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August 30, 2005

ITP at NYU --- Creative Space

Check out the ITP's (Interactive Telecommunication Program) Creative Space. I especially like the Shop Room.

Haptic Research - Physical Computing

Here are some projects produced by some of the grad students in ITP. Pretty impressive?!

March 14, 2006

Danny Rozin's Violin

Danny Rozin teaches Toy Design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. He's well-known for the "Wooden Mirror," which use approximately 900 Servo Motors. I was impressed with this violin he produced in only a week. It hooks up to a MIDI controller.

April 15, 2006

Soft Circuitry

I'm taking up knitting to learn about this process. I plan on making a "Security Blanket," using technology. More to come later. Here's a patch I'm knitting.

October 29, 2006

Nick is wearing my proxy...

He had to wear that for one day. It kind of reminded me of one of those old Toyota car dealer commercials except it bounced over words so you can sing along. Btw, Nick is a genius.

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This is a game...

This is a social game created by Summer Bedhard at ITP at NYU and her group for game design. I couldn't resist taking a photo. It looks fun and funny. Btw, Steve Jackson smells fresh, like pecans, denoted by his name "Pecan Jackson."

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November 13, 2006

Chris Anderson and Lawrence Lessig

Last month, I signed up to see Lawrence Lessig and Chris Anderson talk about his new book The Long Tail. I haven't read the book yet, but "the long tail" represents the "power law distribution," a different way of reading statistical data. In Chris Anderson's book, it is used to analyze content on the web. In a class taught by Clay Shirky, he frequently uses this law to analyze social interactions and groups.
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"RO" is defined as "Read Only" and "RW" is defined as "Read-Write." They also briefly covered their views about Net Neutrality.

November 14, 2006

Pollie Barden Networked Journal Project

When Pollie first pitched her idea, I remembered thinking "Wow! That's pretty ambitious." Anyway, two weeks later, she's already making her prototype and hooking her sensor to the book (which I believe is an fsr). So imagine that black electrical tape around the book's border is a force field. As you write in the book, it triggers the LED light. Then replace that LED light signal with a cell phone message, email, audio, or any kind of response. Keeping this in mind for when my group designs an antenna for our bookshelf. Kudos, Pollie!

Addendum:
I was wrong about the sensor. It is an analog QPROX (proximity sensor) that is constantly on using PWM (pulse width modulator: technique for controlling analog circuits with a processor's digital outputs). I think she's going to ground the cover of her book with some conductive fabric. I really can't wait to see this at ITP show.

For more information about Pollie's work, click here. She also designed and produced this cool laptop tray for one of the kids in her assistive tech class. I think he was very happy with it.

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November 20, 2006

For the People who are taking Physical Computing Without Computers

These two images are for the people who are taking Physical Computing Without Computers, a course that explores mechanical engineering and other solutions that do not use microcontrollers. Most of them are doing projects with gears. These photos were taken in Ron Sear's studio. It utilizes power, but no "brain." Anyway, its functionality is cleaning metal using sand as an abrasive.
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November 29, 2006

Preview Winter ITP 2006, Part I

David Bamford's Remote Emote is pretty cool. He is in my Networked Objects class. The concept of this piece is kind of a physical mirror installation. There are two of these in two different locations. When one square rod is pushed in one location, the corresponding rod in a different location protrudes. It kind of reminds me of Andrew Shoben's work. Immaculate detailed construction and engineering.
To learn more about his process, check out his link.
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Preview Winter ITP 2006, Part II

Another amazing project created by Rocio Barcia and Karl Channell. They produced these controllers that allow you to change the space and scale of the scene that is projected on the screen. I believe this project has a lot of potential in providing an immersive experience in a non-linear narrative. I can picture the user toggling between two or three scenes from an Alfred Hitchcock movie, or even a moving sequence that would allow a user to experience time travel.
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December 1, 2006

Preview Winter ITP 2006, Part III

Ilteris Kaplan's Mood Box

These boxes collect people's emotional state, which is connected to a data visualization interface, called "Moodbox Stats." Collective and random emotions in a specific location are mapped on a color wheel by time. The stats measure the overall emotion of a room or location. Currently, the working prototype communicates emotions to each other. Input: press a button to record emotion. Output: the box changes colors to express the emotion-input.

