The Playpower Foundation seeks to improve education around the world by using $12 “TV-Computers” as a platform for radically affordable learning games that can teach skills like math, grammar, typing, critical thinking, computer programming, and more.

A TV-Computer uses a TV as a display, has a full keyboard, mouse, and game controllers, but retails for only US$12.  This price point is possible because the computer is based on a famous 8-bit processor that is now in the public domain, due to expired patents.

Our goal is to produce a suite of 8-bit learning games target at the 130 million households in the emerging middle classes of developing countries.  We are working with educators, cognitive scientists, anthropologists, designers, hackers, programmers, manufacturers and distributors in order to reach 30 million children in the next 5 years through our scientifically developed and radically affordable computer-aided learning games.

Four 8′x2′x2′ white columns were seeded with identical images and text and then placed in four different neighborhoods around San Jose for exactly 24 hours. Unprompted, passersby filled up each column with graffiti, thereby capturing an impression of the “psychogeography” of the area into which it was placed.

Following these exposures, the columns were exhibited together at the ISEA arts festival in San Jose, 2006. The columns are currently housed in the Social Movement Laboratory

Lomas, D (2008) Attentional Capital and the Ecology of Online Social Networks. In M. Tovey (Ed.), Collective Intelligence, (pp 163-172) Oakton: EIN Press

First implemented in June 2007, student teams wandered the UCSD campus with a GPS-enabled phone. When these groups would pass through particular areas, they would receive a ‘buzz’ followed by a repeating voice file. This voice instructed the participants to engage in a particular “anti-normal” activity: anything from conversing in a trash can to reading a book while lying in a parking space. Teams documented their own behavior, and the teams with the best photos overall won the round of “Anti-Normalizer.

The Anti-Normalizer program was developed in J2ME as a collaboration between the Social Architectures course taught by Derek Lomas and the Mobile Phone Programming Course taught by Brett Stallbaum

News Coverage from: The Economic Times of India

Design for Development: Developing Technologies for Developing Economie

Design for Development: Developing Technologies for Developing Economies was an experimental UCSD course taught remotely from India, via Skype. 20 students from multiple disciplines explored the effects of technology on social change by generating numerous case studies and several prototypes. Guest Lecturers from India were organized to speak to the students; these included individuals from various organizations, from the World Bank to Microsoft Research.

This class sought to connect UCSD students to the problems and the potential found within the developing economies of the world. Through an innovative syllabus and class structure, “Design for Development” provided students the opportunity to prototype sophisticated technologies for social change. This class extended the interventionist design discourse of Social Architectures (Spring 2007) to the perceived needs of the developing world.

Remote Pedagogy: This class was taught from India through a variety of contemporary web-technologies. While it might initially seem like an undesirable challenge teaching a class at UC San Diego from Mumbai, India, the pedagogical opportunities were substantial. While contemporary technology has only recently reached a point where classes could be taught remotely, rarely is there a reason why classes should be taught from afar. This subject material required students to develop a tightly knit understanding and empathy for the realities of the developing world. By conducting this class remotely, my role extended from a lecturer to a informational agent in the field. Secondly, distance education itself is a technology that is being widely considered for its potential to enhance the knowledge capital of developing economies. As students negotiated the technologically mediated educational experience, they had the opportunity to critique (and potentially improve) distance education. Finally, through the enactment of this class, we generated new institutional knowledge about distance education and tele-presence, hopefully facilitating future remote educational opportunities

This class sought to:
…to facilitate an interdisciplinary discourse on the relationship between design, technology and social change

…to generate design methodologies for successfully introducing beneficial new technologies within developing countries

…to cultivate an understanding of economic, cultural, and environmental sustainability

…to ensure that student assignments act as public resources through our class wiki

…to develop new strategies for remote teaching

…to promote peer learning and interdisciplinary collaboration

…to provide first-hand documentation of conditions within developing countries, in order to enhance the empathy and understanding held by students, during our remote design process

Social Architectures, taught by Derek Lomas in 2007, led 20 students in the production of 10 architectural interventions that were designed to induce observable social change. This seminar was grounded in a literature drawing from art, architecture, cognitive science, sociology, and urban planning. This course was the recipient of a $5000 Open Classroom Challenge Grant from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA).

The course information and documentation is available at www.socialarchitectures.com

The Labyrinth’s walls and passages manipulate and amplify the phenomenas of light, shadow, sound and space resonating within UCSD’s man-made eucalyptus landscape. The intervention injects a sense of play and wonder to a physical landscape devoid of ecological diversity and an institution devoid of social interaction.

Much of UCSD’s landscape and architecture are composed of vacant antiseptic spaces that result in a fractured, dysfunctional social body. The Labyrinth resuscitates and defines its specific space with a series of labyrinthine passages woven through the grove’s grid. It co-opts and adapts to this underlying blueprint and underscores the inherent contradictions present at its core: the creation of a man-made space that mimics one developed over centuries and the questionable failure to include diversity in the structural, landscape and social design of UCSD.

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topography (tə-pŏg’rə-fē) –noun, plural -phies.

The three-dimensional arrangement of physical attributes (such as shape, height, and depth) of a land surface in a place or region. Physical features that make up the topography of an area include mountains, valleys, plains, and bodies of water. Human-made features such as roads, railroads, and landfills are also often considered part of a region’s topography.
- American Heritage Science Dictionary

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Presented by Marko Manriquez, Shawn Yourd, and Marjory Loh in conjunction with Derek Lomas of Social Architectures.

Labyrinth manifesto and statement co-authored by Marko Manriquez and Akemi Hong.

Special thanks to Derek Lomas, Todd Pittman, UCSD Media Teaching Lab and Sixth College.

Original concept by Marko Manriquez.

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