the videos from LIFT07 have been uploaded, so go check them out here.

some to definitely take a listen to for their eloquence, insight and downright fun…

ben cerveny

brian cox

regine debatty/france cadet

julian bleecker

lee bryant

jan chipchase

so sxsw interactive starts this weekend in austin, and the amazing people at the beal are sending me down to community build and meet up with the people from peachpit who published the book. i am pretty excited to be heading to texas – this conference is going to be insane – i can’t believe how many people there will be. everything really is bigger in texas. (*cues crickets*)

and it will be almost 30C.

i’m looking forward to a number of the speakers – will wright (will ya just release spore? please?!), bruce sterling, kathy sierra and dan rather (!) have not-to-miss-talks, and there’s a fully packed program of brain candy to choose from. and then there’s the social events. thanks to will and dave for their tips on where to go!

unfortunately, the particular toronto contingent from LIFT07 will not be in full force, but the potential for another merry band of instigators exists… as well, it’ll be great to meet up with my pal noel (who was in geneva), as he gets ready for his luck of seven adventure (go donate!!!), and a few others from LIFT. *hurrah*

i’ll be blogging and updating as much as i can throughout – which i’ve promised myself will be more often than not. (:P) talk to y’all soon!

1: i have the flu. i am feverish and achey, unsettled by the timing, and yet happily awaiting an emergency soup delivery.

2: last night i was invited to dinner by the incredibly gracious and hospitable mark and tonya surman, for a casual and insightful discussion about opencities – an upcoming project i’ve a hand in developing. a wonderful evening talking with friends old and new – each of us revealing how the idea of an open city is personally critical and meaningful. what i understood to be a central theme was the need is to transcend and unify the issues, barriers and perspectives that mediate our experience and intent within a particular community.

how? the approach is open - open source ideology and practice, open access to education, information, resources and culture; open narratives, open space, open business, open unconferences. i see this as an interesting opportunity to mesh the philosophies with the techniques. will they work? how will these ideas merge with social institutions or structures? with our expectations ? what’s the middle ground here? what are the new relationships? new power structures? no idea – but you kind of have to try and find out…

why? a multitude of reasons – each specific to our own motivations and assumptions and goals. it makes me think more about the notion of communities of values – connections or groupings (a la stowe boyd) formed through the most meaningful connections – our values. moving beyond communities of purpose, interest, or practice, these revolve around our beliefs. our ethos. our integrity. the will that fuels our intent, our curiosity and our passion, driving us towards fulfillment, whatever it may be.

at this stage this idea of communities of values is still abstract, and there needs to be a bit more salt thrown into the perspective to ground it. tonya eloquently stated that part of the opencities project is unifying communities of value with communities of place, bringing it back to what is proximal and intimate while still encouraging porousity between the two.

what do y’all think?

#3 after the jump

3: after a bit of reflection, i still think that LIFT07 was a fabulous event and opportunity, but i’ve tempered my enthusiasm a touch. while the conference’s strength was in attracting the types of people who are interested in conversation, and then facilitating that exchange through relevant, accessible content, participant driven aspects to the content streams, and many aspects of intensive group learning experience, a part of me craves – in retrospect – more.

more process, more risk, more vulnerability, more edge. i wish the speakers and the people who attended no disrespect in this – what was presented was full of insight and represented a enormously well-developed base of knowledge and practice. wow. but in some ways it was clean and polished. it fit within reasonable conference expectations.

after the fact, a part of me was left asking about the conversation of their process. the messy part of their ideas. where were the questions that they were asking? their doubt? new tangents? critical new discoveries and the uncertainties that they reveal? i’m willing to bet that almost every person there is involved in ideas that are slightly risky, slightly beyond their control where the edges fray a bit.

i’m interested in understanding why they felt LIFT07 wasn’t the place for those threads to emerge. what was it about the context of content and conversation and exchange that prevented provocative ideas from being discussed? was it the breadth and range of participants? the place? what would’ve happened if the conversation and explorations that occurred after the sessions had occurred during them as well? would it have all fallen apart? become so disjointed as to prevent understanding? perhaps…

as well, what does this reflect about me and my sets of expectations? maybe it’s the past 8 years or so working as an artist that makes me seek out ruptures and connections. the beal perspective definitely plays a role as well…

i learned so much over the week at LIFT07 – the impact is both broad and deep and has changed my life in more ways than i’m aware. because of the people, it opened my eyes to new forms of conferences and gatherings which i believe have so.much.potential for further success, to continue to grow and push out against the traditional. i look forward to seeing how much more it can be, what else it can be.

Was it real? The three days went by me in a blur.

Perhaps. I like how Riccardo Cambiassi summed it up in a twitter chirp. Riccardo is one of the people whom I wanted to meet at Lift07 as I only knew him from his online presence and twitterfoo. See, there is no virtual without real, they are two conjugated images that form a whole.

What was Lift07 about? I added a word to the Lift lexicon: culture.

Oh well, heavens, it was about me! Stowe said it, social = me first. Who would argue with that kind of logic? Not I, not really, not today, and I do like to argue with Stowe Boyd, except this time I went out of his way.

The minute that I arrived in Geneva for Lift07 on Wednesday last week, I was in absorption mode. Most certainly I was not playing it safe either, few people were. If you do go to my favorites on Flickr, you will find that I favorited mostly pictures of myself or people whom I already knew, and there are a few fresh faces here and there. I stayed within my circle of friends, and those who had something to tell me, or wanted something from me, they found me. I got up on stage.

what happened
I found myself on Open Stage with a talk containing one sweet piece of logic, but before I could get to it, I got hung up on the third slide with all the emotion that I did not want to show. It got me, and I had debated long and hard as to whether I was going to keep that slide in the presentation. On stage I found myself sharing how a man whose intellect I admired, and who was not a friend, had done something that made me change the course of action in my life. I tend towards drift. Drift, dissipation, entropy are all favorite dynamic forms of energy to me. Once in a while I need a wake-up call, just to be reminded that perhaps I ought to look again and see if my dreams and my actions are still aligned. Often, I discover misalignment and the task is then to bring back some order into the dynamic of it all. In 1992, I had lost sight of my dreams, and google was not yet invented, I had to take another route towards finding them again. I left the world of physics and academic research to go on to learn about communication, business, and strategic management… but my talk was not about me, nor was it about a suicidal physicist, it was about life and its nature.

about inspiration
I do not get all my inspiration from dead men who committed suicide, I also get it from men who are rather alive and kicking. For the Knowledge Ownership presentation I was also inspired by Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, Lawrence Lessig and David Galipeau. The logic of it all in that presentation centers around language, representational language, and the very creation – invention – of culture through language. While on language let me add a note to my use of the words man and men. To me a man is genderless and it is a figure of speech, it is not about gender.

ab initio
I have found preciously few useful tools to deal with what we all call information overflow. I drown in it like everybody else, and then on occasions i go totally off the grid into the analog ecosystem with some paper and pen and jot down my ideas or listen to the ocean at the beach. However to tackle the essence of what knowledge ownership might be I needed another approach. There is enough information and scientific data out there to corroborate or underline just about any theory or opinion that you may come up with, it borders on total meaninglessness. I chose an ab initio approach, that is, from first principles. I have based my observations on my own knowledge in solid state physics and quantum mechanics, with the help from the contributions of Benoit Mandelbrot, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Bertrand Russel, Kurt Gödel, Richard Sennett, Christof Koch, Gregory Bateson, Lance H Gunderson and C S Holling, to name a few of the major influencers of my thinking.