"Hey Ilteris, how about a Mood Wall?"

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Jane Oh rewards the "Walking Potato"

I think it's a device that rewards you for getting off your couch. The user is suppose to walk, which is measured by a pedometer, and logs in the distance. The more you walk, the more television you get to watch. The pedometer is wirelessly connected to a television.

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Angela Pablo and Megan MacMurray, Electric Plant

Using an inflatable to represent power consumption. When an energy saving light bulb is plugged into this device, it pumps air into recycled bags that forms a plant sculpture. When a regular bulb is switched on, the plastic plant deflates.

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Chris Paretti and Chris Karailla

Voice replaces the remote controller for these cars. If you call a number, you can control the speed of these toy cars with your vocal "Vrooms!" I think the dial plan (Asterisk) parses the frequency and the pitch of your voice to control the speed of the car, and the the telephone extension determines which car you control.

Anyone with a cell phone can participate in this race. Here is a video of how it works...

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December 2, 2006

Preview Winter ITP 2006, Part IV

Pollie Barden Networked Journal, in progress...

About two weeks ago, I documented Pollie's project. It was great seeing her process from cardboard journal, pcomp journal/book design.

That's Tom Igoe in action, Professor at ITP, and author of Physical Computing books: no_pollie01.jpg

Book Design, this image shows the container for the pages of the journal. Note that gray material is conductive fabric: no_pollie03.jpg

That the back of the book, which contains all the electrical components: no_pollie04.jpg
(1) Breadboard that is designed in the journal. It has a wireless piece.
(2) Another breadboard that will be designed in another journal, which is suppose to be situated in another location. This will be hooked to a low-tech printer (that roll of paper), so it would print any activities of the journal (1).
(3) Copper fabric, which grounds the sensor, and helps its sensitivity.

For more information about Pollie, click here.


Andew Schneider's Sustainable Practices, 1/4 Projects

In an effort to recycle plastic water cups, frequently used at ITP, he decided to build this Wheat and Rye Grass Ecosystem. See, not everything at ITP is about microcontrollers, this is pretty low tech and beautiful. I wouldn't mind having one of these hanging in my balcony or even an office somewhere.

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By the way, he also designed the ITP Winter Show 2006 postcards. It conveys human, enchantment, and possibilities.

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Thanksgiving 2006

This is what we did for Thanksgiving. Rather than bake a turkey, we fried pcb boards. There's one chip there that doesn't have legs, so we experiemented with frying. People must be asking why we didn't bake this is a toaster oven using flux, I think it's because we didn't want that chip fried. Instead, cover your pan with some aluminum foil, place board on the pan, put the chip on the board, turn the fire up, at approximately 300 degrees, turn off the fire down, and add some water, so your board sizzles. We're such nerds. I would only recommend doing this if you have a couple of spare chips.
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December 4, 2006

The Irony of BusinessWeek's Award

So in October 2006, BusinessWeek published a story about "Top Design Programs," and NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program was listed as one of the top D-Schools. They gave us this plaque, need I say more? Maybe the design objective is to redesign the award? Actually, we're happy that we were in the mag, and the award is up on the wall between the computer labs.
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December 5, 2006

New York Times Illustrations from Processing Application

This is truly a beautiful information visualization illustrated by James N. Sears. It was published in the New York Times Magazine (December 3, 2006), as the cover.

Although the printed illustrations are beautiful, the actual screen interface is more engaging.

Also mentioned in this story is Matthew Burton, also a member of the ITP community.

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Processing was developed by M.I.T. grads Casey Reas and Ben Fry, and it's free to try. It is part of ITP foundation courses because the language is similar to Java, except the interface is easier to understand than Eclipse. Also, it's a good introduction for Arduino, which is also another free software that similarly functions as Pic Basic Pro.

December 8, 2006

ITP Winter Show 2006

Orbital, James Nick Sears, Ron Sears, Leif Mangelsen

Imagine this with tri-colored LED lights. Pretty crazy, huh? I think this project maybe a show-stealer.

The motor is off... orbital00.jpg
The motor is on... orbital01.jpg

For the final iteration for the ITP Winter Show 2006, click here.

Another photo taken in class... globe_jnsears.jpg

Off, of course.

