Hackers/Makers

Teaching interoperability

Apr 02

F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab are pleased to present the Free Universal Construction Kit: a matrix of nearly 80 adapter bricks that enable complete interoperability between ten popular children’s construction toys. By allowing any piece to join to any other, the Kit encourages totally new forms of intercourse between otherwise closed systems—enabling radically hybrid constructive play, the creation of previously impossible designs, and ultimately, more creative opportunities for kids. As with other grassroots interoperability remedies, the Free Universal Construction Kit implements proprietary protocols in order to provide a public service unmet—or unmeetable—by corporate interests.

… interoperability is a question of power and market dominance. Most market leaders regard interoperability as an anti-competitive nuisance, a regulatory check on their ambition, or a concession to the whining of lesser players. Quite simply, interoperability is the request of the disenfranchised. And which end-user, in so many ways, is less enfranchised than a preliterate child?

And note that interesting acronym…

(via 3D Printer)

littleBits and ending passive consumption

Mar 30

littleBits is an opensource library of electronic modules that snap together with tiny magnets for prototyping and play. We spend more than 7.5 hours with technological devices every day, but most us don’t know how they work, or how to make our own. For all the interactivity of these devices, we are bound to passive consumption. At littleBits, we believe we need to create scientific thinkers and problem-solvers, and interventions need to occur early. The time is ripe to create the pipe cleaner and the popsicle stick of the 21st century. littleBits consists of tiny circuit-boards with simple, unique functions engineered to snap together with magnets. No soldering, no wiring, no programming, just snap and play.

One of the points of my talk at CiL 2012 was that we are “…bound to passive consumption…”, and this includes librarians. Our ability to interrogate the technologies we surround ourselves with is vital, so I hope to see librarians buying this kit for their programs and also, most importantly, using it themselves and applying the hacking/tinkering mindset to their daily technological interactions, instruction and purchasing.

Gabriella Coleman on Anonymous

Mar 30

Agents of activism and naughty mischief, Anonymous has been a constant fixture in the news due to their blizzard of interventions from taking down half a dozen websites in a single day to protest web censorship to assisting the historic revolutions in the Middle East and Africa. Drawing on three years of serious ethnographic research (re: chatting online, a lot), this talk will visit few of their major operations in order to address the political significance of their tactics and most especially, the lulz.

Gabriella Coleman

Wi-Fi Drones create pirate Internet

Mar 07

Electronic Countermeasures is a project by Liam Young of think tank Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today and design studio Unknown Fields Division. The project is essentially an autonomous, roaming Internet swarm, constructed from repurposed UAVs.

“These drones would fly off and hover above the city, and create ad hoc connections and networks in a new form of nomadic territorial infrastructure,” Young tells Co.Design, “a flock of interactive autonomous drones that form their own place specific, temporary, local, Wi-Fi community–a pirate Internet.”

– Co. Design

Ralph Baer, video game inventor

Mar 07

Ralph Baer, the father of video games, turns 90 years old on Thursday. One of his early inventions, the Magnavox Odyssey, was the first home video game system. It turns 40 years old this year.

– Ironic Sans