I've been reading Yvonne Rogers' 2006 article, "Moving on from Weiser's vision of of calm computing: engaging UbiComp experiences." Rogers is a professor at Open University, and a longtime
About fifteen years ago (!!!) Mark Weiser proposed that the aim of design in an age of ubiquitous computing ought to be to create "calm technology." As Weiser
This is a Prezi outlining my contemplative computing work. I initially created it for a talk at Microsoft Research, but expect I'll be updating it over the next couple
I woke up some time before 6 this morning, roused myself out of bed after a while, and got my morning started.
The house I've rented is a century-old place, with singing pipes and radiators that deliver a certain amount of heat. It's actually fairly cozy in some rooms, which is nice; the bathroom includes some fixtures-- including a gravity toilet and a cast-iron water tank that would kill whoever it fell on-- that I suspect are original, or if not are built to last the ages.
my road, via flickr
After many months of proposals, preparation, visas, rallying parents, reassuring children, and wondering how elderly cats would handle it, I'm finally in England-- in Cambridge, starting my three-month visit at Microsoft Research.
I started last night, on the evening flight out of San Francisco, and ended around dinnertime, when I got into the flat (technically a terrace house, I think) we're subletting. About 18 hours all told, though none of it was really stressful: heavy yes, thanks to my having brought two suitcases (I am going to be here for three months, after all), but not really difficult. The bus even took me into downtown Cambridge, more or less, to the station on the edge of Parker's Piece, rather than the car and park on the edge of town (damn you, National Express Web site-- I could only buy a ticket as far as the Park and Ride on the edge of town, but the driver was fine about letting me go into city centre).
After I got things more or less sorted out I went out and wandered around the town a little. Naturally I headed for the town center, walking past St. John's and Gonville and Caius, then up along the market.
Dan Ariely has a good post about why our current "productivity tools" generate time-wasting or addictive behavior: he looks to B. F. Skinner's work on "schedules of reinforcement"
On the downside of ease: [Learning things] the hard way's hard, but not as hard as the easy way. (Esmeralda Weatherwax, in Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies)
Via Lifehacker, a nice little essay on "the chokehold of calendars," and how we've accidentally (or thoughtlessly) designed them to kill our productivity and concentration: The idea of
Two weeks to Cambridge and counting... [To the tune of Kenneth Gilbert, "Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 - Prelude & Fugue #3 In C Sharp, BWV 848,"
In the New York Times, Edinburgh philosopher Andy Clark has a nice essay on embodied cognition. If you’re familiar with his book Natural Born Cyborgs, you’ll already know
