Before leaving, I posted a message about the materiality of technology and made a distinction between material and virtual.I had many occasions to think of this post while traveling. I don’t have a blackberry or an Iphone or any other mobile device to check my email. I did not bring my laptop (and even if I had it, I was not in places with wifi access). The hotels where we stayed did not have internet access.While there were several internet cafes in San Cristobal, I decided not to check my email at all. I did not have my cell phone either.Hence, because I lacked all these material artifacts - tangible (such as the laptop, the cell phone, the blackberry) and intangible (such as wifi access), I was - or at least, I felt - “unconnected” and  in some ways I lost my “virtual” connections to all my friends, colleagues and family.

 This distinction between tangible and intangible, and the definition of materiality as not only “matter”, but also as “substance” and “significance” (according to the definition of materiality in the Oxford English Dictionary) is an interesting one which was pointed to me by a colleague, Paul Leonardi. It allows us to better understand how technology in a broad sense (not only the interface, the hardware, but also the software) can be said to be material. Moreover, Paul Leonardi pointed that such a definition of materiality might not only allow us to describe information technology as material, but discourse as well. Interesting distinction, yet I would argue that discourse can also be material in the first sense - when it’s written in a word document, in a memo, in an email, on a blog or a forum.

Furthermore, the materiality of the practice is also shaped by the space, or the space influences the social practices involved in the virtual interactions. As noted yesterday, the plaza is the space where people meet, discuss, interact but you don’t see people (like those observed by Laura Forlano in Brian Park) checking their email, skyping their friends. To be involved in your virtual interactions, one goes to an internet cafe: a public space which contains the artifacts (tangible and intangible) that allows one to interact virtually - through emails, blogs, forums. Yet, if one has a blackberry, one could sit on a bench of one of the plazas and check her email, or post on a blog. Cheers, al 

Yesterday, I read an article in the NY Times on sense of touch http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/science/09angi.html?partner=rss&emc=rss. The article argued that although often forgotten our sense of touch is more powerful than vision and hearing (we can detect with our finger a bump of just one micron high while we can see anything smaller than 100 microns) and biologically primary (even extremely simple-cells organisms react to tactile inputs). Touch is primary in a deeper sense:

“Touch is so central to what we are, to the feeling of being ourselves, that we almost cannot imagine ourselves without it. It’s not like vision, where you close your eyes and you don’t see anything. You can’t do that with touch. It’s always there.” (Chris Dijkerman, a neuropsychologist at the Helmoltz Institute of Utretch University).  

Yesterday when I read it, I just thought it was an interesting article, but today in the train, sitting nearby someone, brushing someone as I was getting off, I thought of how this connected with the BSWW project.

In public spaces, in physical spaces, our sense of touch is always called upon. We are in space embodied and surrounded by shapes, walls, objects, people. Our haptic sense is less obviously involved in our online interactions. That might be one of the underlying reason why people say that online we miss the “human moment” - part of this human moment being the interpersonal, emotional relations, but part of it being also the non-verbal communication which involves haptics.

In one way it is because we are always embodied and situated - but it does not influence our online interactions the same way.The haptic sense is still called upon: because we are sitting somewhere, because we type and the keyboard is at our fingertips. Yet, it’s not directly involved in our interactions with people: I don’t push you because I’m trying to avoid another person, I am not stepping on your toes by mistake while we are having a coffee, I am not talking with you squeezed among a crowd of people in the train at 6:30 PM.

In that sense, the affordances of a physical space seem to be radically different than those of a virtual space and I am not sure how haptic affordances can be re-enacted, recreated. (This, by the way, is not a problem. My point is not to argue that virtual space should perfectly mimic physical space).

What is interesting is that the changes in the practices in fact brings back the sense of touch in our online interactions. Indeed, as noted in a previous post, and as shown for example by Laura Forlano’s work, increasingly people interact online but in a public context. They go and work in a co-shared space, in a coffee shop, in a park… and their haptic sense is re-engaged.  

Note that our interpretations of space are social and cultural: how close can we be? how far apart should we be? see Edward T. Hall work on proxemics and personal spaces. 

Cheers, 

al   

I mentioned in an earlier post the dissertation work of Laura Forlano “When Code Meets Place: Collaboration and innovation at WiFi Hotspots” on the use of mobile and wireless technology, and more specifically on the role of users in the innovation and development process. More information can be found in an article she  co-authored in  the Situated Technologies Pamphlet on Situated Advocay by the Architectural League of New York ( http://www.situatedtechnologies.net/?q=node/88). In this article Laura made several comments which are very relevant to the questions at the core of BSWW (all quotes below are from the article “When code meets Code”). 

