Archive

Architectures of Quarantine & Containment

One very inter­est­ing addi­tion to the pub­lic space is how we are con­di­tion­ing and defin­ing the pub­lic space with regards to even­tu­al attacks. And it’s chang­ing the land­scape rad­i­cal­ly. And the very first knee-jerk reac­tion was con­crete blocks in front of many insti­tu­tions. Now they’re try­ing to design these con­crete blocks so they seem some­thing which is part of the land­scape but the pres­ence and the robust­ness is still so vio­lent that it’s hard to hide the intention.

Nudes and N00dz

What we’re talk­ing about today is how social media, and specif­i­cal­ly Facebook because we’ve found that they have the strictest poli­cies around this top­ic, how these social media com­pa­nies cen­sor art, and specif­i­cal­ly nude art. We believe that nude art is an impor­tant part of our cul­ture, an impor­tant part of our his­to­ry, and an impor­tant part of our present.

The Rise of Social Robotics

Social ref­er­enc­ing is so great robots should do it, too. But first there are some tech­ni­cal chal­lenges that we need to solve. For instance, low ener­gy con­sump­tion. Throughout these tech­ni­cal chal­lenges, what these robots real­ly need to do is under­stand the social envi­ron­ment that they are in. 

Eleanor Saitta at The Conference 2015

What I’m talk­ing about here is not what we need to do cul­tur­al­ly or polit­i­cal­ly, it’s not the roots of online harass­ment. It’s the design tools that we can use to shape the envi­ron­ments that peo­ple inter­act in to reduce the impact.