December 12, 2006

ITP Winter Show 2006 Preview

"Now, finally, a lot of people are beginning to see how machines might in fact learn to fit into their lives as well as humans do. People are increasingly choosing their books and music by the algorithmic recommendations of Amazon instead of those of their friends, planning dates with mates they find in textfields instead of local bars or social clubs."

—Christian Croft


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This machine will fill out scantron bubbles for you if you drop a coin in any of its slots. Christian Croft designed the gears and kinetic system from scratch (i.e. using the laser cutter to cut Plexiglas). I know he's going to be insulted, but I have to say that the design of this machine is beautiful.

His commentary of moving forward to a world of automation is humorous. I always appreciate Christian Croft's and Andrew Schneider's conceptual art projects. I'm not sure if it's because they have a background in theater, but their work is never too abstract for me to understand.

This machine is going to be attached to a desk.
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This code means something, translated from binary to English.
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For more information about this project, click here to visit his site.

December 18, 2006

ITP Winter Show 2006, Sunday, December 17, 2006

Some photos from the show. More to come later.
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ITP Winter Show 2006, NYU, Tisch School

The Orbital By James N. Sears, Ron Sears and Leif Mangelsen

3D display using persistence of vision.

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December 20, 2006

ITP Winter Show 2006, Monday, December 18, 2006

PART o1:

Solar Cell Bikini by Andrew Schneider

Power your iPod mini with your bikini that collects power from the sun.
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The "Is Our Machine Learning" Machine by Christian Croft

Commentary on the smartness of machines.
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Ubi-atch Toys by Min, Gilad and Chung-xi

These toys read your email as if you were having a conversation with the writer of the email. They are also designing a version for iChat.
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Couch Potato by Jane Oh

This device rewards you after you have taken a walk around the block. The more you walk, the more you get to watch television.
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The Networked Journal by Pollie Barden

I've written about this project before. Please see earlier entry for more information.
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Ambient Lighting Design itpwinter05.jpg



Interactive Puppet Theater

You interact with a sensor that looks like a microphone to manipulate puppets in action.
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A mirror that allows you to see yourself in different hairstyles.

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Are we in a time warp? Typewriter outputs digital? Typewriter crosses computer. itpwinter08.jpg
Twister Game networked? There are hundreds of solutions to win this game. A new approach to Twister, but you need to find the right combination. To do so, it requires you to touch other players. itpwinter09.jpg
Gilad Lotan

Each copper piece represents a continent. When they are spun, you see video of news from that continent that was mined from the Internet.

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These fingerless gloves warm your hands ups when you hold your partner's hand. itpwinter11.jpg


MoPress by Alex and Jane

You wear this jacket that logs in data and provides this visualization.
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Powder and Ferrofluid Interesting texture when it pulses. Pretty mesmerizing. itpwinter14.jpg
Hat Mutterer itpwinter15.jpg


This project is called "Hair" by Carolina Pino
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Kyungmi's "Kenny" digital paint brush itpwinter17.jpg
Networked Shoes as a performance tool. This was indeed a treat to watch. itpwinter18.jpg itpwinter19.jpg
Lara and Myra worked on a chair that functions as a musical interest for assistive tech.itpwinter20.jpg

December 21, 2006

More ITP Winter Show 2006, Monday, December 18, 2006

PART o2

Chris and Juri's Mega Phone Game. This is fun and immersive. I can see it at a movie theater. You call a number and play these short games that are projected on a screen. The games are short and satisfying. One example is blowing into your cellphone to digitally blow a balloon fastest. Maybe the theater can give you a free tub of popcorn if you win. "Don't forget to turn off your cellphones for the movie!" itpwinter21.jpg
Andy, Kate and Che worked on this demo. You can turn off appliances and make your home smart using your cellphone. So if you forgot to turn off your light or forgot to turn on your air conditioner for your cat, this would be a great tool. itpwinter22.jpg
Christin Roman's Telebunny calls your child and comforts it when you're away. itpwinter23.jpg
Chris Parretti's car race allow you to control the speed of the car by yelling into your mobile phone. New game consoles a mobile device? Watch out Sony and Nintendo! itpwinter24.jpg
Preston Noon's Puzzle Poetryitpwinter25.jpg