• She looks at “the emergence of a socio-technical format in which digital networks, information and interfaces are integrated in the physical spaces of our homes, offices, and public or semi-public spaces.” (p. 7) 
• She created an interesting concept: “codescapes to help capture the integration of digital and physical realms, and the sociality, collaboration and innovation that occurs at the seams of these realms” (p.8)
• She refers to the work by Lawrence Lessig’s book, Code (1999) where he compares code and architecture: both regulating and constraining human behavior. Yet, she highlights the difference between the affordances of physical space and virtual space, of architecture and software. She notes that there are “likely to be conflicts in the ways in which digital networks and physical structures regulate social behaviors. For example, I might be able to enter a door, but not access the digital network, or it might be able to access the digital network but not open the door”. (p. 8/9). 
• In a WiFi use survey, she found that the majority of the people (58% in NY) use wireless to get out of their home or office, while others (about 23%) used wireless to fulfill a social need: “to see familiar people or feel like they were part of a community in the places where they use it”. (p. 16/17). 
• She makes a very interesting distinction between the community of wireless networks (online chats, listservs, etc.) and the (local, geographic) communities using these networks (see p. 22/23). 
• Laura also highlights the importance of the context of use: the location of the network you are using influences, shapes your interactions. (see p. 32/33)
• She describes her own experience in building and sharing a WiFi network with her neighbors and how she started interpreting the actions of the users (she does not know) through the speed of the router’s flickers (very slow probably emails, very fast audio, video or large files). She also tells how she feels connected, part of a community, when she sees the number of people connected on her network. (p. 26/27)

Laura’s work highlights the intertwining between the physical and the virtual space, showing how even virtual interactions are always situated, embodied. She also leads us to think in different ways of the affordances of the code and the physical space, in a similar way to which we are exploring the affordances of the virtual space and the physical space.I really like the example of entering the door and accessing the network and I’m wondering: how do we build a door online? It reminds me of studies of the use of media spaces (video networks which connect different spaces) which shows how people recreated “face-to-face behaviors” in these video spaces, such as closing one door, knowing at a door, peeking if the door is half open, etc. Yet, in that context, people built new features so that the technology could support their social practices. In the context of online forums or blogs, it’s about creating discursive practices, rules and norms of behaviors that can “act as a door”. al  al 

Hi, I found this article really fascinating as it puts in perspective all the discussions and articles about virtual work, virtual space and new forms of working and interacting. We might be able to work from home, work at distance, virtually, across time and geographies, many different technologies are developed to support these distributed interactions. Yet, social interactions and physical environments still matter and people look for shared spaces offering them social interactions, the “human moment”. This does not mean that we should not work at distance, interact online, but it might highlight what these virtual spaces need to afford so that people can interact and build a sense of community or shared identity.

Laura Forlano (cited in the NY article below) examined in her dissertation mobile virtual work practices in the media and information technology industries. As part of her doctoral work she did a very interesting ethnographic study of people working from cafes and parks.

Here is the article that you can also find at

 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/business/businessspecial2/20cowork.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=businessspecial2

 ”They’re working on their Own, Just side by Side” by Dan Frost, NY Times, Feb 20, 2008

