Keynote with Meta Knol: The Messy Stuff Wins

How to Create a City of Science, a keynote by Meta Knol & me for the KM World 2021 conference back in November, is about the development of the digital/physical concept for the Leiden 2022 European City of Science initiative, which Meta directs.

Aside from the revelation of her team’s astonishing, 365-days of community-owned and community-led programming, two key moments from Meta’s remarks really stand out for me.

The messy stuff wins

At 18:44, Meta talks about her realization (sparked by some research and thinking I did in response to this tweet) that the messy stuff — content and engagement that is authentic, original, and intuitive — wins out over the steady and predictable “fixed formats” often preferred by traditional organizations.

I didn't expect it to, but it's really true: the messy stuff wins. The most authentic. The most original. The kinds of communications where people would just let go of control and build on trust… To allow spontaneous, original ideas to win from the fixed formats. To make sure that you don’t let the rational get in the way of the intuitive. These are really hard things if you are so much stuck in your pathways. So we had to open up, which also meant that we had to exceed our own expectations for what we wanted to make. And certainly we had to let go of the expectations of others. So: The messy stuff wins. Let go of control.

Let go of the frameworks you learned in school

The other moment that sticks out for me comes at 21:10 where Meta talks about abandoning the traditional frameworks of target groups and “pre-fixed media strategies.”

I said to my team, let’s abandon the whole set of criteria of thinking about target groups and pre-fixed media strategies: What we will do is we will focus on specific interests of people. If you are interested in the stars or astronomy I don’t care if you are a 10-year old girl or a Nobel prize winner. Or if we do an activity on kidneys, and your brother has a kidney disease, then I'm sure you will be interested – and you will be no matter where you were born, in which area, what your income is, what level your education is. So that’s the interesting part, if you really focus on these topics that people are interested in intrinsically then you can just let go of all the frameworks that you learned in school about target groups.

The Leiden 2022 European City of Science formally opens in a public webcast at 2pm CET Saturday.

Slides for "What is awesome?" at Computers in Libraries

2021-03-24 Edson CIL (1).png

Here are the slides for What Is Awesome? How to create a ‘reference survey’ for your new digital initiatives, a short talk I’m giving at Computers in Libraries today about how to do a lightweight competitive analysis for your new digital initiatives.

I’ll be joined today by special guest star Meta Knol, Director of the Leiden 2022 European City of Science initiative.

"What websites should we look at?" or "What have you seen that is good?" are questions that often get asked at the beginning of new digital projects. But with the vastness of the Internet and large number of new apps and technologies appearing every day it can be hard to answer those questions in a way that creates useful, actionable insights for teams and decision makers.

In this talk I use Meta’s project as a case study to show participants how they can approach this challenge, and what else they can do (and what they shouldn’t do) when someone asks “What is awesome?” on the Internet.

(The examples I use are drawn from 4 recent posts below, starting here.)

Leiden City of Science References, Part 4: Convenings, Places, Activities

This is the last post in a 4-part series about “engaging, mind-blowing, and inclusive websites and/or online campaigns” relating to art and/or science — all in response to a call on Twitter from Meta Knol, Director of the Leiden 2022 European City of Science initiative.

This post focuses on Convenings, Places, and Activities. Previous posts focused on,

…It’s a nice, broad range of categories but, admittedly, non-scientific and there is a lot of overlap between them.

All the same qualifiers and caveats apply to this bunch of references as the last 3 — I’m focusing on science content from my own tiny Western frame-of-reference (though I would dearly love to know what the wonderful websites and campaigns look like from the perspective of people in Jakarta, Mexico City, Mumbai…!); I’m drawn to bottom-up & community-focused content and interactions (though I’m clearly a sucker for a good story); and I’m not as impressed with fancy bespoke apps and custom websites as I am with simple, direct, communication with and for people and communities.

