Human Technology Interaction

FoAM, and Experiments in Vegetal Culture

Posted on October 23, 2014October 23, 2014 by timothyjbusuttil

Our future scenario has a strong focus on communal living, changing cultural behaviours and interacting with the natural world more closely in order to achieve greater resilience and sustainability. One group which works with similar themes is FoAM, a collective consisting of artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, chefs, gardeners and designers (FoAM, 2014). FoAM describe themselves as a “haven for people who are unafraid to ask the question: ‘What If?’” (FoAM, 2014). Founded by Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney, FoAM are pioneers in futuring and prehearsing, working with many environmentally centred concepts relevant to our Sustainable Sydney 2015 scenario.

Communal work is a very significant theme in our scenario, as is its interplay with technology. J. Stephen Lansing explores the etymology of the word technology – “The word ‘technology’ derives from technē, a Greek word that originally referred to the labours of the smith and other craftsmen. The analogous Greek word for the labours of the farmer is erga or ‘work’ … For the Greeks, the smith was a solitary figure, whose technē was a jealously guarded secret connecting him to the powers of the underworld through the god Hephaestus. In contrast, the erga, or work, of the farmer was public, involving the whole society and most of the gods.”

In line with this idea, we must see ourselves in this scenario as FoAM do; a community of farmers whose work is public. This informed the driving idea behind our scenario, the interconnected system in which every individual helps to provide not only for themselves, but for others also. The concept of a buy/sell/trade market is explored in our scenario, a kind of economic space which de-emphasises currency and favours the sharing of excess goods between apartment communities.

In their article GroWorld: Experiments in vegetal culture, Kuzmanovic and Gaffney describe their exploration of digital prototypes for plant-centric culture through online social networks (Kuzmanovic, Gaffney, 2014). This experimentation sought to establish self-sustaining digital gardens, and resulted in an offshoot project called Zizim. This was a hybrid mobile app and game which, interestingly, plays with the idea of plant sentience(Kuzmanovic, Gaffney, 2014).

While our scenario’s focus is more traditionally agricultural than FoAM’s work, theirs is strongly grounded in prototyping and body storming. Creating experimental situations, generative media and culinary performances (FoAM, 2014), FoAM works hard to turn “What If?” questions into lived experiences, and then hopefully into realistic solutions to our current environmental problems.

Tim Busuttil 11698622

References:
FoAM, 2014, Grow Your Own Worlds, accessed 22 October 2014 <http://fo.am/about/>

Kuzmanovic, M., Gaffney, N. 2014, GroWorld: Experiments in Vegetal Culture, accessed 22 October 2014 <http://libarynth.org/groworld_vegetal_culture>

Lansing, J. S. (1991). Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali. Princeton University Press.

Technical Skills in Design Education and Design Employment

Posted on October 23, 2014October 23, 2014 by timothyjbusuttil

Michael graduated with a Bachelor of Design in Visual Communications from the University of Western Sydney in 2012. Since before the end of his degree, he has been employed in a small, Sydney-based web development and design firm. Given that I am currently halfway through a similar tertiary education, I interviewed him in order to gain an insight into how different technologies and technical skills play into his employment, and how much of that he gained through his university education.

How would you describe your position in the design world?
I’m a designer who works mainly on the web. I’d probably be a Junior at a real design studio, but at my current job I’m a Project Manager/do-everything-guy. My job largely isolates me from the “design world” as such – I don’t think designers have fully embraced the web yet. It still feels more like science than like art, even though it isn’t.

What role does technology play in your practice?
On the internet, I think it’s unestimable. Without technology, a web designer is a fancy name for a spider.

What amount of work do you achieve outside the computer?
Not a lot. I tend to do initial sketches on paper – because it’s so far removed from the actual screen, you spend less time worrying about the details and more time sorting out if the spatial interactions and interface flow make sense.

What technical skills are significant in your work, and do you feel they were learned during or after your tertiary education?
My work requires me to be fluent in HTML and CSS minimum, and I have a working understanding of PHP, Javascript, and general server-based technologies. On top of that, I have to be conversant in a range of programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, an FTP client, and a number of web browsers, as well as general computer support skills.

I don’t think I learnt any of this at university – we took a basic HTML/CSS unit, but I’d already been in my job for over a year at that point. The rest of it is largely specific to web design and so wasn’t really covered, although I think this is foolish, because most designers in 2014 will need to be web-fluent. Hell, most people should be web-fluent. Technology-illiterate is the new illiterate.

In what ways do you foresee technological change and development being relevant in the design community?
Both crucial and meaningless. As the technologies change, the specific details of our day-to-day practice will diversify and transform – I don’t think there’s a computer-level revolution in the near future, but every new version of Photoshop brings tiny tweaks and modifications. At the same time, the fundamentals of design mostly don’t care if you’re carving a stone tablet or tweaking pixels on a retina-display phablet.

