GeoBlog Report

CONTENTS
Project Description.................................................................................................... .......2

Project Background.............................................................................................. ............4
Description of System Components...............................................................................10
Description of System Components –Access Rights and Profile Generation..................11
Description of System Components –Content Contribution and Digital
Annotation/Description of the Contributed Content.......................................................17
Digital Annotation of Space – Attaching Digital Content to Physical Locale, Digital
Annotation of Space....................................................................................................... 27
Digital Annotation of Space – Geotaggable Space and Dimensionality..........................45
Description of System Components – Location-based Retrieval of Contributed Digital
Content............................................................................................................. .............59
Geo-Blog Technical Implementation – Geographic Description of Space.......................61
Data Tables – Description of Data sets and Relations....................................................65
GEOblog - Future Directions - Adoptability and Expansion............................................78
GEOblog – Future Directions - Improvement of Locationing functionality......................82
GEOblog – Future Directions – Further Enhancement of User Experience, Benefiting
from the Implemented technological platform...............................................................84
GEOblog – Future Directions – Cross Platform Deployablity of the System....................91
Moving Forward - Post-Implimentation Longitudinal User-Study...................................92
Appendix A- Post-implementation User Study-Online Questionnaire...........................100
Appendix B - Post-implementation User Study-Geo-tagging Experiment Using Zone Tool
to Associate Digital content to Physical Localities.......................................................113
1 |G E O - B L O G REPORT
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
GEOblog is a web-based platform that allows people to annotate the space, through geo-tagging and
sharing user generated content or, in other words, placing digital content over spatial zones that can be
retrieved by others based on their real-time sensed location by the system. The platform has been
implemented for MIT campus and is open to MIT community for the content contribution part and open to
general public as a location-sensitive content retrieval/viewing online service.
GEOblog has been developed in MIT SENSEable City Lab. It builds on previous research projects at the lab
focused on providing location-based services on MIT campus. The MIT campus is unique in that over 4000
Wi-Fi access points were installed throughout it (for comparison, city-wide Wi-Fi systems often have
hundreds). This allows Wi-Fi-enabled devices to calculate their location to a high degree of accuracy
(several feet) indoors without as opposed to GPS locationing system that do not work indoors or anywhere
that there is no clear view of the sky.
As an architect/urban designer both by education and profession, I got involved in the project at its initial
conceptual design phase, and in close collaboration with a programmer, I tried to implement a set of
criteria - devised through my theoretical inquiry into techniques of conceptualization, design,
representation and implementation of interactive spaces and responsive environments - in the design of
the interaction scenarios that to my mind can enhance the spatial perception of the individuals that are
occupying the digitally augmented space.
GEOblog offers the MIT community and campus visitors the distinguishing potentials for creating and
benefiting from a grasping sense of place, social capital, and collaborative content generation in the form
of geo-tagged digital narratives which will result in establishment of a dynamic and democratic public
sphere , allowing users to explore the campus as a spatial collaborative blog open to personal stories, self-
expressions, and shared memories, showcasing the institute's unique and pervasive system of wireless
technologies as well as institute's invaluable culture of collaboration, communication, companionship and
compassion...
Aside from added value of over laying a digital spatial narrative and enhancement of spatial perception of
the individuals who use the platform to contribute their stories or retrieve others, the follow-up analysis of
how the system is perceived and received by the community can help to study patterns of inhabitation of
the physical space and its relation to the manner that the augmented digital layer is populated through
time. Also, how the digital augmentation of space is perceived by individuals that occupy that space and
how it can change the meaning of location, spatial zones and their boundary conditions as well as concept
of temporality in the mind of these individuals?
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Initially proposed by the MIT Museum, the project was conceptualized as a location-based storytelling
research project called Museum Without Walls (MWOW). The original idea was that in a period that is
hyped with enthusiasm for geographic information systems and electronic devices, from MapQuest and
Google Earth to GPS locationing technology, “there is an extraordinary interest in the ways locative
technologies can link digital information to the physical world. Just as a museum curator puts a label next
to an artifact on display in order to help tell a story, the new technologies allow for similar sorts of tagging
of the spaces outside the gallery walls.” 1 If implemented, the platform would “provide a new model for
cultural exchange about science and society.”2
The project proposed a system for a “rich repository of digital information and stories(indexed by location,
time and thematically) “ offered by institute itself or created by individuals under close supervision of an
institutional editorial board that can then be placed over or attached to different spatial content holders all
around the campus and could be retrieved by those whose location was being sensed in real-time by the
implemented location-sensing component of the project.
The project had a focus on "in situ", or in place experience of a digital narrative whose various
components were attached to different locations on the campus, whereas the individual could retrieve
them while physically present within a specific place with a hand-held device that through location sensing
technology is aware of its real-time location and as a result of the location of the individual that is holding
the device.
As far as the location sensing technology was concerned, while acknowledging the shortcomings of GPS
based location sensing systems that only work outdoors and also experience a drastic decrease in level of
their accuracy of determining the real-time location of mobile entities carrying a GPS-enabled device in
built areas with high density, the project proposed the use of Wi-Fi base location sensing system for indoor
parts of the campus to expand the location-sensitivity of the system to indoors as well as outdoors. The
1
May 3, 2006 version of Project Overview, retrieved from http://museum.mit.edu/mwow/files/handouts/2006-05-03-
project-overview.pdf/view
2
Ibid.
4 |G E O - B L O G R E P O R T
initial idea was to have a Wi-Fi-enabled hand held device to monitor which Wi-Fi access points it is using to
get access to wireless internet network of the campus and then based on triangulation of space, where as
the geographical location of all the access nodes and the signal strength of the available ones are known
to the system, allow the device to calculate its real-time location and retrieve available content for that
location.
In the project brief different functionalities of the system were illustrated by the graphic below as,
“Contribute—Store—Experience.”
* The project major components of the system as

