Blowing Danish minds and whatnot

On a plane day after tomorrow for Denmark, where I’ll be speaking at the Nordic Exceptional Trendshop and, apparently, blowing minds. (Please note that, with all due respect, I didn’t write that bio blurb and take absolutely no responsibility for the grandiose and manifestly inaccurate claims made therein.) I’m looking forward to meeting some of my Scandic readers, and it’ll be swell to see Régine.

Then, later on in the month - the 14th, to be precise - I’ll be headed up to MIT for a special SENSEable City event good buddy Fabien Girardin’s putting together; more details about that anon.

And now, since I’m as tired as you are of posting nothing but itineraries and whatnot, here’s the first scene of the John Adams opera Nixon in China, which is all kindsa awesome. Enjoy.

Publications divers

Three real quick notes on publications I’m involved with:

- Les Audiences dans la Ville, the JCDecaux trendbook on urban near-futures to which I contributed has been placed online in its entirety, albeit, sigh, in Flash. It’s both in French and very French. Enjoy.

- Similarly, Being Human: Human Computer Interaction in 2020, the fruit of last year’s HCI2020 conference, launches next week. Maximum congrats to Richard, Abi, Yvonne and Tom: I’ve got my copy right here, and it’s as thoughtful and sensitive a roadmap to the next steps in interaction design as one could possibly hope for. Although I still have my doubts about both the “HCI” and the “2020.” : . )

- Finally, it’s become sadly typical of my interactions with my feckless former publishers that I only find out about this stuff when I get the quarterly royalty statement, but it looks like Everyware’s going to be published in (traditional) Chinese. It’s a great second birthday present for the book and I’m super-stoked. Readers in Taiwan do me a favor? Keep an eye peeled for it, and give me a shout when it turns up, thanks.

L’Italia, infine

So I’ve been promising Fabio for literally a half-decade now that one of these days I’d hook something up in Italy, and after an embarrassing number of hiccups, false starts and blind alleys it looks like the occasion has finally arrived. I’ve been asked to speak at Transmitting Architecture, the 23rd UIA World Congress of Architecture, in Torino in July, and I am delighted to finally be able to say “yes.”

This looks like it’s going to be an unusual gig, almost the inverse of last week’s Royal Society talk. Where that was a space specifically reserved for discussions of ubiquitous computing, I have a feeling the topic is going to be relatively marginal to the everyday concerns of this particular crowd of architects and architectural theorists - in other words, a tough sell.

Well, we’ll see. Point is, I’m now at last able to make good to my various commitments to those of you in Italy who have wanted me to come speak there over the years, with apologies for having let you down so often before. And thanks, as always, to Nicolas for whatever behind-the-scenes magic he so effectively wrought.

Repair routines in process

Home, and happy to be. London a triumph, Helsinki a hoot (if somewhat Krapi at times). Many thanks to those responsible…and especially to Bill for the ‘68 Armagnac.

My god, it’s full of stars

Odd morning for me here in Finland: the morning uplink brings word, simultaneously, of Arthur C. Clarke’s passing and of Barack Obama’s truly epochal speech on race.

I’m not really in a place at the moment, either practically or psychically, to integrate these two pieces of news or what (especially) the latter may portend. What I do feel, amid all the excellent reasons for sorrow that the world has on offer, is a measure of hope for the future. Just a measure, mind you, but it’s there and it’s real.

What a strange and unexpected thing to feel.

Austin powers

Oh, just one more thing: gonna be speaking at Interplay, the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers’ annual conference, in Austin in late May. You can expect that I’ll be sharing some thoughts on the transition from wayfinding to wayshowing, and what ambient, ubiquitous and pervasive ya-ya might have to do with all that.

That is all. Emplaning soon. Talk more when I’ve reached the other side of the Atlantic.

London and

Posting may be spotty for the next few days: I’m off to London to speak at the Royal Society’s Discussion Meeting on the near future of computing, with Nokian funtimes in Helsinki afterward.

As far as I know, some kind of get-together is being planned for London the evening of the 18th - ping me for details.

Architecture in Helsinki

…is something Nurri and I will be seeing a whole lot more of: I’ve accepted a role as Head of Design Direction with Nokia’s design staff, with a remit for the service and user interface domain, and will be moving there in August.

It’s kind of a plum gig, as it would have had to be to lure me away from the life and the city I love. I’ll be working on some terribly exciting and important problems, with people for whom I have a tremendous amount of admiration (and in many cases personal fondness of long standing), in a context where our efforts together might actually make a difference.

Needless to say, this is not the kind of move one contemplates lightly. As it happens, though, we both fell in love with Helsinki when we spoke at Aula two summers ago, and have often discussed spending more time there. So when this incredible opportunity came along, I can fairly say I jumped at it. It just felt like the stars were aligning, you know?

I have many people to thank - you know who you are - without whose efforts none of this would be possible, or would be nearly as enticing. And, of course, a big stack of obligations and commitments to discharge before moving, including finishing this book I’m writing. It’s obviously going to be a hectic couple of months.

Something tells me, though, that for most of that time I’m going to be sporting a big, stupid grin. I cannot wait to see what happens next.

