Hello. Two weeks in the world crisis. I keep continuing exploring the new and future and diving into human-tech relations. In my monthly newsletter on Cities of Things, I explored some of the aspects of agency in an AI world that can be a dangerous iteration on the information war that this Putin war is. At least in the first phase.

Next to the usual work with graduation students and planning of new projects, it was nice to meet with a new group of students that will explore the intelligent interactions with street objects for the Applied AI minor of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

We had an inspirational visit to a possible location for this year’s ThingsCon Summer edition. As it is not 100% confirmed I will share details next week probably. And the newsletter end of the month will share more on the program. You can subscribe!

I saw the presentation of Kars on Contestable AI and the role of these approaches in the design and understanding of AI systems. Very useful; find more information on the website.

I was invited to share some thoughts on trends with a group of students from the MILE program.

For the Apple fanboys and -girls, this evening the usual March event will present a new low-end phone and iPad I think, and maybe some new M2 chips, although that can be some other time too. What I am wondering about is the presentation in itself. The last couple of events were fully online and that worked out very well in how sleek it looked. Still, you miss some of the energy in the room of course. This event is again fully virtual, but I can imagine they would combine the scripted elements within a theatre setting one day. It would be cool if they are able to pull off a hybrid of virtual and reality. Would be a great lookout for future AR stuff at the same time. From hybrid to hyper realities. We will see…

For the rest, I will attend a workshop by Viktor Bedö titled “Design F®iction For Predictive Food Commoning”. And I will try to attend some of the Mozfest sessions. I invite you all to join the session Maria Luce and I facilitate on Friday 13:00-14:30CET on Trustful neighborhood relations with intelligent things in cities.

More events this week are the opening of an exhibition at Arcam architecture center on smart objects: Private Eye Butler Spy. I contributed on behalf of ThingsCon. On Wednesday evening there is a  Haunting Machines Talk.

Somewhat later IoT Rotterdam will take place again, 8 March. Including a Cities of Things hackathon.

The usual mix of robotics and autonomous objects.

In the Cities of Things reflecting post mentioned above, I refer to the concept of alienation. I found this column by Jonathan Bean a nice short expression of that concept in the case of connected products that disconnect the working from the interaction. In my own explorations to the predictive relations with AI-products could this be even more apparent. It is an architect’s view on connected products…

Bean, J. (2019). Nest rage. Interactions, 26(3), 22-23.

Read the column ‘Nest Rage’ of Jonathan Bean here. There is of course a lot more to be found on the theory of alienation.