council or a government, you will miss out on the energies and capabilities of your people who will increasingly seek those new realities to discover a better way of living, working and being, when better and viable alternatives are on offer. And the fact is we now have the possibility to truly transform our world, to be more lightweight, sustainable and humane, through the tools, capabilities, language and processes at our fingertips. As Tony Judt argued: ‘Why do we experience such difficulty even imaging a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?’

The city as interface. Digital media and the urban public sphere

Gerrit Visser — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:35:07 +0000

On January 23, 2012 PhD B.G.M. (Martijn) de Waal defended at the University of Groningen for the faculty Philosophy the cultural science thesis ‘The city as interface’.

PhD Martijn de Waal

PhD ceremony: 16.15 uur, Aula Academiegebouw, Broerstraat 5, Groningen
Dissertation: The city as interface. Digital media and the urban public sphere
Promotor(s): prof. R.W. Boomkens, prof. J.F.T.M. van Dijck
Faculty: Philosophy

The main concern of the study ‘The City as Interface’ is the future of the urban public sphere. It investigates various scenarios that describe how the rise of digital and mobile media technologies, such as the mobile phone, GPS-navigation, and the usage of social networks through smartphones, change the way the urban public sphere functions.

Most studies on the urban public sphere have so far theorized it as a spatial construct, a physical place for encounter and social interaction. Yet, such a purely spatial approach has become problematic now that new media technologies, from the mobile phone to urban sensor networks, have started to play an important role in the experience and organization of everyday urban life. The experience of the city has become extended by media technologies that bring absent others or distant (either in time and space) contexts into the here-and-now. The infrastructure of these new technologies and the way they are programmed now co-shape urban life, just like the physical infrastructures and the spatial programming of urban planning have always done.

This may lead to two different (non-exclusive) scenarios that enforce a broader trend in which people sort themselves out geographically, that is: people are more and more keeping in touch with people who share a similar identity or particular goal. Citizens may use digital media as ‘filters’ that allows them to find the spaces where they are likely to meet people who are similar to them. Institutions may use these same technologies to target particular audiences and make places more attractive to them, or even to exclude access to those who do not belong.

A second scenario also builds upon a broader geographic trend that has been called ‘Living Together Apart.’ This is a development in which various urban publics live in and use the same geographic areas, but do not interact much. An example is found in the former working class turned migrant quarters near European inner cities that have become gentrified over the last decades. Local working class people, young professionals and migrants share the same neighborhood. A Turkish coffee house might be located next to a designer coffee bar. They are geographically close, but are separated by a large symbolic distance. The filtering mechanisms of mobile media could enforce this scenario. The chaotic experience of all those different worlds on top of each other becomes ‘navigable’ and ‘inhabitable’ through the use of urban media that help users locate those microvariations in space that are relevant to them.

That, however, is only one part of my findings. Urban media also have the affordance to create a public sphere in new ways. Urban media can create a new type of platform that can bring forth collective issues around which publics can organize. Data from various sensor networks can be mapped to, for instance, show the air quality or energy use of a city. These mappings can become a condensation point around which publics start to organize themselves. In addition, the use of urban media can be used to make individual contributions to such communal issues visible. This could mean that it becomes easier to turn resources into a ‘commons’, a communally used and managed resource. First examples of these are the bike and car sharing schemes that have sprung up in various cities around the world. There is a chance that the communal use and management of these practical collective issues could lead to the formation of publics around these issues that bring together people from various backgrounds. I have shown how ‘open data’ initiatives could perhaps play a similar role. These too could create new platforms on which urban publics can form.

At the same time I have also argued that the introduction of a new platform by itself is not enough for a public realm to come into being. To function as a public realm, platforms need a program that provide one or more functions that will attract citizens from various backgrounds. This is true for physical spaces as well as for urban media platforms. Studies have shown that digital platforms can enhance the sense of a local community or public in a particular neighborhood, but that this does not happen by itself.

Read more about the ‘philosophical’ debate concerning urban media in: Three philosophical questions about the ‘sentient city’ – a response to the exhibition Towards the Sentient City

No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world

Alan — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:09:49 +0000

It an honour to be blogging here and to receive Howard’s endorsement for No Straight Lines.

Howard writes:

Economic transactions and markets have warped perceptions to such a degree that most people fail to see what is important in life, even when its right in front of them. Alan Moore’s No Straight Lines offers a vision that is at once more humane, more forward-thinking, and more realistic

So what is the project all about? This is the condensed version.

