Interactive Design, Knowledge and Augmented Realities Reference: Ciastellardi, M.; Cruciani, A,; de Kerckhove, D.

; Miranda de Almeida, C., Interactive Design, Knowledge and Augmented Realities, in N. Callaos, H. Chu, Y. Yingling, C. D. Zinn (eds.), IMETI Proceedings, vol. 1, Winter Garden, International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, The 2nd International Multi-Conference on Engineering and Technological Innovation Conference Proceedings, Volumen I, pp. 142-145, Orlando, International Institute of Informatics and Systemics ISBN-10:1-934272-67-1 (Collection) ISBN-10:1-934272-68-X (Volumen I) Affiliations Matteo CIASTELLARDI, Department Indaco, Politechnical University of Milan, Italy, MPCT, Toronto; Universal Margin, SL; Andrea CRUCIANI, Mcluhan Programe of Culture and Technology, University of Toronto, Canada, Universal Margin, SL; Derrick de KERCKHOVE, Department of French, University of Toronto, Canada; Department of Sociology, Universit Federico II, Naples,; IN3/UOC, Universal Margin SL; Cristina MIRANDA de ALMEIDA University of the Basque Country, Spain; Universal Margin, SL.

Interactive Design, Knowledge and Augmented Realities

Matteo CIASTELLARDI, Department Indaco, Politechnical University of Milan, Italy, MPCT, Toronto; Universal Margin, SL; Andrea CRUCIANI, Mcluhan Programe of Culture and Technology, University of Toronto, Canada, Universal Margin, SL; Derrick de KERCKHOVE, Department of French, University of Toronto, Canada; Department of Sociology, Universit Federico II, Naples, Italy; Univerisit Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona; MPCT, Universal Margin SL; and Cristina MIRANDA de ALMEIDA Department of Painting, University of the Basque Country, Spain; MPCT; Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, England; U.Margin, SL.

ABSTRACT The complexity of connections that articulate our society has transformed the way we conceive human spaces: the spaces of communication, dwelling and knowledge. The constant growth of the World Wide Web has triggered the appearance of complex systems to control and manage information. The hierarchical construction of classificatory systems has guaranteed the first footsteps for the formalization of online knowledge. Notwithstanding, some popular taxonomies (folksonomies) without neither default relationships among elements nor a precise point of departure, have been growing. These contemporary bottom-up processes inscribe social relationships in a network: they show that every phenomenon is interrelated, that nothing that exists is selfsufficient or independent, and that it is possible to manage a sustainable dimension of knowledge by means of a collaborative approach relating to information. Apart of analysing the connectivity between individuals also the social role of information must be considered. This role relates to the de-codification of links, bonds and contaminations between different layers of knowledge involved in everyday life. We claim that it is exactly in the space between these two different and interrelated dimensions, that is to say, the connectivity between individuals and the social role of information, that interactive design can find a new field for development. The main objectives of this paper are, firstly, to investigate the space between these two dimensions, decoding the idea of cybrid design; secondly, to explore which are the possibilities to overcome some limitations of the actual paradigm; and lastly, to point out how the use of technological systems that link the analogical and electronic dimensions of reality (like WiredBook and Electronic Margin) can trigger the emergence of an augmented hybrid reality which analysis can contribute to define new guidelines to facilitate a bottom-up construction of knowledge in a specific field.

Keywords Space in-between, bottom-up knowledge, connected intelligence, interactive design, interconnectivity, augmented reality. 1 INTRODUCTION

Our world is living an especially complex moment: things are changing fast and defying the Post-structuralist ideas of stability, security, and equilibrium. The constant growth of information, with its meaningless and self-referent invasion of images and sounds, causes a sense of emptiness and creates a total surround kind of environment that transforms the relations between users, data and personal media technological devices. However, although the cross-fertilization between people, media and information generates confusion and uncertainty, social and cultural transformations are also creating new possibilities for understanding ourselves in new ways and translating our practices into a new paradigm in relation to information. The complexity of connections that articulate our society transformed the way we conceive and project human spaces: the spaces of communication, dwelling and knowledge. The spread of the World Wide Web in constant growth has increased the development of complex systems of control and management of information. These systems that have been designed, according to guidelines that aim to optimize the use and retrieval of data, represent the first steps towards the translation of everydays experiences into a shared world of communication where people can find new spaces for interaction and new ways to deal with knowledge. 2 THE SEMANTIC WEB AND NEW ONTOLOGIES

