Category: Space

• Big Data Problems

  Like I mentioned in a post a few months back, there are a few problems with mining Twitter for locational data. Partly, the problems are due to a less than representative sample size. Related to this is an article on Wired today on big data and the ‘death’ of theory. Mark Graham, who is actually part of the floatingsheep collective, has this to say in it:

  “I do get why people think that ‘big data’ will mean the end of theory, because you can now answer almost any conceivable question with large data sets and transactional data shadows, but irrespective of how big or complete our datasets are, they will always be selective and partial. We’re talking about a classic ‘if you have a hammer everything starts to look like a nail’ issue here.” 

  Or in other words, in reference to the original floatingsheep map I commented on, and from the same Wired article:

  not everyone tweets, and not everyone who tweets geotags their tweets. Even with the…contextual geotagging of tweets, that still leaves a sample of tweeters that isn’t absolutely everyone. It’s still a sample of “people with the capability and urge to tweet”.  

  And so the issue of a small, unrepresentative sample size remains. Not quite the takeover of big data just yet.

  2013.01.25

• Streetview Exhibition

  

  An exhibition by Skyliner based on Google’s Street View. For city-lovers, map-makers and fans of architecture of Greater Manchester. Plus a secondary exhibition documenting the demolition of the former BBC building. 

  The exhibition is at 2022 on Dale Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. The opening is tonight from 6pm with music from 8.30pm. Skyliner is a blog on the architectural history of Greater Manchester, and it’s well worth taking a look at. Posts on the Cromford Court apartments above the Arndale Centre, the stunning Albert Hall on Peter Street and the former Lewis’s department store on Market Street are particularly worth reading. Some fantastic photos of all of them too.  
  

  2013.01.25
• Digital rituals – was alerted to this by Alex Gekker. Great stuff.

  CURIOUS RITUALS

  

  Project completed! Here’s the Curious Rituals book (PDF, 20Mb). It describes the gestures and postures we observed, introduced by an insightful essay by Dan Hill and followed by a design fiction by Julian Bleecker and the script of the film we produced.

  
  
  

  We’re currently testing the book printing on lulu. Stay tuned.

  View original post

  2013.01.22
• Audio link to Christian Nold’s new project from back in October 2012.

  Extreme Citizen Science blog

  

  What is being being mapped and to what ends? – CHRISTIAN NOLD
  21 September 2012

  Abstract:
  The presentation discusses Christian’s PhD case study which involves a process of following an engineering focused, noise mapping project funded by the EU. The case study is used to identify the entanglement between subjective experience & devices and power which are at the heart of mapping. The case study highlights a conflict between the experiences of local resident with noise pollution versus the institutional aspirations of mapping protocols. The details of the project expose fundamental ontological and epistemological conflicts about what is being mapped and to what ends. In the project this conflict can be traced backwards from the tools created for the project all the way back to the agenda of the EU research project. The aim of this talk is to provide a real-world example of the role of subjectivity as a…

  View original post 119 more words

  2013.01.22

• Another post

  by Patrick Meier at his prolific iRevolution blog took my interest today. Posted back in June 2011, ‘A List of Completely Wrong Assumptions About Technology Use in Emerging Economies’ is about the situated nature of technology. I challenge anyone to read through the comments and still argue that maps aren’t local, situated objects of knowledge. Nothing intuitive, obvious or general about them. As Meier says:

  In one of the training workshops we just had, I was explaining what Walking Papers was about and how it might be useful in Liberia. So I showed the example below and continued talking. But Kate jumped in and asked participants: “What do you see in this picture? Do you see the trees, the little roads?” She pointed at the features as she described the individual shapes. This is when it dawned on me that there is absolutely nothing inherently intuitive about satellite images. Most people on this planet have not been on an airplane or a tall building. So why would a bird’s eye view of their village be anything remotely recognizable? I really kicked myself on that one. So I’ll write it again: there is nothing intuitive about satellite imagery. Nor is there anything intuitive about GPS and the existence of a latitude and longitude coordinate system.

   And

  More wrong assumptions revealed themselves during the workshpos [sic]. For example, the “+” and “-” markers on Google Map are not intuitive either nor is the concept of zooming in and out. How are you supposed to understand that pressing these buttons still shows the same map but at a different scale and not an entirely different picture instead?

  Good for thinking through how situated protest mapping is in the UK – built for specific reasons, terrains and people. Plenty of the comments draw on experiences in non-Western countries, but as one of them says, there is just as much variation in knowledge within Western countries. Using digital maps on mobile devices draws on a whole new world of required actions, and who’s to think the tap, pinch and scroll of touch-sensitive phones is anything like intuitive? New technologies always require a learning process.

   

  2013.01.21