You are being redirected to my new web site www.albertsuch.com

Monday, May 21, 2007

Everything 2.0

Sometimes, when you learn something new, it seems that everybody and everything is suddenly arranged around that concept or idea; when you start reading about a specific topic and you try to apply to explain any situation or problem, regardless if the original idea has anything to do with it.. This happens at the personal level, but it seems to be much worst in certain situations, specially in the corporate environment.

Working for a large corporation, I've been quite unlucky to go through several of those everybody is crazy about a topic situations. We've gone through the eras of Total Quality, Lean Enterprise, Crossing the Chasm, e-everything,...

And, of course, we are now in the 2.0 era.

Everything important has to have a version 2.0. There is, of course, web 2.0, but there is also school 2.0, home 2.0, work 2.0, There is love 2.0, and life 2.0. There is enterprise 2.0, organization 2.0, government 2.0, politics 2.0, war 2.0,...

It is very interesting to not that there are at least two concepts, that, up to my knowledge, have not been versioned yet: I haven't found any information about peace 2.0 nor about sex 2.0!. There is no relevant site about crime 2.0, but I guess that the term politics 2.0 covers pretty well the concept....

It is obvious that there is a lot of marketing and media hype in all this 2.0 thing, but the question is whether d we really need all these new versions and, even in the case that we do, shouldn't all of us be a little bit more original?...

This rumbling about 2.0 and the (quite stupid) idea of adding a version number to everything, was prompted by this funny video about a supermarket 2.0:


More on surveillance , CCTV, and security

When some time ago I wrote about the pervasive use of CCTV in the UK, my thoughts were based on a few observations while walking around and sightseeing in London (doing the typical touristy thing...), so there was always the doubt about how representative were those observations. I read today in the Spanish newspaper El PaĆ­s a data point that seems to confirm my observations: in England there is a surveillance camera for every 60 habitants (should I say citizens?)...

This datum is part of a review of a series of conferences and seminars that have been going on in Barcelona about the topic of The architecture of fear. Terrorism and western urbanism. The central topic of these conferences was the impact that the security concerns, raised specially after the terrorists attacks to New York, Madrid, or London in the last few years, have had on urban design, architecture, and the development and use of security (meaning anti-terrorism) related technology.

In Spain we are currently in the middle of the local elections campaign, and the topic of security has become central in the discourse of some political parties (mostly, but not limited to, right wing parties). Waving the fight against crime/terrorism flag has always been a political resource, and also a way to prioritize certain technological developments, such as automatic (intelligent?) surveillance.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Social Networking

One of the interesting consequences of all the noise around Web2.0 is all the renewed interest in social networking. If you read some Web2.0 evangelizers, or if you just google 'social networking', it may seem that the whole concept has just been invented a couple of years ago with MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, or any other of the zillion sites that are, more or less, trying to get attached the social networking label.

Obviously, as much as you try to upgrade them with the 2.0 version number, social networking is not only about those web sites, but rather an activity quintessential to human nature. Social networking is about linking and relating to other people and how to use those relationships to acquire and share knowledge, to get things done, or just to enjoy them. Technologies and technological artifacts do mediate in social networks (actor-network theorists would say that they are part of the social networks...), but no technology, and specially no trendy name applied to a tecgnology, can change the fact that we maintain links with other people and that we use those social relations tor multiple purposes.

The study of social networking is not something new either: in the early sixties Everett Rogers studied the process of diffusion of innovations and concluded that between adopters plaid a key role in the speed at which innovations were accepted, or rejected, by users; and in the seventies, Mark Granovetter published his seminal paper on the strength of weak ties in social networks, that opened the field of social network analysis.

But although social networking is a natural human activity, its characteristics and effects are completely mediated by specific cultures. In Maximum City, a book about Bombay (Mumbai) writen by an American of Indian origin (an NRI), Suketu Mehta captures very well the difference in importance and meaning attached to social networking in two different cultures: India vs the US (and the UK):

There is very little you can do anonymously as a member of the vast masses. (...)It has to be one person linking with another who knows another and so until you reach your destination; the path your request takes has to go through this network. You cannot jump the chain by going directly to someone who doesn't know you connected only by the phone line. Then it becomes a buyer and seller transaction rather than a favour. A friend went from Bombay to London and told me she was horrified that she could spend an entire day (...) without ever needing to make a personal connection.

Technologies (telephone, e-mail, Web2.0,... ) can mediate the formation and maintenance of social networks, expanding its reach and increasing (or diminishing) the strength of certain social links. It is also very probable that the adoption and use of certain technologies will help changing the cultural values and meanings associated to social networks and how they are used. But that does not mean, as it may be inferred from some of the media hype, and as much as some marketing gurus may like it, that social networks are not specific internet sites or features added to web services.

(The worst example I've seen of the misappropriation of the social networking concept and term is the title of an article in cnet: Ten reasons social networking doesn't work. Of course, it talks about some reasons why some of the web sites dubbed as social networking sites do not stand to the expectations created)

Monday, May 7, 2007

Infrastructure and ANT

Through Nicolas Nova's blog, I got access to a paper on infrastructure and ubiquitous computing. The point that authors try to make is that infrastructure, defined as 'the structures that lie below or beneath the surface of applications and interactions' plays a key role in defining how we experience and interact with the world.

What I found more interesting is how the authors do not focus only on what we would call technological infrastructure. Infrastructure is not only about power supply, broadband connections and wi-fi hotspots, but also about space and things that populate it, about the ways we interact with, and the meanings we attach to them.

This conceptualization of infrastructure is aligned with Latour's view of the agency of objects. Objects play a role in the course of actions, they participate, as actors, in the formation of associations. But these associations are difficult to trace except in specific moments when they are rendered visible: when there are innovations, i.e. new object types or modes of interaction are created; when they are approached by users unfamiliar with them, or when they stop working (due to accidents, breakdowns, strikes...). These are exactly the situations in which infrastructure becomes relevant: when there is some change in it (innovation), when it is approached by somebody not familiar with it, or when simply it is not working any more, at least as the user would expect it to work.

New applications, new technologies, new artifacts, can change the strength of some associations, and maybe create new ones. In that process, part of the underlying infrastructure is going to become visible and relevant again, it is going to evolve and change, as the innovations and the way we associate to them adapt to it, and finally become themselves part of the infrastructure.