The public wifi access at The Barbican is provided by “The Cloud” which was acquired by BSkyB in January 2011. BSkyB is 39% owned by 21st Century Fox (previously part of News Corporation) whose Chairman and CEO is Rupert Murdoch. Since seeing the kerfuffle about City recycling bins (now no longer) tracking smartphones, I’ve been…
Yesterday at Tuttle (in the Barbican) David and I had a conversation, which I then carried on with Tony about the similarities between the growth dynamics in co-working spaces and gentrification in urban environments (first the penniless artists move in because it’s the only place they can afford, they make the area attractive and then…
I’m a bit dazed this morning by news from my friends Neal & Kathy in Maine that Kathy needed emergency surgery last week and that they’ll likely face a $50,000 bill (without insurance – they have a farm and food business out in the wilds). I know what the healthcare situation is in the US…
Yesterday I gave myself a little time to muck about. I saw Dan tweet about a collaborative google map about “Water Infrastructure Collapse”. I had a look and got the general idea to highlight instances where the infrastructure isn’t working. I’ve been interested in the concept of the mostly-invisible infrastructure stack since listening to Vinay…
Sometimes I don’t really know what I think until I write it down and show it to other people. That’s what happened with my blogpost yesterday – I realised how little I really had decided about this and how much more there was to define. One thing is to get thinking about what social artists…
As I’m here a lot, I thought it might be nice to shake the Tuttle crowd up a little while making it more accessible to Shoreditch/Tech City types. So we’ll be in the Barbican foyer every Friday in August, just turn up and have coffee (there’s a Costa here) and chat – same format as…
I have a residency for the rest of August at Hack The Barbican which is a month-long experiment in creative collaboration in the public spaces of the Barbican Centre – the hashtag for the whole thing is #HTB2013. The aim of the group as a whole is to make the most of the mix of…
Wait! What is this, Google Mail? Another helpful inbox redesign to enhance my productivity? Why thank you so much! Or maybe this one will be just as “useful” as those weird yellow labels with chevrons in them. A gentle reminder to me every morning that you can read my mail and arrange it however makes…
TL;DR there’s some debate about how we might make the annual barcamp for public-service types even better. I have some opinions… For those who don’t know… This is my first contribution to a debate that I first saw starting on Friday morning about how to do UKGovCamp better. UKGovCamp is the annual big unconference for…
I took part in a session at the Living Streets Supporters Conference today to talk about #wewillgather, organizing without organizations and generally using twitter and social media for hyperlocal campaigning and activism. I recorded the session and include it here so that I know where to find it later and also so I’ve a link…