As I’ve thought about Meta’s question over the last few weeks and considered my own responses it became really clear to me that the websites, apps, and digital projects and things that have brought me joy have rarely been the kinds of standalone apps or carefully crafted content experiences that museums and educational institutions often want to produce. Not that those kinds of here-is-the-virtual-tour-of-our-Cezanne-exhibition or here-is-our-learn-about-the-cosmos-app experiences can’t be joyous and wonderful — but, to me, the voice and the shocking, surprising, joy-giving wonderfulness of the Internet and tech comes, when it comes, more from the wilder, unconstrained corners of the web — and the parts of the Internet where people-meet-people — than from the parts that Institutions have tried to tame and control.

Finally, a lot of the examples and references I’m drawn to don’t fit neatly into the category of websites, apps, or digital things. For example, Fridays for Future, cited below, isn’t a website or an app, it’s a global climate-action movement for which social media and the web is an integral part. Meetup.com, also cited below, is a web platform, but it’s not the web/tech aspect of the platform that’s particularly interesting (though there is a lot to study and learn there) but what it helps to accomplish out in the world.

All of my choices across each of these 4 posts reflect my feeling that when it comes to designing things to help or inspire or serve people and communities — thinking about digital and physical as two different things is a trap; a dead end that leads nowhere. From what I’ve observed, digital and physical are just two parts of whole, and when teams think openly and creatively across the whole, blended spectrum of our digital and physical lives then wonderful, exciting, important things can happen.

Convenings, Places, and Activities

AI Dungeon

Alternate Reality Game — World Without Oil

  • What: An ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that asked players to imagine what it would be like to live in a world without oil. “The game sketched out the overarching conditions of a realistic oil shock, then called upon players to imagine and document their lives under those conditions.…The game's central site linked to all the player material, and the game's characters documented their own lives, and commented on player stories, on a community blog and individual blogs, plus via IM, chat, Twitter and other media.” (via Wikipedia)

  • Why: ARGs and “serious play” (games for change, etc) often intend to help people develop new kinds of creative, civic responses to plausible future scenarios. “Play it before you live it” was the game’s motto. ARGs are also known for involving players in the shaping of the plot and narratives as gameplay progresses.

  • Website: Archive/contact, http://writerguy.com/wwo/metacontact.htm

  • Press/info: One Story With 1,700 Different Authors (Current, 2008), https://current.org/2009/05/one-story-with-1700-authors/; World Without Oil (Wikipedia), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Without_Oil

  • Sample: Video and info, http://writerguy.com/wwo/metahome.htm

Fridays for Future

  • What: Global youth protest movement focused on the climate emergency. Catalyzed by Greta Thunberg; also known as School Strike for Climate.

  • Why: Global protest movement reaching remarkable scale and visibility. Coordinated, amplified, and publicized through social media with the #fridaysforfuture hashtag, among others. A digital strike and a Fridays For Future Digital movement have been organized for those unable to protest “outside” and in places with COVID-19 restrictions.

  • Website: https://fridaysforfuture.org/ . See a map of future strikes (next one is March 19, 2021) and register your own event, https://fridaysforfuture.org/action-map/map/

  • Press/info: (Note: this article was written by a high-school student for the Seattle Times) “‘A mass woke-ning’: Seattle’s Gen Zers on the future they want to see” (Seattle Times, 2021), https://www.seattletimes.com/life/seattle-area-gen-zers-talk-about-the-future-they-want-to-see/

  • Sample: …

Into the Wild

  • What: 2017 Augmented Reality exhibition at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore. The museum worked with film and installation artist Brian Gothong Tan to create a rainforest inside the museum’s public corridors.

  • Why: Clever and resourceful use of non-gallery spaces to engage visitors in a visceral, playful way on the subject of deforestation, biodiversity, and the climate emergency. One interesting feature of the exhibition: visitors could plant a virtual tree and (for a fee) a real tree would be planted on their behalf by an NGO partner in Indonesia. (Note: I didn’t see this installation first-hand, but I talked to some of the museum’s team not long after the exhibition closed.)

