Adam Crouch

The hidden contributions of technology to society.

Link to visual essay: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AjqaBRL1HbjpiAeuWOQ7A0HhekTw

Caption:

The hidden contributions of technology to society, through themes from the close reading activity ‘Critical Technical Practice’ and case study of violence (Cyber Bullying) in Auckland.

Reflection:

I began this assignment with no understanding of the close reading activity and not much interest in the case study. However, I am now writing this completely engaged and inspired by the themes I have taken from the ‘Critical Technical Practices’ text.

The main point I have taken from this visual essay assignment is that designers specifically those focusing on emerging technology, must analyse closely, the social and cultural impacts of their work and any underlying or hidden assumptions, values and ideologies to their designs. This can be achieved by pushing towards a critical theory approach, where critical and cultural theories are brought together with designers and engineers.

I have also found that to predict future problems we must also look at history, technology can be viewed as the industrial revolution as the 21st century, which was a rapidly changing time for the world and one that brought many similar problems that technology brings today; rapid change, need for new training, new industries/jobs, loss of traditional jobs/machine replacement, lack of focus on ethical practices & government polices not reflecting industry changes.  

In addition, I have learnt that there is no real authority control over the online web, which demonstrates how important it is that designers/inventors do the right thing. It is impossible for laws and regulations to police the unknown future, so you must remain ethical and proceed with caution in relation to societal issues, when creating the future, especially while in the initial release stages, while institutions and governments catch up. Organisations like the Food and Drug Administration need to be set up to deal with emerging technology and most importantly the world wide web. But this must happen on a higher global level than a country level, as the online world needs to be viewed like international waters/airspace. Perhaps looking at the problems & solutions of when commercial plane travel was introduced could lead to a potential solution for dealing with citizens being online from a perspective of people being more connected and free.

Sources:

Bridging the Great Divide: Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work, Erlbaum, 1997

DESIGN AND THE CREATION OF REPRESENTATIONAL ARTEFACTS FOR INTERACTIVE SOCIAL PROBLEM SOLVING, Cooney 2016

Project So Far:

It has been 3 weeks into our final project, and my passion for the future keeps on growing. I am excited to be trying to create this digital experience to inspire people on the technology that is literally around the corner, and will change their lives within the next 20 years.

Learning so far:

- A vast knowledge about technology that is currently being created by tech entrepreneurs, companies and future thinkers. (Incl. Elon Musk, Dr. Michio Kaku, Mercedes, Bosch, Rolls Royce etc) and also reading about future visions of today from people like Steve jobs and comparing that to actual reality, which surprisingly in most cases we have either exceeded or met these visions from 20 years ago. One of these visions being autonomous vehicles. While we don't have these vehicles on everyday roads yet due to government regulations, the technology to safely transport humans autonomously is there. Another, is simply digital devices being evermore connected together creating 'big data' and allowing technology to advance faster, moving towards this idea of people not just being connected but staying connected.

- Website user design, I have been experimenting and researching several different website layouts. I have found that designers are pushing for websites to become page less and utilise all the benefits of digital media (animations, video, user interaction etc) over print media. This style of one-page web design, is deriving from the human nature of storytelling in an easy to understand and use format. Simply scrolling down through the information is the best way to tell a story, as it achieves the greatest information retention, user satisfaction and overall success. With the increasing use of mobile web browsing over desktop browsing, this push to page less design combined with responsive design has never been so critical for web developers. Buttons have been obsolete from mobile devices for years with many today having only 1. Most of the input comes from the users fingers in the form of scrolling, pinching, tapping etc. These new trends are also so important to adopt that the latest google search algorithms only ranks websites that are fluid, responsive and have great user experience.

- Website coding (html, Css & JavaScript) has been an interesting experience that I have enjoyed learning and improving during this project. Together, combined with the above user design element, my web development skills have been greatly increased.

Project Vision vs Reality:

So far my visions have been to present a story about future technology in a way that inspires viewers through video and interactive web design. And while I have learnt the necessary coding skills to accomplish my goals, I have ambitions that are out of my current skill and time constraints.

These ambitions include:

- A virtual reality tour of your house in the future, allowing users to see themselves walking around their potential house in 5,10,20,50 years. Detailing how devices and gadgets will all work together to make your life easier.

- A commercialisation aspect to my website that allows users to purchase/pre order the devices demonstrated.