what we all know, and tend to not want to make use of
We – humans – we are just one. The same animal that gets up in the morning and has breakfast un-showered, is the same animal who shows up at the office in suit and tie – or whatever equivalent – for negotiations, job interviews or a dry key financial indicators presentation. But that is not the end of the story, we are really just one, just one culture. we all know this, and we all know that this is not all, there is a paradox of existence that needs to be balanced, the we and the I.

knowledge ownership
Knowledge ownership was just the starting point, I wanted to get to culture, and a new understanding of culture that is inclusive of our technology, including the technology of relationships. Technology of relationships has nothing to do with the Silicon or whatever crystalline or quasi-crystalline quantum well or nanostructure construct that actually pushed the electrons inside the hardware bits and pieces in your machine while you were twittering, much less does it have to with any piece of lousy code that you are so fond of calling social software. The technology of relationships has all to do on how we interact with one another in all aspects of our lives, from the professional to the deeply personal.
As a so called knowledge worker, how do you best leverage that which you have, and earn a living in dignity? After all, do we want more? Don’t we work out of necessity? If the necessity was not material, it would be spiritual. Necessity is necessity and necessity drives invention, it creates culture.

knowledge vs. information
I wanted to distinguish knowledge from information. David sees knowledge as talking with conviction, and that is as good a place to start the distinction as any other. Talking takes place in the language domain, and conviction has a spiritual aspect, there is an element of something that one believes in or a view that is strongly held to one’s own sense of identity or being, it is not about just talk and babbling, that would be information, not knowledge. The transmission of information does not require cognition, just cables. The conversion of information to knowledge does require cognition, or say intelligence.

In the presentation I made this distinction by going through the 7×7 slide to arrive at the Si (111) 7×7 surface reconstruction as shown in an atomic force microscope image in one of the slides. This physical observation teaches us two things. First, when a crystal is cleaved and a fresh surface of atoms is exposed, the top layers of atoms, in this case the top three, will rearrange and reconfigure so as to minimize energy. Second, crystals have properties, or attributes that are different from atoms, they are collective properties or cohesive properties that arise from energetic interactions in space and time. A single isolated atom in vacuum has no cohesive properties.

You start to get the idea of the nature of knowledge if you start to recognize that all these representations have acquired a precise meaning through the internalization of information in an (conscious) cognitive process. Furthermore that process is not one of an isolated human absorbing it in the absence of its social ecosystem, after all somebody created the information. Humans do not survive in an adiabatic isolated social system, that is without exchange of energy in which ever form. Once one has dwelled on this idea for a while, it is easy to see that the two have different attributes. Knowledge has fast access times, is dynamic, representable, transmissable, intrinsic, and intangible while information is slow, static, archival, transferable, extrinsic and tangible. Looked at it from this perspective it is clear that the two are not of the same logical type and thus in terms of determining the intrinsically and practically of its ownership, not equivalent.

With this distinction in hand, the matter of ownership and leverage of that ownership can be negotiated. It will be interesting to get into the issue of why ownership is relevant, and what all of this has to do with culture, language, representations and the theme of LIFT07, namely the challenges and opportunities of technology in our society. There are plenty and the world is just fine the way it is, there is just a lot of work to do.

who invented culture?
The invention of culture is to me a bit of a no brainer, but a fun one at that. Culture has to do with the expression of behaviour, in particular collective behaviour. Where else could it come from? UNESCO defines culture in terms of the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features a society or a social group, and that it encompases, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs. I would prefer to rephrase this as culture is the cohesive expression of human behaviour. Culture is to humans what cohesive properties are to crystals. To draw this parallel has some consequences that are far reaching if we explore it further. Then it could be that this easy only to a solid state physicist, and the rest of you are not particularly impressed. None the less, do try to think of what this might mean, and what pragmatic consequences you may be able to derive from it.

my culture is digital, how about yours?
When you look at it in detail the world is digital, and so is culture. It is both digital and analog has always been just an approximation of the digital nature. This seems very far fetched to most of us used to think of digital as the bits and bytes and analog as electrical currents flowing in copper wires. But think again. Current is carried by electrons. What are those? What is the process that allows a current to propagate?

Now, take an imaginary voyage inside one of those atoms that is, for example, on that Si crystal. An atom is mostly empty space, and there is good evidence that it has a nucleus and some electrons orbiting around it. The electrons are caught in the field created by the nucleus and the orbits can be described using the tools of quantum mechanics. Then continue your voyage within the nucleus itself. Again, what is it like in there? Bryan Cox gave you an idea that again there are nuclear particles making up the nucleus and those are held together by some forces that physicist not quite understand in their entirety, thus they have called upon strings and Higgs to help them sort out the mess. It is all rather abstract, rather aesthetic and very real, this is the physical world, and the further down in the detail you dig, the more discrete structure you find. You do not find a continuum, it is not analog. I would stretch the terminology a bit and say that matter itself is digital, and with it equate digital with the quantization of matter, either the electron is there (1) or it is not (0).

ab initio II
If you managed to get this far, you are wondering where on earth I am leading you to. I started by wanting to get some access to what our culture today and knowledge ownership can be accessed and used in order to move the ball forwards and fulfill our expectations of the world.

There is a whole lot that we can learn from all that is already accessible through our culture. Here is my take home list of subjects or principles worth tackling and integrating to create a more cohesive picture of complexity:

1. Non linear processes. These processes exhibit interdependent, adaptive, learning, emergent and ambiguous behaviors.
2. Incompleteness.
3. Self-oranization
4. Self-similarity
5. Autopoiesis
6. Uncertainty

conclusion
The internet is a public space, so is the stage. In a culture dominated by complexity the various ecosystems need to interact, adapt, and learn in the process of self-organizing. The internet does however is a much valuable resource to a complex system, it provides connectedness at the communication level. In any evolving complex dynamic system speeds are important. Why? I think that I need to go into this at another time, just consider for now the effect of two interacting systems, what happens when they are trying to communicate and one is very fast in transmission and the other very slow in reception?

Now I allow myself a few quantum leaps forward and assert that what was very evident for me at Lift07 was the rise of public man. We are having public conversations, we are discussing and thinking in public and as a collective. Indeed, social is me first. But when I am me first and out there in the public, the cohesive emerges. That is the beauty of it for me, that is what happens. This happened to me on stage.

——-

I am still a writer, a physicist, a mother, and I am still trying to make ends meet. Nothing has changed, and yet nothing is the same any more. I still want to live in Geneva, an idea that I have had for a few years, I just need a few clients there, preferably in leadership development. See, being selfish is the most pure of all utopias. Think about it!

Thanks to Laurent and the whole team. You guys have done a fantastic job, you pushed yourselves beyond the confines of expectation, and you surpassed reality, you created it. There is something happening in Geneva, and I want to be there making it happen. Thanks for giving me a stage for learning, after all that is what life and sharing it is all about.

Although I laboured for hours on this text, I am clear that some logical incongruities – plus mispellings, fragmented sentences or typos – may have passed unnoticed. I look forward to your comments and feedback.

Technorati Tags: complexity, culture, danniejost, digital, knowledge, language, lift07, liftconference, ownership, public

DSCF1232.JPG, uploaded by liftconferencephotos.

