Urp: a luminous-tangible workbench for urban planning and design

In recent years, virtual reality technology has gradually attracted widespread attention from the society, because virtual reality technology could produce many scenes that humans cannot experience personally, such as diving into the deep sea or into ...

The Death of DeviantArt and the art-site shaped hole haunting the Internet - Multi-hyphenate

Why every new "Art Community" fails. Equal parts eulogy, condemnation, and mourning.

Building Digital Public Parks with Deepti Doshi

Designed for trust and connection, not ad clicks and outrage

Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams

I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…

All Our Selves In One Basket

They say you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. Are we doing that with our communities?

The Internet has no benches

The case for internet neighborhoods we can hang out in.

Desire Paths for Wikipedia

An extension that remembers the path of a cursor over the linked pages of Wikipedia, “wearing” them into the page.

A City Is Not a Computer

This seems an obvious truth, but we need to say it loud and clear. Urban intelligence is more than information processing.

Defining the Dimensions of the “Space” of Computing

The first computing machines were so large they filled entire rooms. Today they are ubiquitous, built invisibly into our environments. While it's tempting to view this change within a predetermined space of progress, we can still shape the future on our own terms.

Every webpage deserves to be a place

Posted on Thursday 5 Sep 2024. 1,133 words, 5 links. By Matt Webb.

Architecture and the Internet: Designing places in cyberspace

Cyberspace, as the information space is called, has become accessible in the past decade through the World Wide Web. And although it can only be experienced through the mediation of computers, it is quickly becoming an alternative stage for everyday economic, cultural, and other human activities. As such, there is a potential and a need to design it according to place–like principles. Making places for human inhabitation is, of course, what architects, landscape architects, and town planners have been doing in physical space for thousands of years. It is curious, therefore, that Cyberspace designers have not capitalized on the theories, experiences, and practices that have been guiding physical place–making. While most 3D environments closely mimic physical spaces, they are, by and large, devoid of the essential characteristics that differentiate a ‘place’ from mere ‘space.’ And only rarely are they sensitive to, and take advantage of, the peculiarities of Cyberspace. We believe that this state of affairs is temporary, characteristic of early adoption stages of new technologies. As the Web matures, and as it assumes more fully its role as a destination rather than as means of communication, there will be a growing need to design it according to place–making principles. By looking at physical architecture as a case study and metaphor for organizing space into meaningful places, this paper explores the possibility of organizing Cyberspace into spatial settings that not only afford social interaction, but, like physical places, also embody and express cultural values. At the same time, because Cyberspace lacks materiality, is free from physical constraints, and because it can only be ‘inhabited’ by proxy, these ‘places’ may not necessarily resemble their physical counterparts.

Frank Chimero · What Screens Want

Frank Chimero’s Personal Website

Screen As Room: An Architectural Perspective on User Interfaces — Christoph Locher · Interaction Designer

With the use of video games as social spaces being observed for several years and the increased focus put on virtual social spaces due to the scarceness of physical social spaces in the last months, the concept of “spatial interfaces” is once again at the center of discussions. I want to add an alternative perspective to this, looking at the properties of physical spaces as metaphors, rather than models, for interfaces and exploring seven of them in more detail.

Webdesign as architecture

An attempt at modelling digital design as a form of psychological architecture, taking the form of a single HTML document.

Cyberspace to Cyberplace

This post is a broad exploration, it doesn’t have a single central goal or thesis so I will be presenting quotes, resources, and various reflections on these to start circling around the topic from different angles.