- Create my own 3D renders in my videos. Currently I have had to use footage that has been created by companies for their future visions and then edit and mash these together to go with my own thoughts and visions of the future.

Overall Thoughts So far:

I am happy with my current progress and how the project is looking and coming together. I am looking forward to refining my concept over the next week ready for submission and getting the website to the best stage I can. While creating this project Apple recently announced (June 5th 2017) at WDC17 that they are launching Apple Home, which is effectively the first step towards my speculative design project coincidently named "Siri Easy Living". Which offers a fraction of the features possible for these home automation devices but shows that this is clearly a tech trend that is being taken seriously with Google, Amazon, Microsoft and now Apple investing heavily.

(First part of the website completed so far)

Entry 11/05/2017

Today I began brainstorming my concept for the program in which I am going to code for the programming class using processing. I had thoughts about doing either games, interactive art or data visualisation. However, after playing around with in my processing classes with colours and shapes, I began creating an app which you could draw. So, this is where I am going to start my project.

My goal so far is to create an app which allows the user to change the colour, size & opacity of their brush.

So far, I have created a programme in which a circle follows your mouse and then when you click a circle is drawn, and this circle changes shape and colour randomly. Creating some very interesting art.

 Entry 18/05/2017

I have started to fine tune my initial concept. I will have a window about 1000px by 1250px, on the left I will have a sidebar about 200px, and height of window and the remaining section will be the ‘artboard’. In the sidebar users can adjust the colour, size & opacity of their brush. I am going to use RGB for the colour selector and then have individual inputs for Red, Green & Blue to allow for greater customisation. On the right-hand side will be the artboard and this is where users will draw.

I need to work out a way to allow users to change the variables of colour, size & opacity and how to make it so users cannot draw over sidebar only on the artboard.

Entry 25/05/2017

I have worked out I will user an external processing library called jControl which will allow me to easily code in sliders which I can use in the sidebar. So, I will have a slider for each red, green & blue and for opacity and size individually. I have also had a thought about adding in below the sliders a square which represents your current brush settings, so it will change colour, size and opacity based on your current selected settings, this is users can see their brush settings.

I have also made it so the sidebar is layered about the artboard, so you cannot draw on the sidebar. While using my app I realised I needed to have a clear option. To do this I decided I would just write ‘if’ ‘keyPressed’ command so when you press ‘C’ or ‘c’ it will clear your current art and replace it with fresh screen. However, this made the app blink black when you pressed it as it was putting the background over the sidebar. To fix this, I made the artboard and sidebar two separate rectangles that would-be a % of the width and height of the window. This then meant that rather than the background being cleared it only cleared the artboard and so the blinking error was fixed. It also meant that my programme could be scaled to any size window and would keep the same proportions.

 Entry 02/06/2017

My programme is coming to its final stage ready for submission. This past week, I have made all the sliders and elements of the programme use a % of width and height of window so that all the elements including text can be resized to fit any size window and everything will remain proportionate.

I have also started using the fullScreen(), function which means my programme will be going full screen rather than 1000px by 1250px.

Plus based on the lecturer’s advice I have added a SAVE function, so that users can save their work. The tricky bit here was finding a good save string structure for naming the saved files and to not capture the whole screen only the artboard. I solved these challenges firstly because my artboard was a % of the width and height of the window, I could code the capture image function to only take a % of the screen which meant it only captured the artboard. I also used a PNG file type for the image and a date/time string which meant the users image would be saved into the programs root folder as the date and time they saved it.

Final Post

I have begun clearing up my code, formatting it and adding in necessary comments, ready for submission.

I have really enjoyed this project, and it has been a vast experience coding and learning a new language. The best bit for me, was the problem-solving aspect related to coding, which I found the most interesting part, as it got you thinking about different solutions and choosing the best one. While at the end of this process you get to use and see your actual code in a visual product.

For week 2 of our final project, I have made substantial progress towards finalizing my idea and starting to produce my content.

After finishing the HTML, CSS & Java Script Lynda tutorials, I have acquired the skills to begin coding my website. I created a wireframe layout for my website however, after doing some research on UX design and website design trends I have changed my original layout.

Original Layout: Logo header at the top, with a slider below it and then a block of videos in the main content.

New Layout: After drawing a few designs, and with my research. I have decided I need to go for one single page design as these are more effective for grabbing readers attention and telling a story. This is because designers are moving away from websites being like traditional print media. This is also means I want to focus on my website being responsive and mobile ready as to make sure my site caters for the variety of online users.

