Following on from part 1, here are a few of the ‘new’ design patterns that are going to be in v.0.95 of the Design with Intent toolkit, but for which I don’t yet have very good ‘design’ examples. Any suggestions, or photos / screenshots would […]
Deliberately creating worry
Swedish creativity lecturer Fredrik Härén mentions an interesting architecture of control anecdote in his The Idea Book: One of the cafés in an international European airport was often full. The problem was that people sat nursing their coffees for a long time as they waited […]
Artefacts & politics
Many academic fields touch on areas relevant to this subject, from architecture to computer science. Perhaps the closest single exposition of many of the pertinent concepts is Langdon Winner’s 1986 “Do artifacts* have politics?” in which he discusses the idea that: “The machines, structures, and […]
“The progressive and dispersed installation of a new system of domination”
Burak Arikan of the MIT Media Lab helpfully pointed me to Gilles Deleuze‘s 1990 essay, ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control.’
A small-scale attempt to promote the site!
Please digg this site if you find it interesting – the more people find it and get involved, hopefully the better it’ll become. Thanks!
Service discrimination via two-tier internet
The spectre of a two-tier internet (see Control & networks) looms closer again, as detailed in this Boston Globe article – Telecoms want their products to travel on a faster Internet (via Furdlog). “The proposal supported by AT&T and BellSouth would allow telecommunications carriers to […]
New Analog Hole Bill
Via EFF DeepLinks, the news that a new “Digital Transition Content Security Act” is being proposed in the US – specifically targetting video ADCs (see discussion of the analogue (analog) hole).
Cinemas jamming mobile phone signals
Via Boing Boing – the US’s National Association of Theater Owners wants the FCC’s permission to block mobile reception inside cinemas. To be honest I thought this already happened in some places… maybe I’d mentally linked it to office buildings with Faraday cage wall structures […]
Breaking Racial Sound Barriers
Via Furdlog, a Washington Post article by Christopher John Farley, “Breaking Racial Sound Barriers”, presents an interesting spin on the likelihood of architectures of control creating/enforcing/reinforcing a marginalised “technology underclass,” as I previously discussed (to some extent, anyway) in Some implications of architectures of control.
Microsoft blocking MP3s on Verizon Wireless phones? – Engadget
Via Engadget (“Microsoft blocking MP3s on Verizon Wireless phones?”), another example of an architecture of control being imposed on a product or service subsequent to purchase by a mandated firmware or software update (the TiVo example is the best-known in this category).
Is Google DRM crippling culture as great as it seems? – The Register
The Register‘s Ashley Vance asks whether Google’s lack of immediate transparency about its new DRM , as will be used in the recently announced video download service, breaches the company’s famous “don’t be evil” mantra.
“Sign software on the digital line”
Bill Thompson, of the BBC’s ‘Go Digital’ programme, sets out very clearly (‘Sign software on the digital line’) many of the issues involved with ‘trusted computing’ and forcing the use of signed software.