GPS-aided repo and product-service systems Ryan Calo of Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society brought up the new phenomenon of GPS-aided car repossession and the implications for the concepts of property and privacy: A group of car dealers in Oregon apparently attached GPS devices to […]
All posts filed under “Discriminatory Architecture”
{In|Ex}clusive Design
Giving with one hand, and taking away with the other. The juxtaposition of hand rails and anti-sit spikes outside this church in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire suggests a particular configuration of design priorities: helping people climb the steps, but forbidding anyone sitting on the wall. Are the […]
Anti-homeless ‘stools’
Stuart Candy of the brilliant Sceptical Futuryst let me know about authorities in Honolulu replacing benches with round ‘stools’ to prevent homeless people sleeping at bus stops (above image from Honolulu Advertiser story): So far, the city has spent about $11,000 on the seating initiative, […]
“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.’
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 […]
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.
‘Value of your home to be determined by the “freedom” your gadgets exhibit’
In a piece examining GPL v.3 and Linus Torvalds’ recent comments (‘If Linus snubs new GPL, is that it for ‘open source’?’), Andrew Orlowski discusses an idea put to him by a “GPL 3.0 advocate”:
Anti-teenager sound weapon: more comments
This post from last year has been getting a lot of hits over the last few days due to more media coverage of the story – come on & join in the comment debate: Anti-teenager sound weapon in Wales
Richard Stallman’s ‘Right To Read’ dystopia growing closer every day
We seem to be accelerating towards the nightmare vision presented by Richard Stallman in his 1997 article, ‘The Right to Read’, ninety years too early, and investigated so thoroughly by Cambridge’s Ross Anderson. (See also here for more discussion of DRM and ‘trusted’ computing).
Another dystopian vision
I should have posted this very impressive piece last month, but forgot, so here it is: ‘Burnoff: Part 1 – The Bad Guys Win’ by Tarmle.
Anti-teenager sound weapon in Wales
Boing Boing and MAKE note a New York Times story about the Mosquito, a speaker unit produced by Compound Security which produces a high frequency sound (less audible to older people) in order to drive away teenagers hanging around in front of shops.
The Anti-Sit Archives
Transfer has an amazing collection of images of ‘Anti-Sit’ devices, mostly in New York but also internationally.