War Made Easy
Something to watch while we celebrate the birth of this nation, and to make us think about what it has become.
The more of us who are aware, the less they can lie to us.
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duran
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duran
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duran
Tweenbots, robotic social experiments.
Technology as a feature in our lives.
What are the lines between us, and them, and what do we do when a object asks for help?Some of us spend a lot of time working with computers, and when something goes wrong, we fix it. Not because we should, but because we need it to work.
But what happens when an object, or in this case a mobile robot, who has a purpose that has nothing to do with you, asks for help?This is a really interesting project, coming out of the ITP program from the Tisch school of the arts at NYU.
In New York City, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.
The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
The Tweenbot’s unexpected presence in the city created an unfolding narrative that spoke not simply to the vastness of city space and to the journey of a human-assisted robot, but also to the power of a simple technological object to create a complex network powered by human intelligence and asynchronous interactions. But of more interest to me, was the fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people’s willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone. As each encounter with a helpful pedestrian takes the robot one step closer to attaining it’s destination, the significance of our random discoveries and individual actions accumulates into a story about a vast space made small by an even smaller robot.
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duran
This is what it means.
“I have a dream…”
I can only imagine what that man, who has been a waiter and server in the White house for generations is thinking right now.
Its amazing for me to see.
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duran
In response to “What should a modern library be?” at the P’unk Avenue Window…
This is in response to Geoff DiMasi’s post on his blog http://window.punkave.com/2009/01/12/what-should-a-modern-library-be/
Education is not a non-sustainable endeavor. It may not be FINANCIALLY profitable, but it is critically important to any society and civilization, to maintain, improve, and grow that society.
The benefits to education are not realized immediately, they are grown in the on going efforts of the individual who has been educated, and what they return to the community and society in which they live and breathe.
You’re absolutely right.
College is nothing more than a finishing school in many cases. There are a lot of people that I know as well who have gone to just a little college, decided they were bored, and have left for their own world and have flourished. (My Brother is one, so I’m pretty familiar with the idea).And, the problem here is not that education isn’t needed, I agree that it is… It is that the entire system is broken so badly that our focus is in individual success and wealth instead of long term prosperity and societal growth.
For each person who doesn’t go to college, who doesn’t get exposure to the history and culture that is available to them in college, it become harder and harder for that individual, and the whole society to maintain things other than what it takes to be successful and wealthy.
My undergraduate experience was invaluable to me. But not because of the professional skills I developed there (on my own time, and not in class room), but because of the world view it gave me. The exposure to international students, art work, history, language, literature. That I simply did not have access or exposure to in my 97% white high school in a upper class part subburb.
In my view, libraries need to be less about storage of knowledge, (though this is actually very important if you’re worried about hard drive reliability) and more about sharing knowledge and growing knowledge.
Libraries of the future, in my mind become a place where people come to learn in dynamic and interactive ways, with other people, in voice, music, writing/reading, sharing and working.
Much like IndyHall has fostered a number of innovative people to start to work together to create new and exciting things, Libraries should be the place where people go to share ideas and work on ideas together.
They should be equipped with the knowledge and ways of training people to do things, and then provide the mediums in which to do it.
This is exactly what they do now, but right now its about being quiet, and reading something.
As the storage of knowledge becomes more compact, (how many ‘books’ fit in your laptop?), the space in each of these grand buildings can be freed up for other functions and other ways of sharing knowledge and exploring the art of learning.
The exploration of what we do with these spaces should focus on what it takes to bring people together to learn, and share knowledge, and what it takes to facilitate that behavior.
This all requires a shift in our culture though back to rewarding, and favoring education and creativity over greed and conquest. It is all too easy in this world to bomb your neighbor, but our nation struggles endlessly to cure our sick, feed our hungry, and protect our children.
As we scale back on our cultural expenditures as a nation, something I hope to see reversed under the new administration, we scale back our possibilities to grow as a nation and a society.
These learning establishments, or libraries, of the future should be seen as a stepping stone in to returning the value of education as a long term investment, and less about learning how to do a job. We as a society need to learn the value of those lessons in culture, history, reading and writing, and make sure they are a priority to us, that can be shared, and that will help us with our commercial ventures, and not be a seen as something that will delay or gathering of wealth and success in the financial world.
I appreciate any comments.
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Geoff DiMasi
I really appreciate what you are saying.
I really agree that people need to be educated. I was a history major as an undergraduate (which explains why I am able to put the history of modern education into some context.)
The need to educate people has not diminished, but the place where it happens probably needs to change. We need a place to learn culture. We need a place to learn about the value of civilization.
I think the library could be that place. I plan on expanding on that more in future posts on the P’unk Ave Window.
So glad this is hitting a chord with you. I think we can make some real changes here.
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Mike L
I completely agree with you both about the importance of a well-rounded education and learning how to think and evaluate using historical context and creativity.
I recently heard a piece on NPR about the increasing number of young people who are unable to get college loans and may not be able to attend college. I could not help but question whether, considering the power of the Web, the typical college experience must be an expensive in-person venture. Many reputable, Web-based college programs, already exist, but on-campus education is still the norm. Are colleges (which, for the most part, are private businesses) conspiring to keep it this way?
State universities should continue to improve and encourage inexpensive online learning. Perhaps libraries could become local facilities for e-learning and for learning how to use the web, so that people can do it at home.
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duran
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hughesmar
That dog is SO going to get trampled someday.
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duran
4 hours of sleep.
Time line.
