[spectre] Reminder-- Call for Proposals: Situated Advocacy

[Trebor Scholz]

Call for Proposals

The Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series invites submissions for its
upcoming volume on “Situated Advocacy.”

Advocacy is the act of arguing on behalf of a particular issue, idea or
person, and addresses issues including self-advocacy, environmental
protection, the rights of women, youth and minorities, social justice,
the re-structured digital divide and political reform. How have Situated
Technologies been—or might be—mobilized toward changing and/or
influencing social or political policies, practices, and beliefs? What
new forms of advocacy are enabled by contemporary location-based or
context-aware media and information systems? How might they lend
tactical support to the process of managing information flows and
disseminating strategic knowledge that influences individual behavior or
opinion, corporate conduct or public policy and law?

We are seeking submissions from pairs of authors, in keeping with the
format of a “conversation” between two individuals or groups. Please
submit a 500 word abstract and short bio for each author (150 words max)
in Rich Text Format (RTF) by February 15, 2008 to editors [at]
situatedtechnologies [dot] net. We expect final manuscripts will range
from 7,500-10,000 words and will be due by May 16, 2008. Please contact
us if you have questions about potential essays or the Situated
Technologies Pamphlet Series in general.


About
The Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series extends a discourse initiated
in the summer of 2006 by a three-month-long discussion on the Institute
for Distributed Creativity (iDC) mailing list, which culminated in the
Architecture and Situated Technologies symposium at the Urban Center and
Eyebeam in New York that October, co-produced by the Center for Virtual
Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, and the iDC.

The series aims to explore the implications of ubiquitous computing for
architecture and urbanism: How are our experience of the city and the
choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive
media, ambient informatics, and other “situated” technologies? How will
the ability to design increasingly responsive environments alter the
ways we conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban
computing, and what do technologists need to know about cities? How are
these issues themselves situated within larger social, cultural,
environmental, and political concerns?

Published three times a year over three years, the series is structured
as a succession of nine “conversations” between researchers, writers and
other practitioners of architecture, art, philosophy of technology,
comparative media study, performance studies, and engineering. It takes
on the urgent and ambitious task of exploring the implications of
emerging technologies and their intersection with daily life.

Such a rapid insertion of texts into discourse is rarely witnessed
within the context of traditional US publishing, which often requires
years to go from manuscript to distribution of the printed book. We feel
strongly that the discussion about Situated Technologies cannot be
postponed that long. At the same time, we acknowledge that the subject
is itself a moving target, as these technologies continue to evolve
rapidly. Given these considerations, we’ve opted to publish the series
using Print On Demand (POD) technology. Widely used but still little
known, this publishing technique allows fast turnaround of books that
can be ordered through online bookstores and are indistinguishable from
many books in your bookshelf.

Omar Khan, Trebor Scholz, Mark Shepard