  • Website: https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/into-the-wild.html

  • Press/info: Press release by a project partner, the World Wildlife Federation, https://www.wwf.sg/?291970%2FVenture-Into-the-Wild-at-ArtScience-Museum

  • Sample: Video (MediaMonks, 2017), https://youtu.be/fgE7EE22_-0

Meetup.com

  • What: Meetup is “a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, find support, get out of their comfort zones, and pursue their passions, together.” (via Meetup.com/about)

  • Why: In-person meetups have taken a hammering during the pandemic, but the range and diversity of science-related groups and meetups is staggering. (I found over a hundred science-related groups within 100km of Leiden before my hand got tired from scrolling.) Someone told me that in fast-moving fields like robotics and AI a meetup is often the best way to share and learn of cutting-edge developments, with some topics/meetups attracting over 1,000 attendees on short notice.

  • Website: https://meetup.com

  • Press/info:

  • Sample:

Pokémon Go

  • What: A place-based, digital/physical augmented reality app, game, and global public phenomenon.

  • Why: A reminder that people can use games, stories, and tech in fascinating, surprising, and inspiring ways.
    Vice News found a link to scientific thinking as well,

    "I think the biggest lesson is how many people are truly interested in biodiversity, even if the biodiversity they are first introduced to is fictional," Morgan Jackson, an insect taxonomist and PhD candidate at the University of Guelph, told me over email.

    "It's easy to write Pokémon off as a simple game or waste of time when there are so many 'real' plants and animals out there waiting to be recognized. But there are a lot of barriers to learning about nature, and there's no tutorial mode to help people get started like there is in Pokémon." (Source/link below)

  • Website: https://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/

  • Press/info: Overview, Pokémon Go Will Make You Crave Augmented Reality (New Yorker, 2016), https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/pokemon-go-will-make-you-crave-augmented-reality; Is 'Pokémon Go' Good For Science? (Vice, 2016) https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezpad7/is-pokemon-go-good-for-science

  • Sample: See trailer at https://youtu.be/eMobkagZu64

Public Libraries

  • What: Public libraries as public and virtual places where people engage with science content.

  • Why: Civics, community…Libraries are an under-utilized resource and platform when it comes to the production of city-scale events and campaigns. Many libraries host events and public lectures, have after-school clubs for kids, offer classes and educational opportunities, and support “labs” and maker spaces as well.

  • Website: …

  • Press/info: …

  • Sample: See, for example, Do Space in Omaha, Nebraska, “a community technology library, a digital workshop, and an innovation playground filled with new opportunities to learn, grow, explore and create” https://dospace.org/; NASA @ My Library campaign (2017), https://science.nasa.gov/science-activation-team/nasa-at-my-library

Addendum/misc.

In working on this post I remembered a few other online/digital science-related things that made gave me a good, positive buzz ;)

Virtual Dissection Table

  • What: A big, interactive touch-screen table for looking at (and into, and through) the human body.

  • Why: Just a perfect, flawlessly executed use of touch-tables to visualize something that’s very hard to grasp in other media. Using one of these tables makes me think about the human body in an entirely new way.

  • Website: There are many vendors. Anatomage is one, and while I think their video is good the “sample” video below gives a better sense of what it’s like to actually use one of these with your own hands.

  • Press/info: TED talk and demo by Anatomage CEO Jack Choi (2012), https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_choi_on_the_virtual_dissection_table

  • Sample: Pirogov Interactive Anatomy table: tutorial for users (2020), https://youtu.be/GEw90E_rEOE

Do You Love Me (Spot, Atlas, Boston Dynamics)

AR Chemistry Apps

  • What: Augmented Reality applications that let you see and manipulate molecules and chemical reactions.

  • Why: Chemistry can be really abstract and hard to understand for people (and it’s often poorly taught) but these apps can help people understand and appreciate how amazing chemistry really is. (I think having a grasp of chemistry is essential for 21st century citizenship.)

  • Website: There are a lot of apps out there and honestly I have no idea which ones are good, but the videos below will give a sense of what this is all about.

