3.3 billion mobiles

February 25, 2008 at 11:09 am · Filed under play, technology

I was laughing recently at myself – always a good thing to do. I’m currently starting a research project into emerging digital cultures and Tactical media, especially in places outside the traditional US / Northern European domain that has been overcovered. So I’ve been doing the background info-rounds, locating the key focal points etc. So what repeatedly pops up everywhere is the importance of mobiles phones as the fastest growing technology of the future. For instance, an article in the Washington Post recently claimed that there are now an astonishing 3.3 billion mobiles phones on the planet – one for every second person! The article says, in specific

From essentially zero, we’ve passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years. This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history — faster even than the polio vaccine.

“We knew this was going to happen a few years ago. And we know how it will end,” says Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Google. “It will end with 5 billion out of the 6″ with cellphones. “A reasonable prediction is 4 billion in the next few years — the current proposal is 4 billion by 2010. And then the final billion or so within a few years thereafter.
(LINK)

Wherever you look and read, it seems mobiles are emerging as one of the key technologies that we need to reckon with. But when my friends ask me, what do you really do? I tell them that – when in my research mode – I am interested in cutting-edge technology, future media and emerging digital cultures in the broad sense of the term. And then I pull out my own mobile – an old Nokia that has no additional functions excect shock protection and the ever-so-important flashlight. So I suppose I need to soon stop being the quentessential abstract academic who only talks about things and actually now get me one of these multi-function sleek sexy phones that I always predict that will probably have the most significant impact on how people communicate in the future. Just to have a look what the future feels like.

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AML – aesthetics mark-up language

February 13, 2008 at 9:46 am · Filed under design, play, technology

So in our never-ending quest for the Idea, we have been recently throwing around some ideas around AI, aesthetics and creativity. To understand this particularly strange one, however, I probably will need to provide a few words of background to the wider project that we are interested in. I will try to keep it simple. Basically, the problematic/question that I am working around has to do with the “image of thought” in today’s digital cultures. One of the key tropes we are seeing emerging today is that the universe is made of patterns; or “abstract machines” as I prefer calling them after the French philosopher Deleuze. Without getting into unnecessary theoretical complexity here, what this means can perhaps best be seen inflected and explained in two ways:

The first is that “things” (in technical language “identities” or “forms”) are the emergent outcomes of complex repetition of patterns through which complexity if formed. These can then be reverse engineered and computationally modelled so that, say, a fractal algorithm can be used to model complex patterns in nature. This is especially common today in some of the 3D and visual compositing software that we use today and all kinds of experiments with genetic algorithms and cellular automata etc – simple rules, complex outcomes.

The second is that human intelligence itself is made of, to a large degree, of such repetitions. This idea is rather much more elusive than the first but is one of the key presuppositions behind artificial intelligence research. Here the key question is that what algorithms could be used to model the way humans think and thus be used to guide machines to perform complex tasks. The philosophical implications of this are even more profound than getting a robot to recognize faces or clean a non-linear toilet bowl. That is, if human intelligence is, in fact, highly programmable, what then defines humans from machines? This goes two ways: machines-as-humans and humans-as-machines. In other words, AI defines rationality a certain way with certain presupposition of what logic, thinking and consciousness are and how they can be pragmatically simulated in computers. But as importantly, if we look at the concept of rationality and how it has been historically constructed, this has always presupposes a certain “image of thought” that has excluded all that would not fit into the sphere of rationality (intuitions, insanity, madness, illogic, spontaneity, absurdity ….). So how would we then understand the blurred boundaries of man and computer (as intelligent forms, which neither technically speaking are) and the human-computer assemblage that is making the old notions of rationality/humanity perhaps increasingly difficult to defend? Humans as (programmed?) repetitions: computers as programmed repetitions: natural intelligence: artificial intelligence: natural stupidity: artificial stupidity …

Anyway, all this probably seems rather abstract here. However, what was a concrete outcome of this philosophical babble was a project called AML (or what we like to tentatively call Aesthetics Mark-Up Language) that we are now currently trying to get our head around and develop. Similar to the more philosophical questions above, the idea here would be to experiment with how we detect patterns in certain visual styles such as certain genres in film etc. These patters could be then transposed/translated to other instances so that, say – yes, however preposterous this may sound – a Bollywood Film could edit a Hollywood film!

To perhaps see more what we mean by this, please find below an excerpt of some of the behind-the-scenes work-in-progress. The email conversation explains the idea better than I could re-write.

In film theory, for instance, the following elements are often talked about in the semiotics of the filmic image (well it is more complex but bear with me for the time being …)

1) Images;
2) Phonetics = speech;
3) Noise = background noise etc;
4) Text
5) Music.

For our purposes, we will probably have to stick to images for now. Tracking classical elements of film, in the beginning, is far too complex to get started with. Such as depth of field, montage / contrast etc. So what could be easily tracked to get started?

Let’s start with images. We could start off with the following variables:

- movement (speed of movement = speed of change in pixels?) This could be later used to analyze some rhythm of change.

