Design with Intent

Mosquito controversy goes high-profile

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 13, 2008 ⋅ 10 comments

The Mosquito anti-teenager sound device, which we’ve covered on this site a few times, was yesterday heavily criticised by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, launching the BUZZ OFF campaign in conjunction with Liberty and the National Youth Agency:
Makers and users of ultra-sonic dispersal devices are being told to “Buzz Off” today [...]

‘Secret alarm becomes dance track’

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 28, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

The Mosquito sound has been mixed (sort of) into a dance track:
“…the sound is being used in a dance track, Buzzin’, with secret melodies only young ears can hear.
…
Simon Morris from Compound Security said: “Following the success of the ringtone, a lot of people were asking us to do a bit more, so we [...]

BoingBoing podcast – direct link

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 19, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Here’s the direct link for that new BoingBoing podcast – www.archive.org/download/…/boingboingboing_1_64kb.mp3 .
BB were almost the last people I’d expect to wrap up their audio in a Flash interface! Still, ‘View Source’ is a lot easier than having to use a Flash decompiler to extract the link.
Maybe an OGG version will be available for the next [...]

Some links: miscellaneous, pertinent to architectures of control

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 1, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Ulises Mejias on ‘Confinement, Education and the Control Society’ – fascinating commentary on Deleuze’s societies of control and how the instant communication and ‘life-long learning’ potential (and, I guess, everyware) of the internet age may facilitate control and repression:
“This is the paradox of social media that has been bothering me lately: an ‘empowering’ media that [...]

Spiked: When did ‘hanging around’ become a social problem?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 30, 2006 ⋅ One comment

Josie Appleton, at the always-interesting Spiked, takes a look at the increasing systemic hostility towards ‘young people in public places’ in the UK: ‘When did ‘hanging around’ become a social problem?’
As well as the Mosquito, much covered on this site (all posts; try out high frequency sounds for yourself), the article mentions the use [...]

Use of RFID in DRM

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 22, 2006 ⋅ One comment

Via Dave Farber’s Interesting People, a brief New Scientist article outlines Sony’s continuing obsession with restricting and controlling its customers (the last one didn’t go too well):
“A patent filed by Sony last week suggests it may once again be considering preventing consumers making “too many” back-up copies of its CDs…
Sony’s latest idea is to place [...]

‘Labels on digital content should spell out how easy it is to move from gadget to gadget’

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 5, 2006 ⋅ 2 comments

A warning label mockup*
The BBC is reporting that the All Party Internet Group (APIG), a cross-party group of MPs, has made some intelligent – and interesting – recommendations about explaining DRM more fully to consumers:
“The MPs’ report made several recommendations and called on the Office of Fair Trading hasten the introduction of labelling [...]

High frequency wave files back up again

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 31, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

They’re back up (well, the wave files anyway), thanks to the Internet Archive.

ZDNet: DRM train wrecks

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 31, 2006 ⋅ One comment

ZDNet’s David Berlind has started to compile a Del.icio.us list of examples of ‘DRM train wrecks’, i.e. situations where the use of DRM has a distasteful corollary for consumers unaware of what they’re getting themselves into.
“Most people don’t realize how much they’re giving up when they consciously or sub-consciously use solutions that depend on [DRM]. [...]

High frequency ringtone download

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 25, 2006 ⋅ 54 comments

High frequencies being tested in the urban badlands: see, no teenagers here!
A lot of people find this site through searching for something along the lines of ‘Mosquito high frequency anti-teenager ringtone’, and are presumably disappointed when they find that there is no such ringtone to download, even if just because they’d like to test it [...]

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