Laurent Haug, David Galipeau and Dannie Jost.

My Favorites on Flickr

Technorati Tags: lift07, liftconference, photos

wow. it’s over. feeling sorta like a deflated balloon.

i spent last week in geneva, switzerland at LIFT07, an amazing conference about what we can do with new technologies – challenges, opportunities, possible futures… whose goal is to: connect people who are passionate about new applications of technology and propel their conversations into the broader world to improve life and work.

it was an amazing week – packed to the brim with incredible people, provocative ideas, fantastic conversations and lots and lots of cheese. The premise for this conference, and what makes it stand out from just about very other event i’ve attended, is that the organizers have a strong sense of what these events are about – the people. yes the presentations must be relevant, meaningful, critical and well thought out, as well as good, but what people really take away is the conversations, the contacts and the relationships.

and so LIFT was super successful because the nature of that intent was reflected throughout – in the ‘official’ sessions, the participant sessions, the extra-curricular events and other details that emphasized community and exchange. but you have to want it – the experience is only as meaningful as you make it.

the self-organized contingent (i know there’s a ton of ppl missing in that link cluster …)worked hard at meeting people at LIFT, building up connections and conversations. i’m seeing those conversations morph into something else now as the flurry of linkedin, flickr and facebook connections explodes all over the place. i love how it’s growing beyond itself.
in terms of the sessions and ideas – wow! *pink mist* all over the place. highlights include…

nicolas nova and bill cockayne’s workshop on ‘designing the future’ – using critical foresight and research tools developing holistic analysis and future scenarios. i found myself continually making connections and finding similarities between what nicolas and bill presented and what we do at the beal. the perspectives were bangon – in terms of looking across an extensive scope of culture, history, technology, economy, etc, etc. realizing that we exist as part of a greater system, and that we cannot underestimate our role or impact in that when creating future understandings and opportunities. i like the toolsets that they provided, good for structuring and playing with initial research directions. my caveat in this regard is that tools like that need to be used with care – do the constraints of the tool allow for flexibility and freedom over the course of research?

other awesome things…

ben cerveny’s talk on the luminous bath completely blew my mind… one of the most elegant and provocative discussions using the biomimetic perspective as a way to extract patterns and understanding from complex systems.

suren erkman – the future of hyperindustrial economy. super interesting discussion of how the ecological and physiological metaphor can be extended to industrial economies as a way of positioning and mediating opportunity within a rapidly changing market scope; ie – what would the impact/implications of dematerialization, converging technologies (nano, bio, info science and cognition), cascading resources and proactive innovation? areas of pursuit touched upon immaterial industry and economies (value add=knowledge and service), strategies of maturation and systemic cooperation, and creating a framework for measuring industrial or economic metabolism.

what else?…

sugata mitra and the outdoctrination of education. my utmost respect to this man. the hole in the wall project. self-organized knowledge exchange and growth among poor children. empowerment. as well, sugata posited the most critical questions at LIFT. when we talk about the digital divide – between those who have the access, skills and infrastrucure to accept and leverage new technologies – he asks,
“why are we, in the west, so concerned with implementation and dissemination of technological capability in china, india, africa, rather than, say, brighton? why is there such a push to develop the developing world – why has the focus shifted towards this area? (to which i ask – what has our focus shifted away from?) as well, do the ‘underdeveloped’ want to be developed? what would happen if we left them alone? what does it threaten?”

this isn’t to justify either pushing or resisting technological democracy and development, but rather to bring an element of honesty and integrity to the landscape. why is there such hype? to perpetuate an ideology? to sustain an economic system? to socialize nations to be more accepting of a particular system of values, to believe that accepting these values are necessary to participate in the system?

the questions cascade. this is i think the start of a much bigger post, but for not for today.

two final ideas from sugata: technology emerges from those who have a problem to solve. a difficult problem that needs a solution can immediately affect change.

the roots of the digital divide lie in establishing and sharing the key competencies of what technology enables, through education.

Clark Elliott est au départ un psycho-sociologue, spécialisé dans la conception d’ensemble d’espaces de travail, notamment pour des entreprises du secteur des technologies. Il possède sa propre société de conseil et travaille avec l’entreprise immobilière CB Richard Ellis.

La conception d’un espace de travail nécessite une véritable intégration entre espaces, personnes et technologies. C’est une manière de susciter et conduire le changement, dans un domaine, l’organisation du travail, où les organisations comme les individus sont très conservateurs.

Que pourrait être un environnement de travail à l’ère des réseaux ? Après avoir analysé les échanges réels entre les gens, indépendamment de la hiérarchie, Elliott a commencé à créer des “zones d’activités” adaptées non pas à un poste de travail, mais à des activités différentes : conférence, réunion informelle, café, passer un coup de fil, travailler sur un document, lire… la dimension essentielle étant celle des échanges avec les autres (citation du DSI de Procter & Gamble : “le nouveau labo de R&D est le coin café”), de la connexion entre les gens. Mais il faut aussi des espaces de concentration, de discussions privées.

Ce genre d’organisation est rendue facile par les technologies mobiles et portables, et les réseaux Wi-Fi. On réinvente des bureaux à roues ; certains travaillent debout ; des “points d’eau” émergent pour recharger un appareil mobile, télécharger ses mails, et repartir. Les gens peuvent en permanence choisir leur lieu et forme de travail.

La tendance est donc au développement d’espaces communs pour favoriser la collaboration ; au développement d’espaces de travail non-affectés à une personne donnée ; à la planification personnelle de sa journée, incluant ses espaces de travail…

Remarques personnelles : c’est excitant, intéressant, bien pensé. Mais on ne peut pas non plus s’empêcher de penser que de telles entreprises considèrent leurs employes comme assez interchangeables. Et que l’idée selon laquelle il suffirait d’un coin café pour faire de la R&D est à très courte vue. Reste-t-il des moyens de chercher une idée à tatons, de construire patiemment le projet d’un projet, d’écrire longuement un texte ? Le quotidien de l’entreprise est en effet de plus en plus rapide. Certains auteurs et même chefs d’entreprises s’en inquiètent, cependant. Imaginer des espaces de travail dans lesquels on sait aussi donner le temps au temps, non pas seulement en heures, mais en mois ou années – sans pour autant revenir à l’affectation à tous d’un parallèlépipède clos -, voilà la prochaine étape – j’espère.

John Buckman a fondé avec son épouse le label MagnaTune. Il est également membre du Conseil d’administration de Creative Commons.

“Aujourd’hui l’industrie musicale est l’une des plus détestées – et elle le mérite. La diversité musicale est en baisse, les disques coûtent un prix sans rapport avec leur coût de production, des musiciens peuvent attirer des millions de visiteurs sur l’internet et ne rien gagner… les gens le savent et ont décidé de détruire cette industrie…” Le ton est donné.

Magnatune est un label qui vend de la musique non protégée, avec un slogan : “We are not evil” (“Nous ne sommes pas mauvais”), et qui invente ou teste une grande variété de modèles économiques.

Pour l’amateur de musique, la démarche présente les avantages suivants :
• Une sélection limitée de musique “de qualité” choisie par Magnatune (600 albums)
• La possibilité d’écouter l’ensemble de l’album en streaming, sans limite. Un visiteur sur 42 achète, ce que Buckman considère comme une bonne proportion ; le temps moyen d’écoute est supérieur à 2 heures, ce qui est considérable
• Les acheteurs peuvent choisir le prix d’achat du disque qu’ils vont acheter, entre 5 et 15$. Magnatune recommande 8$ et rappelle que la moitié va au musicien. Résultat : le prix moyen est de 8,70$.

