alleshannes.

Stephan Balzer moderated TEDx Berlin

TED conferences became famous for the inspiring and inspired talks, originally on “Technology, Entertainment, and Design”. The recent TEDx conference brought this model to Berlin for the first time (the “x” indicates an “independently organized” event). The organizers around Stephan Balzer really deserve a huge amount of respect for bringing this high class conference to Berlin, and for providing perfect infrastructure and support throughout the show.

Among the outstanding speakers were Veterans like Peter Eigen (from transparency international) and Bernard Lietaer. One could add Hans Rosling, whose groundbreaking statistics presentation from a couple of years ago was shown as a video (a pitty that he wasn’t available for questions afterwards).
Peter Eigen had no problems in making his points compelling and clear without any slides: Corruption by large companies is one of the main causes for poverty in so-called developing countries. He called it a problem of bad governance, not only in the bribed states but at least as severly in the bribing states where governments fail to efficently ban and punish bribing (note that you could get tax reductions for bribing abroad as “extraordinary selling expenses” until a couple of years ago).

Reto Wettach talking about "Bodies and Secrets"

Bernard Lietaer, as a monetary expert, argued against an economic system purely built on efficency: one could learn from ecologically sustainable systems that resilience is tremendously important to cope with surprising events (such as a storm or a financial crisis, background eg. in Berkes et al (1998)). Monoculture is highly efficent but also extremely vulnerable and has very poor potential for adaption.In retrospect, a series of design research talks connected perfectly to Lietaer’s pledge for more diversity: Reto Wettach argued that the invention and development processes of electronic devices must open up for electrical non-experts. If more people would pursue and realize their ideas for new hardware, innovation and more human friendly machines would happen more quickly. He presented Fritzing, a software targeted at making exactly this easier. He was framed by two speakers who delivered impressive examples: Fabian Hemmert investigates haptic and form-changing mobile phones. And Christophe F. Maire already explores the upcoming market for eBooks with his company txtr.

Social and ethical projects were another huge topic, such as empowering a civil society with sports (Boxing Girls). Other talks presented “third world aid” projects and often showed an undercomplex approach while dealing with complex issues. These talks seemed to follow the idea that “we Europeans need to help those poor Africans down there”. What these underpriviledged countries really need, in my opinion, is an end of European (or Western) arrogance, implicit in talking about just Africa (”the dark continent”, source) and explicit in trade barriers (such as import taxes and subsidies in Europe).
Despite being years old and just dealing with statistics, the ingenious TED video with Hans Rosling managed far better to bring fundamental issues to light, like (lacking) equal terms of trade and resepect for the diverse developments of African countries.

In the end, however, each talk delivered valueable starting points for discussions during the luckily extra long breaks. It was sometimes hard to imagine that all those well-suited people in the luxurious environment of the Grand Hyatt were really interested in groundbreaking changes, but I was happy to get proved wrong by a couple of personal conversations. There are by far enough ideas, talks, and people to get back to and that’s of course the success of TEDx Berlin.

Watch out for the videos!

The paper Larissa and me wrote a couple of months ago got finally accepted at the NGMAST conference in Wales this September! This is pretty exciting news, it’s my/our first step into the serious (official?) world of science.

The full title reads
Social Button – Mobile Technology Supporting Social Interaction.
Our project is about a small wearable display with a pin, that can be attached to your clothes. It gets your address book from your mobile phone and checks for matching entries on other SocialButtons that might be in the area. The Buttons indicate a match by displaying each participants personal symbol – a twist, that makes it much easier to find others and protect your privacy at the same time. Larissa’s animation explanes it far better:

So we went to the wonderful city of Cardiff (Wales, UK) some weeks ago to present our work. We got very encouraging feedback and some helpful critique there , and had some interesting face-to-face talks in the City Hall where conference took place. (Our slides come in at 8MB)

NGMAST was the first conference on “Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services, and Technologies”, so it was rather tiny (compared to the very well known ones), but also quite personal, with a very warm chair, and easy to get in contact with the other participants.

With this event it became clear that our idea is promising yet only partially finished – so we are open for your comments!