In the last few years at least two broad perspectives (correlated with independent variables) have been opened in order to

effectively and flexibly codify online data. These perspectives are the semantic Web [1] and the creation of ontologies [2]. Both have allowed for the reaching of specific results in the field of knowledge management. The semantic Web represents a proposal that has increasingly taken consistence since the dawn of the WWW, for the merit of Tim Berners-Lee. Among its most important contributions it permits a dynamic evaluation of information, to present and make traceable any kind of data (pages, files, images, links, etc.) and to complete data with specific metadata. That metadata is additional information that contextualizes each piece of information in a network of multi-pertinent relationships. The semantic Webs structure is based upon ontologies that, so far, constitute one of the few frameworks codified for the management of information. Ontologies are structures able to maintain in perfect hierarchical relation all entities found [3] and tagged, supplying also an exhaustive and rigorous conceptual scheme with which to manage specific relations, rules, dependencies, symmetries and differences. Ontology is a descriptive, classificatory form, developed to open and delineate the schemes in which information will be incorporated and rearticulated. The first steps in the formalization of online knowledge came with different kinds of ontologies that guaranteed a hierarchical construction of classificatory systems. We can not forget the contributions of such structures even when we are trying to envisage the future of a hyper-connected and fluid society in which greater possibilities for interconnection, higher speed in feedback reception (in relation to actions and choices) and, above all, bottom-up management of data classification will be granted by communities. In this sense, some popular taxonomies, the so-called folksonomies, without neither default relationships between elements nor a precise point of departure, have been growing. These non-structured taxonomies brought some spontaneous forms of classification and bottom-up collaboration that reflect the conceptual model built by users that select and analyse information. These contemporary bottom-up processes inscribe social relationships in a network: they show that every phenomenon is inter-related, that nothing that exists is either self-sufficient or independent, and that it is possible to manage a sustainable dimension of knowledge by means of a collaborative approach relating to information. In this way, a different form to deal with information and to construct knowledge starts to reveal the space between human practices and their translation into a digital framework of actions and relationship.

construction, beyond mere passive fruition and reception. Not only messages (contents) but also objects (media) that deliver contents are tagged. Hierarchical schemes and univocal classifications cannot describe scenarios that are in constant change.

DISCOVERING THE SPACE BETWEEN

Systemic hierarchies of information based on a bottom-up perspective of common collaboration begin to transform themselves into folksonomies [4]. They operate by defining and classifying, by tagging different kinds of data. This perspective sprouted from the human need to communicate and from the possibility of using more suitable prosthesis, more versatile instruments and simpler technologies. In order to explore the consequences, or the forerunners, of this phenomenon, it is good to formulate some basic considerations regarding the recent scenario of transition: People are experiencing being in front and immersed in the information flow. Users become active parts in the process of knowledge

This scenario turned users from passive data receivers into active promoters of on-line information and freed them from hierarchies and relational ties. In this scenario, information appears as the result of aggregation to, and separation from, indefinite groups [5] according to complex and non measurable phases. The ties that are constructed among statements, terms, concepts and clusters of data born and die when the attention of collectives spots them and changes their capacity, their contents and the very labels (tags) that classify them. In this sense, unstable links between information are developed as a result of bottom-up tagging practices that derive from the way online communities deal with values. The outcome of these processes is a form of semantics. This semantics emerges from movements of attractions and polarizations observed in users. As no hierarchical structure can control a process that does not coincide with its own schemes of demarcation and classification, the result is a re-articulation of the very network based on a kind of imperfect semantics that is strange to heuristic and linguistic models of analysis. Peering into the core of this imperfect semantics, derived from a bottom-up construction of data, we discover processes of tag mash-up and syndication that characterize the projective and unforeseeable collective mass actions of communities in the net. Considering both, the social matrix that moves peoples aims and the social dimension of information, the problem is to define how these new kinds of practices inside the Web can be integrated and what kind of results and possibilities may appear. The social role of information relates to the decoding of links, deals, bonds and contaminations between different layers of knowledge involved in everyday life. Social attitudes, capacities and behaviours are contextualized in analogical scenarios that constitute the space of everydays life. The analogical scenario has its proper scale and features. However, when the cyberspaces scale is introduced in this scenario a hybrid, or augmented, reality is formed. As a consequence of this change, an impact is produced and a clash of scales and features appears. Along with this impact come a change in perception and a resistance. The clashing of these two scenarios and scales makes it necessary to focus on the space between both kinds of layers of these scenarios: the analogical and the digital layer, distinguished by the two worlds of physical life and Web life. The boundaries of these layers are not clearly defined; there is a sort of space between them. In this space the process of sharing information, knowledge, and practices is considered as a process of transition, or passage, between two different dimensions. We claim that this space in-between opens a new door to the field of design. By exploring the space between these two different and interrelated scenarios design could find frameworks of intervention, not only to help eliminate the blind spots and the missteps that the transition through this space generates, but also to develop tools and systems to empower users. If the users will is to access and collectively create knowledge, one of designs roles could be to offer guidelines and indications in relation to digital environments, shared systems of information and development of cybrid devices and interfaces.

