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April 29, 2005

The true costs of mobility

As a system, mobility is locked into a mode of perpetual growth in a world whose carrying capacity is limited. The status quo policy—“predict and provide”—promises more travel (of people and goods), forever, but using new technologies and integrated systems to make mobility more efficient. A second design strategy is mobility substitution—doing things at a distance that we would otherwise move to do. But mobility substitution is an added extra, not a viable alternative, to mainstream mobility. The only viable design option is to design away the need to move and foster new time-space relations: from distance to duration, from faster to closer.And that will oipen when we start paying the true costs of moving around by whatever means. The latest edition of World Transport Policy & Practice an excellent quarterly journal edited by Professor John Whitelegg, which is just out, includes a salutary "Sustainability risk analysis of the Low Cost Airline sector". Meanwhile, in New Zealand, the true cost of that country's road and rail system is spelled out in a report published today by the Ministry of Transport.The main findings of the study are: That the charges paid by road and rail users do not cover the costs of those networks, and that some costs are not paid by anyone at all; Rail users pay a higher proportion of their costs than road users; Users of urban local roads pay a lower proportion of costs than users of rural roads; and, in many cases the costs of remedying a problem (eg congestion) are much lower than the cost of the problem itself.

Posted by John Thackara at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2005

Darwinian innovation

My book isn't even out yet (the US publication date is on Friday; UK/Europe is at the end of May) and already someone has raised a sneaky question about its basic argument.Fast Company have a section in their book reviews called "Things We Didn''t Like" and they say: "Many a garage inventor would argue that poorly designed, superfluous products are necessary by-products of the innovation process, not fundamental flaws in our design philosophy. Thackara deems it foolhardy, but maybe it's Darwinian". This is a fair point: it won't be easy to combine trial-and-error innovation, on the one hand, with consideration of the consequences of design actions before we take them, on the other. My short answer to this dilemma right now? a) life wasn't meant to be easy; and b) yes this is a hard question, but we can't go on treating the planet, our only home, as a glorified crash-test rig.

Posted by John Thackara at 08:35 AM | Comments (1)

April 26, 2005

Service design project showcase

One of the thrills of my working year in 2004 was helping a UK team develop the concept and business plan for a new service design institute in Newcastle-upon-Tyne - my home town. One North East, a UK regional development authority, is nurturing a post-coal, post-iron, post-shipbuilding economy with great flair. The Design Innovation Research Centre (DIEC) will play a pivotal role in the next phase of ONE's plans. Part grad school, part project organization, DIEC will be an actor, not an observer, in the region's service economy. A seminar in May will focus on four DIEC service design pilot projects, based on real-world situations, that are paving the way for the institute itself: they include an 'Airport Of Tomorrow' a National Health Service hospital. May 19 2005 15.30h BALTIC, Level 1 Performance Space, Gateshead. For a ticket to ther seminar contact: katharine.nott@diec.co.uk, or katharine.nott@onenortheast.co.uk

Posted by John Thackara at 06:57 PM | Comments (0)

Europe's IST research priorities

A new survey of front-line researchers in 25 EU countries reveals surprising devations from tech policy orthodoxy. The so-called Fistera Delphi (it's a system for averaging the results of an opinon survey) asked experts, including this writer, to prioritise research priorities for 2010 and beyond. Strong endorsement was given to “Education and Learning” as an application area for IST that "contributes to the construction of a European knowledge society". (I voted against this, for reasons rehearsed elsewhere). But my vote seems to have counted on other issues: domains such as leisure and recreation, ageing, and security, scored much less well than the report's editors seem to have anticipated. This led them to comment, rather plaintively I thought, that "this result is rather surprising given the huge markets that exist around these areas". I was reassured that European IT experts don't buy the corporate push in these domains. Even more encouraging: "improving IPR protection" came last among the challenges proposed by the report's editors.

Posted by John Thackara at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2005

So you want content?

