Situated Technologies

Title snapshot from presentation

A 3-day symposium was held a few years back in 2006 on the subject of Situated Technologies. What’s Situated Technologies? I don’t have a clue,and I’m still fuzzy in that idea but I believe it has something to do with the technological tools we use everyday, like mobile phones, Blackberrys, PDAs as well as social networking web services such as Twitter, Facebook, Dodgeball etc. Here’s a link to a video presentation on What is Situated Technologies? by Mark Shepard, who’s an artist and an architect.

The video is about 20 minutes long, but for those impatient users, here’s a quote from the video.

Snapshot taken from the presentation

… considering the mobile phone use in Japan … most are equipped with digital camera, sms text messaging, wireless email and internet browsers. Mobile phones have replaced computers as the de facto email terminal of choice for many Japanese who are not in technology, finance, engineering or other computer intensive occupation. In this context, the mobile phone becomes a device in organizing space, time and boundaries around the body in public space. Once constant connections within a close circles of friends has been referred to a personal territory device which regardless of the context of the physical built environment or its public conveyances creates a social space which in some way complicates our traditional category of public or private space in the built environment. 

Situated Technologies

Filed under: Inspiration, Random Thoughts