Mais l’industrie du disque gagne surtout de l’argent au travers de la vente de licences : 12 milliards de $ par an selon Buckman, contre 6 milliards de ventes de musique. Magnatune travaille la vente de licences pour des films, etc., sur une base standard et transparente (avec deux limites : pornographie et politique). Le site décrit 16 formes de licence possibles. Tout est publié, il n’y a pas, selon Buckman, de “négociations de couloirs”.

Magnatune aide les internautes à podcaster sa musique, à la discuter, à la faire circuler. Le label recommande par exemple à chaque acheteur d’un album de le copier pour trois amis. Et expérimente beaucoup d’autres démarches originales qui convergent autour de deux idées : en affirmant ses valeurs et les faisant partager par les consommateurs, on crée un modèle économique viable ; favoriser l’exposition de la musique sous toutes ses formes est économiquement productif. Et apparemment, ça marche.

Nathan Eagle, doctorant au Media Lab du MIT, connait bien l’état de la mobilité en Afrique, puisqu’il travaille à développer le programme Eprom (Entrepreneurial Programming and Research on Mobiles) du MIT. Il y accompagne des applications mobiles pour le développement : des passerelles SMS, des programmes de petites annonces sur le modèle du célèbre Craig List, des répertoire d’adresses pour les affaires, etc.

Nathan est enthousiaste. Pour lui, l’utilisation du téléphone mobile dans les pays en développement est en passe de rejoindre celle des pays développés (41 % contre 59 % de pénétration du mobile). Au Kenya, 200 000 foyers sont reliés à l’électricité mais le pays compte 7 millions d’abonnés au téléphone mobile. L’Afrique est l’endroit dans le monde où le marché du téléphone mobile connait la plus grande progression.

Mais que fait-on avec ces téléphones ? Qu’est-ce que les données peuvent faire comprendre ? Et de présenter les réalisations du groupe Reality Mining du MIT, notamment en matière de visualisations des données qui permettent d’explorer les comportements de groupes, les activités quotidiennes ou les dynamiques de proximités.

Et de s’extasier sur le monitoring de nos données personnelles, de ce qu’on en fait, de ce qu’on fait… Des données qui pourraient permettre demain de faire des prédictions, non seulement au niveau macro, mais aussi au niveau individuel… Reste qu’on se demande tout de même un peu la nécessité qu’un appareil fasse des probabilité sur nos questions personnelles et intimes. Sommes-nous vraiment soucieux de savoir : “Quelle chance y’a-t-il que Caroline m’appelle ce soir, sachant combien de fois et à quelle fréquence elle m’a appelé ces 3 derniers mois ?”

A croire que l’objet d’étude devient un système en soi. Bien sûr, le rôle de ces systèmes est plus évident pour observer les usages à plus large échelle : mieux mesurer les réseaux sociaux d’un pays, la valeur apportée par les utilisateurs, mieux comprendre les phénomènes sociaux mis en oeuvre par les technologies est quelque chose ce que nous cherchons tous ! Il ne faut peut-être pas pour autant croire que cette analyse sur ce que nous faisons puisse être une fin en soit pour les utilisateurs.

Fabien Girardin, doctorant à l’université Pompeu Fabra, à Barcelone (Espagne), a commis, à mon sens, la présentation la plus stimulante de ces deux jours.

Alors que se profile l’informatique ambiante, qu’on nous promet des systèmes sans fils, invisibles, sans coutures, fluides, proactifs, invisibles et “calmes”… Force est de constater que la réalité n’est pas aussi tranquille. L’”intelligence ambiante” n’est ni intelligente, ni ambiante…

Les nuages de connectivité n’existent pas souvent (les réseaux sans fils tombent, il faut souvent avoir les codes d’accès via un mail ou un bout de papier) et l’accès à la connection ambiante n’est pas forcément aussi évidente qu’on nous la promet. Les portes automatiques ont souvent tendance à se refermer sur vous et ne réagissent pas toujours de la manière dont les utilisateurs le voudraient. Tous les jours, nous sommes confrontés à des interactions réelles imparfaites avec les technologies et les infrastructures qui les supportent.

En regardant avec une belle lucidité le monde tel qu’il fonctionne, on regardant ce qui compose les détails de notre vie quotidienne, Fabien Girardin pointe du doigt la réalité créative, sociale, désordonnée et contradictoire qu’évoquait il y a peu Daniel Kaplan.

Alors où est le problème ? Est-ce trop complexe à implémenter ?

Nous vivons dans un monde désordonné. Pourquoi ? Parce que nos infrastructures tombent en panne, se cassent, se volent, se dégradent, s’usent, sont vandalisées, on besoin d’être remplacées, d’être réglées, entretenues… Elles sont hétérogènes et nécessitent des adaptateurs pour fonctionner, se connecter les unes aux autres (adaptateur de prises électriques, démultiplication des télécommandes…). Elles ressemblent surtout à des tours de Babel technologiques. Les questions de propriété, de droits d’accès, sont essentielles et non-triviales : c’est-à-dire par exemple qu’on n’a pas toujours accès à une prise électrique ou qu’on cadenasse nos vélos sur le domaine public. Sans compter qu’il faut encore ajouter les particularités culturelles, les choses qui nous semblent à l’envers parce que la culture où elles s’expriment n’est pas la même que la nôtre, comme le montre souvent le regard de Jan Chipchase. Ce qui est “calme”, acceptable, fluide, peut varier d’une culture à une autre.

Et puis nous sommes imprévisibles, ou en tout cas, la masse des individus, contextes, actions, produira toujours des situations imprévisibles : on développe des applications en essayant de penser à des contextes d’utilisation et la surprise est toujours là, possible, tangente. L’ensemble produit un “nuage d’incertitudes” : que capte le capteur ? Que signifient les données captées ? Que doit-on en inférer ?…

Pour mieux appréhender l’informatique omniprésente, il faudra peut-être proposer de nouvelles approches, faire apparaître les balafres plutôt que de faire disparaître l’informatique. “Couturer la conception” (seamful design). Ne plus cacher les machines, mais au contraire, rendre les limites, les frontières, les incertitudes visibles.

Manifester ce que l’on croyait pouvoir rendre invisible. Montrer plutôt que cacher l’informatique ambiante. On peut ainsi montrer les zones qu’une infrastructure Wi-Fi couvre ou non, pour permettre aux gens de jouer avec ces limites. On indique aux gens où ils sont filmés ou où ils ne le sont pas. Une porte automatique montre dans quel sens elle s’ouvre.

Nous aimons jouer avec le bruit et le désordre, c’est ce qui nous permet le plus souvent d’avoir la main sur notre environnement. La technologie visible fait de ses utilisateurs des acteurs. Les utilisateurs doivent pouvoir être acteurs et pas seulement des récepteurs passifs des technologies qui vont les envahir. Ils doivent pouvoir les configurer. Et d’évoquer le rôle d’un Design pour l’appropriation afin que nous puissions co-créer la technologie.

En définitive, “la seamlessness” (la capacité d’un système d’être sans couture) est une exception : le désordre et les limites sont structurelles, et il faut prendre cela en considération dans le design, pour ne pas reproduire les erreurs du passé de l’intelligence ambiante.

