1. Weiser’s article, about 5 years before the internet was a household name, set about to ask that technology become invisible, and through that he goes on to define ubiquitous computing. A world that is filled with technological wonders that constantly engage us at every turn. he writes about the pen and tablet as if they were a natural thing, as if we were born with them in our hands. However, the use of these tools was learned. Similarly, there;s a learning curve that comes with all technologies. Certainly use would be easier if the design allowed for things to fade into the background, but even that takes a long time to acclimate to. While many of the tools he refers to exist today, I wonder what, if anything, is a natural interface for a computer or electronic device? Is it the nature of the tools that they manifest in any shape and size we can imagine, or is there a basic quality (like the fulcrum action of a hammer) that can be exploited to truly belnd it into our lives.
2. Mitchell writes of the potentials of telecommunication as it related to architectural spaces, and how network technology has transformed our sense of space. It’s striking to me that so many of his examples still rely on the screen as a primary interface, when there’s a lot of ambient information that can be used in these same designs that can also inform us of where others are, and what their spaces are like. Instead of treating information as data, we can think of it as a way of more deeply connecting through the mediation of a network. At the end of the article, he gets into some of the potential pitfalls in the utopian scenario he lays out, but it seems like an afterthought. It all comes across as something that Aldous Huxley would have written. There’s more cybernetic streaks in here as well, particularly when discussing department stores dispatching sale clerks to places where there are customers waiting. While much of this has come to pass, perhaps not exactly in the way he described but close enough, what happens to the spaces that were formerly optimized for particular purposes?  Does the former bank with a large vaulted ceiling become a warehouse for distributing food to people’s homes from online orders? Does the bookstore become a UPS store? Beyond the immediate reuse of spaces, how does the community react? Those whom are displaced?
3. I’d just like to kick back some of Dunne’s statements about a lack of artists and designers engaging with technology. In the late 1960s, as digital technologies, particularly the computer, was starting to gain traction in public consciousness, Bell Labs sponsored Experiments in Art and Technology, a series of events that brought artists together with engineers to try their hand at making works that leveraged emerging tools in an effort to make technology more accessible to the larger population. While these petered out in the early 70s, a precedent was set for experimentation. However, until recently, there are not a many widely publicized scenarios like EAT. New places that encourage this hybrid mode of thinking through new media as a means of generating knowledge are worth mentioning. The School for Poetic Computation in New York City (their motto is “more poetry, less demo”) is one such example, another is the School of Machines, Making and Make-believe in Berlin. What specific ways can we reintroduce wonder,mystery, and art into tools that are by their very nature designed for control. Is it through the hardware, software, application, or an inflection point of all three?

This project was mentioned by Dunne. I love it.