- brightness and contrast (how would this be tracked = the relationship or average of pixels in any given location on the video?)

This could also later be use to analyze things such as harmony of composition, direction of lines in the mise en scene, etc. We would have to come up with a set of principles from art history and composition and see how these could be determined in the screen etc?

- color range (this would probably have to be RGB values in the image itself). This would probably move us into the realm of things such as monochromatic color schemes, bright colors, harmonious colors, contrasting / oppositional color … ie to use some notion of color theory to provide patterns in certain styles of video etc. I’ve
studied this in high school so will be fun to revisit some principles of classical painting.

So I suspect what we need to do is set up a very simple experiment / structure in place that can be developed and extended depending on need. In other words, we need to develop … AML (Aesthetics Meta Language) … a basic language structure that would describe what the variables are within any analyzed video. This language, I suspect, could be then developed into the interface between the language of aesthetics and the computer. Something like this:

//AML: “DEBBIE DOES DALLAS”

<contrast>
<high>134</high>
<low>12</low>
<average>58</average>
<mean>22</mean>
</contrast>

You get the point. The interesting thing about such an approach would be that we would be developing an entire syntactics of the aesthetics-computer interface that could be taken to any given direction we want. And then, of course, transposed back to how we would edit any clips or piece of media that we choose to run through the framework.

So how would this relate to the aesthetics machine? Basically, determining before hand the parameters for aesthetics is impossible. In film theory, there are some ideas such as structuralist semiotics that try to describe the language of different films but – as you know – aesthetics is notoriously difficult to pinpoint, especially when we are stuck with pixel-level pattern recognition on the computer. So what the aesthetics machine could be is the extension of the AML meta-language that would emerge from experimenting with as much visual material as possible. Say, we make AML public and get film-buffs and media-freaks to go through the entire ouevre of, say, German Porn genre to see what patterns emerge. These are then described in the wider structure of the AML language that we start developing So we get:

//AML: “DEBBIE DOES DALLAS” AESTHETIC STRUCTURE

<crossfade>
<number>12</number>
<duration>145</duration>
</crossface>

<contrast>
<high>134</high>
<low>12</low>
<average>58</average>
<mean>22</mean>
</contrast>

etc etc. Perhaps we could even open this language up so that some elements could be done analogically by volunteers (ie Amazon Turk Model) to further build the language beyond what is possible through pattern recognition. As this language develops, then the aesthetics machine will then merely be the instantiation and translation of these variables to other media material.

So if this approach would be the best, we need to develop / conceptualise three things:

1) The pattern recognition engine to get started experimentation with
simple data;

2) The syntactic structure that would describe any given visual material and that could be populated both by computers as well as analog humans;

3) The basic experimentations of how the AML language could be then
used to edit / re-mix some other media element.

So one reason why we are interested in Processing is exactly that it is the ideal platform for such experiments to emerge. In any case, watch the space here as our ideas eventually develop and we start getting the first concrete experiments up.

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emerging digital cultures in asia and africa

January 29, 2008 at 6:54 am · Filed under technology

I am currently a Teaching Fellow in Digital Cultures at SOAS (University of London). A part of my tasks is to design a practical-theoretical course that would look at emerging digital technologies in the non-Western context. One of the key themes to be explored here – that is: what the future media will look like globally and what the implications of these will be for commercial, social and artistic fields. See below the first draft of the course outline that I suggested as a basis for the dialogue. Let’s see how this develops:

EMERGING DIGITAL CULTURES IN ASIA AND AFRICA – THEORY AND PRACTICE

DRAFT V 1.0
JANUARY 28, 2008

OVERVIEW:

The course Media 2.0 in the Global Context looks at the emergence of new media technologies from a distinctly global perspective. We have all heard the buzzwords recently: web 2.0, wikis, Second Life, social software, blogos, locative media, multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG), mobile convergence etc. Much of the debates, however, has so far focused predominantly on the Euro-American context. Yet some of the most interesting developments are happening elsewhere. For instance, in Korea online multiplayer games are now more popular than television among young people. In sub-Saharan Africa, the explosion in the use of mobile phones has led to new innovative business models where paid airtime is now used as a new currency for cross-border interaction and banking. In India, software engineers are busy coding the future applications of the Internet of tomorrow. In Iran, weblogs have emerged as a new turbulent political space where future of the country is debated. What unites all these divergent media is the challenge they pose for media research in the 21st century. The course therefore asks: are the methods and theories that emerged out of the legacy of older media systems such as print, radio and television still applicable to understand the impact of some of these new developments globally? And if not, how should research adapt to the logic of what we could call broadly media 2.0; that is, the emergent new media technologies that increasingly mediate lives across the world?

