This weekend I will be attending “To Catch a Neutrino” by Dr Marieke Navin on Sunday at the 9th Manchester Girl Geek Tea Party.

‘Neutrinos are the most enigmatic and elusive of particles. They can transmit information from the furthest reaches of space and it is this unlikeliness to interact that makes them so interesting to study. Marieke will give you a whistle stop tour of the world of neutrino astronomy then bring you back to Earth to man-made neutrino beams and why we are firing them through the Earth, across Japan and why the study of neutrinos will help us solve some of the mysteries of the Universe.

Marieke Navin took 3 years out after doing an MPhys in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield. In this time she travelled, volunteered and worked as a debt collector. Marieke returned to Sheffield and has recently completed a PhD on the neutrino oscillation experiment T2K in Japan. She spent 6 weeks working down a mine in the Japanese Alps refurbishing part of the detector. Marieke was runner up in the 2007 FameLab competition and now works as Science Communication Officer at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.’

If you are there come say hi!

HighWire update: Last week we took some of the new HighWire cohort to FabLab Manchester to let them play. FabLab is somewhere you’ll be able to find us if we go missing. On this venture we escaped to eat and discoveredMadLab hidden away in the Northern Quarter also. We have also been discussing the idea of ‘impact’ and what this means for HighWire, academia and industry. Lots to come. Watch this space.

In an emerging tradition HighWire is today welcoming it’s second cohort of students in Brantwood at the home of Ruskin. The new cohort is embarking on the Master of research stage of the course which will of course be an exciting and challenging time.

During this time we warmly welcome the new students to the fold and provide insight as to what they will face throughout this year. This may also be the first opportunity that some of the cohort will encounter the trials and tribulations of post disciplinary research which has been the focus of workshops this morning.

Importantly today also marks the transfer of the first cohort to the PhD stage of HighWire where we are pleased to report that the entire cohort has successfully progressed. A few busy months ahead then.

Picking up a random book to read in the library led me to take it out and read it cover to cover. The excellent “Out of their Minds” profiles 15 Computer Scientists including John Backus, Alan Kay, Edsger Dijkstra, Knuth and Fred Brooks. Having the human element really makes a change from a lot of the other reading I’ve been doing on all things smart energy, smart power and smart homes. Often the papers present systems in such a dry, systematic manner you would be forgiven for forgetting that people are supposed to want to live with them. Exploring the motivations for installation then the extent of continued interaction is a theme I’d like to explore more within the “smart home” area.

This in mind on Friday, I, Rachel Keller and Gordon Blair visited the Horizon DTC at Nottingham University. Discussed my interests in smart energy and kept in mind my inherent computer science predisposition to frame problems and discover solutions.

Met some students after being shown into the facilities by the Lake on the Jubilee Campus. The computer science buildings are located separately to the main Nottingham campus and finding it in the morning on the way up from the Igloo Hostel was a happy accident.

After sitting in on a meeting then having lunch we went to the other building housing the Horizon project and got mini-introductions to a variety of projects by staff. The time taken out to see us was much appreciated. Finally we met Prof. Tom Rodden whom seemed to share similar ideas to me around the data side of smart meters and pointed out some relevant projects with a great deal of knowledge and enthusiasm.

Meeting this Ubicomp focused contemporary of Highwire was an enjoyable and valuable day out.

A few days after attending the first HighWire workshop on Physicality this HighWiree took off to go to the Pervasive conference. This is one of the premier ubiquitous computing conferences and on the first day ran a series of workshops. I attended “Energy Awareness and Conservation through Pervasive Applications.” This is a very specific domain and the likely HighWire project resulting from the Physicality workshop will not be in the area of energy awareness, efficiency or tackling fundamental problems like algorithm efficiency. The common ground of these workshops for me being the mobile and ubiquitous computing they hoped to exploit.

Despite the different areas of work, the aims of both workshops were similar, to define a research agenda for those involved. The approach taken by each workshop was very different and both generated plenty of ideas and inspiration.

The Physicality workshop introduction set the fun and playful mood to be carried through the project. Creating craft representations of facets of ones personality broke the ice rather than the now tired introduction of name and short background bio.

Introductions at Perasive were the more formal name, where from and interests. Prof. Giulio Jacucci, the organiser and presenter did try to make this a little more exciting with a favourite food or fun fact.

After the introductions at Pervasive the rest of the morning was taken with presentations of accepted papers to be published in a special edition of PsychNology. Jon Bird of the Open University presented the Change Project more specifically “The Pulse of Tidy Street.” Followed a project describing how devices can interact with Smart Meters using web technologies, fascinating for me as close to how I imagined my PhD would be perhaps a year ago. The last presentation by Duncan Wilson on the engineering firm Arup’s approach to sustainable cities.

