Project 4 University Toll Tunnel

I've often been bothered by toll roads (and also toll bridges, toll tunnels, etc.). Here is my problem, why are there toll roads, while most roads are just free to drive on? It makes some sense that toll roads are generally with less traffic, better road conditions and shorter distances in some occasions, so you kinda pay some money to buy some time. But why should the governors make such difference between roads? Can they just make every road free to pass and maybe still save people's time? All I learned is that toll roads are funded by collecting tolls, while most other roads are financed using other sources of revenue like gasoline tax or general tax funds. So it looks like toll roads can raise more money than normal roads get from tax. But again, why the difference? Roads cannot speak, but it's likely that normal roads are mad with toll roads because of the discrepancy there.

As for me, I personally believe that every road on earth should have the same rights and responsibilities. So if there is road collecting money by requesting a toll, every road should have the right to do the same thing. So I have made a notice (shown on the right), and declared that a tunnel in Siebel Center has become a toll tunnle to test my idea.

The design of the scenario is like this (looking at the floor map below): most students enter Siebel Center from the southwest entrance. If one has a class at room 1111, the shortest path from that entrance is to go through the path to which the red arrow points. This path now becomes a toll one. Every adult with weight less than 1000 lbs will need to pay 2 cents to gain the access to it and those with weight more than 1000 lbs are requested to pay 5 cents instead. If one does not want to pay a toll, he can also walk north for several yards, turn left, take a small path and turn left, walk south for several yards to reach the destination. That being said, this is a traditional setup of a toll road situation.

So I used a frisbee to collect tolls from people. Then I just stood aside and watched how people would react to it. Many students that did not necessarily take the path show some interest in it, read carefully and wondered who did this. On the contrary, those who took the path every day did not pay any attention to it but simply walked through the way. This says one thing -- if you want to make a toll road, ask for the toll before people first ever use the road. When everyone can walk free on it, no one would take it seriously if being asked for a toll later.

When I came back during the evening, I was surprised to find that the collector was no longer at its original position. I looked around and saw that it was moved to a classroom door nearby. Ok, maybe someone wanted to borrow the idea and collect some money for his/her class ...

Networked Economies: Six Degrees of Boggs

When I first got to know the "six degrees of separation" from my friend, I challenged him, "So, how do I connect to Bill Gates?" -- The then Microsoft CEO, richest person on earth, a man that seems so far away from my life.

My friend thought for a while, then said, "You are in touch with your organization head (our organization is a student organization that has a close tie with google), he is in touch with Kai-Fu Lee (founding president of Google China), and Kai-Fu Lee is in touch with Bill Gates."

Only three steps.

Sometimes it just freaks me out when thinking of social network as a canvas. You cannot really see anything, yet everything is there. Things like seven deadly sins are like the palette, concepts like politics and religions are like the brushes. Everyone is the painter, and everyone is being painted.

And that may be the reason for the term sociopoetics to be born. Although I still doubt whether it could be categorized as "artwork", it certainly does take positive steps exploring the society we are living in. It may seem crazy, but is it really THAT crazy? Or are we educated in a way that we no longer view such kind of actions as acceptable?

So I am very confused. But like that you need to stand away from an oil painting work to appreciate it, you probably need to leave your surroundings -- the society -- to observe what has been happening.

Carto City

I still remember my experience of driving in Houston. It's such a highly symmetric layout of a city -- streets line horizontally and vertically, highways develop a shape of spiderweb and blocks after blocks stand there just like pixels on a computer screen. When I saw the tall buildings at downtown on the highway, I can't help saying "Oh, the CITY".

For driving, it's actually not bad to have a city mapped like this. But the more you have traveled in Houston, the more you are feeling that something is missing -- something that belongs to the long evolution of human civilization at one place. As my friend who lived at Houston said, "Houston is just a large collection of human residence. It is NOT like a city."

If you have played some city planning PC games you would have a better understanding of this. Whether it's to building a modern city in SimCity, or an ancient Roman one in Caesar, it's always a process of accumulation: make a small area of resident houses, build grocery store, market, etc. to support life, install theater, arena to enrich life, and so on.

If you don't have access to certain locations, you'd need to build roads to connect to them. But modern civilization has just gone too far. Highways make it no longer a problem if a place you need to visit often is several miles away. Thus, the layout of modern cities shows high degrees of function separation. Thus, we now have the word "downtown" (and "commute").

Project 2

A Broken Heart In The Lost World

Presentation

Andrea Zittel

Multiplicity - Border Matrix

The idea of funnels immediately attracts me. Funnels "gather and select different and dispersed flows", and "give them a direction". This concept makes me link with the I-card door access at Siebel Center. Different people have different levels of access to those rooms at the building. This results in the fact that some cool rooms with all kinds of amazing equipment will only allow a selective group of people to enter. So it'd be interesting to think about who else is able to come in when you are in a space with really few access permits granted (and especially when you have no idea who else has the access). There is also a group of people who have the skeleton key -- the key that can open every door at Siebel Center. It'd be also interesting to think about who belongs to such group of extreme authority and power. (I still remember one time I asked a guy from the tech group to help open a door using the skeleton key, and he told me that if he did not return the key in 5 minutes, he would be "killed". ;p)

At first glance, the idea of pipes seems similar to funnels. However after a second thought, I begin to realize that the idea of pipes is quite emphasizing on that the surface is surrounding a flow, making it impenetrable. This is more like The Channel Tunnel (also known as Chunnel or Eurotunnel) -- an exclusive way helping people get rid of all the sea creatures. Also it generally has to transport objects from point A to point B -- when you enter at one end, you can only exit at the other end. There is little, if any, possibility that you can stop and stay in between.

Thinking of sponges, my first impression is human beings' choices of resident places on earth. In ancient times, when agriculture was not so developed, populations are quite determined by geographic condition. People preferred living by sea rather than living inland, since the sea provided much more food there. And even along the coast line, there were difference. River mouth helped gather more population there, since it provided water adding to the sea food. Hence, along the continental border, those river mouths (New Orleans, Shanghai, etc.) are just like god made sponges on earth.

Flash Sub Project

World Map

The Desktop

It's a little bit unfair to say that it's the PC that change the world. Without a user-friendly interface, probably there is still only a small number of computer experts that know how to manipulate PCs and the PC itself would not be much different from those mechanical machines in factories. Let's say CPU is like the engine to drive the PC car, then desktop interface is like the wheel that helps the user to control the car.

During early years, the introduction of windows style desktop was quite an innovative event. After years of development and refinement, human beings seem to be quite comfortable with the desktop interface now. It's interesting to see that during the process, both designers and users are working towards each other -- designers try to make the interface more intuitive and straightforward, and users try to learn the interface better and get used to it. After they reach a balance point, they kind of settle down. Not much room for improvement seems to be there since then.

Or, are we totally wrong about how we feel and there exists a better interface?

Project 1

Wherever you are, we get you covered ... in time

As We May Think

"At that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous."

That might be just the beauty of science -- the process of discovery is just the odyssey of making things more and more complicated, with simplicity being the ultimate goal to pursue. Sometimes I wonder why people are so fascinated by technology without even carefully thinking about the consequence of it. Well, maybe living in an era named IT, we don't even have enough time to care about that.

The article describes modern technology in a way as awkward as it could be from people's point of view today. However, I can feel that it is such an innovative piece back to its publishing period. It is just like Douglas Engelbart introducing computer mouse, hypertext and dynamic file linking in 1968 -- those old, clumsily looking designs bring a hell of a new world filled with new media like internet to us, in a shockingly short time.

How the world will be? The best answer seems like: let it be.