Positive Technology Journal

Via 3Dpoint.com 

BBC Newsnight’s Geek Week 2.0 examines the nature of the self in cyberspace. The 11-minute segment (click the virtual death link) provides a description of what it means to inhabit a metaversal presence.

Re-blogged from Textually.org (via Yanko Design)

A wearable mobile device for enhanced chatting, by Designer Sunman Kwo.

"A new wearable device that anyone can communicate with that is easier and lighter in mobile circumstances corresponding to the 3.5G, 4G communication standard. Human hand is the most basic communication method.

For easier and simpler controls, it uses the instinctive input method "finger joint". Excluding the thumb, each finger joint makes up twelve buttons, with "the knuckle button", using the cell phone's 3X4 keypad, likely being the most popular input method."

breathtaking :-@

Engadget Gizmodo

From Pasta and Vinegar 

Rogers, Y. (2006) Moving on from Weiser’s vision of of calm computing: engaging UbiComp experiences. In: P. Dourish and A. Friday (Eds.) Ubicomp 2006 Proceedings, LNCS 4206, pp. 404-421, Springer-Verlag.

In this paper, the author starts from the classical ubicomp description by Mark Weisre about a potential era of “calm computing” and explains how research in that domain did not match these expectations. The most important stance of Yvonne Rogers lays in this idea that “An alternative agenda is outlined that focuses on engaging rather than calming people” so that academics can have a new research agenda:

There is an enormous gap between the dream of comfortable, informed and effortless living and the accomplishments of UbiComp research. As pointed out by Greenfield [20] “we simply don’t do ‘smart’ very well yet” because it involves solving very hard artificial intelligence problems that in many ways are more challenging than creating an artificial human.
(…)
To this end, I propose one such alternative agenda which focuses on designing UbiComp technologies for engaging user experiences. It argues for a significant shift from proactive computing to proactive people; where UbiComp technologies are designed not to do things for people but to engage them more actively in what they currently do.

Re-blogged from Infoaesthetics

a wirelessly controlled tactile display, consisting of a 4 × 4 array of vibrating motors that is mounted on a waist band or on the forearm. this tactile display can be used as a navigation aid outdoors, as experiments have proved that 8 different vibrotactile patterns can be interpreted as directional (e.g. stop, look left, run, proceed faster or proceed slower) or instructional cues (e.g. "raise arm horizontally", "raise arm vertically", "hop") with almost perfect accuracy.

[link: newscientisttech.com & ieee.org (pdf) springerlink.com|via boingboing.net]

Via KurzweilAI.net

Using Wikipedia, Technion researchers have developed a way to give computers knowledge of the world to help them "think smarter," making common sense and broad-based connections between topics just as the human mind does.

Link

Via Future Cinema Course 

An International Conference presented by the Interactive Arts and Science Program - Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario

JUNE 5-6, 2007

Keynote Speakers:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Director of the Quality of Life Research Center at the Drucker School, Claremont Graduate University

James Paul Gee, Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading, University of Wisconsin at Madison (sponsored by Owl Children’s Trust and the Brock Research Institute for Youth Studies)

Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Director of the Computing Culture group at the MIT Media Lab

Denis Dyack, Director/President, Silicon Knights 

The primary focus of this conference is to explore the growing cultural importance of interactive media. All scholarship on digital interactive media (such as computer games, mixed realities and interactive fiction), as well as users (including adults and children), will be considered in one of four broad conference streams:

Theory of Immersive Worlds explores: i. the theory of interactivity, from perspectives such as narrative and gameplay (ludology); ii. analyses of the cultural and psychological effects of immersive worlds.

Creative Practices in Immersion examines interactive new media art, and its exploration of new idioms and challenges in immersive worlds.

Immersive Worlds in Education examines the application of immersive technologies to teaching and learning.

Immersive Worlds in Entertainment examines entertainment applications of immersive technologies.

Visit the conference website for details

Via VRoot

A model of (en)action to approach embodiment: a cornerstone for the design of virtual environments for learning

Virtual Reality Journal, Springer London, Volume 10, Number 3-4 / December, 2006, Pages 253-269.

Author: Daniel Mellet-d’Huart

This paper presents a model of (en)action from a conceptual and theoretical point of view. This model is used to provide solid bases to overcome the complexity of designing virtual environments for learning (VEL). It provides a common grounding for trans-disciplinary collaborations where embodiment can be perceived as the cornerstone of the project. Where virtual environments are concerned, both computer scientists and educationalists have to deal with the learner/user’s body; therefore the model provides tools with which to approach both human actions and learning processes within a threefold model. It is mainly based on neuroscientific research, including enaction and the neurophysiology of action.

Via Networked Performance

 LindenLab has announced the availability of the Second Life client source code

Users can download the code, inspect, compile, modify, and use within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2

continue reading

Mind Gym Psychology Prize is a new prize for psychological research worth £10,000 that is being given for published or unpublished reports of well-founded, practical and imaginative research that explores or suggests ways to enhance psychological capability in the general population.

The scope of the competition covers what is loosely called 'practical psychology' and includes, for example, work on social influence, stress, creativity, optimism, time management and relationships.  There is, of course, a very
large overlap with positive psychology.

The prize is sponsored by The Mind Gym Ltd, a human resource development company.  The prize will be judged by The Mind Gym's academic board, which is comprised of Fellows of the British Psychological Society.

In addition to the prize money, the winner and runners-up will be invited to present their findings at a special event at the Royal Society of Arts in London, and will have their research publicised in a national newspaper, almost certainly 'The Times'.

The deadline for submissions is 1 MARCH 2007

 
The details and rules are available here