Mike Bukhin and Michael DelGaudio's mobile phone is video tracking every second and minute of the wearer's day and meta tagging activities.
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Ilteris Kaplan's Mood Box allows you to anonymously input your emotions in one space, which is processed and displayed in a different space. I see a lot of potential. It is beautiful as well. itpwinter28.jpgitpwinter29.jpgitpwinter30.jpg
Fun cell phone game with archaic cell/cordless phone controller>itpwinter31.jpg
Judson's video tracking flea simulation. What a hoot!itpwinter32.jpg
Jeff LeBlanc's art works. itpwinter34.jpg
Che's tree personality test translated to music using Max/MSP and Jitter. itpwinter35.jpg
Jenny Chowdhury's email art. itpwinter36.jpg
Animalia Chordata. Gabe's humorous exploration of personal space. He puts people in bottles. Okay, this project was in one of those blogs I listed above. itpwinter37.jpgitpwinter37a.jpg
Tales of Grim. While you read this book, the rooms in the play house interact. itpwinter38.jpg
Low tech art by Heather, Charles and Tristan. It's pretty satisfying swaying these blocks itpwinter39.jpg
I didn't get to interact with this project, but it looks engaging. itpwinter40.jpg
Tikva's Sonic Body Pong. This was on the Make blog too. itpwinter41.jpg
Steve Jackson's project allows you to channel surf YouTube according to subject matter. If you type in "basketball," it mine all videos related to this sport for the day and play it for you. I'm not even a big YouTube fan, but I found this project pretty cool. itpwinter42.jpg
Fantastic Piano

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February 6, 2007

Class Ring for ITP

Originally, I designed these rings with voice recognition chips (concept) for Amit Pitaru's class Designing For Constraints, but I think they may work better as the design for ITP class rings.
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Concept for Pimp'd-Out-Braille Ring:

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February 10, 2007

Keyboard Emulator

Here are my "scales" (la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la) for Designing For Constraints, specifically week 04. Keyboard emulators are usuall used to tweak videogame interfaces. Here we are using it to tweak physical interfaces. If I press this switch, it activates the screen interface to scan.
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Next, I will be connecting one of these trackballs (from SparkFun) to the screen interface.
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February 18, 2007

Skull and Bones

Is this in style? In the past week, I've seen this "skull and bone" graphic in the form of jewelry and printed on clothes (Preston Noon's cuff links and pants and Avani's earrings). Avani told me that the Joyce Leslie store had featured skull and bones. Flashback to 80's punk.
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March 3, 2007

Is Oprah the most connected person?

I just found this site, Knover. A site that practices the "Six Degrees" theory. It basically maps and keeps a database of famous people and their affiliations. I believe this site scapes the Internet for articles with the specific names, and compiles it in a database, so you can cross-reference people with people, affiliation with affiliation, or people with affiliation. I just searched for Oprah, and her profile alone, came up with 15 pages of people, and has 973 web associations. Warren Buffet has 63 web associations, Bill Gates has 462 web associations, George Soros has just 213. Wait! I found someone who beat Oprah with 1,798 web associations, Bill Clinton. I'm not counting George Bush (2,149 web associations) because it seems like most of it is related to what he's doing with the war, i.e. his connection with Adolf Hitler? I also like how they have separate categories like business, music, fashion, news and politics.

The pitfalls, don't type someone not famous, or it will crash, and it tracks just the mainstream/popular "notables." Although, a profile came up for John Zorn. A search for Clay Shirky came up with a profile as well, but I couldn't find Red Burns.

March 5, 2007

CNC Fabrication, Part 01

Mark and Toru, our profs, arranged this field trip to visit 4-pli (a studio) that has a 3-axis CNC milling machine. Basically it can mill just about anything.


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The smallest drill-bit used on this machine.milling_03.jpg



Serious vaccuums to suck excess dust and debris from this machine.
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This is Mastercam, an application, that simulates the machine milling your 3-D design before it mills. I wish this was a screensaver.
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The blue material on the bed is styrofoam. When the milling machine is turned on, the bed sucks the air out so that the styrofoam can not move during the process.
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Drill bits that are primarily used for undercutting.
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This is the interface for this machine. You can see the X, Y, and Z values on this screen.
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It goes through two passes. The first pass is rough because it uses a larger drill bit. The second pass is smoother because if uses a smaller drill bit. This is the finished design. If you look at the Mastercam photo, you will see this design on the screen.
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Our assignment is to create a surface that can be milled in Maya using dynamics and applying different force fields to manipulate the plane.
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CNC Fabrication, Part 02

4-pli
72 North 15th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11222
info@4-pli.com

Here are some surfaces that were milled. It mills masonite, wood, Plexiglas, and lighter metals, like aluminum (it takes longer).