Sans compter qu’il nous faut aussi nous poser la question de savoir si nous voulons vraiment vivre dans un monde de technologies “calmes”, lisses, où tout est invisible voire aseptisé. Là, je pense que nous apporterons tous la même réponse…

Jaewoong Lee, président de Daum Communications, une plateforme internet Coréenne, a cherché à nous interroger sur ce qu’il y aura après Google. Pour cela il est notamment revenu sur l’histoire des médias, passant d’une communication one-to-one à une communication de masse, et même à une communication mass to mass… Et aujourd’hui, il y a Google, qui mixte toutes ces formes. Y’aura t-il quelque chose après Google ?

Certainement, affirme-t-il, au moins parce que l’information fondée sur les mots clefs n’est peut-être pas suffisante. L’absence d’une sémantique évoluée, le manque de personnalisation, la qualité qui demande toujours à être vérifié… sont aujourd’hui autant de limites, de barrières à dépasser pour la création de services. Pour Jaewoong Lee, l’après-Google viendra des contenus générés par les utilisateurs et du filtrage collaboratif : plus d’utilisateurs, signifie plus de contenus, signifie plus de contenus qualifiés…

Pour autant, il nous manque encore des fonctions qui agiraient comme des “filtres”, des “strates” entre les utilisateurs : agrégateurs de contenus, jardinage de communautés, filtrage collaboratif de l’information, communautés participatives massives,… Sans compter que tout le monde n’écrit pas dans Wikipédia : il y a une fracture dans la création et même dans la capacité de retrouver l’information. Nous avons a inventer les services et les fonctionnalités, les couches simples et fonctionnelles qui nous aiderons à créer et retrouver ce que l’on cherche. Un idéal qu’il qualifie de “meta web 2.0″.

A mon avis : Alors que le propos de Jaewoong Lee visait plutôt à dynamiser les troupes, j’ai trouvé qu’il n’était peut-être pas suffisamment précis pour y parvenir. Certes, l’après-Google (en même temps, c’est déjà ce que cherche à faire Google) nécessitera sans aucun doute de s’appuyer plus avant sur ce web en action que cristallisent les utilisateurs. Pour autant, préparons-nous vraiment ce “meta web 2.0″ ? Où sont les standards faces aux guerres commerciales ? Où est l’interopérabilité ? Qui la construit ? Quand dépassera-t-on la seule agrégation et ses limites ? Comment amener ceux qui n’écrivent pas dans Wikipédia à y participer ? Comment dépasser le talon d’achille du web 2.0 ? Jaewoong Lee n’avait pas les clefs…

Nous nous permettrons de ne pas rapporter en détail l’intervention d’Adam Greenfield – Non pas par manque d’intérêt, au contraire, mais parce que nous avons plusieurs excellentes sources en Français à vous recommander :
• “Everyware”, pour un design humaniste des technologies ambiantes (Internet Actu, octobre 2006)
• “L’informatique ambiante, ‘objet social involontaire’” (Internet Actu, avril 2005)

Par ailleurs, son livre, “Everyware“, à paraître en Français chez FYP Editions en avril 2007. Lecture o-bli-ga-toi-re !

Julian Bleecker est enseignant à l’Ecole d’art cinématique de l’Université de Californie du sud. Lors de Lift 2006, il avait co-animé avec Nicolas Nova un passionnant atelier sur les “blogjets”

Quelles différences entre “First Life” et “Second Life” ? Le “premier monde” est celui des contingences matérielles (on transpire, on creuse des trous, on tire des câbles). Mais tout bit numérique a une base quelque part dans le monde physique : “Second Life” a une base matérielle et nous devrions prendre en compte l’existence de cette base.

Ceci crée une forme de dette :
• Vis-à-vis du temps et de l’énergie humaine dépensés pour créer, maintenir ces systèmes, pour répondre à nos difficultés et nos réclamations
• En termes d’énergie – et donc, aussi, de pollution (voir la remarque de Nicolas Carr, qui explique qu’un avatar de Second Life consomme juste un peu moins d’électricité qu’un humain physique et rejette à peu près autant que CO2 qu’un 4×4 qui parcourrait 3700 km par an)
• Vis-à-vis de notre corps, assis devant l’ordinateur

Pourquoi ceci est-il important ? Parce que ce “second monde” apparemment si léger produit des externalités bien réelles et perceptibles dans le monde physique. Et qu’on ne peut pas “rebooter” le premier monde.

Dans Second Life, nous avons plusieurs avatars et pouvons choisir entre plusieurs mondes – mais nous n’avons qu’un corps, et pas de possibilité de changer de monde.

Quelles conséquences en tirer ? Comment créer des liens productifs et signifiants entre ces deux mondes, entre nos existences numériques et physiques – afin si possible, de tirer le meilleur des deux mondes ?

On pourrait par exemple imaginer des mondes virtuels qui conservent leurs dimensions ludiques et sociales, sans s’abstraire des contingences physiques.

Le jeu est un point d’entrée naturel, parce qu’il nous permet d’aborder des questions difficiles d’une manière légère. Dans le jeu, on peut chercher à créer des manières de ressentir la matérialité du monde physique, notamment le mouvement, le temps et la distance, trois dimensions que les mondes virtuels ont tendance à compresser ou ignorer.

Trois cas pratiques illustrent des manières possibles de relier ces deux univers :

• La Wii de Nintendo, qui transforme les formes d’interaction du corps avec le numérique.
• Animal Crossing, un jeu sur Nintendo DS, dont les personnages ont une existence autonome dans le temps réel (l’heure de la journée, la saison), prend des rendez-vous avec nous, etc.
• Teku Teku Angel, une sorte de Tamagotchi doté d’un pedomètre, qui est avant tout alimenté par les mouvements quotidiens du joueur – et qui disparaît s’il n’est pas bougé.

Tag : lift07

The 3rd and last day of the conference is over and it was as wonderful as the previous two days.

Much has been reported directly and live from the Conference (see this link to explore the conference blog) http://www.liftconference.com/blog

There were many star performances that have drawn unanimous praise. So, I will try not to make the same comments as others have done before me.

In this post I would like to respond to two questions raised by Beth Krasna during the panel discussion on The User/Citizen Centred Society. (Will new technologies give power back to the individual? What are the implications for our Society?) The questions raised in brackets were not the exactly the ones that Beth asked the audience to respond to. Those were the questions given for reflection by the LIFT organisers to the panelists. I will tell you what Beth’s questions to the audience were in a minute …

Robert Scoble and Thiery Crouzet, the other two panelists, basically reiterated that we are living in an era where technology is allowing the power to shift in favour of the people. I don’t think anyone in the audience contested the idea that we are in the middle of a shift in paradigm, somehow in favour of the people.

Some of us are quicker than others in finding ways to interpret change and implementing new ways of doing things. Robert Scoble is, for example, one of those people who has very succesfully integrated new technologies in his business model. He writes, blogs about technology and interviews people, who are at the cutting edge of technological developments. And, of his own admission, he carves a decent living out of those activities. From following Robert’s blogs I gather that he is also concerned with ethics and sustainablility but he is not very eloquent on these subjects. His focus is on technology and the gadgets it produces. However, he sets a convincing example of an individual who has claimed back some power via early and effective adoption of new technology while maintaining and open, caring attitude towards society, the environment. I know less about Thiery Crouzet’s activities.

