The ‘anarchitect’ group, Space Hijackers* have an interesting A-Z of Retail Tricks To Make You Shop – mostly psychological – including a couple of fascinating examples which aren’t well known, e.g. “Supermarkets used to have a trick placing slightly smaller tiles on the floor in […]
All posts filed under “Political design”
New Scientist : Crowds silenced by delayed echoes
Via Boing Boing – ‘Hooligan chants silenced by delayed echoes’, a New Scientist story looking at the work of Dutch researchers who are using out-of-sync replayed sound to disrupt synchronised chanting at football matches. “Soccer hooligans could be silenced by a new sound system that […]
Changing norms
Via Steve Portigal’s All this ChittahChattah, a short but succinct article by John King, from the San Francisco Chronicle noting just how quietly certain features have started to become embedded in our environment, most notably (from this blog’s point of view), anti-skateboarding measures, traffic calming […]
High frequency ringtone download
High frequencies being tested in the urban badlands: see, no teenagers here! A lot of people find this site through searching for something along the lines of ‘Mosquito high frequency anti-teenager ringtone’, and are presumably disappointed when they find that there is no such ringtone […]
BBC: Bram Cohen on network neutrality
This BBC Newsnight story, by Adam Livingstone, about the possibilities of a two-tier internet – ‘BitTorrent: Shedding no tiers’ – has an interesting fictional ‘architectures of control’ example to illustrate the possibilities of price discrimination in networks (see also Control & Networks): “So there’s me […]
High frequency wave files back up again
They’re back up (well, the wave files anyway), thanks to the Internet Archive.
‘Labels on digital content should spell out how easy it is to move from gadget to gadget’
A warning label mockup* The BBC is reporting that the All Party Internet Group (APIG), a cross-party group of MPs, has made some intelligent – and interesting – recommendations about explaining DRM more fully to consumers: “The MPs’ report made several recommendations and called on […]
‘Researchers develop prototype system to thwart unwanted video and still photography’
Via Boing Boing, ‘Researchers develop prototype system to thwart unwanted video and still photography’, news from Georgia Tech of a system that scans and finds the CCDs of digital imaging equipment and shines bright light (or a laser) into them in order to flood them […]
Interesting quote from Ted Nelson
Just looking up something else, I stumbled across this quote from Ted Nelson. From ‘Ted’s ComParadigm in OneLiners’: “A frying-pan is technology. All human artifacts are technology. But beware anybody who uses this term. Like “maturity” and “reality” and “progress”, the word “technology” has an […]
Projected images designed to scare an enemy
The figure of a Martian devil looms over London*: from Quatermass & The Pit, 1958, written by the late Nigel Kneale A couple of years ago, after seeing a programme by Jon Ronson, I was reading about the First Earth Battalion and came across a […]
Some more architectures of control for traffic management
Many of the ‘built environment’ examples discussed here over the last year-and-a-bit have been intended to control (or “manage”) traffic in some way, e.g to slow drivers down, force them to take an alternative route, or force them to stop. I thought it would be […]
Limiting frequency of cigarette use
Images from nicostopper.com and Popgadget Nicostopper is an electronic dispenser which holds up to 10 cigarettes, and releases them one at a time at programmed intervals, to help pace and restrict the smoker. The screen “will also flash “self-help” messages each time to make you […]