News

All news, announcements and new publications, newest first.

  • Notes from “Goffman and the Interaction Order: 30 Years on” Conference in Cardiff

    the below I posted earlier on the SSSI Blog http://sssiorg.wordpress.com —- “I have no universal cure for the ills of Sociology. A multitude of myopias limit the glimpse we get of our subject matter” (Erving Goffman, 1983: 2) On September 27th, a conference was held at the University of Cardiff where participants discussed the influence of…

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  • Robots and Interaction

    A couple of years ago I visited Laurel Riek at the computer-lab in Cambridge. Laurel introduced me to some of the stunning humanoid robots she was experimenting with. One application for those robots, she said, could be homes for the elderly or homes where people live on their own; those robots could keep these ‘singles’…

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  • CFP: ‘Researching audiences in digital mediated and interactive experiences’

    Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies   Special Issue: ‘Researching audiences in digital mediated and interactive experiences’ Part of the AHRC Funded Project http://affectiveexperiences.com/ Co-editors: Irida Ntalla (Schools of Arts, Cultural Policy and Management, City University) & Dirk vom Lehn (Department of Management, King’s College London) Participations is the online Journal devoted to the…

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  • Has anyboy met a brain in a museum lately?

    There is an interesting piece by the Nobel Prize Winner (2000) Eric R. Kandel in the New York Times.Titled “What the Brain Can Tell US About Art” Kandel’s piece contributes to discussions about art that have been going on for at least a decade now in the ‘science of the brain’. I remember vividly coming…

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  • Technology and Social Interaction

    Over the past few weeks an article by Nick Bilton in the New York Times has raised not only eyebrows but also concerns that the journalist may have gone a little far with his argument to abandon commonly accepted and taken for granted ‘rules of conduct’ and courtesy rituals when using technology. Bilton’s article has…

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  • Off Grasshoppers and other Types

    The design of systems to support people’s navigation of exhibitions often draws on concepts and theories about visitors’ movement through exhibitions. In reference to relevant literature it makes inferences about people’s interests in exhibits by the ways in which they navigate galleries and at which exhibits they stop and for how long. Thereby, designers and…

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  • Jumping from Exhibit to Exhibit

    There is an interesting discussion about linearity of exhibitions over at Nina Simon’s Museum2.0. Ed Rodley (*wave back*) has added his own take on this discussion on his blog “Thinking about Museums“. Ed highlights the relationship and between on the one hand the physical or geographical organization of exhibitions and on the other hand the narrative…

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  • Stepwise Exploration of Museums: arguments for a linear organisation of exhibits

    There are long-standing debates in sociology and museum studies as well as amongst museum practitioners as to the layout of exhibitions, i.e. the organisation of exhibits in a given gallery space. For long, exhibits were organised in a linear order, often reflecting the history or evolution of human kind, art, science and culture. Tony Bennett…

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  • Apple Maps – as conversation starter?

    Lots has been written about Apple’s problems with their Maps application. Apparently, motorists stranded in a National Park in Australia after relying on the app had to be rescued and many people complain or joke about problems with the app. This morning, I received a Tweet via @CityJohn who used the app after arriving at…

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  • Pricing and Amazon.com

    When I tweeted a review of Andreas Glaeser’s book yesterday that I had read on orgtheory.net a friend retweeted the post and added that “it’s only $8.55 on kindle”. Since I new the book was priced at £18.17 on amazon.co.uk I looked up the amazon.com site with my iPhone and noticed that it showed me…

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