Cell phone distractions impair recall

Cell phone ringtones can pose major distraction, impair recall

The study includes an experiment in which Shelton poses as a student seated in the middle of a crowded undergraduate psychology lecture and allows a cell phone in her handbag to continue ringing loudly for about 30 seconds.
Students exposed to a briefly ringing cell phone scored 25 percent worse on a test of material presented before the distraction.

Students tested later scored about 25 percent worse for recall of course content presented during the distraction, even though the same information was covered by the professor just prior to the phone ring and projected as text in a slide show shown throughout the distraction. Students scored even worse when Shelton added to the disturbance by frantically searching her handbag as if attempting to find and silence her ringing phone.

Texting May Be Taking a Toll on Teenagers

Texting May Be Taking a Toll on Teenagers - NYTimes.com

The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop.

“Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

Vodafone | Receiver | Mobile creation – the Japanese way

Mobile creation – the Japanese way

Both psychologically and physically, young Japanese are never too far from their handsets and the connections to the world that come with the devices. For them, a mobile device is a constant companion, time-killer, game machine, television, organizer, wallet, music player and communicator. In short, it's not terribly necessary to own a PC to be connected digitally, so when the creative urge strikes, the mobile generation uses the tool most comfortable to them: their handsets.

The sneaky moves of anti-social smartphone users...

In this funny (and actually poignant) 3-minute talk, social strategist Renny Gleeson breaks down our always-on social world -- where the experience we're having right now is less interesting than what we'll tweet about it later.

Storytelling Pictures

I have uploaded photos of the Tactical Nomadic Storytelling Demo to Flickr.

Mobile Advocacy Resource

Mobiles in-a-Box

Welcome to Mobiles in-a-box: Tools and tactics for mobile advocacy

Mobiles in-a-box from the Tactical Technology Collective is a collection of tools, tactics, how-to guides and case studies designed to help advocacy and activist organisations use mobile technology in their work.

Mobiles in-a-box is designed to inspire you, to present possibilities for the use of mobile telephony in your work and to introduce you to some tools which may help you. After reading the material in this toolkit you can expect to be able to design and implement a mobile advocacy strategy for your organisation.

Tactical Nomadic Storytelling

Tactical Nomadic Storytelling
Pattie Belle Hastings

World Storytelling Day, March 20, 2009 (spring equinox)
Tactical Nomadic Storytelling will start at 6:30 pm (sunset)
at the Kunstnernes Hus and then depart for wanderings
and tellings around the city of Oslo.

Atelier Nord
Wergelandsveien 17, N-0167 Oslo Norway

TNS (for short) is an art project that combines live storytelling and props with mobile digital media (visual and audio). Pattie Belle Hastings is currently in residence at Atelier Nord creating a mobile storytelling projection unit and a series of short stories that combine video/animation, audio, mobile devices and live performance. These digital live art experiences are designed to be performed strategically and spontaneously at tram stops, T-Bane stations, corners, alleys, bathrooms - virtually any spot on the street or any unexpected place around Oslo.

Keeping Household Electronics Out of the Landfill

The Green Home - Keeping Household Electronics Out of the Landfill - NYTimes.com

AMERICANS discarded 2.25 million tons of computers, printers, cellphones and other electronics in 2007. About 82 percent ended up in landfills. The Green Home called up Jason Linnell, the executive director of the National Center for Electronics Recycling, a nonprofit group based in West Virginia, to find out how we can recycle our old gadgets instead.

Silence = Productive Elation

Busy working at Atelier Nord on one of my Mobile Misuse components. Pictured: My Mobile Projection Unit... more info to come...

140 Characters in Search of Some Meaning - NYTimes.com

Letter - 140 Characters in Search of Some Meaning - NYTimes.com

What are the implications of my feeling a sense of connection with someone I don’t really know (a TV celebrity) through his sharing with me that he is done with rehearsal and about to have a bagel before the show? What’s missing in our more immediate day-to-day lives that this would draw us in?

Mobile Drawings = Drawing on the Mobile

I have started an experiment of making drawings with free applications for my iPod Touch. This ties into a larger “Return to Drawing”* experiment as the mobile component. The plan is to draw a few pictures on the Touch every week and document the process/progress on Flickr.

My iPod drawings on Flickr

*I’ll post more about starting to draw again on performing the art...

QRcode Art

Sensitive Rose, mobile/net artwork by Martha Gabriel

SENSITIVE ROSE is an interactive compass rose formed by mobile tags (QRcodes) that map people’s desires. The interactions happen via cell phones or mobile devices and the results can be seen in a large screen projection (or in computer screens at www.sensitiverose.com/rose.php).

The work intention is to ‘navigate’ in the desires of the people, in a secret way, through a ciphered poetics of tags, which cannot be deciphered with naked eyes.

The interaction happens via mobile devices by scanning the QRcode on the right or accessing the URL http://www.sensitiverose.com/m/. The interactor must choose what he/she wants from life. After interacting, the effect can be seen in the Sensitive Rose (www.sensitiverose.com/rose.php). The desire is mapped as a colored dot on the screen next to the tag related to it. The tag (QR code) is re-generate with the name of the interactor and his/her desire, codifying a text like: 'Joe wants Love'. Each desire is mapped in a different color, like red for love, white for peace, yellow for money, and so on. The tags are generated after each interaction and when the relevance of desires changes, the whole compass rose changes as well to represent it.

The Mobile Misuse Manifesto (early draft outline)

(a work in process on the design and development of interactive technologies)

"We drive into the future using only our rear view mirror."
- Marshall McLuhan, 1967

Manifesto Section 1

1. Choosing to be “lost” or “disconnected” is an option.
2. Time is finite, whatever is implemented must be worth the value of the time invested. (development & use)
3. The planet is finite, whatever we develop or buy reduces it.
4. Whatever device we say “Yes” to means “No” to something else in our lives.
5. Disappointment is intrinsic in our experience of new technologies.
6. The malfunction and arrogance of constantly changing technologies must not be overlooked.
7. Technology may be inevitable, but our use of it is not.
8. Refusal is an option.
9. Failure as an option.

Subset A

1. If you build it, they might not come.
2. If you build it, they might come and then leave.
3. If you build it, they might all come and overwhelm the system.
4. If you build it, it will be obsolete in a matter of months, weeks, days, or minutes.
5. If you build it, you will have to build it again and again and again.
6. If you build it, someone else may have already done it (and better).

(feedback appreciated)

Preliminary Mobile Projector Play

Wii Project(or) from Rolf S. on Vimeo.

This is Rolf Steier, one of my Fulbright colleagues, demonstrating the possibilities of a mini-projector connected to a Nintendo Wii using the Wiimote Whiteboard capabilities. Rolf is researching the incorporation of mobile devices into children’s learning experiences - particularly museums. This is tangentially related to the project I am working on using mobile projectors, so I need to keep this in mind for possible future iterations... although I wouldn’t want to have to lug around a laptop for street performances, though...

more info and links on Rolf’s blog

Telephone Trottoire

I mentioned the Tantalum Memorial art installation in a previous post and now there is an interesting interview with one of the artists, Graham Harwood on Rhizome: Rhizome | Interview with Graham Harwood

The installation is on view at transmediale in Berlin this week and it’s one of eight projects to win the transmediale 2009 Award.