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January 19, 2007
The Ephemeral Public
Among the design challenges Prospero faces is the basic task of definition. A motivation behind the project, of course, is to conjure an alternative to the creeping ubiquity of one-way communicative media and the latter’s tendency to dominate and thereby define common spaces.
Interestingly, our project converges the limits of theory (e.g., what defines and delimits “the public” in the age of pervasive/locative media?) and horizons of technology (e.g., how does one create an architecture that enables self-defining publics to coalesce and evolve?).
As the basic decisions regarding the Prospero architecture demonstrate, we're seeing the chief decisions we're facing as dwelling within the "Controller" portion of the diagram.
In fact, we've already significantly amended the posted version of this architecture (look for it to be posted soon), such that the "Controller" has gobbled up most of the "Display".
A few interesting questions decisions are immediately before us:
a) As the modules within that Controller are the most pivotal, what would be the best ones to prototype?
b) We have envisioned so far a Null Module, the default to which our display will shift when no one is present. What should this default consist of?
c) We've decided that the display will contain content about itself, call it Prospero's Self-Awareness module. What should it contain? Information on who's been present? Content that has been displayed (i.e., like some weighted average?)? A scroll of various modules that have been developed and with what results?
d) Let's say lots of people are using Prospero at once. What will determine what gets displayed? So far, we've decided to focus on dividing display time rather than display space (because if lots of thing are displayed at once, it gets difficult to see). If the common denominator is, say, watching a football game, how can we claim to have provided anything but a new-fangled TV set? I.e., to what extent can we show the public is capable of doing more than coordinating itself as a multi-organismic remote control?
e) To what extent is it possible to remain neutral about the content that might drive a public to coalesce?
More on all these soon.
Posted by ckaylor at January 19, 2007 03:24 PM