Gneumatic

Boredom Research’s prototype for RealSnailMail uses actual living snails (Helix Aspersa, for the snail-savvy) equipped with RFID tags that enable them to be assigned messages from hardware located within their enclosure. Once a message is sent through the RealSnailMail web interface, it is stored on a “server” until one of the snails happens to pass close enough to activate the RFID antenna. “Once collected your message is lugged around on the back of a snail until such time as it happens by the dispatch centre and is finally forwarded to its recipient.”

RealSnailMail is described as a “’slow art’ project [intended] to make us think about the ubiquity of electronic communications and questions of speed, and, more broadly, question our thinking about communication.” I just sent a message to Jeff; will update when/if I hear anything back.

Also, there are profiles for each of the snails.

I went to an IXDA-sponsored talk with Peter Morville promoting his book Ambient Findability last night. Peter didn’t lead with any opening remarks and immediately opened the floor to questions instead. So the discussion started out a little slowly, but quickly picked up steam. Things really began to get interesting as talk around Web 2.0 morphed into a consideration of how Information Architecture and Interaction Design overlap.
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Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling’s volume for the MIT Mediawork series, is a sustainability manifesto at heart. It is also equal parts (anti-) futurist prognosis, extended thought experiment, and a gauntlet flung down before contemporary design practices. Not bad for a “pamphlet” of less than 150 pages. Read the rest of this entry »