We have posted several more of the presentations from Doors 8. Among these are a text from Ezio Manzini in which he develops his critique of "the tunnel that a mistaken idea of comfort, and an equally mistaken idea of economic growth, have driven us into". He proposes a new idea of well-being, and argues that "traditions can be reframed as social resources, valuable building materials for the future". Jimmy Wales' gripping presentation about Wikipedia (now over the 500,000 article mark) is also online. David Burney's beautifully illustrated talk on the hard infrastructures of New York (including its waste systems) is there. Check out, too, Teko London's innovative visualizations of "journeys of care" in a decentralized, community-based health system. The non-video bits of Joi ito and Marko Ahtisaari's final session wrap are also there, together with Derrick de Kerckhove's intervention on 'the internet of things'.

Posted by John Thackara at 12:38 PM | Comments (1)

April 21, 2005

Are cosmopolitan cities creative?

Do mixed societies innovate more than homogeneous ones? How do new ideas and innovations emerge when people of diverse cultures interact? Comedia has launched an eighteen month project across cities in several countries called The Intercultural City to find out how interractions between cultures might be formed into new products, services, and styles - and how these then spread. The idea is to provide policy makers in city development, business, and innovation management with evidence and a toolkit of techniques with which to encourage greater intercultural innovation. Comedia have a hunch that "there are certain people who make things happen and provide opportunities in cities, and more so for immigrant and minority groups. Such networkers, intermediaries, catalysts have a greater facility to move within and particularly between communities. They have a higher degree of intercultural networking capacity". That hunch will be tested and results published in a final report, with a conference to discuss it, scheduled for March 2006.

Posted by John Thackara at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)

What will *you*wear for the end of the world?

Our models - Joost and the Joostettes - are wearing theDoors of Perception 8 t-shirts, designed by Abhishek Hazra. Apart from being the most beautiful Doors t-shirt ever, this one is also destined to be the most valuable, too, as we only produced a limited quantity - and if the world financial system collapses you won't be able to buy one. So do so fast. Available in sizes S, M, L and XL. Price $40 inlcuding postage and packing.

Posted by Kristi at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

Kiss your lifestyle goodbye

"The end of oil is closer than you think. Oil production could peak next year. Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye". A rollicking doomsday story in today's Guardian, by John Vidal, revisits the so-called "peak oil" contoversy about whether a global peak to oil production is approaching. According to Vidal, "the US government knows that conventional oil is running out fast. ...world oil reserves are being depleted three times as fast as they are being discovered". The US government does not want to admit the reality of the situation, writes Vidal, but a group of ultra-conservative Swiss financiers has asked Colin Campbell, an author of the Peak Oil scenario, to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age. "The first half of the oil age now closes" Campbell is quoted as saying; "It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, allowing the population to expand six-fold. The second half now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital." Now we didn't discuss oil shocks at Doors 8 in Delhi, but we did hear Margrit Kennedy make a persuasive case that the world money system, too, is heading for collapse. (We've just re-posted a revised version of Professor Kennedy's presentation). Now I don't know if this is a reality check, or an unreality check, but on my office wall is a Guardian story from a few years back with the headline "Human life on the planet under threat"; the piece was run on page 13 of the paper under "International News".

Posted by John Thackara at 07:59 AM | Comments (1)

April 20, 2005

Happy in your work?

According to the City & Guilds Happiness Index hairdressers are the happiest workers in Britain: 40 percent say they are very content in their job (giving their careers a score of ten out of ten). Next in the happiness stakes are the clergy (24 percent ), chefs/cooks (23 percent ), beauticians (22 percent ), and plumbers, mechanics and builders (all 20 percent ). In contrast, only five percent of lawyers, IT specialists and secretaries/PAs, four percent of estate agents, three percent of civil servants and two percent of architects say they are extremely happy at work. Even that score seems doomed to plummet once architects learn how the C+G advises them to be happy in the workplace: "Enrich your working environment with photos and flowers". Thanks to Archined for that one.