Do you foresee the technical requirements of your design practice changing in the future?
I’m a web designer. I’ll be lucky if they don’t change before I wake up tomorrow.

Interestingly, Michael points out that almost all of the technical skills required for his job, he did not learn at university. However, it is also worth noting that Michael’s current position is not his desired one; his daily work is coding-heavy and design-light, and his ideal job would factor in a much larger amount of designing work (2014, pers. comm., 21 October).

Michael’s position on the significance of web literacy confirmed mine, that “most designers in 2014 will need to be web-fluent.” As before, however, these skills of Michael’s were largely self-taught or picked up at work (2014, pers. comm., 22 October), which he believes to have been a slight failing of his tertiary education. Whether or not all designers are required to be competent website builders in 2014 is a separate debate, but it certainly goes without saying that a level of web literacy is required so that designers can have a dialogue with code-literate practitioners.

Moving away from his web-centric skill set, Michael’s skills in Photoshop and Illustrator might be viewed as more design-focused. Furthermore, his propensity to begin work with initial sketches on paper is a practice taught in Visual Communications (although this behaviour is both inter-disciplinary and seemingly a natural human instinct).

Most significantly, in my opinion, is his clearly certain belief that technical development and the constant change in technical requirements of his work and practice. In a later discussion, Michael stated that he felt the most significant skill he learnt at university was the ability to learn new programs and systems (2014, pers. comm., 21 October). Given that this change is, in his opinion, not only inevitable but immediate, the ability to adapt to these changes is of paramount importance for any design practitioner.

Tim Busuttil 11698622

References:
Busuttil, M. (2014) Interviewed by Timothy Busuttil, Design Education and Employment, 20 October 2014.

Let the Deaf Listen and Speak

Posted on October 23, 2014October 23, 2014 by Ariel Ruby

Will you understand accurately when you meet a hearing-impaired person who expresses by hand sign language on the road?

Accord to the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), there are approximately 70 million deaf people worldwide, accounting for 1% of the total population of the world. They have to use sign language to communicate with others. However, sign language is hard to learn and expresses limited content. Is there a tool that can make the deaf person break the tether of gesture language to communicate with other normal person or dumb person fluently?

At the same time, A study (Ali, 2007) shows that researching of gesture recognition system has become more important in the field of human technology interaction. The gesture language is an important interactive mean in the human technology interaction, characterized by vivid, intuitive and strong visual effects. At present, the hand gesture recognition system as communication tool for hearing-impaired person draws the attention of researchers of human technology interaction. It collects gesture data of the hearing-impaired, converted actions into text, and displayed text information on the LCD screen.

The hand gesture recognition system contains two key parts. One is the gesture detection system, that is, detects hand detection and positioning and inputs image separated the hand from the background. The second part is the gesture recognition system. It extracts gestures and recognizes features from hand image.

The data glove is a widely used gesture detection device. It feeds back the movement data of various joints. It has high accurate rate of recognition. However, there are some advantages, like expensive price for purchasing the data glove and position tracker, and bringing poor user experience (sweating hand).

The second gesture recognition system is with camera as the input device. The input device can acquire the gesture information with single or multiple cameras and then recognize the gesture by analyzing the acquired image with the computer system. The disadvantages of camera system are time-consuming for complicated computational process and poor recognition rate. However, relatively cheap price is accepted by most of customers as well as easy to learn and simply operation.

As to the gesture recognition, Takahashi (1991) studied the gesture symbols and could recognize 46 gesture symbols. At present, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is mainly used for the recognition of static gestures. The Hidden Markov Model (OKA et al, 2002) is a statistical analysis mode and applying in dynamic gestures recognize.

Most of the researches have focused on the static gestures recognition technology. Due to the technical limitation of gesture detection system and gesture recognition system, dynamic recognition technology runs below expectations.

If apply into these people, the product are also add a function of voice, which expressing content in voice directly. If one makes the OK sign with ones fingers, the system say OK directly. That it will be more convenient for hearing impaired people exchange.

We have reason to believe that the 70 million deaf people will communicate with the society flexibly as the improvement of recognition of correct rate in gesture recognition technology.

Emilia Wang 11533294

Reference

World Federation of the Deaf, viewed 6 October 2014, <http://www.wfdnews.org/>.
Erol, A., Bebis, G., Nicolesc, M., Boyle, R.D., Twombly, X.2007, ‘ Vision-based hand pose estimation: a review ‘． Computer Vision and Image Understanding， 108, no. 1,pp.52－73．
Takahashi, T.& Kishino,F.1991, ‘Hand gesture coding based on experiments using a and gesture interface Design’. SIGCHI Bulletin. vol. 232, pp.67-63.
Oka, K.，Sato, Y.& Koike, H．2002,’Real-time fingertip tracking and gesture recognition’, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 122, no. 6,pp.64－71．

The Times They Are-A-Changing

Posted on October 23, 2014October 23, 2014 by Ariel Ruby

Interview conducted with my father (50 years old)

What kind of technology did you have as a child?

