Smart Mobs
This book, while it varies a lot, is mostly about mobility, networks, people and what is happening with all that. It’s a look at what happens when people as a group interact with technology, what we have done with it, and what we will be facing in the future. It dips into a lot of philosophical discussion and talk of ubicomp.

Everyware
Similar to Smart Mobs, it’s talking about the future, but the focus is more on technology that we are using and will use in our daily life. It’s a very good overview of recent research and ideas that are out there, with a greater sense of urgency than Smart Mobs. As a designer himself, Adam Greenfield takes a stab at some initial principles.

Smart Mobs using Everyware
The books are similar enough that I have trouble distinguishing my thoughts about them. Both of the authors call themselves futurists, and spend most of the time talking about the future state of things as derived from current technology and intentions by research groups and companies.

The most valuable thing I’ve gotten from both of them is a deep pool of resources that they bring up. They both bring up a lot of philosophical trains of thought, researchers, manifestos, and books that help to understand what’s around the corner. I think it’s great because a lot of them are confirming stuff that we already learned like Goffman’s various writings on the presentation of self.

 They also bring up and explain technologies that are enabling new ways of interacting with each other that we don’t really have time to cover in school. Knowing about what is going to happen with data networks and embedded technology will probably help to ground design ideas a little better

The other thing I liked about both books is the balanced approach they take. They are cautiously embracing the new, which is probably a healthy thing to do. They bounce back and forth, describing utopias and dystopias of the future. Both authors really want to preserve human dignity and use new technology to benefit us rather than just because we can, much like we are taught throughout school.

There is a strong sense of urgency in both of the books. They are talking about the inevitable and we have to be prepared to deal with complex situations that are very different from what we are used to. I think their sense of urgency is already being answered through user-centered design, I hope.

Not to go on too long, but I think both of these books are important for designers of all kinds, especially with mobility where it’s at today. I have heard lots of people distance themselves from anything technical because of the connotation that interaction design already has, but I’ll reserve my thoughts on that for later.

Criticism?
I don’t have anything that critical to say about the books. To people who are already familiar with this stuff, the books might not be so useful. For designers, they don’t offer many answers, but mostly questions and considerations we need to understand.

Smart Mobs came out in 2002 and Everyware in 2006, so sometimes it feels like Adam Greenfield is simply updating the state of things with his book. Smart Mobs takes a very massive approach and covers a lot of different topics, whereas Everyware is a little more focused and organized in bite-sized chunks. In terms of a knowledge resource, I found Smart Mobs to be a little deeper, and I plan on actually buying it just to reference. There are a lot of great quotes and references. There’s also the Smart Mobs blog which updates with news relevant to stuff that is talked about in the book. It’s a shame Everyware doesn’t have something similar, unless I missed it. Either way, both were well worth it, and are easily skimmable.

PS. No, I haven’t started reading for my thesis project yet.

It’s hard for me to just leave something broken because I know I’ll never go back and fix it for a while. I finally did fix it, by putting the right cryptic code into the .htaccess file. This site helped me pick what to put in it, and with some tweaking I finally got this site back up. All I know is that there shouldn’t be a way for me to easily bring the whole thing down.

I’ve thought about using something RSS-related for a whlie, so I pulled some feeds into thunderbird, but I really didn’t want to know every time a site updated, especially something like BBC News. I liked that I was in control, so I visited whenever I had the time and would browse through things I missed. After all, we don’t all need to read every story and article that someone posts, right?

This might sound like a commercial, but they’re not paying me. Through a random link, I found netvibes, which is great just because I can use it as a universal dashboard for things like email and todo lists. The greatest thing about it is that it acts like an RSS aggregator. It pulls the 5-10 most recent topics into a window for each feed, so I can just browse what the most recent stories are without having to read through anything unless I find it interesting. I might be behind the curve, but I had an enlightening moment where I understood how useful it is. It’s also great since it’s a web app and I can access it from anywhere, so it’s always synchronized.

There’s still a problem though. Because it’s a live feed, I feel compelled to tab over to the netvibes page every so often to see what’s new. It hasn’t really cut down that much on the time spent and the amount of feeds I added are still overwhelming. One thing I’m noticing right away is how many stories I read that are duplicated everywhere. What I want is something that will scan through every feed I added and tell me which stories I should read. Maybe that’s what other people are for…

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /ei/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php on this server.

To which I spent lots of time searching for a solution and not finding one that worked. I gave up, and a couple of weeks later, I tried reinstalling WordPress. There were some issues uploading to my server for some reason, but I finally got a fresh install, but with the same problem. Luckily I came across this post on the WordPress site. So I threw this into a file in wp-admin

<IfModule mod_security.c>
SecFilterInheritance Off
</IfModule>

and named it .htaccess like it said. It worked, and I have no idea what was broken or how this fixed it. All I know is that it probably had something to do with a conflict of the permissions on the serve I am using.

This brings up interesting points about community support. This is mostly how I have fixed computer issues since I have had access to the internet. By googling the error, there is bound to be someone else who has come across it and done all the work for me by solving it. It’s great to be able to use the global collective of knowledge to get things done quickly. But is it detracting from my own skilling? Probably, but that’s fine as long as it’s not a priority for me to be skilled in fixing random web app errors.

The Argument
First, I appreciate the way it’s presented. There is a simple site with trendy visual effects and three video pieces. The videos are somewhere between ads and scenarios of use. Seeing it done from afar makes me realize how effective videos can be, and how important it is for us to demonstrate products in a way that makes sense and appeal to people’s needs, whether or not these do the job. At the very least it confirms that the way we learn how to present our work at school is relevant to what people are doing in real companies.

For anyone who has seen the many multi-touch display videos floating around, this is just a commercial version of what is already being done. The easy integration of physical objects and devices is something relatively new and encouraging to see. It’s great because it means that people like Microsoft care about how their products interact with other products regardless of who made them. I also like the fact that there is sensitivity to the expressiveness of motion and playful features.

Is this the right direction?
On the other hand, there are still issues that bug me when seeing products like these. One is the use of a touch screen as a way of interacting with information. While it is a more direct way of manipulation, I still feel like it’s not necessarily an appropriate behavior. There is something that bothers me about having the digital world extremely rich and full of information, while the physical side is limited to pushing on glass and sweeping hand motions. We have adapted to be able to process information in so many forms that it’s a shame that we still haven’t been able to properly take advantage of our senses.

There are so many tactile experiences that hold deep meaning and cannot be conveyed through visual means. Whether you’re flipping through some high quality card stock or feeling the craggily bark on the side of a tree, there is deep sensorial learning that happens which is lost in computing in general and specifically with touch screens.

In a similar vein, although I just said I like their visual style, at the same time I despise it. The slick bubblegum UI that Apple and now Microsoft use is something I find troublesome. There is no aging or deterioration besides the slowdown when your computer is bogged down with new programs. Where is the metaphorical rust of interface? How can we have rich experiences with computation if everyone is staring at the same unchanging representations? Do custom visual styles solve this?

There is a variety in our interactions with the natural world that is absent when it comes to digital devices. You could argue that it creates an illusion of immortality for people, especially as storage space and processing speed no longer become an issue. It’s easy to forget that although the digital representations of our lives appear permanent, we are in fact products of the natural world and will soon return to it.

Update 6/12/07: I found this article after I wrote this, it addresses the visual aspect of what I was talking about. The analogy to fashion is interesting and something I have been trying to articulate for a while.