Contemplating his career path a couple of years ago, a young computer programmer named Brad Neuberg faced a modern predicament. “It seemed I could either have a job, which would give me structure and community,” he said, “or I could be freelance and have freedom and independence. Why couldn’t I have both?”As someone used to hacking out solutions, Mr. Neuberg took action. He created a word — coworking, eliminating the hyphen — and rented space in a building, starting a movement.While coworking has evolved since Mr. Neuberg’s epiphany in 2005, dozens of places around the country and increasingly around the world now offer such arrangements, where someone sets up an office and rents out desks, creating a community of people who have different jobs but who want to share ideas.“It’s nourishing on a fundamental level,” said John Vlahides, the executive editor of 71miles.com, a travel site covering Northern California, who rents a desk for $175 a month at one of Mr. Neuberg’s original sites, the Hat Factory. “And if you’re not nourished, how can you be creative?”Coworking sites are up and running from Argentina to Australia and many places in between, although a wiki site on coworking shows that most are in the United States. While some have grown-up-sounding names, most seem connected somewhere between the communalism of the 1960s and the whimsy of the dot-com days of the ’90s, like the Hive Cooperative in Denver, Office Nomads in Seattle, Nutopia Workspace in Lower Manhattan and Independents Hall in Philadelphia.The coworkers, armed with Wi-Fi laptops and cellphones, are in some ways offering a techie twist on the age-old practice of artists or writers teaming up to rent studio space.Most coworkers say they were drawn to the spaces for the same reasons that inspired Mr. Neuberg: they like working independently, but they are less effective when sitting home alone.“Even people who are antisocial feel a need to be around other people for at least part of the day while they’re working,” said Laura Forlano, a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School who has studied people working in communal offices and cafes.Coworking comes in many flavors. The Hat Factory in San Francisco is a live-work loft that’s home to three technology workers who open up during the day to other people. Some companies, like Citizen Agency, a San Francisco Internet consulting firm that has done the most to evangelize coworking, have an open-door policy, in which people rent desks but others are free to drop in and use the Wi-Fi or the conference room.Some companies rent out desks to the nomadic workers, hoping some of their Internet mojo will rub off. Yet others have started coworking spaces as businesses unto themselves, like a community version of the corporate business centers operated by the Regus Group.Tara Hunt, a co-owner of Citizen Agency, which calls its office Citizen Space, has listed (in a blog, of course) some principles of coworking. They include collaboration, openness, community, sustainability and accessibility.Many of the ideas come from the open-source software movement, in which people share their work freely with little regard for financial gain. Taking a nod from that movement, the people involved in coworking share their experiences and ideas on a Web site, coworking.pbwiki.com.Despite such ideals, the arrangement does not always work perfectly. Thor Muller, the chief executive of Get Satisfaction, a San Francisco start-up, said he had opened his offices to friends to come in and work. One day, a friend started aggressively recruiting Satisfaction’s employees for his own start-up, and he was banned from the office.“There should be honor among start-ups,” Mr. Muller said, still rankled.Ms. Hunt and Chris Messina, her partner in Citizen Agency, said they have had to make sure that people respect their space and leave it clean.“Someone wanted to bring her dog in, and we had to say, ‘That actually doesn’t work for us,’ ” Ms. Hunt said. And Mr. Vlahides at the Hat Factory griped about “some humorless European guys” who sat at the common table and talked loudly on their cellphones instead of going outside. Citizen Space lets people drop in without paying, but if someone uses the space regularly, the group asks the person to pay for a key. For $350 a month, a worker can rent a desk and get a key to Citizen Space for 24-hour access. For $250 a month, you get only a key. The space has seven desks, a large table for drop-ins, a private conference room, whiteboards and other office amenities — some less typical, like beer and wine.Ms. Hunt and Mr. Messina say they don’t make a profit on the space. “We could get our own office with 800 square feet and spend the same money,” Mr. Messina said, “or we can be here, and have a space where people can come and work and have meet-ups that serve the community, and it gives us the opportunity to meet some fascinating people.”Mr. Messina and Ms. Hunt are so passionate about coworking that they even sell their technology customers on it. While consulting with a San Francisco bag maker, Timbuk2, they persuaded the company to create some coworking desks in its offices, attracting technology folks to help stimulate ideas.Other coworking spaces are set up as businesses. Roman Gelfer, a former equities trader, and Sasha Vasilyuk, a writer, started Sandbox Suites in San Francisco last October, renting out 4,300 square feet on three floors. Their rates start at $135 for a once-a-week drop-in slot and go up to $495 a month for a private desk.“If you build a space from the ground up for coworking and networking as well, you could do a better job, and I definitely believe it’s a great business,” Mr. Gelfer said.Still, he allows free events in the space, like hackathons — weekends in which programmers get together and build, say, Facebook applications.The Hat Factory has a more informal feel. One might call it messy. The lore is that the room, in an industrial loft, once belonged to a woman who made hats. It’s now occupied by a Web video producer, a guy who runs a Web video start-up called Viddyou and a Yahoo employee. About seven others work in the space, which is open during daytime business hours.The Hat Factory vibe is more like a dorm than an office, with Mr. Vlahides throwing candy across the floor to tease the resident cat, and bedsheets hanging from the ceiling.A coworking site in Brighton and Hove, England, called the Werks, is an example of how the networked world can spread an idea across borders. James McCarthy, a founder, had left his job in information technology at American Express and with a partner rented a 6,000-square-foot building that once belonged to Barclays Bank.They rent to artists, software developers and designers, among others, with hopes of someday being profitable but also allowing free drop-ins to spread the word.Similarly, Fernando Maclen in Buenos Aires had read online accounts of Citizen Space and a coworking space in Vancouver, British Columbia, and for a college class wrote a paper about how he would create a coworking site.“In less than three months, I made my business plan (based on the experiences posted by the coworking group) and asked my parents for financial support,” he said in an e-mail message.Mr. Maclen’s space in Buenos Aires is now half full with eight workers, but he said that his own small design studio had benefited “200 percent” from the arrangement.“We, as a design firm, have our own projects, but we outsource parts of them, very often to designers inside the coworking space,” he said. “They do the same with us. We complement each other. The speed is incredible. We don’t waste time with endless phone calls or IM chats, we simply walk to the office next door and there they are.”The coworking wiki page lists many countries where people would like to start sites, or work in one if someone else would get it going.People who are coworking feel a bond to other coworkers.One day last month, a technology worker from Montreal, Duncan Ward, set up his laptop at Citizen Space in San Francisco. “I just came to town for a week to do some networking for my start-up,” he said. He had heard of the site from a friend who was setting up a coworking site in Montreal.As for Mr. Neuberg, who started the movement, he is no longer coworking, although he still promotes it. Like many other talented programmers , he took a job at Google.  al