Digital Hinterlands features a diverse range of work by some of the best recent architecture graduates from London’s Architectural Association, Bartlett , Royal College of Art, and University of Westminster. Curated by Ruairi Glynn in consultation with Arup, this exhibition revealed how the latest computational design and rapid manufacturing processes are providing new ways of understanding and designing space. From built models, 1:1 fragments, material experiments and installations, to interactive devices, virtual worlds and robotics, the exhibition presented the ideas of a wave of young designers, operating on the speculative hinterlands of architectural design.

Openframeworks is a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation.

The library is designed to work as a general purpose glue, and wraps together several commonly used libraries under a tidy interface: openGL for graphics, rtAudio for audio input and output, freeType for fonts, freeImage for image input and output, quicktime for video playing and sequence grabbing.

The code is written to be both cross platform (PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone) and cross compiler. The API is designed to be minimal and easy to grasp. There are very few classes, and inside of those classes, there are very few functions. The code has been implemented so that within the classes there are minimal cross-referening, making it quite easy to rip out and reuse and/or extend.

made with openFrameworks from openFrameworks on Vimeo.

Steve Jobs has openly criticised Adobe Flash in his highly critical and public post on the Apple.com site. This is a must read. You can read it here.

Tablet mock-ups: Glen Murphy/Google

The UK government forced through the controversial digital economy bill with the aid of the Conservative party on the evening of 8 April. This meant it would get royal assent and become law – after just two hours of debate in the Commons. The digital bill is a clunking, medieval assortment of ill-informed and manipulative clauses. It fails abysmally to distinguish between civil and criminal law, property and monopoly rights. Below is a wonderfully articulate, succinct and educated letter, written by a UK resident congratulating one of the few MPs who did actually attend parliament to hear the reading of the bill and highlights the failings of the bill – most MPs ignored it of failed to attend. Quote below from Cameron Neylon.

‘Dear Don Foster,

I am writing firstly to commend you for your attendance at the Digital Economy Bill Second Reading last night. I was one of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people watching the reading unfold on Twitter. By now perhaps some MPs and party strategists are digesting what happened but I wished to pick out a few things that seemed particularly relevant, particularly in the context of a general election.

This was the first real exposure of many of those watching to the internal functioning of the house. A large community of highly engaged people motivated to either watch, listen, or follow blow by blow descriptions of exactly how the debate proceeded. The almost universal reaction was one of abject horror.

Representative democracy bases its existence on the assumption that the full community can not be effectively involved in an informed and considered criticism of proposed bills and that it is therefore of value to both place some buffer between raw, and probably ill informed public opinion, and actual decision making. This presumes that MPs, particularly party spokespersons take the time to become expert on the matter of bills they represent. By contrast what we saw last night was a minute by minute dissection by well informed people outside of parliament of what, with a small number of honourable exceptions, totally uninformed people within parliament were saying.

The placement of copyright infringement alongside theft (Afriye, Timms, Wishart) displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the UK legal system, and particularly the distinction between civil and criminal law, property and monopoly rights. Not things that are well understood by the public but things that the public have a right to expect parliamentarians to educate themselves about as they go to the heart of what the bill is about. These points were dissected and rebutted instantly online only to be repeated uncritically in the house.

The idea that the bill has any chance at all of reducing illegal filesharing by 70% is laughable, as is the idea that “technical measures” can protect public WIFI against unfair take down notices. Finally the notion that the “creative industries” are suffering when they have taken record profits are their own research shows that illegal file sharers are their biggest customer needs to be put to parliament.

But the UK’s real creative industry were those on Twitter last night. The people whose livelihood depends on a free and working internet, who work as sole traders or in small companies. The people who will create the media of the 21st century. The people who will bring the UK out of recession. They were out in force last night and while we disagree passionately about the details of copyright and intellectual property rights and how they should be best applied, there was one voice united in the wish that the Digital Economy Bill in its current form be buried.

Particular horror was reserved online for those MPs who stated clearly that the process of the bills progress was unacceptable. That something so important has had such little scrutiny and that something so controversial has been placed in the wash-up process. Member after member stood up to say the bill and its progress was flawed, dangerous, and “appalling” but they would nonetheless “reluctantly” support it.

Finally I would note that, while you were present, the lack of other Liberal Democrats in the house was noted. This is a natural constituency for your party. Indeed Bath has a vibrant technology community as you are no doubt aware. I hope your party strategists have seen the damage that was done last night and I hope they draw the logical conclusion. If the Liberal Democrats turn out in force tonight and bury this bill at the third reading then it will make a difference to your electoral results. If you want a hung parliament, this is the way to get it.

Yours sincerely,

Cameron Neylon

p.s. I will be posting this letter publicly on my blog at http://cameronneylon.net Please feel free to reply or comment there. I hope you will give me permission to publish any other reply you make in a similar form.’

Wired magazine have fascinating video clips from the 2010 CES [consumer electronics show]  of a superb working example of the evolving 3D printing technology. The basic 3D-printer shown – MakerBot’s Cupcake CNC – is priced at the low $750.00.

Did You Know 4.0?” has now been created for the Economist’s Media Convergence forum in October:

The original ‘Shift Happens‘ presentation by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman was turned into a video and uploaded to YouTube in June 2007. The video was then remixed and became a serious YouTube hit called ‘Did You Know?‘ and attracted over 6.5m views.

Intel’s latest campaign celebrates Geek’dom and Tech’head culture. This appeals to me – I take pride in being a geek – and although the wider audience may not immediately recognise the achievements of the ‘rock star’ engineers – and OK, the ‘rock star’ comparison is tired, and actually, are ‘rock stars’ cool anymore?  –  the overall treatment focuses on the Intel folks’ talent; their pride and their immersion in what they do -  this is communicated to everyone.

Back in the 1960s, there was no better way for a larval engineer or scientist to stand out from those pursuing more mushy majors than swaggering around with a fancy slide rule in a spiffy leather holster dangling from their belt.