Blog

Leuven.


The first paper session at EuroITV 2009 starts with Nils Walravens, whose focus is on the past, present,and future of HDTV in Europe. In Europe, only 20% of users currently own HD-ready screens, and only 5% view HD content at this point (so surprisingly, Australia seems to be ahead on this point - a sign of its growing prosperity over the past decade?).

HD emerged first in Japan, as a new analogue standard that was incompatible with existing TV standards; in Europe, HDTV was seen in the late 80s and early 90s as a lifeline for the television industry (struggling at the time), and there was a drive towards developing its own standards (which failed, due to poor policy decisions). European development failed to consult effectively within and beyond the industry; terrestrial transmission was impossible, not least because signal quality was poor; the standard remained analogue, not digital; and prototype devices were ugly and extremely expensive. And of course there was no attractive content which would drive user adoption. HDTV was translated as 'high-deficit television' as a result...

Leuven.


If this is Thursday, I must be in Belgium... I've made the (surprisingly lengthy) trip from Hamburg to Leuven near Brussels for the EuroITV (as in, interactive television) conference. On the face of it, this may seem only peripherally connected to my own research interests, but in my paper I'll be continuing to explore the theme of user-led disruptions to the conventional television model which I addressed in my MIA article and the presentation at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress last year.

We start with a keynote by Rich Ezekiel, Director of Yahoo! Connected TV. He begins by …

Hamburg.


Normally I tend to blog more when I'm travelling - but this trip is so packed full with conferences and events (not to mention the need to keep up with my regular work) that I'm hardly finding any time to write at all. So, just a quick note to say that more videos from the next09 conference at the start of May are now online, including interviews with a number of the keynote speakers conducted by conference media partner Sevenload (a YouTube-style German videosharing platform).

Here's me, speaking (in German) to Olaf Kolbrück from the magazine Horizont …

Copenhagen.

The final speaker today at COST298 is Maria Bernschütz. She takes us back to the emergence of the digital individual - identity emerged with the emergence of ID photos in the mid-1800s, but it was determined by the photographer; today, users are able to edit their online identities, photoshop their images, and otherwise control their online presence. So, what practices are in use here, especially by youth? Maria examined this in the context of the Hungarian sites MyVIP and iWiW.

Copenhagen.


The next speaker at COST298 is Kresten Bjerg, who points us to problems in the health system. How can daily diaries created using the Phenomenalog software be used to track personal health information, for example? What role does telemedical monitoring play? How can they be connected?

This requires a consideration of how such interfaces model the doctor/patient interface, and how and whether personal information entered by the patient is transmitted to third parties. This is largely also a problem of psychology (in patients and their caretakers), and of developing such systems with patient needs and abilities in mind, rather than based purely on medical practitioners' needs or on technological possibilities.

Copenhagen.


The next speaker at COST298 is Constantin-Bala Zamfirescu, whose interest is in developing Group Decision Support Systems. These have traditionally be implemented in physical infrastructure developments, such as 'situation rooms', bringing together decision makers and information in the same physical space, but can now also be turned into virtual spaces. Performance of GDSS is dependent on software configuration and instruction.

A GDSS is commonly used over a number of phases, for example from data gathering to situational awareness. Ideally it presents a solution space (possible solutions to a problem) within a larger search space (including all available information); this creates a great deal of cogitive complexity.

Copenhagen.


The final session on this second day of COST298 starts with Inge Røpke and Toke Haunstrup Christensen, whose interest is in the environmental impact of ICT use. What new environmental threats are likely to emerge from current trends? This research was conducted through in-depth interviews with Danish users, and found pervasive, creative, and diversified ICT uses.

ICTs can be used for a wide range of activities, and are now integrated in almost any form of everyday life - this is different for example from the Hungarian example which we heard about earlier today, where being online is still an activity in its own right, rather than a condition for participating in a range of more specific activities. Inge now runs through a number of examples demonstrating the pervasiveness of ICTs - Webcams to monitor rooms, computers to monitor exercise activities, community email newsletters and Websites, and so on.

Copenhagen.


Finally for this COST298 session we move on to James Stewart; his interest is in how we create place and space, especially in the context of using personal ICTs (pICTs). This also ties into the question of user co-creation, of course, especially where it is looking forward towards future uses. The research project took place here particularly in the context of branded meeting places - locations which were clearly marked as governed by an established brand (e.g. Starbucks, McDonald's).

Some interesting activities here included linking online and physical spaces, and connecting with Twitter and Facebook in order to enable group interactions. The 'virtual' and the 'real' are increasingly blurred in the process; in practice, they are linked by electronic gateways. The idea of tagging emerged as a very important practice in this (tags understood here as anything from metadata tags to signs, logos, stamps, barcodes, and much more) - we appropriate the world by tagging, and we can see our and others' tagging activity for example in map-based representations.

Copenhagen.


The next speaker in this COST298 session is Simona Isabella. She notes how the mobile phone as a technology that crosses public and private spheres can be seen as an embodiment of contemporary society. Overall, the meaning technological artefacts assume depends on internal technical as well as external social factors; technologies are socially shaped, within the constraints imposed by technological possibilities, and may ultimately even be domesticated - but in different ways by different groups.

Mobile telephony history shows these developments: in Japan, for example, the humble pager evolved into a medium for interactive text communication, while the landline picture phone in the US failed because of concerns over privacy. Today, the emerging broadband society can be described as a society of perpetual contact; the mobile phone embodies and enacts this. By adding Internet access features, it transforms telephony from one-to-one to one-to-many; additionally, the use of social networking sites through mobile devices heightens the always-in-touch nature of contemporary society.

Copenhagen.


Eva Törnqvist is the next speaker at COST298, who highlights a specific form of user-led, bottom-up innovation in the use of mobile phones: by birdwatchers in Sweden. Traditionally, this community has used other tools to disseminate information about where to see rare birds: for example sticking paper signs on the back of a road sign, later on using answering machine and pager messages (to the point where they clogged the phone lines in small Swedish towns to breaking point).

Today, a community called Club 300 (as in, at least 300 recorded sightings of rare birds) uses mobile phones to share their knowledge. The switch to mobile phones also allows for the transmission of substantially more information (bird pictures and sounds), and connection with other services (such as road directions). Similarly, the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management now also share their wildlife and hunting pictures and videos on the Web, as well as through mobile phone services.