Interrelativity

Interrelativity: musings about interrelatedness

  • Consequential Strangers and Acquaintanceships, Online and Offline

    Consequential strangers are the people with whom we enjoy casual relationships in our neighborhoods, workplaces and third places that can be as vital to our health, wealth, wisdom and well-being as our family and closest friends (or what I like to call speed dial friends). According to a new book by Melinda Blau and Karen…

  • Giving thanks for my ‘speed dial friends’

    I am grateful for all of my circles of family and friends, offline and online, but on this day of Thanksgiving, I want to express my special appreciation for a small subset that I often call my speed dial friends: the set of my closest friends whose phone numbers I have programmed into the single-digit…

  • Coffee, conversation, community and culture at Starbucks

    Given my long-standing interest in the social and community aspects of coffeehouse culture, I was intrigued by a number of articles about Byant Simon‘s book, “Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks“, that turned up during web searches and in some of the links in the tweetstream of @CoffeeShopChat. Over the last several…

  • Coffee, conversation and continuing education at Kirkland Zoka

    I’ve met with good friends at Kirkland Zoka the past two mornings, enjoying great coffee, stimulating conversations of considerable breadth and depth, and a continuing education about a range of topics, including social media, Foucault and social dialogue, the challenges of living without a goal (or, at least, living without attachments) … and the finer…

  • Blessing and Wounding: Longing, loss, pain and transformation

    I was transfixed by an article in today’s Wall Street Journal – In Praise of the Crackup: A novelist peers through darkness to find glittering gems in writing and art – by Jeanette Winterson, in which she explores “the collision of creativity and mental instability”, digging deeper into the way that artists are often able…

  • Strands Labs Seattle, A Retrospective

    On October 1, Strands Labs Seattle effectively closed. With the tightening economy, our parent company, Strands, has decided to focus its resources on its three primary business units – Strands Business Solutions, Strands Personal Finance (moneyStrands) and Strands Social Discovery (strands.com). The CoCollage application that we developed in the Seattle lab continues to be supported…

  • Interactive Displays at Disney World

    As I noted in my notes from UbiComp 2009, I missed a few sessions during the last day of the conference so I could explore more of Disney World, taking advantage of my free birthday pass to look for examples of how interactive displays were used to enhance guest experiences at Epcot Center. It felt…

  • Notes from UbiComp 2009

    Having earlier posted some notes from the pre-conference Doctoral Colloquium and Hybrid Design Practices workshop, I've finally gotten around to compiling – and augmenting – some notes from the main technical program of UbiComp 2009, the 11th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, held at the Disney Yacht Club in Orlando, Florida, last week. Before delving…

  • Pins, Positivity and Practices: Hybrid Design at Disney World

    The day after the Doctoral Colloquium at UbiComp 2009, I attended a workshop on Hybrid Design Practices. Given my interests in hybridity, design and practices, I was eager to see how these all might fit together, and to meet others with shared interests. The Call for Participants included a number intriguing dimensions, including a field…

  • Discussions about Doctorates and Dissertations at UbiComp 2009

    I was a panelist at the Doctoral Colloquium (DC) at the 11th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2009) last week, the first time I’ve participated in that particular track of a conference. The goal of the DC is to give graduate students working on their doctorates (PhDs) an opportunity to present their dissertation work…