Posted by John Thackara at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2005

It's a material NYC

The US leg of my book tour for In The Bubble kicks off in New York on May 13. I'm speaking at an event called Malfatto: Imperfect Design for a Better World?. Material Connexion's founder, George M. Beylerian, has invited an awesomely creative bunch of speakers: the architect/artist Gaetano Pesce; toy maker and sculptor Kardash Onnig; trend announcer Li Edelkoort; Scott Henderson, co-founder of Mint; James Ludwig, Director of Design for Steelcase; and Scott Wilson,Global Creative Director for Nike Explore. Then at the weekend (14/15 May) I'm taking part in Orange Alert, a season of events celebrating Dutch design organised by Robert Kloos.

Posted by John Thackara at 06:54 AM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2005

Nomadic Banquet

A reminder that among numerous archives of Doors 8 stuff not on this site is Debra Solomon's Nomadic Banquet. We are still receiving presentations and other material which will be posted here in due course.

Posted by John Thackara at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2005

Wireless Philly

Digital Cities Convention (May 2-4 in Philadelphia) is part of "a global thought-leadership series to accelerate the adoption of broadband wireless technologies for economic and social development worldwide". According to a piece in muniwireless.com, Philadelphia was chosen to launch the Convention in light of Wireless Philadelphia™, an ambitious initiative to strengthen the city's economy and transform its neighborhoods. The city's Chief Information Officer Diana Neff says the idea is to provide wireless Internet access for the purpose of helping citizens, businesses, schools, community organizations and visitors make effective use of the wireless Internet. About 40% of Philadelphia’s population still has no access to broadband - and won’t anytime soon: those neighborhoods are not attractive to present service operators given current wired-technology infrastructure costs.

Posted by John Thackara at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2005

One for the birds

Science tells us birds sing to attract mates and defend territories. But why do some birds make only a "peep" and others sing ornate songs that go on for hours? An intriguing event in New York on 16 April brings scientists together with musicians and poets to explore how different approaches have explored and made sense of bird song. David Rothenberg, a philosopher and musician, who has just published book WHY BIRDS SING (Basic Books), will host the event and present live examples of music he's made live with actual birds, from the white-crested laughing thrush in the National Aviary to the Albert’s lyrebird in Australian rainforests. David's guests include Don Kroodsma, who is among the most accomplished field biologists working on the intricacies of bird song; Ofer Tchernichovski, who has recorded every single sound a baby zebra finch makes during the two months he takes to learn his song, and then analyzed all this data using custom computer software; Alan Vardy, the leading expert on the poetry of John Clare, the British Romantic nineteenth century poet who best understood the rhythm and sense of the song of the nightingale; and biology professor Fredric Vencl,who wrote the only scientific paper published on the song of the white-crested laughing thrush.

Posted by John Thackara at 08:22 AM | Comments (1)

April 10, 2005

Gates memory project

Bob Stein writes to inform me of a fascinating experiment in creating a collective memory of an ephemeral event - albeit one which promises to be the most photographed art work ever. Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates project in Central Park was dismantled after a brief run of just sixteen days. "But during that time, millions of people experienced them, spending hours upon hours out of doors during the dark, frozen, improbable month of February. In the first four days alone, more than one million visitors passed underneath the billowing orange banners that wound like a ribbon through the park. Trips were planned, picnics were arranged, parties were thrown, days were unexpectedly re-routed. The Gates were as much an event, a happening, as they were a work of art". Now that the Gates are gone, says Stein, we begin the process of remembering them. "But it is not just the objects themselves that we recall. It is what happened while they were here: the conversations, the crowds, the impromptu visits, the unexpected snow, the long ambling walks, and the various artifacts - photographs, sketches, films, swatches of fabric - that were amassed. Memories often begin with an image, and the Gates project is almost certainly among the most photographed works of art in history. So it is with images that the Gates Memory Project will begin". It's a project of Flickr and the Institute for the Future of the Book.

Posted by John Thackara at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2005

Open letter to Dr Solomon Benjamin

Dear Solly,

My attention has been drawn to your post of 28 March on the Sarai Commons-Law mailing list.

I am usually pretty relaxed about criticism. After all, if our events failed to provoke discussion and disagreement, they would be feeble events indeed. One reason I was so happy to be introduced to your work, and then to be able to ask you to come to speak, was that you bring such clarity and sharpness to the issues we set out to understand and discuss.