I watched black and white TV and used rotary dial telephones and phone boxes. We had a big, old air conditioner unit as well as a gas stove and oven. I played with skateboards and a ‘stick-and-ball’, with slingshots and air rifles and often rode a dirt bike in the backyard. Everyone played outside, not inside and when the street lights came on I was told to come home.

Would you say you are up to date with the latest technology?

Yep. These days I am a technology specialists and work with cloud computing in a telecommunications company.

Has it been difficult to keep up?

Not really, I’m across the technology before it gets released to mainstream – it is my job and passion to understand new technologies and to deliver technical services to multinational corporations. Most people my age who aren’t as interested in technology are not confident in using that latest things, which will only get more difficult for them as time goes on.

What do you use your computer/internet for the most?

I use my computer mostly for E-mail, research, project management and product capability development.

How important is technology for you these days?

My GPS is extremely useful to get to places I’ve never been, such as throughout Europe and urban and rural parts of Australia. My mobile allows me to maintain 24/7 communications with anyone including family, friends, emergency services and work colleagues. I use the computer for downloading trial software, applications for downloading, encryption and security, as well as anti-virus products while I go about my daily work and social networking.

Where do you see technology advancing to in the next 50 years?

Applications are in the Cloud, so there’d be more predominance in software as a service (SaaS) and in automation for typical daily tasks and business related applications where automation is key to productivity and reduction of costly resources. I think there’ll be non-touch interactions between people and devices using voice, sound and hand movements. I also think optical recognition will be used for security, as well as safety in vehicles like detecting drowsiness or fatigue or even if they are under the influence. Vehicles will be automated with a destination imputed and no human interaction (or very little), creating much safer driving conditions. Interplanetary travel to new colonies and space stations will be readily available and global travel will be via the outer atmosphere.

What do you think are the “pros and cons” of our ever-changing technologies are?

Obesity would be far more common. There’d be a far greater lack of confidence in social environments and the I reckon the Japanese disorder Hikikomori will be a common trait due to the lack of social interactions. Personally I think some pros would be having more relaxed living conditions and having more time for social and physical activities due to advanced technology that may assist in speeding up or eliminating parts of the usual daily routine.

What is your opinion on the over-use of technology in recent times by the younger generations?

I think smart phones are inhibiting their ability to have proper face-to-face social interaction. It is also damaging their eyesight, but will allow for rapid gathering of information which will enhance education via internet sources. Unfortunately the internet sources viewed are not always accurate and are a combination of various opinions from people who are not educated with fact.

Technology is advancing faster than ever before, but the young and the old are being affected in different ways. The older generations who have not been able to keep up with changing technologies are being left behind. Martin Beckford has found that ‘older people have trouble getting information… because so much of it is kept online’. Beckford also points out that in an attempt to minimise the hassle of travelling around, online pension payments have reportedly made it far lonelier for the elderly, despite its original intention being to benefit them. Quite a number of the middle-aged generations today have stopped understanding a large portion of modern technology, and it seems only those who, like my father, have a “job and passion to understand new technologies” can hope yo keep up.

On the other end of the spectrum, children and teenagers are becoming immersed within technology far earlier than any other generation. Recently on a UK television show ITV Tonight, host Jonathan Maitland revealed that “by the time they start school, 70 per cent of children are already confident in using a laptop, tablet or smart phone”. Other statistics also came to light during the programme, such as the 40% of parents believing their child’s familiarity with technology is important and, oddly enough, 17% of children under three own their own smart phone/tablet. Despite being a generation apart, my father and I both grew up playing outside and with minimal, if any, Internet interactions, causing me to feel that a three-year old owning the latest iPhone or tablet is absurd. I am yet to decide whether I am against this because these children are missing out on the hands-on, imaginative experiences that my father and I would have had, or because I cannot even begin to fathom what a three-year old could possibly need with a phone.

German Professor and author Manfred Spitzer holds a similar, but far stronger view of this, convinced that “touchscreen devices and a developing brain do not mix.” According to his book ‘Digital Dementia’ (2012), these aforementioned technologies prevent the brains of children from being properly used, deeming it as an almost ‘criminal act’ for parents to be providing it to them.

Overall it eventually comes down to using in moderation, like most things in life. The elderly are not using as frequently and are falling behind the times, while the youngsters of the world are found to be over-using it, which may lead to social or psychological issues down the line. Technology is still becoming more integrated into schooling and everyday life, ultimately affecting both young and old, the key is to not over or under do it.

Daniel Righetti 11772656

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