I have also decided to scale back my original concept, from 5 videos to 2-3 videos and an infographic, as after starting to create my videos, coding my website, my infographic and research I realise how little time I have, to learn so many new skills. If I have time, I will push for more content. However, I believe my current plan will be more achievable, and produce a quality result, that I can add to at a later date and give solid evidence for my concept.

Starting Coding: It is a positive feeling starting to code my website for the first time and seeing it come together. My first challenge was being able to add videos and images on the same line being horizontally aligned. But with the help of online resources like W3 School, I could play around and finally start to shape the website. The learning has been a challenging but enjoyable challenge, and I have learnt skills that I can now use on future projects too.

HTML (Head, meta, body, <>, </>, div, class etc)

CSS (Charset, margins, padding, color, #, .class, px etc)

Starting Video Production: I have watched several interviews from people like entrepreneur Elon Musk & physicist Dr Michio kaku and read several blogs and journal entries to create and script my own view for my first speculative design/future concept which is the Siri Easy Living app. Which is very advanced home automation that uses AI to learn your life and become your personal and family’s ultimate assistant. Running your life and be the central hub to all your other future technology such as your self-driving vehicle. I believe that your house will become the controlling hub of everything in your life as technology will require a smart hub to bring everything together in cohesion. This is my first rough cut for this video.

What Next For the final half of this project I will be carrying on developing my website and refining the wireframe to make sure it has a good flow with my content. I will produce a more refined first video. I will research and then write the script for my second video on Self Driving Vehicles and then will create that video. I need to create the graphics for my website and then get it all fully functionally. So, I will be very busy.

Quick learning pointers:

For this 4 week, final project of our Studio I paper, we have been tasked to re-visit the first 3 projects we have done and build on / combine them, in any shape or form. Since I found the speculative design topic interested me the most, I have decided to continue my research in this area and base my project of that.

I have chosen to create an interactive website that shows what my vision of the near future (10-40 years) looks like, using videos, design & info-graphics. To determine my success, I am aiming to inspire people to get excited about the technology of the future and see that they want the future I am portraying.

My initial idea was to create one video that showed my vision. But, by learning from my mistakes in my other projects, I now I need to push myself. So, I am going to research 5-10 key future trends and base my content of that, building a solid foundation for my project.

PROJECT NAME: Tech of Tomorrow

BRIEF: To create a vision that inspires and educates people on the technology of tomorrow’s world. Including self-driving cars, electric vehicles, home automation, wearables, transportation, Internet of things & smart cities.

PROGRESS SO FAR: I have begun coding my website through Dreamweaver, which has been a challenging but positive experience. I have made websites through content management systems like WordPress and Muse previously. However, it has been my goal to code a website from scratch and this was the perfect opportunity to learn how.

I have broken up my project into 10 key future trends and have started carrying out in-depth research on these topics, of which I will create 1 to 3 minute videos of my personal views on what I feel these trends will be, when they are likely and how they will all connect.

The script for our film. 

E-waste is potentially the most fatal threat of our generation. Companies are shrinking the life span of products, new tech appears year on year to the date, we are becoming a throwaway society. In 2016, 6.4 billion consumer electronic devices existed, up 30% on 2015 and predicted to reach 20.8 billion by 2020.(1) The world is mounting up discarded electronic appliances such as mobile phones, computers, and televisions at an astonishing a rate with no sustainable solution in place.  

Electronic waste (e-waste) is the disposal of electronic devices, particularly items with circuit boards, wiring & soldering. What makes e-waste problematic is that it usually contains harmful, hazardous and dangerous chemicals & materials which pose varying negative risks to human life and the environment.  

I took apart on old Xbox 360 which I was throwing away, to research and examine the parts & materials used in the device to understand about e-waste and the chemicals involved. The Xbox 360 released November 22, 2005 & discontinued on April 20, 2016, was the second gaming console developed by Microsoft to rival Sony’s Playstation and the predecessor to the Xbox One. Manufactured in China between Flextronics, Wistron, and Celesticaand and assembled by Foxconn.(2) As of June 9, 2014, 84 million units have been sold worldwide.(3)  

The Xbox 360 is powered by a custom IBM power PC-based CPU with three 3.2 GHz cores, custom ATI graphics processor with 10 MB embedded DRAM, 512 MB 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM, Detachable and upgradeable hard drive (250gb in my console) *except the core version, 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 memory unit slots, 2.4 GHz wireless adapter, IR receiver, 100 Mbit/s Ethernet port, Wifi 802.11b/g/n, AUX port, HDMI port, is 310mm high, 80mm wide, 260 mm deep & weighs 3.5kg.(4)

