New technology may be changing the human brain

Taken from Hansards UK's House of Lords record's of Baroness Greenfield's speech on 20th April 2006:

A recent survey of eight to 18 year-olds claimed that children were now spending on average 6.5 hours a day using electronic media. Most recently, the trend to multi-tasking—that is, using one or more devices in parallel—amounted to an effective 8.5 hours a day. Could this screen and multimedia culture impact on thinking and learning? The journalist Kevin Kelly summed up the issue very well:

"Screen culture is a world of constant flux, of endless sound bites, quick cuts and half-baked ideas. It is a flow of gossip tidbits, news headlines and floating first impressions. Notions don't stand alone but are massively interlinked to everything else; truth is not delivered by authors and authorities but is assembled by the audience".
......
Memory, for example, may no longer be as essential as it was for those of us who had to remember such dates or had to learn reams of Latin grammar. Along with the ability to read and the need to remember, surely we are at risk of losing our imagination, that mysterious and special cognitive achievement that until now has always made the book so very much better than the film. If one is always working with directory trees, where menus are offered with fixed numbers of options—where to get to another action one has to plod up and down various branch-lines of thinking—would that not impose itself on how we think in general?

happy slapping?

The use of mobile phone video for recording bullying and teasing, by either viewing of the recorded footage sent through the phone network or email circulation of the downloaded file. Amongst kids it has become so common that many teachers are considering banning mobiles in schools to try and prevent it.

Does this mean that they become emotionally remote from the aggression they are involved in? Taken to extremes a case reported by the BBC suggests that this tactic can reveal some not very 'happy' aspects of it's use. Three teenagers were convicted for the killing of a stranger, a crime which they apparrently carried out inspired by the recording of violent acts. The BBC reported that " During the trial it was reported that the gang were addicted to 'happy slapping' , the act of carrying out an attack and filming it on a mobile phone".
In passing sentence the Judge made the following observation " It seems that the three of you had been on previous expeditions and had become obsessed with the activity of catching people unawares, assaulting them and filming it for your later gratification'

On a positive note it shows great promise for the use of video on mobile phones, with hopefully creative and educational applications arising out of the familiarity and ease of use of such technology.
see Futurelab

Imaginary Maps

Map design can be thought of as mind design; the way a map is designed will influence the views of the world it stimulates or inhibits.
Continued at: Imaginary Maps, Global Solidarities article by Brian Holmes

Bluejacking

My first bluejack. A photo of Bremen, Germany sent to me whilst on a train going somewhere else.

BlueJacking is a new term used to define the activity of sending anonymous messages to other Bluetooth equipped devices (typically PDAs and Mobile Phones) in range of the senders device. Whilst the ability to receive such messages can be disabled or the Bluetooth functionality of the device can be switched off, the fun nature of BlueJacking is likely to encourage people to paticipate and to enjoy the new phenomenen.

The phrase BlueJacking is attributed to Ajack - a member of the Esato boards who 'discovered' it back in December 2002.

Read a recent BBC article on the topic

Visual Tagging

Semacode is a system for ubiquitous computing. Semacode's software provides the tools necessary to build applications that combine aspects of the virtual world into the real world. It works by combining existing standardized elements — camera phones, optical barcodes, URLs — into an integrated system.
The design philosophy of semacode follows the "small pieces loosely joined" principles
Semacode works by embedding a URL (web address) into a sort of two-dimensional barcode which looks like a dense crossword puzzle (pictured) — called the tag. The SDK software contains the capability to detect and decode the tag very rapidly with the camera on your phone. It extracts the URL and sends you to that address using the phone's built-in browser.

Mis-Guided Tours

90 min walks for ten people at ICA in April, organised by Wrights & Sites :

A utopian project for the recasting of a bitter world by disrupted walking, A Mis-Guide to Anywhere is a travel document for your destinationless journeys.

Unlike ordinary guided tours, these walks will be disrupted by the practice of mytho-geography, which places the fictional, fanciful, fragile and personal on equal terms with ‘factual’, municipal history.

12.30pm - The Problem of Shopping
Rearrange the dreams on sale by reading stories in window displays, sight-seeing shop assistants, shopping for a fictional ‘you’ or exploring shopping nostalgia.

12.45pm - Out of Place
A walk of coincidences, derived from overlaying a map of Paris onto London. What’s where the Eiffel Tower should be? Where can we stop for un Ricard?

1pm - Scales
In a park or open city space: walk the dimensions of a paving stone; walk the dimensions of your home; walk the dimensions of your body.

1.15pm - Masses
A drift in search of spaces where the trivial becomes monumental and the monumental becomes cake decoration. A chance to give homage to the trinkets and fondle butchers in bronze.