The attempt to maintain a shared frame of reference (e.g., the ability to take reciprocal perspectives).

van der Pol et al., 2004 van der Pol, J., Admiraal, W., and Simons, P. R. J. (2004). Context enhancement for co-intentionality and co-reference in asynchronous cmc.

The attempt to maintain a shared set of intentions while communcating (e.g., stay in the same thread providing answers on the same subject).

van der Pol, J., Admiraal, W., and Simons, P. R. J. (2004). Context enhancement for co-intentionality and co-reference in asynchronous cmc.

Sorry, just a moment of soliptude [frustration + sickness] …

Going to work today, I tried to spot the cell id of the antennas my phone was connecting to. I used a GSM tracker and I recorded the log below:

Tracker started at 8:28

1. In CELL 31313 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:28

2. In CELL 31315 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:29

3. In CELL 19183 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:29

4. In CELL 19186 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:30

5. In CELL 19182 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:30

6. In CELL 31083 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:31

7. In CELL 31082 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:31

8. In CELL 12666 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:31

9. In CELL 31095 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:33

10. In CELL 31096 LAC 6000 Name sunrise MCC 228 MNC 2 Time 8:34

Tracker stopped at 8:38

Then I tried to approximate the position of the antenna measuring the time intervals between two different cells. Although the method I used is questionable, it is evident that there is quite a dense coverage of antennas that can be used to infer the position of the player. Roughly, it seems that the radius of each cell is 100 meters. The portion of the city I moved through I not densely populated. I expect the radius of the cell to be smaller in the city center. The graphical result is reported below just for fun. Enjoy.

D. Hollan, E. Hutchins, and D. Kirsh. Distributed cognition: A new foundation for human-computer interaction research. February 22 1999. [url]

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This article resume the theoretical foundation of Distributed Cognition and connects it with other field of research. For the distributed cognition theory, a cognition spans out of the peronal boundaries of the agents and interconnects humans and objects in the same conceptual grid.

I found two interesting references in here:

1. In distributed cognition, one expects to find a system that can dynamically configure itself to bring sub-systems into coordination to accomplish various functions;

2. distributed cognition looks for a broader class of cognitive events and does not expect all such events to be emcompassed by the skin or skull of an individual.

via Jamie Lawrence:

The Seamful Game is a GPS and WiFi based game played in the streets using PDAs. It began life as a project to test an idea about exploiting and exploring the seams of an 802.11 wireless network. Now approximately one year on, Bill is a fully featured multiplayer team game, which has been accused of being fun to play. Players must develop an understanding of the network coverage and the effect of signal strength in order to successfully play the game. In this way we are turning the patchy network coverage, which is usually seen as a problem to be overcome, or worse ignored, into a feature (indeed possibly the main feature) of the game.

Distributed Cognition is a branch of cognitive science which proposes that human cognition and knowledge representations, rather than being soley confined to the boundaries of an individual, is distributed across individuals, tools and artefacts in the environment. The concept of distributed cognition was developed by Ed Hutchins. Since distributed cognition stresses the cognitive importance to the individual of environmental objects (human or otherwise) it is a useful approach for (re)designing socio-technical cooperative enivironments.

There are drugs that kills … literally! The problem is those drugs and medicaments are on the market and are publicized as if they were curatives. The pharmaceutics company are worst than the tsunami in killing people …

Fortunately, the internet brings us alternative information sources using which we can defend ourselves. It is the case of worstpills.org, which contains a database of the drugs with alternative evaluations.

I found this nice game in Patrick’s office. It is a kind of puzzle called “Binary Arts”.

I have an hard time to invent a good game for the development of my thesis. Today, after a brainstorm session at CRAFT, I rested with the idea of the ubiquitous monopoly like game.

In SimCity, the simulator is modeled on real phenomena. There the land price is regulated by a couple of factors.  Land value is one of the most fundamental aspects of urban structure. The land value of an area affects how that area is used. In this simulation the land value of an area is based on terrain, accessibility, pollution, and distance to downtown.

The farther the residents have to go to work, the lower the land value where they live, due in part to transportation costs. The value of commercial zones depends greatly on accessibility by the populace.

Land value is also affected by surrounding terrain. If land is closer to water, trees, agricultural areas, or parks, its value will rise.

We can sketch these four elements like:

– terrain (proximity to water, trees, agricoltural areas, parks, …)

– accessibility (the ease with which is possible to reach it)

– pollution (environmental conditions at the place)

– distance to downtown (where downtown stays for all the socially defined places)

– distance from work (related to working areas)

Subsequently we can categorise factors contributing to the price of the land as:

– fixed: like the terrain parameter, which is related to defined and static natural characteristic of the place;

– user defined: like the accessibility and pollution, that may be defined on how the user moves into the city;

– socially defined: like the landmarks defined by the interaction with the group;

– game defined: users may buy or sell a particular block, putting an industry or an hotel there.

-> the social value of a place can be defined by several parameters like: the user’s permanence time on that spot; the message density on that area; the number of meeting messages on the same area.