I’m not a young man anymore

Which is true, and also the name of the previously unknown Velvet Underground song unearthed last month and just about immediately seeded on the net. (Here’s the direct link; go thou and download, if you haven’t already.)

Let me reiterate that, so we can savor it together: previously unknown Velvet Underground song. One of five tracks that have come to light here, in the so-called “Gymnasium” set - including the first known performance of “Sister Ray,” in a filthygritty version clocking in at nineteen full minutes.

I haven’t written this up yet - various other things on my mind - but this is epochal. In my world, this is already the equivalent of watching flabbergasted as previously-lost dialogues of Plato suddenly turn up on eBay: an occasion for loving exegesis, for delight in seeing how the new fragment fits into the known canon. And it would be even if the material didn’t totally howl…which it does.

This is the Velvets as primitivist garage band, circa ‘67, a sound you’ll no doubt be familiar with from Disc 3 of Peel Slowly and See. It’s raw, propulsive stuff, with none of the overlay of Warholiana that Nico brought to the proceedings; to my ear, the glorious, metronomic crunch and thud of the Mo Tucker/John Cale rhythm section makes out best under circumstances like these. Or is that “thud and crunch”?

Either way: fuck me, basically. A new Velvets song, and it’s a keeper, something I’m (appropriately enough, I suppose) happy to think of as an early 40th birthday present. That’s just the pure niceness, and the secret generosity at the core of the world speaking.

Kona Africabike: The OLPC of bicycles, and better

When I wheeled my Cannondale Capo into favorite local bikeshop NYC VELO yesterday afternoon, I fully expected to retrieve it a day or two later, looking and performing very differently.

What I wanted to do with it was admittedly odd, and in some lights almost Lovecraftian in its perversity: I wanted to take this gorgeous frame - painstakingly optimized in every respect for one role and one riding posture - and force it to different ends, making of it a monstrous hybrid. Not this kind, mind you, nor even this one, but some unholy fusion of stripped-down NYC messenger steed and easy-going Dutch city bike.

This I planned to do by replacing the aggressive bullhorns and their forward-reaching stem with upright cruiser bars, and the carefully ergoanatomic seat with a fully-sprung Brooks saddle. The result, in theory, would have afforded me the more relaxed cockpit, improved overview on traffic, and different kind of riding experience I was looking for, while still allowing me to take advantage of the frame’s basic lightness and responsiveness. But as the component costs, complexity, and associated labor bill all began to peak, reason quailed, the project logic collapsed, and the timeless order of the spheres reasserted itself. More precisely, it was Nurri who did so. And what she asked was this: Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?

Who throws a stolid Brooks onto a bike so designed around weight savings that it sports carbon-fiber forks? Who tries to undo a logic so deep it runs down to the bikeular DNA, and overmaster it with kludged-on parts and geometries? Nobody sane, that’s for sure.

Especially not when this waits at the front of the shop, with a lower pricetag than the components alone would have set me back. This, my friends, is Kona’s $300 Africabike 3.0.

The Africabike is a veritable tank among rides. Formally, anyway, it resembles what a Soviet factory might have turned out if ordered to reproduce the classic Dutch bicycle exactly. It weighs, oh, let’s just say twice what the Capo does. And calling it the “OLPC of bikes” is actually an unwonted compliment to the computer: unlike the OLPC, Kona’s bike was designed with one specific and concrete mission in mind, by which all of its features and material qualities were dictated, and at which it has demonstrably succeeded. What it mostly shares with the OLPC, actually, is the fundamental two-for-oneness of its purchase proposition: you buy one here, and its twin is donated to an HIV/AIDS prevention worker in sub-Saharan Africa (and latterly, Afghanistan).

All this would only go so far toward recommending it, frankly, if it were not also one hell of a lot of fun to ride. Everything that fits this vehicle for harsh African duty winds up rendering it an unexpected blast on New York City streets, from the oversized, puncture-resistant tires to a diamond-hatched saddle so ass-friendly you can easily imagine it furnishing Graceland. And, indeed, you ride like a king, or the King: up high, outlook wide, low tension, movin’ easy. It’s not at all the same kind of visceral kick that I get from breaking traffic on the Capo, but it is a simple and a solid hoot, conveying to the rider just about everything that made bikes fun as a kid. And while I’m perfectly willing to bet you’d get the same kind of experience from, say, a Jorg & Olif Scout, that’d set you back more than twice as much, and you wouldn’t have the satisfaction of knowing that you’d made some contribution, however humble, to HIV prevention efforts where they’re most acutely needed.

I haven’t owned a bike with coaster brakes (or a kickstand, for that matter) since I was eight, so it was kind of a shock to contemplate welcoming the Africabike into our household. But that’s just what we eventually decided to do. The Cannondale gets to remain what it is: lightweight, austere urban transit, a bike so fleet that I’ve ridden duathlons on it single speed or no. I get my city-bike experience, plus some, when that’s what I want. And I’ve helped to ensure that, somewhere in the global South, someone brave is that much better equipped to reach the villages, to teach the people they meet about HIV and how best to avoid it. It’s kind of a win-win-win.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I do believe I’m going for a ride.