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’.

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.

Product Designer Lee Murray has created an application for CCTV surveillance with his concept, The Observer; a public access viewing station allowing any member of the public to watch others via CCTV cameras. The object explores the potential social implications if all CCTV cameras were monitored by the public.
Using web camera & internet technology to bring the concept to life, Lee hopes that ultimately the entire system would be connected to the nations extensive network of CCTV cameras. Constructed from sheet steel & aluminium, this concept makes interesting nods to ‘people watching’ and crowd sourced surveillance. While  the Observer’s design has been inspired from classic science-fiction books & films such as “Brave New World”, “1984″ & “Brazil”.

The Pirate Bay meets the Digital Economy Bill. Rather fitting don’t you think? However in agreement with Richard Wood, Mandelson would be a much better target.

Whilst writing a paper for Fiscar 2010 I have been exploring the issues surrounding development of a file sharing culture in the design profession (more specifically the product or industrial design profession). I suggest that as personal fabrication becomes more commonplace, a trend we are observing, that the value (for the average citizen) of product design files will increase and consequently a file sharing culture might emerge.

I spoke previously of “The Product Bay‘ established by the founder of the ‘Pirate Bay’, an action which demonstrates that a file shared product design future is not only feasible but also considered commercially viable. While open source development of Makerbot and Fab@Home, among other open source development of personal fabricators is bringing personal fabrication closer to reality. Consequently, I am considering the implications for the design profession, implications that are wide ranging and to date unconsidered by the profession itself.

To be presented at Fiscar 2010 in Helsinki from May 23-25th 2010

Graham Dean a fellow HighWire student has brought life to Eric Morcambe’s statue in Morcambe Bay. By providing contextual information gathered from APIs about local Morcambe weather and writing code to construct tweets in the first person to make it more lifelike Graham has enabled Eric, or rather Eric’s statue to tweet about the weather. Richard Wood of HighWire has also created a tweet stream from Islambard Kingdom Brunel.

Quirky is an experiment in crowd-sourcing, democratic design and collaborative design and I’ve been watching Quirky over the past few months with growing interest.

Ben Kaufman, the ‘founder’ of the idea thought of Quirky at the age of 22.

Quirky works as follows:Potential inventors with ideas pay a $99 fee to submit an idea and the growing Quirky community rate the new submissions. The ideas submitted are then put through stages of product research, industrial design and product naming. Successful products are developed and made available for order. When enough product orders are received the product is put into production and distributed. The best outcome for the inventor is that your idea gets produced. The worst outcome: free advice and feedback.

Onotate is an app allowing users to annotate web design mock-ups but Onotate decided to investigate how we might (annotate) Onotate the world.

Imagine we could express our mood or feelings about things we see in the real world, whether it be liking that morning coffee or disliking your boring desk at work (obviously you will think of more exciting things) slap a coloured sticky on it and proclaim your feeling towards it – Onotate it!

How it  works?

Participants onotate the world using the sticky notes, photograph (geo tagged) and tweet with corresponding hash tags and the image and location is marked on the Onotate world map.

I love the idea behind this, a ‘web enhanced democracy of sorts’.  Now, how do I stick these on a politicians forehead?

For your chance to participate visit Onotate

Wired UK and US covers, both covering the ‘new industrial revolution’. Interesting to behold, in terms of the cover art used. Is the UK/European image a nod to socialism?

I will be presenting at Fiscar 2010 in Helsinki from May 23-25th. I will present on Digital Fabrication, Digital File Sharing & the Implications for the design profession.

Also attending and presenting are fellow HighWiree Richard Wood and Co-director of HighWire Leon Cruickshank

If you are attending I look forward to seeing you.