Building a location-based mobile media content delivery system around GPS presents some huge problems.
It occurs to me that mobile phone manufacturers may not add GPS functionality to their handhelds for quite a while, or if they do the implementation may not be sufficient for our needs. I feel that we need to have a dialogue with the manufacturers so that we can understand their position on GPS technology and so that they can understand the service that we can potentially provide their customers.
It is primarily out of this frustration (as well as the problem of GPS reception in buildings) that I have tried to imagine an architecture design for our system that uses RFID tags instead of GPS.
An RFID tag is small and cheap. These are great features for the system that we are designing. They are mobile, they function perfectly well indoors and mobile phone manufacturers are already implementing RFID functionality in their phones: both tags in phones (here) and sensors in phones (here). This overcomes my three biggest concerns about GPS.
Our system should accomodate mobile objects. If not immediately, then as soon as technologically possible. Do not resist this.
Our system should work indoors. If not immediately, then as soon as technologically possible. Do not resist this.
Our system should use technology that mobile phones will have soon. If not immediately, then as soon as technologically possible. Do not resist this.
I'm not elaborating on these point as I think that they are obvious. I will discuss them point by point with anyone that feel they are debatable.
RFID tags can substitute for GPS. Just give the tag its coordinates in the database. We could even use the GPS coordinate system to keep consistency and to allow for GPS device compatibility. Best of all, mobile objects tracked with RFID could be automatically pinpointed by their proximity to other stationary RFID tags.
But there are some major problems with using RFID tags over GPS:
First, it is obvious that we would give up the platonic ideal of a network that is accesible worldwide from the day it is launched. Second (and a corollary of the first), we are limiting expansion of the network to physical "tagging" of spaces and objects. Thirdly, we are allowing for a large amount of instability in the network as physical RFID tags could be removed or vandalized. Fourthly, I am just not sure that the mobile user’s phone could be triangulated accurately from RFID tags in the environment. The user will not usually be standing on the tag itself so her position must be calculated from at least two stationary tags.
So what do we do? Perhaps we won’t have to make a choice at all and both technologies will become available simultaneously in mobile consumer devices. Then the advantages of each technology could be fused. But until that paradise emerges we should be prepared to compensate for the lack of one with an innovative use of the other.
"Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past. Some manufacturers are planning to tag just the packaging, but others will also tag their products. There is no law requiring a label indicating that an RFID chip is in a product. Once you buy your RFID-tagged jeans at The Gap with RFID-tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID-tagged shoes, and get into your car with its RFID-tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel. Bar codes are usually scanned at the store, but not after purchase. But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is "numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked." Anonymity and privacy? Gone in a hailstorm of invisible communication, betrayed by your very property."
Why do we want to keep things (objects, experiences, ideas...) private?
As we start to create a mobile media map of LA we must consider that many people will object to their likeness existing in a database with GPS and time metadata attached.
What are some good reasons for/ consequences of privacy?
What are some bad reasons for/ consequences of privacy?
What would happen if all types of privacy disappeared?
Would it create a paradise or a hell?
RFID Communities and Metadata Moss
I am proposing a research project, supervised by Scott Fisher, to design a system and interface for mobile platforms that uses networked embedded RFID tags in common objects to create communities of these objects so that contextual and environmental metadata is available to the user. A user could navigate through the data using a complex augmented reality HMD system or a simple wireless device, like a mobile phone.
The architecture of the system would establish a network of physical objects in a small room as an experiment. The power of such a system would be in the organization of objects into communities or groups. While specific objects and the metadata derived from them are interesting alone, it is important to know the context and relationships of the object to its physical surroundings and its virtual or networked surroundings. These relational connections could be made by both the manufacturer of the object and/or by the system self-organizing through a variety of analyses. The prototype system will attempt to show how even in a small space of familiar objects, the communities of objects will empower the user to derive more use from the grouped metadata as she explores the physical and virtual spaces.
