All posts filed under “Site Announcements

Podcast of London Copyfighters’ Brunch

Podcast of London Copyfighters’ Brunch

The guys at Meme Therapy – incubating the world’s premature ideas have produced a great podcast of last Sunday’s fascinating London Copyfighters event, with interviews, discussion and some of the speeches from Speakers’ Corner, including my own rather spur-of-the-moment rant (about 25 minutes in) in […]

Welcome : About this site

Welcome : About this site

Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments. This site aims–with readers’ input–to examine and analyse […]

Anti-perch spikes

Anti-perch spikes

These spikes on a window ledge in Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, look quite old. The ledge is steeply angled, so would be difficult to sit on anyway; if anything they’d make it easier actually to climb up to the window if breaking in were a concern. All […]

culminate // 2006

culminate // 2006

This’ll probably be my last post of 2006, so I’d like to thank everyone who’s read the blog (and commented, or suggested stories) over the year. 2006 has seen this blog, and the awareness of the ‘architectures of control’ concept, grow substantially – it’s pleasing […]

Welcome, new readers

Welcome, new readers

Welcome to visitors from 9rules and We Make Money Not Art. With a diverse set of new readers, and the start of a new year, I should probably try to explain, succinctly, what this blog’s about. Most of the posts look at ‘architectures of control‘ […]

A vein attempt?

A vein attempt?

Blue lighting is sometimes used in public toilets (restrooms) to make it more difficult for drug users to inject themselves (veins are harder to see). The above implementation is in Edinburgh, next to the Tron Kirk. It was more difficult to see my veins through […]

Enforcing reverence & increasing mental acuity?

Enforcing reverence & increasing mental acuity?

The steep steps with tall risers and shallow treads at Ta Keo, Angkor, Cambodia. Photos by Casual Chin and Sarin Va Simon Crilley, designer and author of the Future Thinking blog, left a very interesting comment on the recent ‘Architecture & Security‘ post: “These architectures […]

The secret

The secret

“The secret to getting ahead in the 21st century is capitalizing on people doing what they want to do, rather than trying to get them to do what you want to do.” (Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com, in a Wired article quoted at the Public Journalism […]

Locking out IE users

Locking out IE users

UPDATE: The code being used is from the Explorer Destroyer project, which has an explanation of its rationale here. It’s worth noting that it’s not just ‘Get Firefox’, but ‘Get Firefox with the Google Toolbar’, hence the $1 referral fee… I’d much rather have Firefox […]

Sniffing out censorship

Sniffing out censorship

Image from News Sniffer News Sniffer‘s Revisionista monitors alterations to published news stories from a variety of sources by comparing RSS feeds, sometimes revealing subsequently redacted information or changes of opinion (e.g. note the removed phrase in the first paragraph of this story about Cuba). […]

Behaviour shaping round-up

Behaviour shaping round-up

The legendary Rob Cockerham looks at the Point of Sale Trail in Fry’s Electronics, Sacramento. Shoppers queuing for the checkouts are routed through a maze of aisles densely packed with impulse products: “At any point in the line, approximately 280 different products are within view, […]