With this in mind, this course aims at unraveling some of the methodological and theoretical problems that are raised when we look at what we could loosely call media 2.0 in the global context. The course, however, does not pretend to provide a final word on this shifting and emerging field. Unlike many other introductory courses to “digital culture” and/or “new media” (in many variations) the course instead aims at providing students with the necessary tools that allow them to begin investigating the issues that get raised for themselves. Its focus is therefore as much experiential and experimental as it theoretical and academic. It aims at providing both the theoretical background to some of the key debates dealing with contemporary digital cultures globally today but as importantly the practical know-how for students to begin using and exploring these new technologies first hand. It therefore encourages students actively involved in the debates that are taking place around new media technologies globally as well as use these new technologies for conducting, promoting and publishing research in multiple environments.

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hacking the mobile revolution

January 29, 2008 at 6:53 am · Filed under technology

There has been a lot of hype recently about the “mobile revolution” taking place especially in the poorer parts of the world. India alone added some 76 million mobile phone subscriptions in 2006, a lot of it in its smaller cities and rural areas. Africa, considered often the poorest part of the planet, now has, according to some estimates, 100 million mobile phone users – that is: every ninth person on the continent now sports a mobile phone in one form or another, connecting regions that don’t even have electricity or normal landlines.

What fascinates me about this rapid escalation of mobile phones especially in the poorer regions of the planet is that it becomes rapidly appropriated to accomodate to the local conditions. The problem with many of our understandings of modern technology comes from the fact that we – as a part of the global information elite located in the cushier sides of the digital divide – have been accustomed to seeing the world through the prism of our broadband, blogs, Second Life, IM, email, Twitters, Jaikus, Internet-mobile convergence etc. Because of this, we have a hard time to imagine how, for instance, mobile phone use changes drastically when there is no steady electricity (in Africa, entrepreneurs have come up with car battery-operated charging stations on motorbikes) or proper infrastructure (cross-national trade now is being done in Kenya by sending paid airtime as a viable currency for payment).

Therefore, reading Jonathan Donner’s research into the use of mobile phones in sub-Saharan Africa is like pressing the refresh button on the browser. Donner argues that in Rwanda, “beeping” has emerged as a mainstream activity as a way of staying connected with each other. Basically, what this means is that instead of paying for the call, the ringtone of the phone acquires a pre-texted (ignore the pun!) meaning for the receiver, acting sort of like simplistic morse code that is sent according to an evolving sender-receiver feedback loop. Donner writes:

Beeping is simple: a person calls a mobile telephone number and then hangs up before the mobile’s owner can pick up the call. If the beeper’s name and number have been programmed into the recipient’s mobile, then the recipient will see the beeper’s name on the call log as a missed call. If not, the recipient will see only the number of telephone placing the call. In either case, the missed call is intentional; the beeper has sent a signal to the recipient without saying a word or typing a single character. Better yet, sending a beep is nearly free.

As these examples from the popular press suggest, “to beep” and its synonym “to flash” are common practices among the rapidly growing ranks of mobile phone users in sub-Saharan Africa:

• A lighthearted book, called How to Be a Kenyan, was originally published in 1996. The revised 2002 edition includes a new chapter called “of beepers, flashers, and vibrators” (Mutahi, 2002), reflecting the rapid spread of mobiles in Kenya.
• A columnist in Uganda writes: “I was angry with my so-called friends who ‘beep’ me all the time – blackmailing me into calling them back….I can understand someone beeping me once and a while. My problem is that so many Ugandans – from MPs to senior military officers and at least one government minister – have turned beeping into a profession. And, they never seem to realize that if they perennially don’t have “units” or airtime to complete a call, it must be the same for me too” (Pajero, 2004).
• In an article called “That Beeping”, a Tanzanian columnist explains, “beeping is a habit that transcends all social classes,” perhaps because “phones are cheaper to buy than to maintain”. His conversations with college students also suggest that “beeping is a modern fashion to say hi to friends” (Kalagho, 2004).
• On the GhanaHomePage website, expatriate columnist Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng describes his difficulties learning “Efie Nkomo (Flashing Skills)” as a returning visitor to his country. “I got loads of flashes on my phone in the days following my arrival. So many, dear reader, that I almost got blinded by them” (Nkrumah-Boateng, 2004).

As Nkrumah-Boateng succinctly puts it, “it can get confusing, all this flashing businesses”. Not all beeps mean the same thing. Some are requests to call back; some are little signals that the beeper is thinking of the recipient; others convey some pre-negotiated instrumental message, like “I’m done with my work, pick me up”.

Read the full essay HERE. So for us interested in the future media, I think it is sometimes necessary to step offline and outside our e-skins to see how the rest of the world is busy hacking the new techonologies for their purposes. The biggest problem I think that currently exists with the web 2.0 social software mobile etc is that the community that produces the tools and applications is closing in on itself, sharing the language, the desires, the lifestyles and the ways of using technology. Whereas most innovation happens when something unexpected is created and brought to the world – when “the difference that makes a difference” is produced. So the question is: how to break “outside” this? How to see what we are not habitually accustomed to seeing?

Perhaps, we should worry less about the latest trends in technology and backpack through Africa for 6 months and listen to people hacking the tools in order to make life better. Get lost on a train in India, hike in the mountains, and go offline for a month. It is (t)here where the future is being developed in unexpected ways .

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