Interfacing with such a system requires an elegant method of visually symbolizing the massive amount of data than can rapidly accumulate even in a small space with a few objects. There are two ways I propose to simplify this problem. The first is to represent the amount and density of the metadata associated with an object as a type “moss” that grows and glows when seen through the HMD of the augmented reality system. This simple visual metaphor helps the user to understand what the virtual space of information looks like when applied over the top of the physical space. The semi-transparent nature of the moss would prevent it from interfering with the visual field of the user.
The second way to simplify the massive amounts of metadata produced by such a system is to create a “focus and framing” system that the user controls. The metaphor of depth of field in photography may be applied here to help the user understand how to control how much information she is viewing. A photograph with a large depth of field contains more information because more of the environment is in focus. The frame clearly isolates a subject and excludes other possible subjects that would change the meaning of the image should they appear in it. The focus and framing system would be a set of filters that the user could dynamically adjust as she moves through the environment. I prefer not to think of this as a “zoom” because the viewer always maintains the same focal length: that of the eye.
The first proposed application of this system in an entertainment context would be a “day-in-the-life-of” program that would provide a sort of interactive reality show about celebrities. The celebrity would wear a mobile device that records the objects and environments that she moves through by using the RFID tags and metadata. The focus and framing tool would be set to include and exclude objects determined by the producer. Internet users could then find the objects, comment on them in the virtual space (comments that would become attached to that object), and buy them or replicas of them. Combining this system with a TV documentary program like MTV’s “Cribs” would allow for a unique experience that brings the user into the world of the subject.
For this project in the Fall semester of 2003 I propose to research and design in three specific areas:
1. Infrastructure and network design for augmented reality systems.
2. Embedded RFID tags.
3. Interface and application design for virtual and augmented environments.
I would produce a paper summarizing my research and design proposal for implementing the system. Additionally I would produce a detailed walkthrough of a user’s experience of the entertainment application of the system. The Spring 2004 semester would be used for creating a working prototype.
In a discussion today about a mobile authoring tool for a location-based network it occured to me that there is no reason to separate the authoring space from the content space. If the authoring/content space were shared and dynamically updated as users made content contributions then the author would have the advantage of seeing the immediate implementation of the work and the user would have the advantage of observing the creative process.
The objection could be made that the content space would become too cluttered for the author to work in. It seems that this would be a problem for the mobile user in the content space as well and the clutter issue must be solved by a filtering/tuning/focusing/framing system anyway. So if an effective and powerful filtering system were implemented then the author would be able to block out distracting content. But even more interesting is the capability of the author to allow for content to exist within the creative space during the authoring process. So an author could choose to isolate all the night imagery associated with a specific location and then voice annotate a spoken word piece about her love twilight wanderings in that neighborhood. Of course an author could choose to filter out everything and create a blank canvas as well.
The superimposition of the authoring environment upon the pre-existing content (or content upon the authoring environment) of a mobile location-based environment is particularly compelling considering the networked collaborative effort to construct the content space. Artists often surround themselves with the works that inspire them in a variety of mediums. Those pieces exist peripherally to the art being created in the moment and become the context. In the mobile media space, the content creation device (the mobile phone, PDA, laptop or AR HMD) is the content viewing device so the user is the author and thus uniquely positioned to blur the lines between content and its context.
"Adam Smith believed in a God that was kind and wise and all-powerful. The great theorist of the free market believed in Providence. "The happiness of mankind," Smith wrote, "seems to have been the original purpose intended by the Author of nature." The workings of the Lord could be found not in the pages of a holy book, nor in miracles, but in the daily, mundane buying-and-selling of the marketplace. Each purchase might be driven by an individual desire, but behind them all lay "the invisible hand" of the Divine. This invisible hand set prices and wages. It determined supply and demand. It represented the sum of all human wishes. Without relying on any conscious intervention by man, the free market improved agriculture and industry, created surplus wealth, and made sure that the things being produced were the things people wanted to buy. Human beings lacked the wisdom, Smith felt, to improve society deliberately or to achieve Progress through some elaborate plan. But if every man pursued his own self-interest and obeyed only his “passions,” the invisible hand would guarantee that everybody else benefited, too.