With some research online I came across an investigation by Greenpeace called “Playing Dirty” which analysed three popular gaming consoles including the Xbox 360 to test for the use of hazardous chemicals and materials. I was amazed to find out what could be found in the Xbox 360, and actually concerned as I had been playing with this device since I was 10 years old. There was widespread use of bromine and BFR’s in the circuit boards and printed wiring boards, beryllium-containing alloys and most interestingly PVC was identified in wire and cable coatings and makes up 10.6% of the overall weight of the device, the use of PVC means plasticisers or softeners which include phthalate esters (phthalates) are present. Phthalates are not permitted in toys for children sold in the EU, DEHP one phthalates found in the Xbox 360 which is dangerous to reproduction has the ability to interfere with sexual development in mammals especially males. It is important to note that all the chemicals & materials found in the device did meet the European Union's restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) guidelines. However, many of these chemicals would be banned if the device was classified as a children’s toy but gaming consoles do not fall under this category and so can be used despite a large number of under 18 year olds using the device.(5)

While the percentage of dangerous chemicals and materials is relatively low per device, we need to think about the major problem that is e-waste. As the latest gaming consoles are released and the older Xbox 360 is phased out and support is dropped by Microsoft, they will all be heading to landfill. If we take the information from above, 84 million units have been sold, at a weight of 3.5kg per unit that is 294 million kilograms heading to the tip, that combined is a lot of bromine and other hazardous material of which 10.6% is PVC which contains phthalates. Many developed countries short sighted solution to this problem was to ship this waste to non-developed countries where workers with no safety equipment are haphazardly melting down metals & contaminating chemicals together with no procedures in place which is in turn poisoning water supply, harming the environment and affecting the community’s health.(7) We have turned a blind eye on this major problem and there is no sustainable solution.

The 2050 speculative view  

Future Trend 1: Internet of Things (IOT)   Future Trend 2: Smart Cities   Future Trend 3: Zero Waste  

Everything from the kitchen sink now contains electronics, connecting it to, and feeding data, to the ever-expanding internet of things network. Paper and other similar consumables are rarely being used, replaced by handheld personal electronic devices. Countries around the world will be working together to solve the problems of today and the future, with major cities moving towards becoming smart cities, with efficient, cutting edge public transport, healthcare, infrastructure and recycling facilities.(8)

Governments will impose strict regulations on manufacturing, specifically electronics companies. Whereby they will ban all hazardous chemicals and materials from being used, and implementing a certifying procedure for all materials being used to make sure they all meet ISO standards deemed safe for consumer devices.(9)

Both large and small, high tech recycling centers will be built across the world, providing a low cost and highly efficient method to dealing with e-waste. Devices will start at the fragmentation stage, they will be placed into machines and stripped down in seconds using high voltage zaps. The parts containing high market value metals will be sent to furnaces that run over various temperatures from 700-1550c (10) to extract these materials, including gold, silver, platinum, palladium and copper. (11)  The remainder of the device will go to the shredder where it will be shredded into fine sand-sized particles that will be moulded into blocks and used in the construction of sustainable buildings.  Drones will also be used which will scan landfills and the streets to pick out any dumped e-waste that has not been collected by the e-waste recycling centres. A collection robot will then use this information to pull out that e-waste and send it to the recycling centre.(12)   

References  

1. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3165317  

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20100817072333/http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2005/id20050816_595546.htm  

3. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-2014-399-xbox-one-out-now-xbox-360-sales-rise-to-84-million/1100-6420231/  

4. https://web.archive.org/web/20100701091411/http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/Hardware/Specifications/ConsoleSpecifications.aspx

5. http://www.greenpeace.to/publications/playing-dirty.pdf  

6. Gullett, B.K., Linak, W.P., Touati, A., Wasson, S.J., Gatica, S., King, C.J. (2007) Characterization of air emissions and residual ash from open burning of electronic wastes during simulated rudimentary recycling operations. Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management 9(1): 69–79  

7. Brigden, K., Labunska, I., Santillo, D., Walters, A. (2007) Cutting Edge Contamination - A Study of Environmental Pollution during the manufacture of Electronic Products. www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/cutting-edge-contamination-a  

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878029614001376  

8. https://www.recycling-magazine.com/2017/01/18/future-trends-e-waste-recycling/

9. http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/10-recycling-and-waste-management-trends-watch-out-near-future.html

10. Novel Approach for Processing Hazardous Electronic Waste  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878029614001376

11. Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy (Green Manufacturing)   https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/article/10.1007/s40831-016-0087-z

I chose to disassemble an old Xbox 360. Read my next blog post to see what I found and the meta data. 