The Highwire workshop included a presentation from Tinker to set the scene and give participants an idea of where this partner company is situated.

Post-its were used at the Highwire workshop to put ideas on boards on three typical areas that need to be addressed in any physical computing installation. That’s the methods of data capture and potential sources, imaginary, wacky and impossible included. The means of processing and transforming and means of output or interaction with the data.

At Pervasive the ever present post-it was also utilised but a more general comment on anything approach which were then condensed into three themes by a few volunteers. After lunch we broke-up into three groups to tackle one of these emergent themes. I set out to a local cafe with James Scott, Jörn Loviscach and Matthias Betz armed with a pen and a couple of pieces of A3 paper. Initially we tried to find common ground but quickly each person lead off into their own area. This proves how broad this particular area is and finding an agreed overall research imperative and set of questions may be impossible. Governance plays as much a part as technological research challenges.

The Physicality workshop kept people on topic after lunch with an exercise in making something and part way through proceedings swapping the topic the team had to discuss.

Both workshops were concluded with a presentation from these groups. Looking back on both of these proves designing a workshop is as much an exercise in managing levels of disagreement and with them different agendas as generating that buzz around a particular theme.

HighWire attended FutureEverything this week. FutureEverything ‘… is an art, technology and social innovation organisation that runs year-round innovation labs and an annual festival of art, music and ideas – bringing the future into the present.’

With music and presentations from a wide variety of musicians, researchers, professionals and artists choosing between FutureEverything events to attend was extremely difficult. Situated in the Contact Gallery, Oxford Road, Manchester, the first event we attended was the Open Data: Moving the Immovable panel discussion. Introduced by Sarah Hartley of The Guardian William Perrin opened with his views on how to ‘get data out of large public bureaucracies. With four methods entitled The Bulldozer , The Ferret, The Avalance and The Extraterrestrial method delegates were presented with a number of examples where previously immovable data was either extracted, scraped or freed from large bureaucracies and used in socially important ways.

Following was James Darling of RewiredState who despite technology challenges imparted two useful notes ‘government is bad at computers, let us show you how it is done’ and ‘ask forgiveness not permission’.

Jordan Hatcher a lawyer, academic, and entrepreneur working on Intellectual Property and Internet law issues in the UK and worldwide presented next on ownership in relation to databases. Suggesting three approaches, ‘Ask for Licence’ ‘Copyright as absolute’ and ‘Infringe’, and suggested that databases be presented under ‘Public Domain Licences, Attribution Database Licence or Open Database Licence’. In choosing a licence he suggests that those responsible for the database should consider the reasons behind why they are opening the data.

Finally Eimear Coleman of Barnet Council posed the question of ‘Why are organisations so resistant?’ and suggested a move from the current system of ‘new public management’ to ‘communicative governance’ and to achieve such a movement a ‘fundamental culture change is necessary’. In otherwords there is a need to shift from ‘data ownership mindsets to data custodians’. Highlighting the concern of risk adverse organisations Eimear suggests that strategies must bear in mind the concerns of those involved and at risk of spin. The ‘speedy zealots vs de publik sektor’.

Yesterday marked the end of my Future Everything 2010 experience. It was a full on affair with inspiration to be found in almost every corner. Although I do have to admit, there were moments I was checking my email. But hey, I’ve never protested to have a large or even adequate attention span. Fitting I thought that my last interaction/experience of the conference was watching a mad scientist and his “creation” (or short man wearing sunglasses standing to attention) freestyle words we gave him. Kudos to my colleague Natasha Carolan for trying to bamboozle the poor fellow with “Serendipity” after my feeble attempt with “Ambiguity”. In hindsight, I should have gone for “purple” – it’s un-rhyme-able. Try it.

So, on to the conference itself. One of the highlights for me was the “Doing it Together” presentations and the follow-up panel discussion given by Alison Powell (@Postdocal), Mushon Zer-Aviv (NYU – @Mushon) and Alexandra Deshcamp-Sonsino (Tinker – @TinkerLondon). Now I’m not just saying that because HighWire got a mention… But it helped.

Alison Powell from the Oxford Internet Institute began her talk by introducing Habermas’s ideal public sphere, a renaissance evolution that sought to bring rational, critical debate on public affairs into the public arena. She highlighted cafes as a good example of the establishment of public spheres. Here people would congregate (generally men) and discuss local issues with their peers. Add to this the introduction of mass media through newspapers and the “bottom” rungs of society were able to deliberate on what was going on at the “top”.