Published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations later had a profound effect upon the nation born that year. The idea that “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness” were unalienable rights, endowed by a Creator, fit perfectly with the economic theories of Adam Smith. “Life, liberty and estate” was the well-known phrase that Thomas Jefferson amended slightly for the Declaration of Independence. The United States was the first country to discard feudal and aristocratic traditions and replace them with a republican devotion to marketplace ideals. More than two centuries later, America’s leading companies – General Motors, General Electric, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Boeing, et al. – have annual revenues larger than those of many sovereign states. No currency is more powerful than the U.S. dollar, and the closing prices on Wall Street guide the financial markets of Tokyo, London, Paris, and Frankfurt. The unsurpassed wealth of the United States has enabled it to build a military without rival. And yet there is more to the U.S. economy, much more, than meets the eye. In addition to America’s famous corporations and brands, the invisible hand has also produced a largely invisible economy, secretive and well hidden, with its own labor demand, price structure, and set of commodities.”
The first two paragraphs of Eric Schlosser's new book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market.
"Then something terrible happened just as I got in the park. I dropped old Phoebe's record. It broke into about fifty pieces. It was in a big envelope and all, but it broke anyway. I damn near cried, it made me feel so terrible, but all I did was, I took the pieces out of the envelope and put them in my coat pocket. They weren't good for anything, but I didn't feel like throwing them away. Then I went in the park. Boy, was it dark."
I read J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye for the first time last night. It was not at all what I expected, which is reasonable considering how in/famous the novel is.
I don't wish to attempt a critical analysis. I can only say that I cried which made me feel alive and "goddam depressed" at the same time.
"Then I told her about the record. 'Listen, I bought you a record,' I told her. 'Only I broke it on the way home.' I took the pieces out of my coat pocket and showed her. 'I was plastered,' I said.
'Gimme the pieces,' she said. 'I'm saving them.' She took them right out of my hand and then she put them in the drawer of the night table. She kills me."
But everyone else that reads this should take note.
MC Honky has arrived. He is a mystery (sort of).
He rocks indisputably.
"The Onion: Why should anyone buy your record?
MC Honky: [submitted via e-mail] Mrs. Honky's pottery business isn't doing the business it used to. Damn terrorists.
O: Do you think your record will help people?
MCH: All kidding aside, this is the only record ever made that really can help anyone who listens to it. Listen to "A Good Day To Be You," for example, and tell me if you don't feel a lot better afterwards. I am the inventor of self-help rock, and this is the world's first taste of the genre. You're welcome!
O: Do you think your record could save lives?
MCH: I really do. Hey there, young teen with the gun to your head! Just buy and listen to I Am The Messiah before you pull the trigger. Aha! That's what I thought. Life isn't so bad, now, is it?
O: Is this record your ticket to heaven?
MCH: What a silly question. This record is heaven.
MC Honky's newest album is titled I Am The Messiah."
—Stephen Thompson
"You are very well read. But you don't make me feel stupid. Thank you."
-A Good Day To Be You
I can probably get free expo floor tickets for those that are interested from my friend at ICT. No access to conferences or classes... sigh, but there are always guerrilla tactics and impersonation.
Comment or email me if you want a ticket.
And there is the issue of whether or not to stay down there (San Diego).
k
This amuses me. I saw this album at Aron's yesterday:
I was thinking about Friendster and somehow I arrived at:
Amazon should have a matching service. With all the information that they store about your personal interests, expressed through purchases, item rankings and location, that metadata could be applied to a personals system. Whether you want to meet someone with similar or dissimilar interests, so much of our culture is about personality expressed through consumption. Just take a walk on 3rd St. or Melrose. Of course, not everyone is so simple... but I am sure that there are those that would be delighted to be matched with someone who owned the stuff on their wishlist. It's like finding the perfect materialistic complement.