Webstock is an annual event held in Wellington for folks working in the web. It ships in luminaries in the web world to run workshops and to present at a two-day conference. I’ve attended every single Webstock to date and I’ve always been inspired. Last year for example Matt Jone’s talk, “The demon haunted world”, captured my imagination about ubiquitous computing and inspired me to enrol in a Master’s thesis.
This year Webstock gave me a gift (thank you Webstock!): A space in Adam Greenfield’s workshop, “Systems/Layers: A walkshop on networked urbanism”. I drew heavily on Adam’s work in my thesis proposal, particularly his book “Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing” which was published in 2006, and which remains hugely relevant in 2010.
The goal of the workshop?
What we’re looking for are appearances of the networked digital in the physical, and vice versa: apertures through which the things that happen in the real world drive the “network weather,” and contexts in which that weather affects what people see, confront and are able to do (Greenfield, 2010).
In particular we were asked to look for:
- Places where information is being collected by the network.
- Places where networked information is being displayed.
- Places where networked information is being acted upon – either by people directly, or by physical systems that affect the choices people have available to them.
(Greenfield, 2010)
We met at Duke Carvell’s in Wellington’s Cuba quarter – my neighbourhood – and proceeded to walk and to note the network in action.
Over the course of an hour, Adam pointed out curiosities previously unnoticed. This was my ‘hood. Yet, I had not seen rooftops bristling with aerials, streets covered by security cameras, and buildings shielding black boxes. It was mind blowing and I was reminded of Michel de Certeau’s (1984) blind urban walkers.
“They walk – an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers, Wandersmänner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban “text” they write without being able to read it. These practitioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen; their knowledge of them is as blind as that of lovers in each other’s arms. The paths that corresponded in this intertwining, unrecognized poems in which each body is an element signed by others , elude legibility (de Certeau, 1984, p. 93).
My friend, Alex Herdman, also attended the workshop. This was serendipitous for two reasons. Firstly, he had a great camera and secondly I had someone to unpack my thoughts with.
So what did I get out of this? – A new way of seeing and more questions than answers. Public spaces are becoming less democratic: We forfeit our privacy when we enter into these spaces (indeed much of the city is not for the public). How do we make people aware of this?
Oh, and rather awesomely, the workshop was filmed so you can get a glimpse of what it was like.
References
de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. California: University of California Press.
Greenfield, A. (2010). Systems/Layers: A walkshop on networked urbanism [Workshop handout]. Wellington, New Zealand: Webstock.