(There is also a corresponding workspace at our University’s site for internal communication, incom)

at the exhibition of inbox artspace …

To everyone who wants to know a little bit more about Russia, its political disposition, and the daily life there, I strongly recommend Ben Bidders Russenblog. He tries to work as a journalist, for sure one of the most exciting and often enough uneasy occupations to find there at the moment. How the press, independent press in particular, and all kinds of critical citzienship is handled by official representatives is a pure scandal.

A link in one of his posts led me to the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, which published some photos (with frightening content). It was not on purpose, most probably, but at the time of my visit (07-05-26) the fotos got accompanied by a large ad, almost the size of the pictures themselves. While this is questionable enough, the picture’s caption establishes another link, describing the scenes as raw violence (”rohe Gewalt”). At least for me, raw is somehow associated with meat (> cat food).

That really made me think.

[edit 080223] There is a new and English abstract![/edit]
[edit 071129]With my thesis I want to explore what role machines can play in our interaction with extended social networks.[/edit]

here comes the latest version of my proposal that will be the basis for my master thesis at FH Potsdam.

Please do comment as much as you can and like, everything is appreciated!

Get proposal pdf 230 kb, text in German only

Abstract …

When talking about virtual and real worlds it soon gets difficult to determine what we consider as virtual and real. Our thoughts and imaginations are not technically enhanced or otherwise mysterious but they are not part of the actual, material world, either. They do shape our perspective and our plans and actions.

Public Buildings are solid environments but their particular determination, they way we perceive the building and select a proper behavior is not built-in but a system of signs and codes that we read permanently.
With the means of Semiotic Analysis I investigated on the relation between (real) buildings and our interpretation, that means our (virtual) reconstruction. The results are presented by an interactive documentation that reflects the subjective process of decoding (unfortunately, texts in German only). It is the fruit of the Master Class in Design Theory, led by Prof. Dr. Rainer Funke.

As a first example, I examined the Berlin Central Railway Station as a hub of public transport on the one side and I discovered an interference with the mixed-in shopping mall concept on the other one. Having travelling in mind initially, a passenger has to cross the shopping sector. This changes the context for his decoding of sign systems, so he misses the guides to the trains easily.

flash, 3.4 MB

For the second example, I was wondering which signs and features render a church into a somewhat mystic room with a very special atmosphere. Although one could still call it a house by its primary features it makes people whisper and feel different. Featured buildings include St. Hedwig, St. Paulus, Sophienkirche, and Maria Saal (Kaernten, A)
flash, 4.6 mb

Italy is the origin of my beloved arduino-board. So it seemed natural to me to place it into an agile sports car when I had to make up a project for the metal workshop course. It is designed as a cabrio alluding to the relaxed Italian attitude.
The goal of the class led by Martin Ziegler was to learn the basic handling of all necessary tools and gain some experience in working with metal. …

For recent and recurring reasons I started to think about a “VPN bashing module” for our Master-Room in the fhp.

The vpn-client that became our only and obligatory access to the internet seems to have its own intelligence that acts according to plans beyond human understanding (maybe extraterrestrial). Every now and then he chooses a deliberate candidate to kick out of the network, sometimes followed by periods of denials to all attempts of reconnecting.

This is not only undermining the belief in the predictabilty and determination of technology but is also really making us mad and breaking up the holy work-flow. As the resulting aggression has to find a way out and is better deflected from the other inhabitants, a punching ball might serve that purpose. With some sensors built in and a computer with AutoHotkey running, a procedure to initate a reconnect should be easily available.

Plus: If vpn doesn’t reconnect at once one can keep punching the ball (really hard). Some other applications for that interaction principle might come to your mind as well.

Just for the record: This code will drive our arduino boards (two of them and yes! they are connected AND talking!).

It took Larissa and me quite some time and a lot more nerves. And Tomek, too! He spent hours with us on ICQ altruisticly, even got his two Arduinos out of the box and gave us the right hints finally – by remote!
So we learnt a lot. Most important: With two communicating Boards, never forget to connect the grounds. Always remember.

The code for the geeks: …