FORMS OF BOTTOM-UP ANALOGICAL DESIGN APPLIED TO CYBRID DESIGN

The contribution of design in relation to knowledge sharing becomes fundamental when it comes to creating an organized and structured grid of contents. But, we wonder, how design could reflect a bottom-up perspective of knowledge management in which users become designers and express their own rules and paradigms to manage information? Behind this consideration there is an epistemological problem. We should admit that we need a theory of knowledge to understand how society builds knowledge by means of bottom-up and democratic processes of design. In order to develop this theory we suggest that in the electronic society of knowledge in which we are immersed it is essential to turn our attention to pre-disciplinary forms of design that can shed light on our connective trials of electronic knowledge generation. Lets explore some of these predisciplinary forms of design that appear in the fields of breadmaking and construction of words. Next we will try to learn from both experiences of historical design and apply them to the field of cybrid design. The bread-matrix as a reference for the semantic Web We can start from a simple and metaphorical example: bread making. Bread is a thousand-year product of design, a model of bottom-up design present across time and space. Bread is a kind of food matrix or model that adapts to social tastes and is actualized according to the technological stages and resources of each epoch. The bread-matrix is the result of a collective process in assembling intelligences focused towards a common aim. Each culture adapts that abstract bread-matrix to its own needs, material resources, specificities and culturally determined tastes. Bread is design without designers, or at least without authorship, without intellectual property or patent. It is a worlds popular patrimony. However, bread is not a homogenized, standardized, unique product that serves everybody. Bread, as a cultural matrix, remains in a kind of abstract form that is actualized and customized each time in different shapes made anywhere in the world. But none of these forms overrides the other possibilities of bread making. Thinking in a Web-based grid, bread-making is not a wiki process, nor a constant research for a state-of-theart result: it is a pre-disciplinary field of historically determined shared knowledge. The processes of knowledge generation in the society of knowledge, favoured by the semantic Web, can be compared to the bottom-up experience of design that guided bread making. The same democratic character shows up as an attitude towards fixed design strategies. We are not used to the immense quantity of data to which we are submitted in the society of knowledge. We are deeply in need of signposts, and in search of sensitive ways to help manage data that is meaningful to us. In a similar way as what happens to bread, that can be considered as a food and diet abstract matrix, words are abstract models that each person actualizes in each situation. The historical matrix of words Words are historically and culturally generated matrixes that gain meaning in socially shared contexts. The generation of the meaning in the case of each word is an actualization of abstract matrixes in emotional, political, rational, highly charged contexts. In these contexts there is no possibility of existence of

a unique sense: according to Donald each word is an invention, a representation, the resulting map of a cultural consensus by means of which cultures build meaning [6]. Words are in most cases a product of a kind of bottom-up social design in which cultures were designers. The social actualization of words is the key to understand meaning in each historical context. Breads and words are two kinds of food, for body and for intellectual and emotional communication. In both, the same kind of generative process is present. Tags: Words in search of an ephemeral identity Words inhabit a hybrid space between their configuration as abstract matrixes and actualized meanings in each circumstance. This hybrid space is simultaneously synchronic and diachronic. Words emerge from complexity pools, as salt flowers emerge in a pool of salt water. Their emergent ephemeral identities are the building particles of electronic meaning in the semantic Web. In this form of building up knowledge, words, not text, are the stars with which we form constellations of meaning and forms of cyber design. The interval is constituted by the difference between their identity as abstracts matrixes and actualized forms of updown, social knowledge. The interval is the hybrid space in which words live as tags. So, we can define a tag as the unstable and emergent stage of a word in constant search for identity. It is a kind of cyber design of the words identity. We can render visible words ephemeral identities as meaning by means of cybrid design. Cybrid Design: cyber + hybrid design Cybrid design represents a first step to cover all the aspect of relations and interactions in the space between. The concept of Cybrid Design comes from the mother-concept of Cyber design [7], and can be understood as design that combines analogical and digital media, or augmented reality. In augmented reality both the virtual and the analogical domains are present and collaborate to augment either the virtual or the analogical dimensions of reality. That is a hybrid situation in which a physical object is connected to the virtual reality: a wired-object, a cybrid object of design. A wired-object is a hyper-node, an interface to the virtual dimension of the object, its electronic margin. We coined the concept to work with this virtual dimension1: the electronic margin is the virtual place where all the benefits of Internet and of multimedia contents can be managed and customized in relation to the Web dynamics. For instance, these benefits, inscribed in the products electronic margin as information and knowledge, can be either about the very object (its process of fabrication, certificates of quality, multimedia files, etc) or about the social or personal data that the objects owner wants to add to the electronic margin. So a wired-object can include professional files, personal and professional information, multimedia contents and so on. The process of wiring product is a method to establish a bridge between the digital and the analogical dimensions of the product, enabling people to access digital information through hi-tech devices and special codes (wired-codes) that connect real world with the virtual context. In this sense, the electronic

