I suppose I large part of a successful mobile app intervention/invention is also to get a wide enough user base. Seems like this web platform does not have a mobile app endeavor yet and would like to see if I could partner with them, perhaps design the app together with them, to engage bartering in a more physical realm, catalyzing serendipitous matching of people with surplus and need.

https://ourgoods.org/projects

 

The following data was logged during the studio bike ride on Tuesday with the iphone app, MapMyRun. The data is more interesting than I originally thought since the pace was measured in realtime, and not as an average at the end. You can see the variable pace graphed along with the elevational data, which gives us a better understanding of the route. Rather than the trip takes us 50 min to complete, we know where we were the slowest, and can better identify the conditions that effect bike traffic (ie: road conditions, car traffic, multiple crosswalks etc.)

 

I speak French as well as James speaks Spanish, but I think you’ll get the point of this video.

If the future is sharing information, resources, and physical spaces, how can we facilitate the process of sharing in cross cultural interactions? Multiple studies reveal that in urban settings where different cultural groups coexist there are high levels of segregation and a lower use of the public space. Cultural frictions can translate into racism, violence, xenophobia, and become obstacles for development. At a global scale, intolerance for other people’s ways of life has resulted in ethnocide. Wades Davis in his Ted Talk Dreams from Endangered Cultures encourages us to value our ethnosphere as it is humanity’s great legacy. In this lecture Davis quotes Margaret Mead’s greatest fear, “as we drifted towards this blandly amorphous generic world view not only would we see the entire range of the human imagination reduced to a more narrow modality of thought, but that we would wake from a dream one day having forgotten there were even other possibilities.”

Tolerance and respect for other people’s way of living can start being address at an urban scale. Cross cultural interactions are battlegrounds where notions of tolerance and respect get tested. During the semester I plan to develop strategies to encourage and facilitate these interactions.  

Now I don’t speak spanish, but the website from this video has some great information on open-source information sharing, and envisions how it will eventually be integrated into everyday life. In any case, the video is wonderfully mesmerizing.

Think Big:

How can the physical environment read our digital layers to connect strangers of similar interests?

• When people connect and converse over like interests, a sharing of knowledge occurs. Further, more complex ideas can begin to emerge through these conversations that can perhaps enhance society as a whole. How can our digital layers begin to emerge in daily life so these physical connections can occur?

 

Start Small:

• Interviews: Lisa Valela, Program Coordinator Harvard Graduate Commons. Susan Keller, Assistant Director Harvard Real Estate. Nashid Nabian, GSD Urban Planning. Jifei Ou, MIT Media Lab Tangible Media Group. Miscellaneous Cafe Goer #1. Miscellaneous Cafe Goer #2.
• Videos of individuals working in public settings to begin to understand modes of focus.
• Case studies including means of: innovative workplaces, knowledge sharing,  stranger connection, GPS location systems, technology embedded furniture, urban library / book share, cafe culture, etc.

 

Act Now:

• Orchestrated spontaneity to occur week of 9/24

 

What is my map telling me?

 

 

« Previous 1 … 34 35 36 37 38 Next »

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

networkedurbanism: This website has been created solely for educational purposes, and not for profit or commercial distribution of any kind. All rights from the content belong to the authors or to the corresponding educational institutions.

ABOUT US . CONTACT . 2012