Beth, however, took the discussion a step further in my view. I thought that her questions to the audience were particularly relevant as many people in the presentations that I attended during LIFT spoke about new (direct) ways of doing business and/or new ways of doing all sorts of things. They shared striking examples of new business models (Magnatune, BookSmooch, JPG Magazine, Habba, etc.) and their success. But, not everyone will be able to follow in the footsteps of these successful entrepreneurs to make a living from the web.

In many of the successful models presented, the ‘middle man’ was cut out which allows the entrepreneur as well as the artist and potential customers to benefit as is the case with Magnatune, for example. However, too much of that kind of activity will probably leave scores of ‘middle people’ behind and potentially out of a job. I am not saying that I am against this type of innovation. To the contrary, I think it is wonderful but we cannot all make a living that way. Entrepreneurs or not, I believe we are all somehow connected and therefore somewhat responsible for one another. Don’t get me wrong, I am also not in favour of a society that hands out goods and services without requiring some kind of effort. Nevertheless, I would agree with those who believe that availability of resources and opportunities are perversely imbalanced in today’s world and that as individuals we can play a role in attempting to redress the balance (well, at least a little …).

When I think of what effect these new direct business models might have on society, I can’t help but wonder what will happen to those of us who are not educated enough, quick enough, smart enough, etc. to spot the opportunties and make the most out of this new and quickly changing environment. I believe we will have to sooner or later agree on some universal values to guide our initiatives or risk serious further deterioration of our global environment.

So, what did Beth ask the audience to reflect about? Here they are, the two million dollar questions:

1. Given this Direct Economy, how are we going to behave on the web? and,
2. What sort of ethical considerations will Direct Everything engender?

As co-founder of a new think tank, Beth and her colleagues examine the effect of the Direct Economy on business and society. Here is the link to ThinkStudio http://www.thinkstudio.com/ .

While I do not have direct answers to Beth’s questions, here are my thoughts. For starters I believe that adoption of a set of universal values to frame and guide our actions, as individuals but also as communities, is necessary. Here is a list of the principles that might lead to agreement and acceptance of some universal values:

• Equality of rights for men and women. Until this happens, there is little chance for peace to develop.
• Abandon of all kinds of prejudices; social, racial, … etc.
• Universal education (basic education and instruction for everyone should also enhance greater tolerance and understanding among people.)
• Universal auxiliary language to facilitate global communication and better understanding.
• Strike a balance between science and religion (i.e. science and religion cannot be in contradiction with each other; they are complementary in nature. Like two sides of the same coin; dealing with the material and spiritual aspects of human life. )
• Search for spiritual (ethical) solutions to economical issues to eradicate the extremes of wealth and poverty on earth.
• Create a (true) international tribunal binding to all nations.
• Independent investigation of truth (learn to use and trust your own thinking, which is easier to do when you know how to read and write.
• Religion to become the cause of unity among people as opposed to an excuse for war and strife.
• Accept that all major religions are equal in status and basically stem from the same source.
• Hence all messengers of god are united in essence. However impossible it may be to define the concept of god, there appears to be evidence that the basic moral principles of most religions are complementary in nature and that diffences in the practical precepts are mostly due to historical and environmental contexts. As the world evolves, contexts change. So, why wouldn’t we have to adapt our thinking and behaviour as well?
• The logical consequence of the preceding 11 principles would be a condition we might define as World Peace.In a Direct Everything Economy, I would like to suggest that the above-mentioned principles which were first publicly announced in 1863 by Baha’u'llah (1817-1892), a 19th century visionary, set the tone and framework for what is required to develop an ethical and sustainable society.. Despite vicious persecution of early adopters, these principles have survived and permeated much of modern life.
  For original references see http://www.bahai.org/

Regarding the question: How are we going to behave on the web? I believe that there is ample evidence around to suggest that role and responsibilities of the individual are changing. Technology, the internet and the web, have played a key role in giving the people a voice and significantly more freedom to express themselves. True, freedom of expression is not the same all over the world but, nevertheless, many more people have the opportunity to find information and/or express themselves more effectively than ever before. In this context it will be increasingly important for us to know who we are, why we’re here, what our interests are and how we would like to contribute to building a sustainable society.
It is largely a matter of personal choice as to how we wish to exercise the power freedom confers on the individual. In a split second we are aware of phenomena that occur at the other end of the earth and we can comment instantaneously.
In fact, so many people are writing and commenting about all manner of issues that it has become more of a challenge to deal with what you actually want and need to know. But, there are gimmicks for that too; we have aggregators and rss feeds to help us filter, organise and stem the ongoing flow of information about subjects of interest to us.
So how are we going to behave? Moderation and Respect seem to be a key concepts in all of this. And what moderation and respect look like is culture bound and probably somewhat different for every human being on earth. However, I believe that these are key notions to explore in order to develop an understanding of oneself and the world we live in. Moderation in all things. Nothing new here. Just a reminder that the individual has great responsibility with respect to his/her behaviour on the web.

As for a methodology to implement these high-minded principles and ideas, the Baha’i communities around the world offer an interesting opportunity to study how diverse communities are attempting to walk an ethical (spiritual) path with practical shoes. To achieve collaboration among people of such different backgrounds and inclinations the Baha’is have adopted a form of open, frank and respectful discussion called consultation. Baha’i consultation is defined somewhat differently from what is currently commonly understood as consultation in a business or administrative environment. However, that will have to be the subject of another post. Suffice it to say that it is the preferred methodology in Baha’i communities for resolving all kinds of issues. Consultation baha’i style has sporadically been attempted by other communities and/or institutions with varying success; unity in spirit and purity of motive being prerequisites for successful consultation …

In the context of what life might look like in a direct everything economy, I would like to invite you to take a look around the EBBF website. EBBF stands for European Baha’i Business Forum. You will no doubt observe that EBBF members as others often struggle with the implementation of their values in their day-to-day environment. Nevertheless, they willingly learn from or share their experience and knowledge with others. Here is a link

http://www.ebbf.org.

As Daniel Kaplan so aptly reminded everyone in his wrap-up of the conference, no matter how wonderful a conference LIFT07 was, we still have to connect with the messyness and conflict in the ‘real’ world. I believe that EBBF based on the principles and values it espouses and the projects it supports makes a credible contribution to bridging the gap that exists between theory and practice in business environment (and elsewhere). Maybe ThinkStudio would like to establish a connection with EBBF with a view to explore more ideas about how we will behave in a Direct Everything Economy?

I used the title mainly to get attention. The sub message was that its not sustainable for Banks to continue with online Banking as a simple automation of services application. They must address the social aspect, and learn how to work with that environment. I used examples of;

- Verity CU
- Wells Fargo
- Vancity
- UFirst CU

As examples of bank disrupters, I focussed on Wesabe, Prosper, Zopa, FYGO, and CircleLending.

Actual deck attached here. Can Bankers can be Bloggers too – LIFT 07

PDF version: bankers-can-be-bloggers-too-final-1.pdf

LIFT 07 speakers notes

LIFT || A conference about technology in our society.

What an experience, this LIFT conference! It makes me feel priveliged to be here in Geneva and alive today. Today two presentations, in particular, really blew me over.

The first was presented by Sugata Mitra, who made a compelling case for giving educational techology (ET) to the underpriveleged first. In a nutshell, Sugata showed that in under priveleged areas where primary education is poor or not available because schools don’t exist, aren’t good enough, have no teachers or the teachers aren’t good enough, ET can offer a way forward.

