Slides for a lecture delivered to 2nd year Glasgow School of Art Design students. This lecture forms part of an informal staff exchange between Historical & Critical Studies at GSA and the Centre for Visual & Cultural Studies at Edinburgh College of Art.

1. Beyond
the
Object
Glasgow School of Art - 12th February 2009
Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland Licence www.neilmulholland.co.uk

3. 1999
1973
2009
Chris Anderson
Free: Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

11. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) requires convergence
Minister for Convergence Stephen Carter recently appointed by Gordon Brown

12. Ubiquitous Computing – Key Terms
‘Everyware’ (Adam
Greenfield- The Dawning
Age of Ubiquitous
Computing)
where information
processing has diffused
into everyday life, and
virtually disappeared
from view.

13. Ubiquitous Computing – Key Terms
AmI (Ambient
Intelligence)
electronic environments
that are sensitive and
responsive to the
presence of people
– another way of
describing the
deployment of Everyware

14. Ubiquitous Computing – Key Terms
RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification)
– a specific form of AmI
everyware.
I will focus on RFID as an
example of everyware.

15. R Fiscal ID
RFID introduced via its cost benefits/
potential, e.g:
Tracking of orders, just-in-time precision,
monitoring of best-before dates.
This reading of the technology is managerial
or economically determined.

17. e.g. of Economic Determinist view of AmI:
“The Wall*Mart Standard”
What WallMart wants allegedly effects the whole
marketplace regardless of whether or not RFID is
necessary in all commercial arenas.
What evidence is there for this?
e.g. of WallMart’s global market hold:

20. 22 million Germans reportedly
carry a quot;Paybackquot; loyalty card.
What 10,000 of these consumers
do not know is that the Payback
cards they picked up at the
METRO Future Store in
Rheinberg, Germany contain more
than just the promise of rewards -
they also carry hidden RFID
remote tracking chips.

22. R Fun ID
Social acceptance of RFID; technology introduced via its
entertainment, leisure and ‘exclusiveness’ – by its role in the
‘experience economy’.
From an managerial perspective, this appears to be mainly
retail-related acceptance (macrosociological), but it could just
as easily be seen to be led by social interactionism
(microsociological).
Is AmI really human-centred rather than technologically or
economically determined?
It’s obviously misguided to assume that the new technology
will determine social behaviour – could be that RFID is the
product of social behaviour and that it adapts with it.

23. This leads to Social Constructivist readings of AmI:
“Passive Technologies are being superceeded by interactive technologies”.
=
‘Closed networks are replaced with open networks’
Note that the social constructivist reading of AmI could be taken as utopic or
dystopic depending on the evidence you use to illustrate them.
Let’s start with some fairly positive illustrations (RFunID) of RFID
implemented in design contexts and follow them up with a few dystopian
examples (RFearID):

24. Inspa World

25. 1999

29. The mobile phone is equipped with a 13.56 MHz RFID
reader. The reading range is very close, about 1-2 cm. This
facilitates touch-based interaction - the TouchMe physical
selection paradigm. This demonstration is created in VTT
Electronics in co-operation with Nokia.
The tags have various directions or commands for the
mobile phone. These include actions such as:
Initiating a phone call to a number specified in the tag
Adding a phone number to the address book
Opening a WAP page
Opening a WWW page
Sending an SMS

31. Encourages more impulse or ‘tabbed’ buying:
You walk past a poster. Swipe your RFID-reading mobile phone over
it, phone goes online and allows you to by the product.
Swipe the cover of a CD to hear a 30 second snippet of the music it
contains.
Other examples include:
When was your bottle of beer made? Swipe the bottle...
When is the next collection of rubbish due?....swipe your bin
What's the Amazon link to an author?....swipe a book
From a business perspective, RFID can be embedded in