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March 10, 2007

TED Conference

Last year, my friend Jay Moorthy told me about TED, and I've heard about it here and there. Lisa Strausfeld also mentioned TED when she lectured about Richard Saul Wurman (known for his book Understanding USA, where famous designers created information graphics about statistical data in the U.S.). For those of you who don't know about it, TED is the acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design. Some notable speakers and performers have been Al Gore, Malcolm Gladwell, Cameron Sinclair, Nicholas Negroponte, Jeff Han, Tracy Chapman, Sirena Huang, an 11-year-old concert violinist, and even our own ZeFrank (who taught Creative Acts at ITP). It costs about 5g's to go, and you have to be invited, but all of the money goes to charitable organizations. Anyway, they have free podcasts of past speakers, under TED TALKS, which I try to listen to.

This year, I was really interested in Theo Jansen's works (I first heard about him in Living Art). He does these amazing kinetic sculptures, and he's one of the speakers at TED this year. Also, Hod Lipson, who is doing some work in robotics. His robot like of looks like a starfish, which can be seen in the BusinessWeek slide show about TED. I think he's also created a DIY Desktop fabricator for less than 2g's. And also, Nick Sears, from ITP, will be talking about his thesis, the newer 3D orb, and presenting the initial iteration (shown at the 2006 ITP Winter Show).

Bill Clinton, Lawrence Lessig, Paola Antonelli, Zaha Hadid, Richard Branson, and They Might Be Giants will also speak and perform this year.


Here are some recommended links, some are repeated from above:

Podcasts of TEDTalks

TEDBlogs

BusinessWeek's Slide Show on some speakers [which include Theo Jansen, Hod Lipson, and Nick Sears]

BusinessWeek's story about TED

March 15, 2007

Translating Video into a 3D Structure

For Fabricating Information, we used an open source software applications, Isosurf and Blender, to convert RAW grayscale images to x, y, z coordinates. I took an experimental video, and played with dropping frames, blurring, and cutting segments. To learn more about the process, click here.

Here's the video:

Here are the 3D structures that I came up with:

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March 27, 2007

Rapid Prototyping Fabrication - Fabricating Information

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Rapid Prototyping Fabrication is a process that prints resin on x, y, and z axes. So from this video (screenshots below), each shot is a cross section of the artifact.

Here is the process:

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Here are some colleagues pieces:

James N. Sears [derived from Mathematica]

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Che Mangat

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Stefan Hechenberger [derived using motion capture]

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April 10, 2007

Danny Rozin

Production process and first peek of his new Pixel Mirror.

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April 20, 2007

Social Facts

Notes on Group Analysis) by Clay Shirky

1. How many people?
XS ~ 6
S ~ 12
M ~ 50
L ~ 100
XL ~ 1000

2. How was it founded?
happened --- external/internal ---planned

3. What constitutes membership?

4. How tightly bound are the tools?

5. What is the boundary condition?
center --- edge --- horizon

6. What keeps people coming back?

7. Do People in the group transact?

8. Does the group act?

9. How much "real world" is there?

10. How synchronized are the interactions?

April 21, 2007

Social Facts: Trust, Final Paper

I decided to type this in verbatim on my blog just in case I lose this assignment.

Final Paper

For next week, pick a topic to write your final paper about. This will be due on the last day of class.

Your topic should have the following three characteristics:

1. It should involve some aspect of a group that communicates with one another partly or wholly using social media.

2. The group should have some shared goal other than the pleasure of one another's company (Linux Kernel developers and My.Barak.Obama yes, ITP mailing list and Stickam no.)

3. The group should be observable by you.

The paper can be analytic -- how does or did this group come together, and how does it work today? -- or it can be projective -- how could this group be changed for the better? (Including the possibility of designing a way for latent groups to come together around some external activity.)

There is no fixed set of analytic models (users/goals/tools, logic of collective action, etc) and no standard set of questions (as with the 'proposed change' question from the midterm.) Instead, the design of the questions you want to ask yourself is part of choosing the subject.