links for 2009-04-11

"So far the investigation of spatio-temporal patterns of people mainly rendered a quantitative understanding of the city. In our study, we intend to leverage implicit spatio-temporal data (i.e. latitude, longitude and timestamp) with the richness of people-generated information. Our approach is to consider that uploading, tagging and disclosing the location of a photo can be interpreted as an act of communication rather than a pure implicit history of physical presence."

"We are doing this breeding work and releasing this material into the public realm for everyone. Thus, you may only request this seed if you agree to not patent, legally protect or apply for breeders rights over the resulting varieties. Nor will you in any way restrict anyone else saving seeds of your variety for their own home or farm use." (link from Amanda Williams)

We see food plants as part of our common human heritage. And we do not think it is correct to patent them.

So, we are doing this breeding work and releasing this material into the public realm for everyone.
Thus, you may only request this seed if you agree to not patent, legally protect
or apply for breeders rights over the resulting varieties.
Nor will you in any way restrict anyone else saving seeds of your variety for their own home or farm use.

"The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people's willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone. As each encounter with a helpful pedestrian takes the robot one step closer to attaining it's destination, the significance of our random discoveries and individual actions accumulates into a story about a vast space made small by an even smaller robot."

"this is all everyday technology - embedded in, propped up against, or moving through the street, carried by people and vehicles, and installed by private companies and public bodies. Each element of data causes waves of responses in other connected databases, sometimes interacting with each other physically through proximity, other times through semantic connections across complex databases, sometimes in real-time, sometimes causing ripples months later....

Yet how much of this activity is obviously perceptible on our streets when viewed through conventional means?"