Subject: Call for Proposals

The Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series invites submissions for its upcoming volume on “Situated Advocacy.”

Advocacy is the act of arguing on behalf of a particular issue, idea or person, and addresses issues including self-advocacy, environmental protection, the rights of women, youth and minorities, social justice, the re-structured digital divide and political reform. How have Situated Technologies been—or might be—mobilized toward changing and/or influencing social or political policies, practices, and beliefs? What new forms of advocacy are enabled by contemporary location-based or context-aware media and information systems? How might they lend tactical support to the process of managing information flows and disseminating strategic knowledge that influences individual behavior or opinion, corporate conduct or public policy and law?

We are seeking submissions from pairs of authors, in keeping with the format of a “conversation” between two individuals or groups. Please submit a 500 word abstract and short bio for each author (150 words max) in Rich Text Format (RTF) by February 15, 2008 to editors at situatedtechnologies dot net. We expect final manuscripts will range from 7,500-10,000 words and will be due by May 16, 2008. Please contact us if you have questions about potential essays or the Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series in general.

About

The Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series extends a discourse initiated in the summer of 2006 by a three-month-long discussion on the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC) mailing list, which culminated in the Architecture and Situated Technologies symposium at the Urban Center and Eyebeam in New York that October, co-produced by the Center for Virtual Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, and the iDC.

The series aims to explore the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: How are our experience of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics, and other “situated” technologies? How will the ability to design increasingly responsive environments alter the ways we conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban computing, and what do technologists need to know about cities? How are these issues themselves situated within larger social, cultural, environmental, and political concerns?

Published three times a year over three years, the series is structured as a succession of nine “conversations” between researchers, writers and other practitioners of architecture, art, philosophy of technology, comparative media study, performance studies, and engineering. It takes on the urgent and ambitious task of exploring the implications of emerging technologies and their intersection with daily life.

Such a rapid insertion of texts into discourse is rarely witnessed within the context of traditional US publishing, which often requires years to go from manuscript to distribution of the printed book. We feel strongly that the discussion about Situated Technologies cannot be postponed that long. At the same time, we acknowledge that the subject is itself a moving target, as these technologies continue to evolve rapidly. Given these considerations, we’ve opted to publish the series using Print On Demand (POD) technology. Widely used but still little known, this publishing technique allows fast turnaround of books that can be ordered through online bookstores and are indistinguishable from many books in your bookshelf.

Omar Khan, Trebor Scholz, Mark Shepard