His Hole in the Wall experiments suggest that groups of primary school age children are able to self instruct and organise some of their education by simply making technology available to them. No instruction was required. Computers, staged in English, were left in areas where groups of children could easily access them. Although the children had no prior English language knowledge or anyone to show them how to use the equipment, they managed to teach themsleves some English as well as how to use the technology!

Look out for the video clip of Sugata’s intervention on the LIFT07 website when it becomes available. You won’t regret it.

Access to techology apparently even influences the acquisition of values. Surprising, wouldn’t you say? Especially bearing in mind that all this was achieved with technology not designed for the purpose of education. Imagine, as Sugata suggests, what might happen when we start pouring more thought and energy into providing digital, automatic, fault tolerant, minimally invasive, connectedness designed for educational purposes to groups of under priveleged children ? It makes me feel that education for peace is not such a distant, elusive option but a reasonable goal and exercise within reach, especailly when initiatives of this nature start gaining momentum around the world.

The other presentation that really floored me was that of Bernino Lind, an entrepreneur and messy mind, as he describes himself. Why was it so surprising? Formally dressed in coat and tails, he brought a band of street musicians with him on stage to play while he was speaking. Sheer madness, you might think, but no. Somehow it all made sense because he demonstrated convincingly that people can do so many things at the same time. In fact, the mayhem that ensued was helpful in further breaking down my preconceived notions about creativity.

It clearly takes a lot of effort and courage to break with our ingrained tribal behaviour. Even to admit that we often still operate at this level is difficult, but judging from Bernino’s example, the result of breaking with conventional habits seems to be well worth taking the risk!

Ben Cerveny est un pionnier du “design d’interaction”. Il a travaillé sur un très grand nombre de projets, des systèmes d’exploitation aux jeux vidéo en passant par les médias.

Qu’est-ce que cela signifie de vivre dans un monde de réseaux omniprésents ?

La culture consiste à associer un sens à des objets, et à des personnes. Aujourd’hui, nous sommes plus clairement conscients de la manière dont fonctionne ce scénario. C’est sans doute l’un des apports du numérique.

La caractéristique d’un monde d’informatique omniprésente est la dissémination d’information dans l’espace. Nous vivons dans un “bain de lumière”. Nous parlons beaucoup de “flux”, plutôt comme une sorte d’aspiration à naviguer, à épouser la complexité du monde d’aujourd’hui. L’attention est une sorte de medium fluide et lumineux, au sein duquel des réactions interviennent : le “bain de lumière”.

A partir de cela, émerge un domaine d’activité, celui des contenus générés par les utilisateurs, qui créent des sortes de matières suspendues dans ce medium fluide qu’est l’attention. Nous avons tout autour de nous des morceaux d’attention, la notre et celle des autres… et au bout d’un moment, un processus d’auto-organisation prend forme, par accrétion. Comme les protéines, l’information s’organise toute seule dans cette “soupe primordiale”.

Cerveny propose une analogie entre la naissance de la vie cellulaire dans la mer cambrienne et celle de l’information auto-organisée dans la webosphère. Des morphologies agrégées, croissantes en complexité, émergent toutes seules comme des “organismes informationnels”, nageant dans le bain de lumière, et qui s’attachent à des personnes, des espaces et des choses.

Mais qu’est-ce que cela signifie pour les gens ? Un potentiel de “signalement passif”, de communiquer sans avoir à y penser des signaux sur sa localisation, sa disponibilité. Et cette signalisation permet aux groupes sociaux de gagner de manière considérable en flexibilité.

L’analogie chimico-biologique se prolonge par un développement sur la bio-luminescence : le mécanisme par lequel les artefacts informationnels suspendus dans le “bain de lumière” se créent, s’agrègent, se mettent en réseau, peut être tracé. Des schémas-types (patterns) émergent, que l’on peut reconnaître et analyser.

…

Remarque personnelle : on m’excusera (j’espère) d’avoir décroché à ce stade. Dérouler la métaphore jusqu’à ses dernières conséquences, conduit parfois à confondre le phénomène avec ce à quoi on le compare… au point de ne plus savoir quand on passe des intuitions intéressantes (il y en a) aux banalités pompeuses. Bref, c’est assez joliment dit, encore mieux illustré pour qui aura vu la présentation, mais au fond, qu’est-ce que ça dit de nouveau ? Il doit bien y avoir quelque chose, car Ben est un designer numérique très reconnu. Le premier qui parvient à en tirer quoi que ce soit de concret ou de vraiment neuf aura droit à ma reconnaissance éternelle – merci !

Tag : lift07

Jan Chipchase travaille depuis Tokyo pour Nokia Design, où il est en charge de mener des études comportementales et d’imaginer des produits qui répondent à ses observations. Sa présentation peut être téléchargée à partir de cet article, où elle est également très bien résumée. La dernière version est accessible ici.

La question posée à Jan Chpichase et son équipe par Nokia était : “comment designer un téléphone pour les analphabètes”.

L’équipe est partie de quelques hypothèses :
• Tout le monde peut apprécier la possibilité de transcender l’espace et le temps d’une manière personnelle et commode
• Il est préférable de s’attaquer aux racines d’un problème que de concevoir des technologies pour tourner autour du problème
• Les utilisateurs analphabètes sont d’excellents testeurs : les solutions qui répondent à leurs attentes ont de grandes chances de fonctionner pour la plupart des utilisateurs.

Selon les Nations Unies, il y aurait environ 800 millions d’analphabètes. Mais on peut aussi être semi-analphabète, par exemple dans un environnement dont on ne maîtrise pas la langue.

Dans les pays où l’on compte le plus d’analphabètes, l’équilibre entre la connaissance structurée (lire, calculer…) et la connaissance non-structurée est très différent de ce qu’on trouve dans les pays développés. L’alphabétisme est souvent observé uniquement autour de la relation au texte, alors qu’il faut y ajouter la relation aux chiffres, mais aussi aux autres (on peut avoir un ami qui sait lire…), etc.

Or les appareils électroniques se fondent pour l’essentiel sur des interfaces textuelles. La solution des icônes ne marche pas toujours ni partout, y compris parce que leur interprétation est très dépendante de chaque culture.

La bonne question est : dans quelle mesure le manque de familiarité avec l’écrit est-une une barrière à l’usage compétent d’un appareil.

L’équipe de Chipchase s’est alors rendue dans un grand nombre de pays africains et asiatiques, pour observer sur le terrain la manière dont les gens gèrent leur quotidien, et la manière dont des interfaces textuelles peuvent constituer des obstacles. Comment des gens qui ne savent pas lire allument-ils et règlent-ils la télévision ? Comment lisent-ils l’heure ? Commet utilisent-ils d’autres objets mécaniques ? Que font-ils des objets textuels qui se trouvent chez eux, tels qu’un calendrier ? Comment gèrent-ils leurs contacts, leurs rendez-vous, leurs comptes, leurs transactions commerciales – parce qu’ils le font !

Une telle recherche doit obéir à des règles éthiques, ne serait-ce que pour accéder à l’intimité des personnes étudiées.

