much of my independent research over the last year and a half has been consumed by the relationship between architecture, our physical environments, and digital technologies, our primary source for information, communication and knowledge. the primary goal of such research is to decipher how the fast-paced rise in digital technologies will, or rather should, begin to change architecture… architecture that has remained in static manifestations since the beginning. however, currently we are seeing a trend that is beginning to demand more from our built environments, and the well-understood notions of program and function will no longer solve the architectural design dilemma. such environments, the spaces and buildings surrounding us, will have to be smart, flexible, adaptable and willing to respond to its users appropriately.
this notion is referred to as ubiquitous, or pervasive, computing–the idea that digital technologies and computers embed themselves into our physical environments for us to interact with them on a more natural level beyond a mouse and a keyboard though gestures and speech-recognition. also, tagging becomes important which is similar to the idea of tagging on the internet today. for example, flickr is a prime example in which you can tag a photo with relative words that allows for easier, more efficient searching and findability. you can even tag a photo with its exact GPS location (latitude and longitude) in order to plot that location on a map. soon, RFID tagging will perform much of the same functionality… allowing all of our everyday objects to be searched for and located more efficiently and much more quickly.
the beginning of this is taking place already, especially in eastern asia where the technology is more advanced than here in the states. an article in the nytimes this morning, ‘new barcodes can talk with your cellphone‘, described a new type of barcode that can be read by software on your cellphone simply by taking a photo of it:
In much the same way that Web publishing took off because of the ability to link to other people’s sites, cellphone technologies linking everyday objects with the Web would reveal the digitally encoded attributes of tangible things on grocery shelves or newsstands…
The most promising way to link cellphones with physical objects is a new generation of bar codes: square-shaped mosaics of black and white boxes that can hold much more information than traditional bar codes. The cameras on cellphones scan the codes, and then the codes are translated into videos, music or text on the phone screens.
such barcodes will essentially become ‘physical hyperlinks’ that function similarly to hyperlinks on web pages… linking you to additional information related to a word or phrase. the primary challenge, of course, is developing the technology in order to be useful and functional so that people will have a need for it and thus adopt it. additionally, it should not interfere with how we normally perform on a daily basis nor should it be more of a burden to use.