  • Press/info: Great story! — Vietnamese High School Student Creates AR Chemistry App After Academic Flop (Vietnam Times, 2017), https://vietnamtimes.org.vn/vietnamese-high-school-student-creates-ar-chemistry-app-after-academic-flop-12194.html

  • Sample: AR Chemistry Augmented Reality Education Arloon (2017), https://youtu.be/Qi3h18wJJiI
    This one is a little confusing, but shows the potential for organic chemistry, MoleculAR (v0.4): an augmented reality app for organic chemistry (2018), https://youtu.be/Q67-MH5_4xQ

Perseverance Rover Panoramas and VR

Other post in this series: Part 1: Websites, Channels, and Platforms | Part 2: Campaigns and Happenings | Part 3: Media and Products | Part 4: Convenings, Places, Activities

“For a while it was beautiful. it was messy, and it was punk as fuck. We all rolled up our sleeves and helped to build it.”

We were the ones who were supposed to guide it… We failed. […]

We designed and built platforms that undermined democracy across the world. […]

We designed and built technology that is used to round up immigrants and refugees and put them in cages. […]

We designed and built platforms that young, stupid, hateful men use to demean and shame women. […]

We designed and built an entire industry that exploits the poor in order to make old rich men even richer. […]

The machine we’ve built is odious. Not only can we not participate in its operation, nor passively participate, it’s now on us to dismantle it. […]

Mike Monteiro, writing about the Internet and the World Wide Web in his book Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It (with light editing for clarity)

We've chosen scale

In 2014, the Guardian reported that Burmese migrants were being forced into slavery to work aboard shrimp boats off the coast of Thailand. According to Logan Kock of Santa Monica Seafood, a large seafood importer, “the supply chain is quite cloudy, especially when it comes from offshore.” I was struck by Kock’s characterization of slavery as somehow climatological: something that can happen to supply chains, not just something that they themselves cause.

But Kock was right, supply chains are murky—just in very specific ways. We’ve chosen scale, and the conceptual apparatus to manage it, at the expense of finer-grained knowledge that could make a more just and equitable arrangement possible.

See No Evilby Miriam Posner, Logic Magazine, spring 2019. Posner's essay is about the profound social cosequences of “supply chains”.

The article continues,

It’s not as though these decentralized networks are inalterable facts of life. They look the way they do because we built them that way. It reminded me of something the anthropologist Anna Tsing has observed about Walmart. Tsing points out that Walmart demands perfect control over certain aspects of its supply chain, like price and delivery times, while at the same time refusing knowledge about other aspects, like labor practices and networks of subcontractors. Tsing wasn’t writing about data, but her point seems to apply just as well to the architecture of SAP’s supply-chain module: shaped as it is by business priorities, the software simply cannot absorb information about labor practices too far down the chain.

Turn on the C by GE light bulb

[NARRATOR]

Welcome to C by GE’s smart tips.

We’re going to show you how to reset your C by GE bulbs, which will un-pair your bulb from other devices and apps that it’s connected to.

There are 2 factory reset processes which depend on the generation of bulbs and the firmware you’re running on.

Here’s the first process designed for bulbs with this package or for firmware version 2.8 or later.

Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds.

Then turn on the bulb for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 second.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

And then turn it on one last time.

The bulb will flash on and off 3 times to show that the reset was successful. If it doesn’t, your bulb may be running on an older version of firmware and we’ll need to try the second factory reset process, which is designed for C by GE bulbs with this package or for firmware version 2.7 or or earlier.

Ready?

OK.

Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds.

Then, turn on the bulb for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds, and then turn it on one last time.

The bulb will flash on and off 3 times if it has been successfully reset.

For more smart tips about our smart products, go to CbyGE.com.