- 1am: Wake to sound of neighbor banging on his door for 10 minutes before his room mate lets him in. Neighbor proceeds to yell at room mate for about 15 minutes
- shortly after, I’m able to fall asleep, annoyed, but not so bad in the grand scheme of things.
- sleep…
- 4am: Wake bolt upright in bed to the sound of pounding music directly above my bedroom, in my neighbors bedroom. Wonder out loud “what the fuck?”
- 4:15am: consider arson, but am in unconscious zombie land, and time slips away.
- 4:45am: realize I’m still awake, return to thoughts of violence
- 4:50am: think of calling the cops, but remember that they won’t do anything besides ring the door bell unless you say someones being murdered, or you’ve been shot, decide that lying to cops isn’t a good idea in the grand scheme of things.
- between 5am and 6am: zone between sleep and awake and half asleep, mostly angry
- Comprehend, from my days as an RA in college that trying to quell a drunk or high neighbor at 5-6am is not usually that productive.
- 7am, somehow fall asleep, possibly out of sheer exhaustion.
- wake up at 830, realize that I’m going to be late for my 9am meeting with the VP of Technology and the VP of Communications
- This is where I find my rage, that I should have had the night before, instead of paitence and hope it would quiet down
- 905am as I am walking out the door, receive a personal phone call from the VP of Technology asking where I am…
Today is not only a day where I was late for a 9am meeting, but its going to be capped with two holiday parties, that i was really hoping to be present and functional for.
But I suspect around 8pm I’m going to crash pretty hard, and thats going to suck.
A lot.But at least its time to really have a conversation with my neighbor, and the landlord.
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duran
The fish.
So, I have a fish.
It cracks me up.When I sit down at my desk, where I have my fish bowl, it gets all angry and puffs up its gills to defend its tank. I laugh pretty hard at it.
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duran
“The future is in beta”
I don’t know who said that. Part of me wants to say William Gibson. But I’m not sure.
This evening I’m headed up to NYC to visit my brother for a few days. I decided to take Bolt Bus. They say it has wifi, and the price is very good.
So what the hell. It can’t be worse then the China Town bus, can it?Right now, as I type this, I’m sitting about midway back on the bus, plugged in and on the internet at 75mph headed north on I95. The fall evening has turned dark, and I’m listening to friskyradio typing in to the glow of my monitor as the highway blurs by me in the windows. I’m in a sort of future pause right now, as I see what tomorrow will bring us, and how its already here if you’re looking in the right spot.
In 83 Gibson wrote about a ubiquitous data network. At the time it was raw fantasy with the “internet” as we know it only a sketch on a drawing board, and barely connecting only the most major Universities in the world. His vision was of a matrix of computers, connecting everyone together, making communication and the exchange of data effortless and integrated fully with our daily lives. We’re not quite there yet with the level of Virtual Reality he predicted, but its almost impossible to not find somewhere where I can get on line… and the power to share, collaborate, and integrate that it brings us is amazing.
Case in point.
Obama Iphone App.The Obama campaign continues to blow the lid off of what you can do with the internet in coordinating grassroots campaign movements. Wired has a great article on how it is connecting people all over the country in a way that has never been done before, for the purpose of grassroots organizing.
And now the Obama campaign has an iPhone app thats leveraging the digital device we have in our pockets to track and manage that same campaign at the level of what you, as a single person can
The ability to share information quickly and effortlessly is the biggest problem with running any organization. Your team can not execute the plan if they don’t have the knowledge to do what you want them to do. The advent of the internet as a way of distributing that information easily was the first step. The devices that most of us carry in our pockets are just waiting for the connectivity to take the next step.
The iPhone, I’ve always said, is the first generation of a new paradigm in connected devices. its easier to use, slicker, better interface, and developed in mind for applications as a small computer, not as a phone. Its screaming for applications that leverage our own personal data, such as your phone book, and GPS sharing, with a larger organizaation that needs you to participate in the mission at hand. Leverage this for any grassroots or low capital oganization that needs to maintain connectivity and organization and you no longer have to have offices, phone trees, or even email if the system communicates the data you need to share exactly how it needs to be consumed at the other end. If that data integrates with you personal knowledge, such as the phone book, or GPS system, you then have the ability of coordinating that data with real action in real time. The Campaign software tracks calls made, and your position when you make the call (its not tracking who, just that a call was made from its interface). This data can be shared with the head quarters, and you’ve instantly got a knowledge network based on not only abstract contact info, but also geospecial relationships. You know know exactly where the holes are in your coverage, and can see whos near by to fill it.
I think its brilliant, and for the purpose of a volunteer force organizing to elect a man president its perfect for their needs.
this *IS* what we’ll see in 4 years, and in 8 years, and I cna’t even imagine in 12 years….
The military has been working on the smart warrior technology that does this for the use of soldiers on the ground for decades, I think a simple iPhone app made it look old, and useless all of a sudden.
I don’t want a day when you can’t unplug.
But the day when everything I need to do my job, and connect with who and what I want to connect with is right around the corner, and I can taste it. The future is in beta, and we’re all testing it. -
duran
umm, maybe Chrome is a little too grabby grabby in its TOS/EULA
Check this out
cnet.com on the Chrome TOS“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”
Bold for emphasis.
So, if *I* read that right.
Anything I post to a website, via Chrome, might be copied by google to their databases, and used for what ever purpose they want, when ever they want.Right?
yeah… Sorry, thats a little absurd.
It will just be a toy until thats straightened out.
zombiemomma is discussing. 
hughesmar is discussing. 
zombiemomma 4:44 pm on April 12, 2009 Permalink
I wonder if they weren’t so damn cute if people would’ve helped so much.