dessalles

Unbeknownst to the throngs of iPhone owners bitching and moaning on their tech blogs and micro-messages over AT&T’s poor wireless service, the telecom giant has a much bigger problem, the most French of business problems, one which has led thousands of suburban middle managers to buy their first steel-toed work boots: impending union strike.¹

On August 7, 1983 the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) began a 22-day strike against AT&T. The strike marked the last time the two unions, which at the time represented 700,000 AT&T employees, were able to collectively bargain for all it’s workers. Months later on January 1, 1984, the decade-old anti-trust suit, United States v. AT&T, culminated in the divestment of the national monopoly into seven regional “Baby Bells”, fragmenting with it the unionized workforce. continue reading »

The phenomenon known as “spring” descended on New York City today. As is always the case on the first 70° day of the year, myself and many other office-bound New Yorkers intently watched the temperature outside climb one exhilarating degree at a time. While this was once was an activity facilitated by docks, system trays and menu bars, over the last couple years it has increasingly become a ritual dominated by mobile phones. And this year, more than any other, the process of obsessively checking for weather updates on my phone seemed strangely familiar. continue reading »

The US Mint revealed their redesigned $5 bill last week, adding additional anti-counterfeit measures. Of them, the more interesting are the yellow EURion constellations that now grace the front and back:

The EURion is an Orion-inspired pattern of five, usually fairly small, symbols that are repeatedly incorporated into the design of currency to thwart digital replication. A fair amount of scanners and photocopiers will refuse to process a document if the pattern is detected. This system is fairly similar to the DocuColor Tracking Dots that are inconspicuously produced by many commercial color printers so government officials can track a document to the exact printer that produced it. Both are a form of Steganography, which according to Wikipedia “is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the sender and intended recipient even realizes there is a hidden message”.

While I only just learned about the formal practice of Steganography today, it’s actually being employed on a project I’m currently working on. At Schematic, we’re designing a set of semi-public, touch-screen interfaces that need to communicate some information to a group of in-the-know superusers without detection by the primary users or onlookers. At one point we considered encoding information into the typography, but we eventually settled on some color coded ornamental elements. The reason we’re being so discreet is because the information could compromise the interaction between the super and primary users – a relationship critical to the success of the overall service we’re designing. continue reading »

[Photo: Navy Information Operation Command in the National Radio Quiet Zone]

Re-reading Dunne & Raby’s Design Noir, I was reminded of the National Radio Quiet Zone. Described by the authors as an “electromagnetic sanctuary, relatively free from electromagnetic pollution”, the 13,000 square mile swath of land straddling the Virginias was designated by the FCC in 1958. Pretty much all forms of wireless communication are prohibited in the area; and I remember reading somewhere only diesel cars are permitted since spark plugs generate too much radio noise. I like how Dunne & Raby’s description of the area as a “sanctuary” implies we’ll some day be vacationing in the NRQZ – giving our heads a rest form the tin foil that encapsulates them. But as is always the case with such things, all is not what it seems. Tucked away in the hills of the NRQZ is is the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Navy’s Information Operations Command. It’s the later that has engendered the Quiet Zone’s mythical status, as it’s speculated the command center houses NSA intelligence gathering systems. Turning the paranoia of electronic surveillance on it’s head, suddenly the absence of wireless communication seems strangely suspicious. What is it they’re doing that’s not possible outside the “sanctuary”? And why doesn’t whatever they’re doing create any form of “electromagnetic pollution”? What sort of electromagnetic sorcery are they busy mastering?

I think the folklore emerging around the Quiet Zone is emblematic of a major cultural shift ubiquitous computing is forcing upon us: The absence of communication will be considered anomalous, inaccessibility to information will become incongruous and privacy will be more a matter of controlling mis-information than preventing information from appearing in the system. continue reading »

Been thinking about different forms of digital communication and why they exist. I’m seeing an increasing need, particularly in the design of online communities and social networks, to formalize the conditions under which the needs of a conversation no longer align with the affordances of a particular communications channel – forcing a change in medium. At what point does a Facebook Wall conversation migrate to email? What influences a text message conversation to become a phone call?

Those who’ve held onto their grade school science will remember, in chemistry, a phase transition is the process by which a substance passes from one state of matter to another due to relatively small temperature and pressure changes. I’d like to see a similar mapping between a conversation’s conditions/needs and it’s corresponding medium or “phase”. And some nomenclature would be nice. What would you call the transition from text-messaging to a phone call? What’s the communications equivalent of condensation?

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