How to: Reset C by GE Light Bulbs by GE Lighting, 3 January 2019

Make the pie

Dear Carolyn,

My husband's family is really academic, most are in school until their late 20s at least. My husband has a bachelor's degree and I have some college but never finished. His family has always been welcoming and they aren't snobby or anything -- with the exception of Thanksgiving. My in-laws host and make a great meal. My husband's siblings are never asked to contribute because they are in finals and "don't have the time or money" to bring anything. We are always asked to bring a dessert or something.

My husband thinks I'm overreacting and doesn't care, but for some reason this really bugs me. How do I let it go? Or is it worth it to bring it up?

[READER COMMENT] Make the pie. Make it with a loving heart, freely and voluntarily. For all you know, the academics in the family can't cook.

[CAROLYN HAX] This answer is the answer to so many things: Make the pie.

Letter to advice columnist Carolyn Hax, with responses, The Oregonian, 9 November 2018

The total erosion of meaning itself

The central disappointment of these spaces is not that they are so narcissistic, but rather that they seem to have such a low view of the people who visit them. Observing a work of art or climbing a mountain actually invites us to create meaning in our lives. But in these spaces, the idea of “interacting” with the world is made so slickly transactional that our role is hugely diminished. Stalking through the colorful hallways of New York’s “experiences,” I felt like a shell of a person. It was as if I was witnessing the total erosion of meaning itself. And when I posted a selfie from the Rosé Mansion saying as much, all of my friends liked it.
Critics Notebook: The Existential Void of the Pop-Up ‘Experience’ by Amanda Hess, New York Times, 26 September 2018. The piece is subtitled “I went to as many Instagramable ‘museums’, ‘factories’ and ‘mansions’ as I could. They nearly broke me.”

You cannot give instructions to a gigantic inflatable

Screen grab from Inflatable Cobblestones Berlin Part 2 (Vimeo), by Artur (presumably Artúr van Balen), 2012The video is captioned: On the 25th revolutionary 1st of May demonstration in Berlin-Kreuzberg, protesters were throwing huge inflatable cobbl…

Screen grab from Inflatable Cobblestones Berlin Part 2 (Vimeo), by Artur (presumably Artúr van Balen), 2012

The video is captioned: On the 25th revolutionary 1st of May demonstration in Berlin-Kreuzberg, protesters were throwing huge inflatable cobblestones, made of silver-reflective foil and tape. The creative intervention was initiated by the art-activist collective “Eclectic Electric Collective” (EEC) and was meant as a celebration of an object which is both a symbol and a material weapon of anti-authoritarian struggle everywhere. It also aimed to bring new strategies of tactical frivolity into the demonstration. http://eclectic-electric-collective.blogspot.de/2012/05/under-pavement-beach-gigantic.html

Our intention was also to subvert the image of the “stone-throwing demonstrator” which the media spectacle around May 1 feeds off so much.
 We are interested in tactical frivolity, in finding new ways of protesting. And we are interested in how the opposition between police and protesters can be subverted. So when we playfully throw an inflatable cube at a police line and they, not knowing what else to do, throw it back, suddenly they are engaged in a game with us and their image as tough riot cops is broken.

There was this funny situation when we threw it towards the police. And there was the spontaneous game when they the police kicked it back, protesters again kicked it to the police, police kicked it back, etc. – and suddenly they realised they were part of a game. So they threw it behind the police line where children found it and began to play with it.

You cannot give instructions to a gigantic inflatable by Joanna Rainer, 31 April 2012. Rainer's article is an interview with Artúr van Balen and Verena Meyer, of the Eclectic Electric Collective, about their work with “inflatable cobblestones” and “tactical frivolity” in mass protests.

It just requires that Twitter would care

Imagine if signing up to read Twitter was free, but posing required you to spend a week doing moderation first.

Everyone who came into the community would have to learn the rules before they violated them.

Then, when you’re tempted to break the rules, you’d remember that there were people who would read what you wrote, just like you did for others, and you’d lose your account and have to do another week of moderation before getting to post again.

This is not too hard to implement. It’s certainly easier than inventing a magic AI that will solve all your problems. It just requires that Twitter care enough about their community to do it.

