And they did. A young graffiti artist tagged a
piece of paper and then tossed it into the can,
projecting his name onto the sidewalk. Later, a busi-
nessman exiting a photo developing shop tossed
his unwanted double prints into Jetsam’s mouth,
creating an instant photo album on the pavement.
public trash cans you walk by on the way to the office. “It’s not as if we think Intel should be developing
Last year, Paulos and Tom Jenkins, a student trash cans,” Paulos explains. “But we want to propose at the Royal College of Art, spent countless hours research ideas that might feel a little awkward, stalking a single garbage can in San Francisco’s because it’s from those unusual vantage points that Financial District. After their field study, they built we may see other interesting possibilities.” what Paulos half-jokingly refers to as “the most expensive trash can in the world” and set it on “Making things is much harder the corner outside the lab. Called Jetsam, the than programming because can is augmented with a variety of hidden sen- there’s no quick Control-Z undo.” sors, processors, and a video projector. An infrared switch detects when refuse has been tossed KEEPING TABS ON YOUR FAMILIAR STRANGERS into the can (or grabbed out of it), and snaps a digi- Indeed, Paulos charts urban territories and dynam-tal picture. A highly sensitive scale then weighs the ics that are invisible, ignored, or taken for granted. item and a laptop PC categorizes each bit of refuse Sashay is a mobile phone application he wrote that by time and size. Meanwhile, an evolving visualiza- maps your path through the various cells in a city’s tion of the garbage photos and data is projected mobile phone network. The point of Sashay, Paulos out of the can’s opening, creating a rotating galaxy says, “isn’t to help you get places, but rather cause of garbage on the sidewalk. you to reflect on how you move.” Another project
Left: Jabberwocky is a mobile phone application that detects “familiar strangers” nearby. To avoid privacy issues, the color and motion of the blocks on the display provide information about crowds rather than specific individuals.
Right: One prototype for the Connexus project is a “friendship bracelet” containing superbright LEDs that display a range of color and tactile outputs based on input from another bracelet wearer. Another version mimics the form factor of a wristwatch. Surrounding the Connexus devices are several “motes,” coin-sized wireless sensors. The matchbooks were part of an experiment about anonymous text messaging.
“Archaeologists dig through trash to learn history, for mobile phones, called Jabberwocky, extended so we looked at what trash can tell us about urban liv- the Familiar Stranger experiments conducted in the ing,” Paulos says. “Is there a lunch binge at noon or a early 1970s by social psychologist Stanley Milgram. coffee craze at 3: 15? If there is a continuous stream of A familiar stranger is someone who you may see lottery ticket stubs, does that mean the local denizens repeatedly, at the bus stop or cafe, for instance, but are risk takers? Instead of hiding trash, we changed it never interact with. You mutually agree to ignore into something that people interact with.” each other. The Jabberwocky application grabs the
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