I said I was over it, but here’s one belly of the beast I wouldn’t mind entering: there’s an internship open at Intel Labs for their Urban Probes project. Intel have done some interesting, Situationist-inspired stuff about urbanism and mobility lately, like Asphalt Games, which originally came from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where Abe is at the moment. Yes, it’s co-option, but it’s nonetheless very interesting co-option, which is better than all the less-than-interesting co-option I’ve done for the last few years…
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Yesterday we caught up with Maria and James before they went back to London. James is doing user interface R&D for Symbian devices, and he had some tantalising things to say about the delineation of “sitting forward” and “sitting back” activities in a mobile UI context. I’ve been wanting to get in on this stuff ever since I wrote a paper on wireless futures four years ago:
Unlike the desktop Internet’s browsing model, the wireless device arena requires more of a boomerang model, in which elegantly returning is more important than doggedly navigating.
Since then, I never had the time or institutional space to adequately explore the implications and possibilities of mobile interactivity, so perhaps that’s something to aim for. Not the internship in particular, but a commitment to thinking and practising technosocial mobility in various projects.
