1) Guy Debord, et. al.”Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation”, Internationale Situationniste, v.1, 1958.

William

Can it be done? It seems that in order to serve as “director” an individual would have to remove himself/herself from the action.  Is it possible to both participate and direct? If so, can the “director” participate to the same degree as a “liver?

2) Lucy Suchman, “Preface” and Situated Actions”, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, Cambridge, 1987.

William

Is situation-less action or thought possible? Previous models of sociology seem to depend, to some extent, to pre-existing cognitive constructions, but Suchman’s discussion upends this dependence, at least when referring to of-the-moment thought and action.  How does goal-setting fit into Suchman’s model, or daydreaming?

3) Malcolm McCullough, “Embedded Gear” and “Situated Types”, Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing and the Environmental Knowing, MIT Press, 2005.

William

McCullough’s statement “Persistent goals in knowledge representation carry over from the world of ambitious desktop artificial intelligence to less versatile, but more numerous instances of information appliances, smart spaces, and interactive environmental controls” encapsulates most of his article.  However, this statement is based on the perceived failure of desktop artificial intelligence to meet situation requirements.  Jumping to less versatile, more numerous “smart things” is to me an odd conclusion, though one tempered by McCullough’s discussion of location-specific filters.  How well does this discussion hold up in a world full of smart phones?  It would seem that they allow more versatile, more numerous things, and in some ways obviate  hyper localized technologies.

Rob-

1.      In the section on shopping, the idea of smart shelves and smart carts is brought up.  This seems like it would be a good idea.  Are there barriers to implementing systems like this (besides just cost of adopting this system) that are the reasons why stores have not tried them out yet?

2.      On page 69, McCullough writes about the new form of locality.  This section (and the descriptions of some of the sensors) seems to be presenting a different way of thinking about digital technology from what many people are used to.  We often think of computer technology as connecting us to places we cannot be, but McCullough says that new devices need to have situational protocols and interact more with the environment around you than what is not around you.

3.      On page 135, McCullough discusses wearable devices that could poll the vicinity and inform the user of various attributes of the people around them, for example who is listening to the same song as them.  This seems as if it would be difficult to use anywhere except where there are very dense numbers of people (maybe a mall, an airport, or a busy downtown), and a lot of people probably aren’t spending too much time in dense enough areas for these to be effective as they were described.