André Lemos is Associate Professor, Faculty of Communication, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. PhD in Sociology, Sorbonne (1995), Visiting Scholar University of Alberta and McGill University, Canada (2007-2008). Coordinator of Cybercity Research Group (UFBa/CNPq) and Researcher level 1 at CNPq. Member of Prix Ars Electronica, Wi. Journal of Mobile Media and Canadian Journal of Communication Board. This Carnet is online since March 1st, 2001.
A Brief History Of Social Media, de Brett Borders, faz uma interessante memória da micro-informática e das formas de relação social mediada por computadores, começando pelo phone phreaking, passando pelos primeiros hackers, as BBSs, a rede USENET, os primeiros chats e browsers, até chegar às redes P2P e as atuais "location-based social networking". Para uma visão geral desta história e anlálises para entendê-la, vejam o meu livro Cibercultura escrito no período onde estas questões emergiam.
"Social media isn't really 'new.' While it has only recently become part of mainstream culture and the business world, people have been using digital media for networking, socializing and information gathering - almost exactly like now - for over 30 years".
Vou aproveitar o pretexto do post do Tiago Dória (via email do Fernando Firmino), informando sobre mapa interativo dos crimes em Londres (o usuário coloca o zip code e vê a situação de seu bairro) e no Brasil (WikiCrimes e o Citix), mas há outros como de Chicago, etc., para falar um pouco sobre a história desses mapas de crimes e das "estatísticas morais". Estou escrevendo sobre isso no meu livro (Mídias Locativas e Processos de Espacialização) e retomo aqui uma pequena parte. Rever a história é importante para não cairmos no cilada da novidade.
Esse tipo de mapeamento não surge agora com mashups e google maps. A diferença está na possibilidade de uma produção bottom-up, no cruzamento de bancos de dados e nas diversas formas de interatividade. No século XVIII, na Europa, mapas com detalhes começam a ser produzidos para vigiar e monitorar o espaço, principalmente pelas empresas de seguro, e em Londres. Como afirma Short, "one the most comprehensive and detailed urban mappings during the 18th century was undertaken by insurance companies, which needed accurate maps to determine the likelihood of city fires and calculate the level of insurance premium to be paid by the residents." ("The World Through Maps. A history of Cartography", John R. Short, Firefly Books, Toronto, 2003, p. 151). Claro, o que acontece hoje não é nada mais do que o desenvolvimento histórico desses mapas, e não é de hoje a febre por vigilância e monitoramento em Londres, Paris, Boston... O primeiro foi em Paris em 1829.
No século XIX, nos EUA, surgem mapas estatísticos revelando uma radiografia social. O primeiro foi o "Statistical Atlas", de Francis Walker, de 1874, com 44 mapas com dados sobre imigração, etnia, religião, tendências econômicas, densidade populacional: "Walker was writing at the same time when social science, social control, and social surveillance were all emerging as important new discourses of a nation experiencing rapid urbanization and large-scale immigration." (p. 164). Esses atlas não apenas representam cartograficamente as nações, eles as justificam, as legitimam e servem como instrumento de poder.
Mapas de doenças, de crimes começam a ser produzidos no século XIX e crescem no século XX. Esses mapas revelam "moral estatictics", termo criado pelo estatístico francês André-Michel Guerry em 1833. Essas estatísticas morais apontam para os "levels of crime and poverty, among other social phenomena. Crime maps first appeared in France in 1829 when Balbi and Guerry used data from 1825 to 1827 to plot, for each of the departments in the country, the incidence of crime in relation to 'educational instruction'(...)" (p. 194). Hoje, como afirma Short, "geografic profiling" é uma tendência, mostrando aspectos psicologicos e perfis que são usados para criar e reforçar leis. Trata-se de assumir, como afirma Short, que o perfil de crimes e de criminosos são "place specific".
Em post recente falava da recriação da história e do reforço a uma memória do lugar com o uso das mídias locativas, como o projeto sobre o muro de Berlim. No mesmo espírito, o projeto Street Radio, usa rádio FM, bluetooth, celular e redes sem fio criando uma estrutura de rede mesclada para que as pessoas possam ouvir história escondidades de Southampton. Vejam trechos do post do The Next Layer, "A new public wireless interface: Hivenetworks successfully launch 'Street Radio' in Southampton."
"On Friday the 14th of March 2008 ten 'street radio' nodes went live in Southampton narrowcasting Hidden Histories -- stories from Southamptons Oral History Archive selected and arranged to correspond with the location of the 10 nodes. Participants started to meet at around 11 am at the gallery cafe in Southampton's Civic Centre. There they received maps of the Hidden Histories trail and those who needed them could borrow little FM radio receivers. Here you can get a digital version of the Hidden Histories map and here you get a Hidden Histories Guide
The underlying technology has been developed by Hivenetworks over the past 3, 4 years. The technologically creative mastermind behind the project is Alexei Blinov. For many years he has supported artists by finding technical solutions for their ideas. This time it was the other way round, as the basic concept behind Hive Networks is based on ideas and research carried out by Blinov, supported by a network of collaborators and friends. Blinov conceived the idea of a network that is not just a carrier of information but one that sees hears, smells, and which automatically adds new nodes and drops them if necessary, a hive of little devices which interact with each other and the public. (...) The concept of Hivenetworks was created by the artist-engineer Alexei Blinov with the proposition that it should enable media artists to create complex public art works without having to get into the deep end of technological development. Here you find an article about the deep history of HIvenetworks.
