IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

munications. In these connected communities, a central market might be
located in one village, a hospital in another, an industry in a third, and
so on—to form a distributed economic web combining real and virtual
elements.
Mediascapes
Locality 83
In his book Digital Ground, writer Malcolm McCullough explores the ways
that communication technologies modify our perception and use of space.
The high-rise building was made possible by elevators and, less obviously,
by the telephone (which enabled a large organization to occupy several
floors efficiently). 27 Could the mobile phone have an impact of similar
magnitude on the functioning of social networks and, thence, on the ways
we think about and inhabit localities? Wireless access to the Internet increasingly
renders the whole city—not just its buildings, equipment, and
furniture—an interface. 28
Many large companies perceive locality to be the next big thing. For industry,
‘‘location’’ denotes a new opportunity to display and sell things.
But as is so often the case, artists and design researchers are way ahead of
them in the originality of their thinking and experimentation. Researchers
at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy, for example, think the mobile
phone can function as a kind of remote control that activates interfaces
in our surroundings in urban and public space. You head for a bus stop
knowing that your bus will arrive in four minutes. Once there, you summon
up your personal Web page on one of the bus stop’s display panels.
( J. C. Decaux and Viacom Outdoors manage tens of millions of such urban
surfaces: They can run the infrastructure.) Or why not use the printers in
automated teller machines (ATMs) to print out copies of text messages
sent to your mobile phone? Among more than forty scenarios for using
the phone in conjunction with public space developed by the Ivrea team
is Sonic Hub, a street bench that doubles as a private communication
space. When a person is called, he can sit down on a Sonic Hub bench
and continue his call through the bench speaker system, rather than
through the phone. 29
Another unexpected application of mediascapes by media artists is called
collaborative mapping. This is what takes place when GPS devices track the
routes users take—and the information is shared or collectively developed.