Are our place-based systems full of intelligence but lacking passion? Do we want our children to grow up with services that simply let them see the world in a logical, ordered, controlled way? In the rest of the article, we’ll take a look at another direction for these systems, one that moves the user away from being a bystander to playing a central role as a performer.

Two things are required. First, we need to find interaction techniques that de-emphasize screen touches, in favor of ones that put us back in touch with our surroundings. Second, instead of just informing us, there are wide-open opportunities for systems that inspire us to see our places as stages where our imaginations can run riot, where our routines become rituals, and where we can feel we truly belong.

 

From introverted to Extravagant Computing

Crowds of commuters, heads down, shuffling along the street, tapping away at personal technologies— a common sight in most cities. Every day, millions of people are being drawn into the digital.

While much has been said about the dangers of people bumping into lampposts, what we really should be concerned about is what they are missing as they screen-walk past each other: an awareness of how different we are all in shape and dress, a reassuring smile or fleeting connection at the blink of an eye.

Researchers have worked hard
to produce mobile systems that
support heads-up interactions.
Take, for example, the work of
Enrico Costanza and colleagues
on intimate interfaces [ 5]. Sensors
strapped above the elbow, hidden
under the user’s clothes, can sense
subtle muscle changes: A slight
flex of the bicep and your mobile
rejects an incoming call, without
slowing you down or forcing you to
take your eyes off the street.
While this concept is heading in
the right direction, the tendency to
focus on the hidden, personal, and
subtle is at odds with a world of
bustle and human expressiveness.
A world in which many are com-
fortable walking and talking loudly
into hands-free headsets, some-
times gesturing dramatically. A
world where, as Fiona Candy notes,
we have always used the things we
wear and carry to say something
about ourselves [ 6]. The elaborate
hat-doffing etiquette of Edwardian
times is today’s pack-walking per-
formance that combines attitude
and style. A world that has always
seen us bring functional and
expressive artifacts into the street:
pipes to smoke, rolled up news-
papers to march purposely with
from the train-station, boom boxes
to amplify our identities. This is a
world where technology is less in
the woodwork, more in the face.

• Figure 1. The right sort of cloud: snow transforms places. This photo of the pavement near my house reminds me that I share this community with birds, cats, dogs, and people of all shapes and sizes.