Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity and Culture

The ubiquitous nature of mobile and pervasive computing has begun to reshape and complicate our notions of space, time, and identity. In this collection, over thirty internationally recognized contributors reflect on ubiquitous computing’s implications for the ways in which we interact with our environments, experience time, and develop identities individually and socially. Interviews with working media artists lend further perspectives on these cultural transformations. Drawing on cultural theory, new media art studies, human-computer interaction theory, and software studies, this cutting-edge book critically unpacks the complex ubiquity-effects confronting us every day. Visit the book's companion website at: http://ubiquity.dk

Table of Contents:
Foreword, N. Katherine Hayles Introduction: Complex Ubiquity-Effects, Ulrik Ekman PART I. INDIVIDUATING Ulrik Ekman, Individuations + Lily Díaz, Cultural Theory - Topology of Sensibility, Mark B. N. Hansen - Weather Patterns, or How Minor Gestures Entertain the Environment, Erin Manning - Peekaboo, I see you!, Lily Díaz - The Implied Producer and The Citizen of the Culture of Ubiquitous Information: Investigating Emergent Typologies of Critical Awareness, Morten Søndergaard + Morten Søndergaard, Media Art - Ulrik Ekman, Complexity and Reduction – Interview with David Rokeby - Jay David Bolter, Interface, Bodies, and Process – Interview with Teri Rueb + Interaction Design, Jay David Bolter - The Elephants in the (Server) Room: Sustainability and Surveillance in the Era of Big Data, Simon Penny - Towards Transdisciplinary Design of Ubiquitous Computing Systems Supporting End-User Development, Irene Mavrommati - Ambient Literature: Writing Probability, Jonathan Dovey + Software Studies, Ulrik Ekman - Ubiquitous Memory: I Do Not Remember, We Do Not Forget, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun PART II. SITUATING Situating: Contextuality and Context-Awareness, Jay David Bolter + Cultural Theory, Maria Engberg - Thinking in Networks: Artistic-architectural Responses to Ubiquitous Information, Yvonne Spielmann - A Portrait of the Artist as a Smart City: Body, Complexity and Urban Life, Henriette Steiner and Kristin Veel - Distraction Reconsidered: On the Cultural Stakes of the Ambient, Malcolm McCullough - The Information Environment, Sean Cubitt - Media Always and Everywhere: A Cosmic Approach, Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska + Media Art, Lily Díaz - From Simple Rules to Complex Performances, Lily Díaz - Interview with Blast Theory’s Matt Adams - Complex Historicity, Maria Engberg: An Interview with Electroland Principal Cameron McNall - Interview with Mogens Jacobsen, Morten Søndergaard - Ubiquitous-ALife in TechnoSphere 2.0: the Design, Individuation and Entanglement of Ubicomp Apps in Urban South East Asia, Jane Prophet and Helen Pritchard + Interaction Design, Maria Engberg - Disability, Locative Media, and Complex Ubiquity, Katie Ellis and Gerard Goggin - Indexical Visualization - the Data-less Information Display, Dietmar Offenhuber and Orkan Telhan PART III. EVENTUALIZING Events, Lily Díaz + Cultural Theory, Maria Engberg - (In)visibility, (Un)awareness and a New Way of Seeing through Complex Cinema, Maria Poulaki - Cutting and Folding the Borgesian Map: Film as Complex Temporal Object in the Industrialization of Memory, Patricia Pisters + Media Art, Ulrik Ekman - Hiding in Plain Sight, Jay David Bolter – Interview with Hasan Elahi + Interaction Design, Morten Søndergaard, - Participatory Strategies in Interactive Installations, Giulio Jacucci - The Collective Novice: A Designer’s Reflections on Emergent Complexity in Collaborative Media, Jonas Löwgren + Software Studies, Jay David Bolter - Information-Events, Big Data, and the Flash Crash, John Johnston