I am especially sympathetic to your pointed question about "our attempt to constantly map our cities in a un-questioning way". I raised similar questions myself, before and after Doors 8 - but your doubts are more sharply stated. You are right: we need to think far more critically about the use of cartography and mapping by designers in the context of research and product development.

But one sentence in your posting is upsetting and, frankly, demeaning. You write (about the programme) that it contained "Little on improving corporate accountability though, but then, the sponsors would hardly approve of that topic as a session heading". The clear implication is that our corporate sponsors were able so to determine the agenda so that nothing that might have discomifted them appeared.

The facts are as follows. First, I did not solicit the approval of our sponsors, or their input, on any aspect of the the programme. The agenda for the Doors 8 programme was determined by me personally according to a policy that has applied very publicly to all Doors events since 1993: corporate agendas (or those of any special interest group, including designers) shall not influence or impinge on the programme in any way, period.

For Doors 8, we did discuss with several companies the content of one pre-conference workshop on "Service Design In Emerging Economies"; this was conceived and executed as a special interest event about business issues; it would have been strange (if not impossible) to prepare it without involving business people. But apart from that one workshop, which was one event among nine days of events, the entire programme was developed independently.

Second, the total amount of money contributed by commercial sponsors to Doors 8 was a rather small proportion of the total costs of the event when the time of staff members is counted in. We wish we had raised a lot more sponsorship. But by far the largest part of the global budget for Doors 8 comprised time and resources donated by the two organisers: the Doors of Perception Foundation, and the Centre for Knowledge Societies.

The suggestion of improper corporate influence is especially damaging considering that the event was only possible because our modestly paid staff colleagues worked 18 hour days for weeks on end. Another success factor in our event was the work, time and enthusiasm of dozens of unpaid student volunteers from Indian colleges and universities.

I am writing to you publicly like this because your comment follows a series of jibes that, until now, I had decided to ignore. During the months before Doors 8, we heard continuous reports of ill-informed chitchat to the effect that Doors was a "commercial" event at the service of corporate interests. The fact that such comments were, are are, totally untrue does not stop them being damaging. They should stop. Hence this letter.

For the record, I am as delighted now as I was a month ago to have discovered your work. The energy and insight you brought to the Doors conference was something special, and helped to make it a fabulous and memorable event. I look forward to inviting you to another Doors event as soon as possible.

With warm regards,
John Thackara

Posted by John Thackara at 05:55 PM | Comments (3)

April 05, 2005

Sorry, Stefan

I owe an apology to Stefan Magdalinski, from whitelabel.org, who was one of the star turns at Doors 8 (and has nice words to say about the event in his blog). In yesterday's emailed Doors Report, I managed to omit a "not" and thereby render a sentence about Stefan weird. I said, "he left the project when its P2P ambitions did turn into a sustainable business" - and, as Stefan points out, "noble and public spirited and insane though I am, I don't quit businesses that I founded at the point at which they become sustainable. We ran out of cash while trying to make it sustainable, I lost my job, and the assets got bought in a fire sale". A further clarification: I quoted Stefan saying that fewer than one percent of a website's visitors usually contribute or comment, and that people usually only start contributing after they have been visiting a site for three years. Whereas (he kindly explains) what he actually said was that (research from the BBC indicates that) typically novice users take three years of being *online* before making their first active contribution on any site. "A subtle but important difference" says Stefan; "Also, this doesn't apply to certain groups: those with a lot of puter experience, and kids aren't so reticent at all".

Posted by John Thackara at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2005

It arrived!

Four years since I started work on it (not counting the ten years of Doors events it draws on) I received the first printed copy of my book. You won't beleve what a relief it is that it's finally done. Thanks a million to the many people who helped make it happen.

Posted by John Thackara at 11:28 AM | Comments (2)

April 02, 2005

Conference pictures

Pre-Conference workshops. 46 images.




Day 01 Conference. 18 images.




Day 01-b Conference. 49 images.




Day 03 Conference. 69 images.

Posted by John Thackara at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)