Hivebox on light pole in front of former Tyrell and Green building
On a tight budget and close deadline, we were very happy to be able to deliver. On 10 light poles in the centre of Southampton on Above Bar street weather proof little boxes have been mounted which contain repurposed commercially available hardware. The unique hard- software combination implemented by Hivenetworks is playing soundfiles in a loop on FM radio on 89.0 MHtz. The very low powered USB FM transmitters are said to have a range of about 10 to 15 meters. Thus, around each lighhtpole in a radius of 30 meters approximately you can hear one particular radio art piece created by me with excerpts from the Oral History Archive. The boxes also scan the surroundings for mobile phones with the bluetooth function on. Asking the carrier of the mobile phone to accept a message first, a short bluetooth text message is transmitted announcing the node, the frequency and its content. The Hiveware contained in the boxes also creates a mesh network based on the OLSR protocol. Currently we do not provide access point services, the mesh is only there for maintainance reasons. Via the net we can 'see' the boxes from London and check if they are working and upload new content.
Snapshot of the mesh network topology
(...) But technical functioning aside, the project also worked as a whole. I simple loved drifting from one node to the other, headphones on, radio in hand, listening in to one story and then, after a while, moving on to the next. There was a specific effect that we had hoped to happen but could not count on because at the end of the day this was the first time that something like this was done. We placed the nodes in such a distance that ideally the covered areas would overlap just a bit so that you could drift from one story to the next and even have an area where both nodes were audible. And this was exactly how it turned out. Between node 6 and 5 for instance, or node 7 and 9, you could walk away from one node, its signal slowly getting weaker, while the other soundbytes would start coming in, gently interfering but not wiping out the first signal, until you were close in reach and only listened to one node again. It would be very tempting for the future to use this effect to ask sound artists to create compositions for specific areas.
(...) The street radio set up deployed by Hivenetworks on the other hand uses technology which people already carry in their pocket. Most of the newer mobile phones have bluetooth and FM reception. Having headphones, even small ones, really improve the experience. But that's it, oiff you go and listen to stories from Southampton's maritime past while taking a walk through the city, smelling the air, seeing radio masts of ships in the distance, being 'disturbed' by some live seagulls. What struck me as particularly interesting is this overlapping of the visual sense with the profane ongoings of Southampton on a weekday morning and the audio sphere with the voices from the achive. It creates a new layer, a new public interface through which to experience the city. (...)"
Dois projetos interessantes en NY mostram possibilidades de reconstruir histórias de praças, bairros e outros lugares das cidades através das tecnologias móveis, associando mobilidade, produção de conteúdo livre e resignificação dos espaços urbano. Vemos aqui como os lugares ganham novos significados com as experiências com mídias locativas. Acho que é mesmo uma resistência à impessoalidade e a tendência massacrante da aceleração e disseminação informacional que começa na modernidade.
O primeiro é Intersections: where the past meets the present, de Gaelen Green, Alexis Lloyd e Ana Velez, onde através de QRCodes, passantes podem acessar histórias do passado de lugares atuais que, em vários exemplos, não guardam mais nenhuma relação evidente com esse passado. No site é possível fazer um download de um mapa, imprimi-lo e sair explorando os pontos com as tags (QRCodes) e, assim, explorar a intersecção entre passado, presente e futuro, entre o espaço urbano e o ciberespaço.
"Intersections is a site-specific project that enables you to explore the layers of New York City history using your mobile phone. Currently installed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Intersections is comprised of a series of stickers bearing semacodes. These semacodes, or 2-D barcodes, can be photographed using a web-enabled camera phone, and are then decoded to download a historical photo of that very location. This mobile interface allows users to compare the historical image with the current view of the location, thereby gaining greater understanding of the layers of history and change inherent to the city."
O outro projeto é o My Washington Square, de Alexis Lloyd, também com o objetivo de recontar histórias sobre um lugar, aqui Washington Square em NY. O objetivo é explorar as diversas camadas históricas de um lugar. Pesssoas podem adicionar suas histórias, ressaltando novos sentidos dos lugares.
"My Washington Square is an experience-mapping project exploring contemporary and historical stories situated in New York?s Washington Square Park. Through personal stories submitted by online visitors as well as historical information, this project explores the ways in which physical spaces contain many layers of memory and experience. You are invited to explore the stories submitted by others and to share your own experience of this rich and complex place."
Esse projeto também faz eco com o Banff e-History que já reportei nesse Carnet onde crianças da escola da cidade fazem pesquisas sobre locais, os indexam por GPS e recontam suas histórias. Os links dos dois primeiros projetos vêem do blog de Anne Galloway.
From Atari's PONG to the Sony PlayStation 3--we laugh, we cringe, we reminisce. Danny Allen Friday, December 22, 2006 01:00 AM PST
The first piece of tech gear that I could call my own wasn't a computer; it was a game console--an original Sega Master System. I remember it, and the often-cheesy marketing that so appealed to my eight-year-old-self, as fondly as I do my first kiss (sorry Kathryn from fourth grade). So, inspired by our recent look at old computer ads and the launch of the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3, I've compiled a list of classic console commercials spanning three decades.
But first, some ground rules: I've included only consoles, not gaming PCs, in my coverage. And I've focused on advertisements for the consoles themselves. Sure, some classic ads for various games have hit our screens over the years, but the focus here is on the hardware.
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