in an iPod world

video clips shown in class

Web 2.0 - This shows how web 2.0 is working.


This shows how 2D bar code work to bring digital and physical reality together.

This shows an implementation of augmented reality using iPhone.

building 3D model of Rome from Flickr tourists photos

free from judgement

We spend an enormous amount of energy making up our minds about other people. Not a day goes by without somebody doing or saying something that evokes in us the need to form an opinion about him or her. We hear a lot, see a lot, and know a lot. The feeling that we have to sort it all out in our minds and make judgments about it can be quite oppressive.

The desert fathers said that judging others is a heavy burden, while being judged by others is a light one. Once we can let go of our need to judge others, we will experience an immense inner freedom. Once we are free from judging, we will be also free for mercy. Let’s remember Jesus’ words: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged” (Matthew 7:1).

Henri Nouwen

Reflection on Reshaping Boundary: Art, Design, and Management Workshop

Last two days were quite exciting. I was facilitating Reshaping Boundary Workshop, together with Lucy Kimbell who was the primary designer of the workshop. The idea was originally conceived by Fred Collopy as an on-going design inquiry of new way of new way of engaging design and management. While we were somewhat nervous the day before the workshop, it turned out to be better than anyone of us expected. Detailed design and careful preparation of materials and space paid off. What bound participants together, however, I believe was a certain sense of shared purpose, destiny, and urgency.

The idea behind the workshop was the movement between stakeholder experience and the invisible structure that generates that experience. The participants were given a persona of a stakeholder and asked to start from the reflection of their current image to the imagination of the future. The first day ended with a 2D sketch of the future experience and structure.

Digitalization in a post-professional world

I gave a very brief talk at Case Western Reserve University as a provocation at Reshaping Boundary: Art, Design, and Management workshop. Many of the ideas that I have discussed through my blog earlier.
Digitalization in a post-professional society

View more presentations from Youngjin Yoo.

TED Video by John Lloyd

This morning, as I was running on the treadmill, I watched a TED clip by John Lloyd. He talks about importance of things that cannot be seen. Watch it and enjoy. Very funny and clever.

He ends with two really great quotes. "I don't know why we are here, but I am pretty sure it's not in order to enjoy ourselves." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein.

"We are here on earth to help others. What others are here for... I have no idea." -- WH Auden.

re-imgainging as an act of design

As I am re-reading Designing Design for my class, I came to the following passage from the first chapter, What is Design?, of the book.

Today's designers are beginning to realize that endless possibilities for design lie dormant not just in the new situations brought on by technology, but also in the common circumstances of our daily lives. Creation of novel things is not the only creativity. The sensibility that allows one to rediscover the unknown in the familiar is equally creative. We hold a great accumulation of culture in our own hands, yet we remain unaware of its value. The ability to make use of these cultural assets as a virgin resource is no less creative than the ability to produce something out of nothing. Beneath our feet lies a gigantic, untouched vein of ore. Just as simply donning sunglasses makes the world look fresher to us, there is an unlimited number of ways of looking at things, and most of them haven't been discovered yet. To awaken and activate those new ways of perceiving things is to enrich our cognitive faculty, and this relates to the enrichment of the relationship between objects and human beings. Design is not the act of amazing an audience with the novelty of forms or materials; it is the originality that repeatedly extracts astounding ideas from the crevices of the very commonness of everyday life. Designers who have inherited the legacy of modernism and shoulder the new century have gradually begun to explore their consciousness of that fact.

Well said.

scientific writing

Yesterday, I re-twitted @markwhiting who wrote, "So many academic papers should not have been published." Several people commented that they liked the posting. This made me think about scientific writing and its value in the society. What I do for my living is scientific writing. I do research in order to write. I communicate my findings through writing and teaching. People often listen to what I have to say, read what I write, and even pay me for what I am doing (perhaps for what I know).

When one looks at the history of science, it is very clear that the science occupies a very special place in the discourse in our society. We -- those who do academic (or scientific) writing -- are given a privileged voice in the contemporary society. Just as in the medieval age when priests could invoke the name of God in order to settle disputes, we can say to laypeople "in the name of science". People do listen to what we say and what we write, not because of who we are and what we do, but because we draw on the authority of science in saying what we say. In the same way that priests had certain aura of authority in the past, "scientists" in today's have certain sense of authority in all aspects of life. From N1H1 virus, to the design of new airplane that needs to be tested, to the safety of cereals we eat in the morning, to the forensic evidence used to convict someone as a murderer, science often has the last word.

Yet, precisely what is it that we do as science remain largely mysterious to many people. Popper's notion of falsification as the basis of science in this sense is very important and intriguing in this context. Reacting to the predominance of logical positivism, Popper begins with the limitations of empiricism and the logic of induction (particularly the issue of universal knowledge). Thus, the idea of falsification denies the complete "knowability" of Truth (with a big T), pointing out all human scientific knowledge is temporary and falsifiable. So, unlike other forms of claim, scientific claim acknowledges its limit and use it as the basis of its value. The very fact that it can be falsified creates never-ending opportunity to advance humanity into the domain where we've never been to.

So, coming back to my tweet and my own sense of value of what I do, what I do is valuable not only because I am right, but also because I know and acknowledge that I can be wrong. In that sense, science can never replace religion or old tradition, which gained their power precisely out ofunshakable commitment to believe that they are right. Of course, I see many scientists today who think their values are based on what they know to be right, which makes them no more than contemporary equivalent of shamans. And, I see lots of them.

Sunday Posting

Each Sunday, I will post some texts that touch my heart and move my soul. Today, it is from the Book of Jeremiah -- an ancient Jewish prophet who predicted the desolation of Jerusalem and Judah Kingdom.

"But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."

Yes, there are seasons of heat and drought. But, there is a hope beyond what we can see with our naked eyes. We just need to close our eyes.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Think again when you take shower next time

There are some things it is better just not to think about. Like the 10,000 bacteria you inhale with each breath in the average office building. Or the 10 million bacteria in each glass of tap water. Microbiologists have now added something else to the list of things too gross to contemplate: the deluge of bacteria that hit your face and flow deep into your lungs in the morning shower.

via www.nytimes.com

The solution? Run the water at least 30 seconds before you step into the shower. I also wonder how many bacteria leave on the shower curtain at my gym...