Electronic Margin is a concept that is linked to the system WiredBook & Electronic Margin, that is being developed by the authors since 2007.

margin is the virtual treasure of an object, which can be achieved directly from the object. Wired objects and augmented realities

the most of the power of social networks by inscribing the paper text in the context of connected intelligence and sharing of online knowledge. 5 CONCLUSION: TOWARDS DEMOCRATIC DESIGN, A NEW STEP FOR INTERACTIVITY

The first step implied in this design approach, based on wiredobjects, offers an answer to two important questions in relation to bottom-up knowledge management, (a) which is the role of design and, (b) which is the role of users, understood as designers, in relation to shared knowledge. Wired processes add to technological convergence, unifying the cognitive structure and organization of information in a hypertinent way, completing the cycle of information between two dimensions: the material and the electronic/virtual. The same processes, adding fluidity and real time-ness to objects of design, produce augmented objects of design, augmented realities. The creation a wired-object starts by the tagging of a physical object, or a text on paper. This first phase is carried out by putting in the object or text an evolved barcode (wcode or wired-code), that can be read by personal mobile technologies. The second phase is to explore the Electronic Margin using a personal mobile device (mobile phones, PSP, etc., provided with a wcode a reader). Users can explore the Electronic Margin to access the resources that relate to the object and to add personal files and data. In doing so, users either can add or browse texts, links, notes, comments, files and media, publishing them directly in the platform, by means of open tools, and without any pre-defined ontological or semantic structure. Apparently, this process is common to many platforms, starting from the most famous: wiki. However, the difference between a wired system and a wiki system rests on the fact that no data replaces previously added data. New data enriches the electronic margin but does not take the place of existing data. A palimpsest of collectively shared layers of contents emerges. This design approach prepares only the initial structure of the whole system: design offers only the space for the kickoff of knowledge management but knowledge emerges as a result of collective contributions of users. Connecting paper texts and any printed material or object to the Webs digital environment in the Web is a powerful strategy to improve bottom-up knowledge. This implies wiring books, labels, objects, etc. In the case of wired-books there is a transformation of the experience of reading from a one-way process into a multiple-way process that adds synaesthesia, multi-sensoriality and spatiality to the experience of reading on paper (depth, volume, texture, movement, etc.). It implies a substitution of the idea of text on paper, understood as final product, by the idea of discovering and building by yourself, an opportunity to transform the reading on paper in a lively process that breaks the fixity and linearity of texts, contextualizes reading, contributes to build the eimaginary of texts and increases the immediacy of lecture. The integration of the paper and electronic dimensions of a text brings the paper text closer to the way our minds think. Wiring a text means to empower the reader: the text becomes a reader-directed product. It also enables alternative shared readings and interpretations obtained directly from a paper text in real time. It is a system that favours the externalization of personal internalized reading [8], thought processes and shared consciousness. Apart from that, a wired-text adds to technological convergence, in different ways: it links the analogical and electronic dimensions of technology and it also helps to increase the scope of use of other technologies. It is a system that makes

Democratic design implies a deep change in the way we consider interactivity. If we want to be consistent, democratizing mechanisms should be considered at the first phases of design making. Design has the possibility to establish a new projects rhetoric in order to create a dialogue between the social and the technical tissue, and this means not only to produce tools or systems to support new scenarios of sustainable models, but also to open new doors and supports for online interactive knowledge. In synthesis, we can find almost two different and complementary roles for design in the electronic era in relation to the space in-between: (1) design as a cultural mediator, a bridge to build the gap between the analogical and digital dimensions of reality (design of wired-texts, wired-objects, wired-environments, etc.), and (2) design as a matrix that emerges when users create his-her own knowledge path in the Web. REFERENCES [1] T. Berners Lee, 2002, Weaving the Web: Origins and Future of the World Wide Web, Britain: Orion Business, 2002. [2] J. Davies, R. Studer and P. Warren, Semantic Web Technologies. Trends and Research in Ontology-based Systems, Chichester: Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 58. [3] S. Nirenburg and V. Raskin, Ontological Semantics, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004, pp. 353-8. [4] D. Tapscott and A.D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, New York: Portfolio, 2006, p. 41. [5] P. Lvy, L'intelligence collective: pour une antropologie du cyberspace, Paris: La Decouverte, 1994, p. 122. [6] M. Donald, A Mind so Rare, New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. [7] D. de Kerckhove, Lintelligenza connettiva. Lavvento della Web Society, Roma: Aurelio De Laurentis Multimedia, 1999. [8] D. de Kerckhove, La Piel de la cultura, Barcelona: Gedisa, 1995