Derek Powazek (@fraying), 15 March 2019

Obscurity

Obscurity makes meaningful and intimate relationships possible, ones that offer solidarity, loyalty and love. It allows us to choose with whom we want to share different kinds of information. It protects us from having everyone know the different roles we play in the different parts of our lives. We need to be able to play one role with our co-workers while revealing other parts of ourselves with friends and family. Indeed, obscurity is one reason we feel safe bonding with others over our shared vulnerabilities, our mutual hopes, dreams and fears.
Why You Can No Longer Get Lost in the Crowd, by Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger, New York Times, 17 April 2019. This article by Dr. Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science, and Dr. Selinger, a professor of philosophy, is part of the New York Times’ Privacy Project

Hudson Yards

“Up in the sky, Hudson Yards’ observation deck may also become an attraction — a triangular platform, 1,100 feet high, theatrically cantilevered from the top of 30 [Hudson Yards], with bleachers that provide an even loftier view. It opens next year.

I got a preview the other day. It’s one of the most amazing vistas over the city. I gazed north toward Harlem, gaped at the Empire State Building, and took in Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

New York is awesome, I thought.

Then it occurred to me.

From that deck, you can’t see Hudson Yards.”
Hudson Yards Is Manhattan’s Biggest, Newest, Slickest Gated Community. Is This the Neighborhood New York Deserves? by Michael Kimmelman, Architecture critic, The New York Times, 14 March 2019

What sort of place?

Screen grab of https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/14/arts/design/hudson-yards-nyc.html

Screen grab of https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/14/arts/design/hudson-yards-nyc.html

“A new place is emerging.
The question is, what sort of place?
And this is the immediate problem with Hudson Yards.”

It is, at heart, a supersized suburban-style office park, with a shopping mall and a quasi-gated condo community targeted at the 0.1 percent.

A relic of dated 2000s thinking, nearly devoid of urban design, it declines to blend into the city grid. […]

[T]he whole site lacks any semblance of human scale…as if the peak ambitions of city life were consuming luxury goods and enjoying a smooth, seductive, mindless materialism.

It gives physical form to a crisis of city leadership, asleep at the wheel through two administrations, and to a pernicious theory of civic welfare that presumes private development is New York’s primary goal, the truest measure of urban vitality and health, with money the city’s only real currency.

Hudson Yards Is Manhattan’s Biggest, Newest, Slickest Gated Community. Is This the Neighborhood New York Deserves? by Michael Kimmelman, Architecture critic, The New York Times, 14 March 2019

And yet we feel sad

Where slowness comes from:

  • Input devices
  • Sample rates
  • Displays and GPUs
  • Cycle stacking
  • Runtime overhead
  • Latency by design
  • User-hostile work
  • Application code

…There is a deep stack of technology that makes a modern computer interface respond to a user's requests.

There is reason for this complexity, and yet we feel sad that computer users trying to be productive with these devices are so often left waiting, watching spinners, or even just with the slight but still perceptible sense that their devices simply can't keep up with them.

Why software feels slow, Mark McGranaghan, 2018

Sometimes the crazy stuff needs to happen

Can a robot have custody rights to a child? Are there consequences for mistreatment of a robot? Can a robot ask for a divorce? Who is liable for a robot’s behavior? Who is responsible for its care? Can a robot hold a copyright?

…Sometimes the crazy stuff needs to happen before you can start to see the design space.

Casey Fiesler, Black Mirror, Light Mirror: Teaching Technology Ethics Through Speculation, October 2018

Different ground

The dinners demonstrated a commitment from Zuckerberg to solve the hard problems that Facebook has created for itself through its relentless quest for growth. But several people who attended the dinners said they believe that they were starting the conversation on fundamentally different ground: Zuckerberg believes that Facebook’s problems can be solved. Many experts do not.
The Impossible Job: Inside Facebook’s Struggle to Moderate Two Billion People by Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox, Motherboard, 23 August 2019