Adam Greenfield: The City is Here for You to Use

As part of the HCSNet Workshop on Social and Mobile Technology to Support Civic Engagement, and NICTA Queensland's Big Picture seminar series, we are pleased to announce a public keynote presentation by
Adam Greenfield

Tuesday 14 July 2009, 3.45pm for 4pm start (to 5pm)
LaBoite Roundhouse Theatre, 6-8 Musk Ave, Kelvin Grove QLD 4059
map: http://www.laboite.com.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=6

The talk will be followed by light refreshments and an opportunity to meet the speaker. Seats are limited, so please RSVP by Fri 3 July 2009 to Ms Julie-Anne Edwards at julieanne.edwards@qut.edu.au

The City is Here for You to Use
Over the past few years the “computer” has begun to disappear into the fabric of everyday life, its power to collect, store, process and represent information diffusing into the objects and surfaces around us. Things as ordinary and seemingly familiar as running shoes, elevators and lampposts have been re imagined as networked devices, invested with unexpected new abilities. Meanwhile, the phones we carry have become ever more powerful “remote controls for our lives”. Proponents and enthusiasts argue that no domain of human behaviour will be untouched by this transformation, but relatively little thought has been given to specifically how these changes might unfold at the scale of the city. How will the advent of a truly ubiquitous computing change our urban places – both the way they are built, and the way we live them? In this talk, Everyware author Adam Greenfield tries to wrap his head around this dynamic set of conditions, to clarify what’s at stake and to offer some potential frameworks for building humane and liveable cities in the age of ambient informatics.

Biography
Adam Greenfield is an internationally-recognised writer, user experience consultant, and critical futurist, having worked for clients ranging from global concerns like Toyota, Capgemini, and Sony to local nonprofits. He brings audiences the most advanced thinking available on next-generation computing, with special expertise in the social, ethical and design implications of ubiquitous computing. He is currently head of design direction for service and user-interface design at Nokia and lives in Helsinki with his wife, artist Nurri Kim.

Sponsors
This seminar event is co-hosted by the NICTA Queensland Research Laboratory, Queensland University of Technology’s Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (iCi), and the ARC Network in Human Communication Science (HCSNet).
If you would also like to attend From Social Butterfly to Urban Citizen: A HCSNet Workshop on Social and Mobile Technology to Support Civic Engagement (13/14 July 2009), please register following the instructions at http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/node/2943
Urban Informatics group on facebook: http://tinyurl.com/fbqutui