I started this #Sound project with very little knowledge or experience with sound and came out at the end with learning new audio software, how to manipulate sounds, how to build up a sound library, how to use multiple audio tracks & fade them together, how to build an acoustic instrument & then manipulate its sound in real time to create an interactive instrument which could make hundreds of sounds, how to solder & build a contact microphone and finally how to create a live performance.

The biggest challenges for me was: 1) Learning how I could record my instrument and then have that being manipulated with audio software in real time, However, I managed to solve this by using a contact microphone though a USB soundcard into my laptop running Adobe audition. 2) Running my computer and our instruments through the BCT sound system as we had no knowledge of how to do this especially as our set up was different to many other groups as we were experimenting with manipulating our instruments in real time though Adobe Audition.

Next time, I would engage Clint earlier to get advice on how to best set up our equipment, and learn how to use the BCT sound system/mixer, as we were under pressure on the day. I would also try to simplify the performance as when trying to experiment with live sound manipulation and using variety of tech gadgets which meant more potential problems, you lose the wow factor.

Overall, I enjoyed this project, getting hands on, learning new things and having a fun time with my group members. Sound is not my strong point but I am glad I got to experience and learn from the mistakes I made along the way, especially from the live performance.

SOUNDSCAPE

Link to soundscape: https://soundcloud.com/user-580224853/futuristic-sci-fi-adam-crouch

INSTRUMENT

PERFORMANCE

Video from performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnYDwcGWxr8&feature=youtu.be

The performance was the hardest of all 3 sub-projects, I found that creating an interesting performance for 5 minutes in a week was a challenge especially while trying to engage 5 other members and have everyone doing something. My first thought was to try a virtual band, have one computer on display and then have all members join the conference call from various parts of the city with a microphone, everyone would record sounds and we would build up a live performance. However, with a one week timeline I put this idea aside, as I thought just the planning stage would take a week.

Next, we thought why not use the real time sound manipulation that we have used in the instruments project and go with a space/sci-fi theme. After a day of testing we realised our main problem was being able to live play our instruments for 5 minutes straight, we addressed this problem by pre-recording some of the sounds, we combined parts of our soundscapes from the first project along with a choir backing track and then made a graphic score to illustrate when and who would live play their instrument during the live performance.

Unfortunately, the live performance did not turn out as well as I thought it should, due to our group manipulating sounds through our computer, and lack of knowledge of sound equipment, we didn’t think about how this would work through the BCT audio system and mixer, along with technical problems as one sound card did not work in the performance, although it was working just an hour before. Despite these issues, I think we managed to keep our cool and do an excellent job of improvising and created a 5-minute space themed performance. Next time I would learn and understand the equipment we would need to be using to live play as even with many hours rehearsing and learning our instruments it came down to not working out how to put these through the sound system.

I am not a very music orientated, so I didn’t know much about instruments. Luckily after a few hours research, I began brainstorming a few concepts. Out of 5 concepts, I chose to go with the rubber band idea, as just with playing with them I could hear interesting sounds. My first iteration was rubber bands around screw on a plywood base, now this worked quite well. However, I thought it was lacking something, it really wasn’t pushing myself. So, using knowledge from the soundscape project, I came up with a way to combine my instrument with audio manipulation software in real time, this way by adding effects I could virtually make hundreds of different sounds.

The challenge with this, was how to microphone the sound and then have that going into my computer and edit the sounds in real time. The solution was to use a contact microphone which I built and then have this plugged into a USB sound card into my laptop. I had this all working but it took me many hours to work out how to hear the microphone input in real time. I found it was possible in Ableton Live and was using this but finally figured out how to do it on Adobe Audition which was great, as I already knew this software and how to manipulate sounds from the soundscape project.

Next time I would like to add more materials to my instrument instead of just rubber bands possibly using plastic bands and hair ties etc., I would also try adding more than one contact microphone and try stereo microphones rather than mono ones.

https://soundcloud.com/user-671951810/first-try-sound-manipulated