Getting Nowhere Slowlylearning from a thousand miles

at walking pace

Alan Dix

http://alanwalks.wales/

Tiree

Tiree Tech Wave23-27 March 2017

University ofBirmingham

it’s all abouta walk

1058 miles (1700 km) around around the margins of Wales

Welsh Coast Path

opened May 2012linking existing pathsa single way marked routewith Offa’s Dyke encircles Walesthree full traversals in 2012 (one running)

vision

personalencircling, encompassing, pilgrimage, homecoming,

practicalIT for the walker & IT for local communities

philosophicalreflections on walking and space, locality and identity

researchpersonal agenda and living lab

no hard boundaries

research – practicepersonal – philosophical

19th century science or Mediaeval?

walking as research

slow! ... and hurts :-/

imposed time frame ... for good & ill

waving banners

using technologyQ. “what technology do you use?”A. “a map”

keeping moving, in the wet, ..

the best technology!

voice recorder

real buttons!!

use it while moving

data

locationGPX ... batteries ... sporadic signals ....

bio-sensingECG (heart), EDA (skin) and accelerometers

audio and imagesin the moment

textafter the event

implicit

explicit

+ semantic markup

Hack Alan!

some themes

at the margins

social marginality:poor, old, rural

information marginality:poor connectivity, old

devices

IT deepens the divide... but can IT help in the

margins?

mapsreclaiming the local map within technological space

mapping never easier ... so long as it is ‘standard’

“Post-Renaissance maps cover the surface of the world with an homogeneous Cartesian grip”

Barbara Bender

local maps – local concerns

community and cohesion

abandonment and dissolution:Rhyl – dustbin of LiverpoolDee estuary – even the pubs closed

internal strengthPenmaenmawr – in the face of adversitycommunity enterprise: shops, pubs, arts

an interstitial community

caravan site (nearly) in centre of townbut behind, in the gapssemi-permanent residents

locality? parallel communities in same place

language and culture

intimately linkedeven for the non-Welsh speaker!

changed in my lifetimebut under threat again

technological implicationsnot just translations ... media choice etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capel_Celyn

Churches of Wales

health and well being

logistics and transport:constant stress!! ... and I was just visiting

from mountain goat to geriatric and back

the kind of person …

connectivity

I expected it to be bad ...

but it was worse

always connected?

mobile signalabsent or weak

broadband ...not so broad

masts point to seanot land ...yachts = money

https://explore.ee.co.uk/coverage-checker

@ 2013

software makes it worse ...

Twitter 140 chars ... but unusable with poor signalheavy XML API

email slow but works – 1970s technology

Flickr uploader freezes on poor connections... even in Paris!

✔✗

✗

... not a recent issue ...

1994 maybe first

HCI & mobile

journal paper

layers of experience

not using technology ...

always alone …

while walkingactive

camera, recorderpassive

GPS, ECG, EDA

when stoppediPad, blog, flickr,

social media,uploading data

before/afterweb for planningnew contacts on

Twitter, emailreporting, analysis

while walkingother walkers

occasional friends/family

meeting

when stoppedshop keepers,

B&B proprietors,chance meetings

talks, visits

before/after family and friends,

readers, researchers,

future walkers

socialsphere

technicalsphere

connecting and context

time and place

most things time stamped … but not always same time

GPS … can be interestingespecially paths on slopes

location and path – loops etc.

semantic markup

one narrativemany threads

1058 miles done what next ...

more:w: http://alanwalks.wales/t: @alanwalkswalesf: facebook.com/alanwalkswales