Facial Recognition + Social Networks = Augmented ID
Concept Piece
Via: Bruce Sterling

danah boyd
Personal Democracy Forum (PDF)
New York, NY
30 June 2009

[This is a rough unedited crib of the actual talk]

This talk was written for a specific audience - the attendees of the Personal Democracy Forum. This audience is primarily American, primarily liberal-leaning, primarily white, and primarily involved professionally in politics in one way or another. Keep this audience in mind when I’m talking about “we” here.

Good morning!
Many of us in this room have had our lives transformed by technology. Some of us have grown up with tech while others have embraced it as adults. Many of us have become enamored with tech and its transformative potential. And because of this, many of us have become technology advocates. We’ve worked our way into different institutions, preaching about new opportunities introduced because of the internet. Furthermore, many in this room have been active in transforming politics through technology. We’ve leveraged technology for fundraising and getting out the vote. We could go on and on about political events that have been shaped by technology, from the Obama Campaign to the post-election Iranian protests.

Watch Nick show off all the toys, gadgets and devices the NY Times is working with, as they look for the best methods to display their grand old paper.

• Nick Bilton is design integration editor in the Research and Development Group at The New York Times. This video was recorded on May 4, 2009. - Vimeo
• New York Times R&D Group - Engadget

List of readings that might be of interest to anyone researching experimental geography.

Via: ODF

Field surveillance system specially designed for rapid deployment and real-time intelligence

Eye Ball is an advanced, audio/visual surveillance sensor that can be deployed and operated by a single person. Each unit is only slightly larger than a baseball making deployment easy; simply throw the Eye Ball into the area you need to survey, mount it on a pole or lower it on a cable through a tunnel. Eye Ball is self-righting and rotates, to provide continuous 360° video and audio coverage of the target area. Night illumination, visible or invisible, allows the Eye Ball to operate at night or in darkened areas.