The next thing Powell went on to speak about was counterpublics. Counterpublics are alternative media, underground magazines and other non-state-sanctioned or “underground” media. The things the cool kids read. The Public Sphere Guide describes counterpublics as “dissident networks of communication excluded by the dominant public sphere”. The purpose of counterpublics, according to Alison is as a resistance or “push-back” against the structure of idealised public sphere and politics.

Then along came The Network. I have personally never read H.G. Wells’ collection of essays titled World Brain: The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopedia but Wikipedia tells me it is very good and it is now on the list. Alison Powell goes on in the talks to liken todays internet to H.G. Wells’ writing. I wont lie to you, when she first mentioned Wells I momentarily switched-off assuming it was just another reference to 1984 and how the internet was surrendering our privacy. But thankfully it wasn’t. Powell explains that although there are similarities to Wells’ “brain”, the internet is much more distributed and accessible to all.

Unlike the cafes and mass printed media, the precursors to the internet, the technology can now be a form of mobilising/motivating the public.

Next was Social Media Models (SMM). Powell sees SMM as “a set of functions that can work in different ways and not as specific applications”. SMM are not always as radical as alternative media, but they can be. I’m sure that if you really think about it, you have probably come across some sort of grungy underground movement or anti-establishment group on Facebook. My personal favourite, well, the favourite I am willing to write here is The National Sarcasm Society…

According to Powell there are three parts to SMM: Filter, Feed and Funnel.

In terms of information intake these days, we have moved from scarcity to abundance. Not only are we using more media sources than ever before but those sources are increasingly saturated with undesirable “noise” and there is an ever present need to censor what we let in. That’s where the Filter comes in to play. No longer do we have to wait for someone else to curate our information and feed it to us. We follow the people we want to follow, we befriend those we want to befriend and we watch what we want to watch and as such we are now responsible for our own media and information intake.

Enabling us to filter is the Feed. Often we think of the feed as pulling data in but we are also being swamped by others’ opinions. Your friends that you follow, they are stressing their opinions and whether you like it or not, you are probably swayed by what they have to say. Powell argues however, that the feed is more elite than the “cafe” as we are now in a position to be selective about who we connect with and allow into that feed. It’s not always as easy to remove someone from a cafe setting. However hard you push.

As part of the SMM, Powell also discussed the Funnel. Now, using the funnel, messages and motivations can be amplified empowering the bottom up approach to social commentary. So now, when we have Open Data being sent from the top down, we increase the voice from the bottom up. Not to mention that data generated by the end citizen can now be funneled upwards to the likes of local councils and even country-wide government. A good example of this is fixmystreet.com allowing you to see and report on issues local to you. Powell believes that the Logic is the transformative bit, not necessarily the applications.

There are downsides to the internet and its ability to empower social spheres. All of those citizens that now have an “audible” voice have the power to detract from a single cause. This is known as the Echo Chambers. Imagine two different groups are campaigning for the same cause but do not focus their followings at the same point. It has the potential to divide and detract from a common goal. Pretty much along the same lines as Labour’s pleas to not “split the vote” between Labour and the Lib. Dems. in the recent elections. But I am trying to write a blog post without some sort of political commentary so I’ll stop that analogy right there. Powell’s point was that while deliberation is now easier with the prevalence of the internet, the step from deliberation to action can now be even more difficult.

Another issue with SMM is that we are all now becoming what Powell describes as Data Serfs. Now, with our increasing activity on the internet and digital social networks, we are creating more and more data for others. I for one am pretty well sure I have now reached the point where Google knows more about my past, checkered and un-checkered. A few years ago I read somewhere that Tesco, with the information they scrape from your Club Card, can now not only tell when it is your time of the month (obviously this probably only applies to half of you reading this), but also they can now ascertain when you are pregnant before you yourself can, just by the change in purchasing habits. Most likely just rumour but it does highlight what I’m saying. By innocently participating in services we are creating data that can be used both for us and against us. We now have to be more careful than ever with what information we now allow others to see.

The last points Powell made in her presentation were on Platforms, Infrastructure, Practices and Democracy but at that point, my notes run dry.

Part 2, with Mushon and Alex coming soon…

HighWire recently held an Ideas Workshop with Alex Deschamps-Sonsino CEO of Tinker London. The workshop was the first of a coming series of workshops related to an emerging HighWire project involving Richard Wood, Graham Dean, Natasha Carolan & Marcia Smith. This project is focused on (broadly speaking) physical computing, interaction design, physicalisation of data and emotive and persuasive design.