Qu’avons-nous appris ?
• Les analphabètes travaillent beaucoup, de longues journées, de longues semaines
• Ils peuvent accomplir toutes les tâches de la vie quotidienne, mais tout prend beaucoup plus de temps, en particulier parce que cela nécessite le passage par un proche qui sait lire et écrire
• Avec leurs mobiles, ils savent tout seuls appeler, répondre des numéros locaux ; mais les choses se compliquent dès qu’il faut changer les paramètres, ajouter des indicatifs, etc.
• Il est difficile d’apprendre quand le réseau et l’électricité sont souvent interrompus, quand on emprunte un terminal puis un autre…

Dans quelle mesure ces utilisateurs mal à l’aise avec l’écrit sont-ils prêts à apprendre par essais-erreur ? La question se résume ainsi : quel est le coût de se tromper ? On n’osera pas explorer si on a peur d’effacer tous les paramètres ou les données d’un téléphone qui n’est pas nécessairement le notre, ou bien qu’on a déjà eu du mal à rendre utilisable ; ni si on ne parvient pas à retracer ses pas.

Quelles tâches peut-on déléguer à d’autres, à la technologie ? Du point de vue des processus, les attitudes des plus riches et les plus pauvres s’avèrent en fait remarquablement proches : les deux délèguent, beaucoup, y compris des choses très privées.

Bref, les analphabètes sont “pareils que nous, mais beaucoup plus”… Ils demandent de la simplicité comme nous, mais plus fort, d’une manière plus vitale.

InternetActu.net a déjà évoqué les travaux de Jan Chipchase :
- La télé mobile : une consommation très personnelle de média
- Les pratiques d’utilisation partagée de téléphone mobile

Tag : lift07

Sampo Karjalainen est le directeur de la création de Sulake, l’entreprise qui a créé en 1999 l”univers virtuel” Habbo, qui accueille 7,1 millions de visiteurs par mois.

Habbo est un lieu virtuel dans lequel les ados se retrouvent en ligne. Plus qu’un jeu, c’est un environnement ouvert dans lequel on fait un peu ce qu’on veut : une sorte de Second Life, plus simple, qui ne nécessite qu’un navigateur. L’utilisateur moyen a 14 ans, un peu plus au Japon ou au Brésil, un peu moins en Europe. Il y a autant de garçons que de filles.

90% des joueurs jouent gratuitement, 10% paient (par exemple pour acheter des objets) environ le prix d’une place de cinéma par mois.

Habbo est avant tout une “ville”, avec des places, des cafés, des discos, des jardins publics… Les utilisateurs se créent des personnages et passent l’essentiel de leur temps à discuter. Ils peuvent se fixer des rendez-vous, s’écrire en différé. On peut y jouer à plusieurs jeux, tous collectifs.

Mais ce qui fidélise le plus les ados, c’est la possibilité de créer et décorer son propre appartement. On achète (avec de l’argent réel) des éléments de décoration, des animaux domestiques, des habits amusants, puis on invite des amis. Certains objets de décoration sont rares, des utilisateurs en font collection – puis les revendent dans des espaces d’enchères. Dans leurs “pièces”, les utilisateurs peuvent organiser des jeux, programmer des “quêtes”. On trouve des salles de classe, des repaires de bandits (avec des mafias très organisées et hiérarchisées), des salles de bingo. Les gens se lancent des défis, organisent des concours de chant, de beauté (ou de laideur)… Certains joueurs cherchent des parents ou des enfants à “adopter” et jouent pendant quelque temps au papa et à la maman.

Autour de Habbo, un vaste univers de communautés, de sites web, d’échange d’objets, etc. s’est créée. L’entreprise a décidé de leur faciliter la tâche et d’aider les joueurs à se créer leur propre page web.

Pourquoi les utilisateurs font-ils tout cela ? Pour attirer l’attention, bien sûr. Mais tout simplement pour jouer, pour rester enfants un peu plus longtemps – mais ceci reste un non-dit, Habbo ne peut pas se marketer sur la base de ces arguments.

Ce jeu sans finalité précise fonctionne précisément parce qu’il offre une infinité d’opportunités aux joueurs. C’était l’idée dès le départ, mais la créativité des utilisateurs a surpris les créateurs de Habbo.

Que faut-il pour favoriser une telle créativité ?
• Il faut quelque chose avec quoi jouer : des objets, des avatars, des lieux – pas forcément en très grand nombre, mais surtout organisés de manière à pouvoir être personnalisés et combinés, associés entre eux.
• L’interaction doit être intuitive, presque invisible (pas de commandes déconnectées de l’univers)
• Encourager une attitude ludique, encourager les gens à jouer à leur aise, sans complexe : minimiser les aspects utilitaires et commerciaux, valoriser le jeu et les tentatives
• Permettre aux utilisateurs de se fixer leurs propres objectifs
• On peut bien sûr imaginer et tester des “cas”, des situations de jeu imaginées par les concepteurs – et on ne s’en prive pas, mais le dispositif reste constamment ouvert.

Mais l’essentiel est de créer un dispositif social partagé : permettre au créateur d’un espace ou d’un environnement de les discuter avec d’autres.

Tag : lift07

LIFT || A conference about technology in our society.

Just completed the 1st day at LIFT07 and what a wonderful day it was. Attended 2 workshops and met thought-provoking and interesting people.
The 1st dealt with DYI evaluation and monitoring methods. It was moderated by Glenn O’Neil, a swissified Australian of his own admission. Glen’s approach to the workshop was very practical. I like that. He presented a theorethical overview and quickly moved on to interactive activities that allowed us to split up into smaller groups to implement some of our new-found knowledge on what turned out to be live projects, ranging from a health education project in Brazil to an HR project in the school system in Vaud and others. Undoutedly those who submitted their projects to the methodology presented by Glen have come away with some useful tips for improvement. It was a well run workshop which has left me wanting to find out more about E&M. Thanks, Glenn.

In the afternoon I attended a workshop on creativity which really got my juices going. The workshop was moderated by 2 people. Dannie Jost started it off by presenting a thought-povoking introduction of a model of creativity based on work done on the subject by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Creativity, ISBN: 0-06-092820-4). This was followed by practical tips on how to foster creativity led by Henriette Weber. A wining combination that has kept me thinking about the process of creativity for several hours afterward. Thanks, ladies, for solliciting so many interesting comments from the people in the workshop and for breaking the mold of my preconceived notions on what creativity might be.

I’m looking foward to tomorrow’s adventures at LIFT.

Earlier this week I was reading one of Robert Scoble’s blogs. He urged readers to join converations rather than to start up new ones and while, I largely agree with him, I still quite like to have a place to store and share thoughts, mostly with my friends.

However, if, as happens rarely, someone comments, I gratefully accept the contribution to my education and understanding.

So, I don’t really want to start a conversation. Just would like to let you know that I feel as if I am being given an infusion of creative thoughts by keeping in touch with what is happening around the LIFT conference, which will take place in Geneva in February of next year. I know you’ll think I’m nuts but the site just vibrates with the positive energy of creative thinking.

Check it out for yourself and see what a smart, heartwarming crowd is gathering around this initiative. Just go the website and be captured by the vibes!

http://www.liftconference.com/2007/index.php

In February 2007 the 2nd edition of LIFT will be held in Geneva, Switzerland. I just love the title; it lifts me up when I check its progress on the blog. The conference is about technology and its impact on society. It is a great programme that is drawing an inspiring crowd from all walks of life. Check it out on http://www.liftconference.com/2007/index.php , you’ll like what you see and don’t hesitate to join the conference if you can. It looks very promising!