City Machine

City Machine Tim Kindberg ICPS 2010, Berlin

Talk Overview
Urban Computing
The city as a system
Presence and flows of the virtual and the real
Implications for service design
Krstl
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Augmenting the city ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

My background
Ubicomp projects with an angle on the city
Cooltown (mostly interiors despite its name)
Cityware
Mobile Bristol
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Based at Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol
pmstudio.co.uk
Artists, designers, technologists
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

1/5 Introduction

Urban environments
Opportunity
Huge potential for valuable services and apps
Panoply of spaces: retail, leisure, civic…
Challenges
Density & volatility
Immutability of much existing fabric
The urban wild
Many stakeholders; digital divide
Security and privacy threats
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

The urban majority?
Half the world's population lives in urban areas
“ In principle, cities offer a more favourable setting for the resolution of social and environmental problems than rural areas” (UNFPA)
“ Poverty is now growing faster in urban than in rural areas. One billion people live in urban slums … Although urbanization increasingly concentrates poverty, it also provides possibilities for escaping it.” (UNFPA)
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

What if the city was a machine?
As the web is a machine
Humans, software, hardware, building materials…
What would be its architecture? Services? Applications?
Its (political) geography?
Currently “urban computing” = standalone applications
On phones and some embedded
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Of course I don't mean... ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 Metropolis Fritz Lang

Automobiles & the city ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 howwedrive.com

Software & the city? ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

My agenda 1. Embed the Digital in the Physical
Useful or playful services & applications tuned to our circumstances and needs
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

2. The City as a System
Rush-hour tube train: 100 iPods @ 20GB each = 2TB @ 33 km/hour => 0.2 TB/sec
How can we meaningfully realise such aggregations?
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Goal
Urban pervasive services with wheels
How well does your service connect with city?
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

2/5 Examples

London congestion charge ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Real-time tube trains
http://traintimes.org.uk:81/map/tube/ (API still suspended?!)
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Helsinki energy consumption ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 http://www.pixelache.ac/nuage-blog/

City as a game board
e.g. igFest games in Bristol
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 http://igfest.org /

Subtlemobs (c.f. flashmobs)
"Imagine walking through a film, but it’s happening on the streets you live in”
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 Duncan Speakman

3/5 Presence and Flows

Presence & flows vs location
In the city, location is often important but equally presence - what is around us - is significant
Many valuable city spaces are in between : they aren't locations that anyone has mapped
And may not be amenable to GPS mapping
From a wider perspective, cities are in flux
How does the virtual flow in relation to the real?
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Presence-based services
Context is highly dynamic
C.f. Google web crawling
Search by (what, city-proximity) instead of (what, where)
E.g. Bluetooth/WiFi discovery
“ Proximity” is hard
Salience and appropriateness
Real time
Convenience
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Physical hyperlinks
Borrow from web: “this thing in front of me”
<a href= “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pero's_Bridge”> </a>
Anchor is physical
Technologies
Barcode, NFC/RFID, Infrared, ...
Cooltown/web of things/real-world wide web
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Tokyo hyperlinks ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Cooltown, Google-style, 10 years on
>100,000 window stickers with QR codes mailed to US restaurants, shops etc.
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Hyperlinks in the wild
What is the catchment area of a hyperlink?
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 BBC Coast Mobile Experience, Glasgow

Embedding matrix ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 Physical Virtual Explicit Digital Sign 2D Barcode Implicit Actuated Fountain Mediascape, AR

Physical, explicit embedding ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Embedding matrix ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 Physical Virtual Explicit Digital Sign 2D Barcode Implicit Actuated Fountain Mediascape, AR

Mediascapes
Playing a GPS/RF-triggered game at the Tower of London
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 http://www.mscapers.com/

Augmented reality Image / location / compass
Superimposition, pointing
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 HP’s WebSign (2001)

Sense and sensibility in the urban wild
Sensors: inaccurate and readings not always available
How to design for that?
Mediascapes
Adapt narrative for inaccuracy, local situation (seams)
AR
Works with barcodes but doesn't scale well without them in the wild
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Piazza Matteotti, Udine
People talking on mobile phones
Crossing the piazza (left) and lingering on the piazza (right) in the afternoon
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 Joachim R. Höflich

Space Syntax
Hillier and Hanson (1984)
Analyses cities as systems of space created by physical artefacts of architecture and urban design
How are aggregate human movement and other behaviours related to spatial design?
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Bluetooth in Bath
About 10% of all people walking along a Bath street over various times had Bluetooth switched on and discoverable
[O’Neill et al, Ubicomp 2006]
Flows of Bluetooth in Bath obeyed Space Syntax predictions, just as flows of people did

4/5 The algebra of real life

Algebra
Algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning the study of the rules of operations and relations , and the constructions and concepts arising from them
Abstraction
Solving for unknowns
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Spatial and temporal symmetries ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

City abstraction: Tube map
Remove all context but stations
Topology (relations) vs geometry
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 Harry Beck 1931

Operators: Pervasive Verbs, Nouns
Inform
Suggest
Remember
Control
…
The GET & POST of Ubicomp at the human level?
System model is teleological, not ontological
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Discovery: solving for unknowns
Discovery is a process in the (socio-technical-physical) city machine
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 Harbourside cafe Watershed

Physical twitter: discovering the hashtag for here ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Bluetooth names & culture of in situ media sharing ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14 self others default name association graffiti / t-shirt direct address Bluetooth “awareness” Ima kettle Pick me pick me Madonna Adam J Taylor Nokia 3230 Nokia 6280 wayne beer boy M.U.F.C OK! Free downloads? Pocket PC TomTom GO 300 Ami Anna’s phone x x carla x x Chris 07886****** Crown Jools Messy Dawg Snagglepuss The Man From Delmonte... Biker chic Bolton Everton Pezza’s girl bonjour tutti! Call_me Clear off! F*** off u **** Jokes On U Porn please Send me porn Someone’s phone Tish - Send Me Stuff! VIRUS ALERT!! 4 a gay time call 077… BÃ©z >>}Â¥{<< Ho in training $LiK JiM MilkWasABad Choice

Volatility and abstraction
Bluetooth discovery on or near a street takes a long time on many mobile phones
Wrong system assumption
“ Failure” (to obtain the name of a travelling phone) is routine
Abstractions in our discovery “algebra” need to work despite this volatility
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Krstl
Networked crystals: collectively programmable “content stations” for urban spaces
Shops, shopping centres, pubs, cafes, transport hubs,...
Delivery network for location- unique and location-specific content
WiFi and Bluetooth – any phone
matter2media.com/ technology
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Krstl
Visitors
Coupons, content, experiences that can't be (easily) obtained elsewhere
Space owners
Curate content & experiences to reverse trend to online
Campaigners
Target information/advertisement by space
C.f. foursquare.com etc.
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Crystal journeys: crystals as content stations
Individual human journeys
Journeys of services/content
Commercial logic: influence human journeys
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

5/5 Conclusions

Main points
Presence and flows vs location
Social/material embedding & interconnections
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

The algebra of real life
Topology vs geometry
Relations e.g. presence
Teleology vs ontology
Pervasive operators e.g. verbs
Narrative & experience vs services & devices
Discovery (solving for unknowns) is a human/computational/material process
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

The Knowledge
Not just the science of services but also...
Sociology
Urban planning/architecture
Economics
Urban geography
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

Thank you! Questions?
www.matter2media.com
[email_address]
ICPS 2010, Berlin, 2010-07-14

City Machine

by matter 2 media on Jul 25, 2010

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City Machine — Presentation Transcript