The day was pitched as an ideas factory, to encourage idea generation, exploration of the domains of interest and networking between the relevant disciplines. Given our ongoing dedication to playfulness the day was designed to entertain and inspire each participant. With guests including Folly CEO Taylor Nuttall, Imagination Lancaster and the Computing and Management schools in Lancaster we started the day by creating teams through drawing keys out of bowl at random, a starting point which set up a playful and provocative atmosphere.

Yesterday marked the first of a series of workshops being run by the team here at HighWire and despite some early morning apprehension and what could generally be aligned to last minute “jitters” the day was a resounding success. From our end at least. The aim of the day, which is now much clearer in hindsight, was to explore how academics, students and industrial partners viewed and interacted with their data. In a word, physicality. For this workshop we split the subject into three sections: Data, Transformation and Physicality.

In the context of this workshop, Data is the raw information in the “loop”. It is a name, a bus route or the length your hair has grown since you last had it cut. It can both define and be defined by a physical embodiment. Imagine it in the context of Twitter and Data would be the “Tweet”.

For us, in geek speak, Transformation is the “middleware”. It’s the bit in between Physicality and Data that enables interaction between the two. It is the Arduino’s, the API’s, the PHP script and the “Code Monkey” bashing feverishly away at the keyboard to make it all work. Take Twitter again and the Transformation would be Twitter itself. For us, Physicality is about Data being physically represented in a sometimes playful and emotive manner. There are many great example of physical objects being controlled, adjusted or made interactive by using them in conjunction with data. A notable couple would be Tinker’s “Rewind” project and Mathieu Lehanneur’s “Therapeutic Objects”. Once again using the example of Twitter, Physicality could be a man, woman, or even a machine (I often have a tendency to default to technology), physically writing out each Tweet.

In each of these areas we then asked the participants to identify things that they were either doing, wanted to do or perhaps thought were impossible. This was done with trusted Post-It notes and appropriately titled boards.Next we asked the participants, over lunch (we’ve learnt that it is treacherous ground to ask academics anything on empty stomachs), to identify ideas posted on the boards that they felt particularly fell into one of five key areas. Those areas were: “Count Me In” – enabling us to identify potential points of collaboration and/or expertise. “Impossible” – looking for inspiration, we wanted to find the areas that the participants believed were impossible. After all, we do like a challenge. “Done to Death” – Where did the participants believe their was a sense of “overkill”, that the technology or society had moved on or that there were simply more exciting things to be doing. “Reference” – Where participants had prior knowledge of idea and thoughts we wanted them to share references that we could then follow up and Finally we wanted the participants to annotate anything that they believed was “Bright and Exciting”, that one is fairly self explanatory really. After lunch a series of activities designed to entice creativity and divergent, “unstagnated” thinking aimed to build on the playfulness of the day and potentially inspire us with a project direction we had not thought of. But that is another blog post all together.

So that brings me full circle, back to the title of this post – Physicality and the “Done to Death” Pile. At the end of the workshop we began to muse over what we had discussed, discovered and played with during the day. The “Done to Death”’s, a “pile” we had used during the workshop to help us remove the mundane, overused buzzwords from the list of potential key areas. One in which we had payed little attention or interest to, it was highlighted as an unexpected area of interest. So, here they are, listed below:

NB: It is important to note that the following list is subjective and only really based on interest levels

Data

• Search
• Social Networks
• Heart Beat

Transformation

• Google
• Walls for Graffiti

Physicality

• RFID
• GPS Tracking
• Wearable Sensors
• Sensor Tech
• Fridge that shouts at you
• Computer Vision
• Robots

Although, granted, each of the above points have interesting aspects or offshoots well worth exploring, the collective consensus of the workshop group, ruled them out. For me, this highlights the difference between academia and the commercial world and perhaps where they fail to communicate sufficiently. What commercial enterprises find interesting or perhaps a solution to a problem, may already be “old hat” in academic institutes. This is precisely where HighWire is supposed to fit in. Breaking down the ivory towers of academia and dispersing what we learn into industry and doing it quickly. To quote one academic at the workshop, “just get something out there”.

A HighWire forum with Monika Buscher, Daria Loi, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonisino & Lucy Suchman took place this week. Opening with an introduction by Monika we proceeded to discuss innovation.

Alexandra CEO of Tinker.it spoke of the Arduino chip and the growing community of tinkerers who engage in projects using this chip.

‘Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.’ Arduino

This platform is interesting to consider in terms of democratising innovation, the community which grows around it provides a source of support and information for individuals working on projects using the chip, and the open source chip facilitates innovative use. Within this elements of participatory design, collaborative design and prototying emerge.