We have arrived at the edge of the adaptive range of our industrial world. At the edge, because that world, our world is being overwhelmed by a trilemma of social, organisational and economic complexity. We are in transit from a linear world to a non-linear one. Non-linear because it is for all of us socially, organisationally and economically ambiguous, confusing and worrying. Consequently we are faced with an increasingly pressing and urgent problem, WHAT COMES NEXT? And also we are therefore presented with a design challenge: HOW do we create better societies, more able organisations and, more vibrant and equitable economies relevant to the world we live in today? No Straight Lines presents a new logic/literacy and inspiring plea for a more human centric world that describes an entirely new way for true social, economic and organisational innovation to happen.

NSL argues we now have the possibility to truly transform our world, to be more resilient, to be more relevant to us both personally and collectively, socially cohesive, sustainable, economically vibrant and humane, through the tools, capabilities, language and processes at our fingertips.

The key to unlocking this opportunity, so we can design for transformation is through understanding the interlocking concepts of the six key principles of No Straight Lines, these are:

[1] Ambiguity [2] Adaptiveness [3] Participatory cultures and tools [4] Openness [5] Craftsmanship [6] Epic (designing for transformation).

It means we can then ask this question: How do we find the best possible solution to seemingly intractable problems? And be able to answer it.

It does not matter what industry or sector you are in understanding NSL will enable you design and create better organisations, better businesses and a better society.

There is a website of the project No-Straight-Lines.com, the book is available at Amazon Europe, and Amazon US in paperback and Kindle versions.

There will also be a free version of the book in epub format and this will be published shortly.

Below a TEDx talk about the project

Spotted on #CES via Twitter

Gerrit Visser — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:42:39 +0000

via: Stefan @Svartling

#CES 2012: Lenovo K800 - The First Phone With An Intel Processor: http://youtu.be/JpaXc9JywWo via @youtube

more info by Stefan Svartling … and Intel goes mobile (report and live blog of the Intel press conference)

1:42 am “Today, your smartphone has more computing power than existed in all of NASA in 1969.” Wow.

1:43 am Intel thinks of mobile phones as more than just calls, messaging and light gaming.

1:43 am It’s just another computing platform.

1:44 am “The best of Intel computing is now coming to smartphones.” Crowd hollers and cheers.

1:44 am “And it’s coming first to China.”

1:45 am Jun, a senior VP at Lenovo, says his company expects all devices will be connected. “We’re transforming Lenovo from a leading personal computer company to a leading internet-connected device company.”

1:45 am “Here in my hand..” He’s got the new phone.

1:46 am Lenovo smartphone K800.

Obsessive smart phone users hear ‘phantom vibrations’

Gerrit Visser — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:12:50 +0000

Smartphones are so addictive many users now hear “phantom vibrations” because they are desperate to receive new messages, a study has found. The findings will be presented to the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology Conference in Chester.

By Nick Collins http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/

Blackberries and iPhones are meant to help workers manage their workload by giving them access to messages and alerts while away from the office. But people become so obsessive about checking their email accounts and social networking sites that they actually become more stressed as a result, researchers said.
Some are so hooked to their devices that they even begin to experience “phantom” vibrations where they mistakenly believe their phone is buzzing in their pocket, it was claimed.

Sweden’s Church of File Sharing Resets the Conversation of What Defines A Community

Antoine — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:45:38 +0000

Throughout the history of communities, religion has always been seen as a knitting or fracturing factor for communities. In Sweden, a recent acceptance of the establishment of The Church of Kopimism (a term meaning “file sharing”), takes that definition of religious activity, and stretches it to a technological domain that in some respects has been inevitible.

Here’s the statement of faith (creed?) that The Church of Kopimism stands on (from the plain-text iteration of their website):

information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains, and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore, copying is central for the organisation and its members

The Church of Kopimism doesn’t seem to follow the traditional structures of religion where there’s some transmeta-state being inferred to the members. However, its flexible membership stance (you simply need to engage in the activity of sharing a file) does reencourage the discussion of whether behaviors by themselves are enough to catalyze a transformative movement, or if there needs to be some “higher goal” achieved.

If we compare this against the socio-political movements of just 2011, could the mobilization of any groups of persons around a behavior be enough to define a community? If so, how does that change or transform the contexts of behaviors as attached to or their own entity from the term “community?”

I’m interested in your thoughts. Can a community be defined only by their behavior, or does that behavior need to come to a head in something else (there’s nothing that I can discern from The Church of Kopimism’s statement of faith or other press that points to file sharing having a greater goal; this might be something more implicit from those living within Sweden’s cultural narratives)?