metabolo.org - systems

Architectures of Control v. Designing for Emergence

gva — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:20:20 -0400

In the course of research for my Media Law paper, on Creative Commons and designing for emergence in law, I came across this excellent blog. In many ways this site might be considered the opposite of "designing for emergence":

Architectures of Control
http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/

What are Architectures of Control?

[example images - Audi A2: The user cannot open the bonnet; Bench designed to prevent lying down: 'redesigned to face contemporary urban realities'; printer: Some HP printers shut down the cartridges at a pre-determined date regardless of whether they are empty]

Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments.

This site aims—with readers’ input—to examine and analyse the ideas and techniques of these architectures of control in design, through examples and anecdotes, and by keeping up-to-date with relevant developments...

I plan to redesign metabolo.org later this summer and intend to emulate many of the successful features I see here...

Privacy isn’t dead -- it never lived.

interfaced — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 01:53:45 -0500

Privacy isn’t dead -- it never lived. Personal information is currency in a consumer society. It allows for prediction and strategy. Rewards cards, credit cards, contests, transponders, websites, subscriptions, donations, investments, bill payments; they all require of tracking. Whether or not this is bad thing is the issue. If you look at your life as property, something you own, then you could classify this as theft. However, if you look at your life as a natural phenomena then observation can only further progress.

The more we learn about how people live, the more insight we will have on how we can change and grow. Unfortunately, most people take the ownership approach to their personal information. Even the phrase “personal information” sounds like a very private thing, which is why the issue is so deceiving. In a small town everyone knows your business. This is what allows for town meetings, participatory politics, and culture in general. When a population grows beyond a certain size, around 150, it becomes less of a cohesive unit and begins to rely more on institutional rather than communal organization. This is necessary for a large community to maintain it’s order.

Back to privacy though. Since people in this modern society no longer know the details of their neighbours’ lives, there are no lifestyle checks. To overuse a metaphor, we are like ants in many ways. Ants communicate to each other and send simple messages in a distributed way. There is no central organization and there is no privacy. If ants started keeping secrets, there would be no way to know where the food is, or what the next job should be. Likewise, in a society where privacy is prized highly, lifestyle is a very difficult thing to gauge. In fact, most people’s concept of the ideal lifestyle is actually based on a fictional image portrayed by the media. The only people’s personal lives who you see are celebrities playing real people. Obvious examples of the fiction portrayed by media include: characters never going to the toilet, never having credit card problems, being able to afford high fashion and plasma TVs with a part-time job. All of these examples are the new wave of advertising. It’s about product placement, but more so about lifestyle suggestion.
Since the only rubric we have is provided to us by a media source with a foremost interest in selling, we struggle to keep up to the lifestyle which we believe our fellow humans are leading.

The unfortunate point about all of this is that it has been brought on, not by the greedy corporation, but by the paranoid consumer. Consumer research firms have vast amounts of information about you that your neighbour or even relatives would have no idea about. The food you buy, the clothes you like, the sites you visit, the gum you like; all of these things are on record. Now, is this a bad thing? No, it’s not. How would a company come up with the idea that they need a gum with more punch if they hadn’t found out from statistics? Would you tell them?

Some businesses may be motivated by the sale, but the consumer is the one to please. Granted, most purchases are based on emotional sells, but once again, what is the problem? These information collection agencies spend tons of money to compile information about you. Why shouldn’t they get a share. Just as a scientist who discovers a new cure should get the credit, so should the person who discovers your email.

But they’re selling your information. They are making money from what you can provide for free. Why not step in and take your fair share? You can only get control of your personal information if you are willing to sell it at a reasonable price. Look at peer-to-peer file sharing: it is around because CDs cost too much and bootlegs are unavailable. Likewise, your information is not available from you so one must fall back on to specialized networks and pay top dollar.

Not only are you loosing money by letting others make the sale, you are also loosing out on a vibrant local community. Though mass amounts of information collected by these companies are available, neither you, nor your relatives, nor your close friends have access to it. GAP, McDonalds, Cokes, and all those big corporations you hate are able to survive because of your information. The mom and pop’s groceries store down the street can’t compete; they don’t have the capital to invest into paying for your information. Let me make this clear: local businesses cannot compete because corporate offices know more about those local residents.

So what is there to lose, why not give away your information? Well, the only people who have something to loose are those very people who have access to your information in the first place. Their advantage is that you are obsessed with privacy.

Everything Originates in Fire

gva — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 20:29:55 -0400

My friend Alex Busby just returned from Chennai, India where he was working on visual effects for a feature film. He related to me a philosophical concept about connectedness that he encountered there.

This view touched on everything from microbiology to the tangible realm including details like the chambers of the heart. One of the central ideas was that fire transforms inanimate substances and compounds into living ones -- it is a catalyst. It is held to be the most primal of the elements.

A ritual using coals and lighting fires from other fires was part of the experience Alex described. I hope to learn more about this. Perhaps it is connect with Ayurvdedic medicine or Vedic thought.

Another current to investigate (according my colleague Bob Logan) is the Greek philosopher Heraclites.

Metabolism: The sum of all biochemical processes involved in life

gva — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:54:10 -0400

Definitions of "metabolism" from Answers.com

me·tab·o·lism
n.

1. The chemical processes occurring within a living cell or organism that are necessary for the maintenance of life. In metabolism some substances are broken down to yield energy for vital processes while other substances, necessary for life, are synthesized.

2. The processing of a specific substance within the living body: water metabolism; iodine metabolism.

[From Greek metabole, change, from metaballein, to change : meta-, meta- + ballein, to throw.]

Selected translations for: Metabolism

Dansk (Danish)
n. - metabolisme, stofskifte

Nederlands (Dutch)
metabolisme, stofwisseling

Français (French)
n. - métabolisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Metabolismus, Stoffwechsel

Italiano (Italian)
metabolismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - metabolismo (m)

Español (Spanish)
n. - metabolismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ämnesomsättning

What’s in a Name? Insect Social Systems

gva — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 21:02:33 -0400

Choosing a name for this site was tough. The interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary) focus of my research is one issue. Most important to me was to allude to nature or biology with a term that operates something like the way "biomimicry" does.

This intriguing page provided one of several deciding factors. Deep within its text I discovered that "metabolo = change."

Insect Social Systems - "The study of insect social systems is an active and fascinating field, encompassing many important issues in behavioral ecology, evolutionary theory and even genomics." [del.icio.us/gva]