introduced and visualized in the project brief
In its initial concept, the proposing party – MIT Museum – envisioned the content storing part of the project
as being handled on remote content servers that the Wi-Fi-enabled digital device would send a request
based on its real-time location to retrieve the relevant content.
Also, the goal was to develop the location sensing service as a device-independent service that could run
both on hand-held devices and laptop computers. For content retrieving part, the project brief proposed
the functionality of “en situ” content retrieval based on real-time sensed location and also distant content
retrieval based on users interaction with on on-line map of the campus - best implemented example of
which is the additional functionality of Google map which enables the users to retrieve digital images
attached to different points of the map by double clicking the icon of the image on the map.
With such proposal on the table, MIT SenseAble City Lab was approached by the museum for further
design development and also implementation of a working prototype on a handheld device, as well as full-
scale implementation of the system campus wide as the final stage of the proposed project.
* Nokia N800 was the proposed hand-held device

for the initial working prototype
Nokia N800 was the hand held device, proposed for initial implementation of the prototype. This hand-held
device is able to connect to internet via Wi-Fi connection to retrieve content from distant servers, which
also enables it to calculate its real-time location based on signal strength of all the available Wi-Fi access
nodes given the fact that the geographical location of these access nodes are stored on a local file on the
device. It also has a touch screen that can augment the user-experience with easy to initiate screen-based
user input.
MIT SenseAble City Lab was approached by MIT Museum at a time that a platform for location sensing over
Wi-Fi network was already implemented and in full operation. Called iFIND, the implemented platform “
would give all 20,000 members of the MIT community the ability to accurately calculate their location on
campus, using Wi-Fi access points, and to choose if, when and with whom they want to share it with.”3 With
almost 4,000 WiFi access points, which provide the wireless network all around the campus, the MIT
campus is one of the most densely networked areas in the world. In such a wired environment, “new social
issues emerge: How can you know where your friends are? How can you increase the chances of casual
3
“SENSEable City reveals 'friendspotting,' new MIT social networking form” retrieved from
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/ifind.html
encounters with classmates? How can meetings be more effectively coordinated, in real time?”4 With these
questions in mind the goal of the project was to “ allow friends to keep track of friends and increase
serendipitous connections,"5 “The developed platform was unique compared with similar applications, in
part because of the extreme precision of its positioning system. More significantly, iFIND was developed
with particular attention to privacy and data storage issues. There was no centralized storage of data, and
everything happened on encrypted peer-to-peer transmissions among users. “ and since the system was
device-centric, as oppose to network-centric, nobody could track one’s position unless he or she wanted
them to.
* Implimented interface for iFind by MIT SenseAble

City Lab
In initial discussions between the design team and their colleagues at MIT Museum, It was decided that
this approach towards location sensing which conceptualizes the function as such that is handled locally
and client side to provide a desired level of transparency/privacy to the users of the platform be adopted in
the new platform too. As a result, it was proposed that building on the already implemented technology for
iFind, a web-based software for Nokia N800 be implemented that calculates the real-time position of the
device locally and generates a request to a distant web-server based on the sensed-location to retrieve
relevant content placed in the vicinity of that location, whereas the digital content was provided by various
institutional entities entitled to do so by Massachusetts Institute of Technology or from a repository of
content contributed from members of MIT community that has been reviewed and/or edited by an
4
Ibid. quoting Carlo Ratti
5
Ibid.
appointed editorial board. It was also decided that for initial showcasing of the project, a digital guide tour
of the campus pertaining to the rich history of MIT student initiated hacks and pranks be prepared and
uploaded to the system as a jump start which would be followed by other thematic collections over time.
Hack-Track was described in its biref as follows:
“One of the unique aspects of student social life at MIT is the tradition of student hacks and
pranks. This practice has a long history. Student hacks draw great attention and depict a
cheerful character of the MIT student body, while the students subjected to hacks find
themselves faced with friendly, mostly harmless physical challenges. Conceptually, hacks
can be perceives as a collective, grassroots, social construct that binds the members of a
community – in this IT student body – to the urban setting – in this case the MIT Campus.
One of the interesting aspects of hacks is their temporary nature. Although they live on as
sweet memories shared by members of the community, their actual/physical
manifestations are removed after they are enjoyed by the community. How can the vivid
experience of witnessing these hacks be preserved and made accessible to visitors of the
MIT campus and members of its community? How can the ephemeral memory of the things
past reconcile with the fixity of the physical terrain that accommodated these past
occurrences? Throughout the years, MIT hacks have been intensively documented by both
students and the institute. We propose the development of a digital guided tour of the MIT
campus that will reveal the documented incidents of hacks throughout history to visitors
and members of the MIT community as they walk through out the campus. Visitors will use
a handheld device which could automatically retrieve content about the hacks that are
relevant to their location as they move.”
*Hack-Track proposal; the graphic that describes
the idea of a digital guided tour of the campus
which has a unified theme in this case MIT Hacks
and Pranks
Since MIT Museum houses an extensive collection of MIT hacks, collaboration was established between the
MIT SENSEable Lab and MIT Museum for the development of the project. In this partnership, the Lab’s main
role was the design and implementation of the technological aspects of the system and MIT Museum would
provide the digital content that would be shown throughout the campus.
The hope was to secure enough funding to build an MIT-wide “Meuseum WithOut Walls” system in time for
MIT's 150th anniversary in 2011. In order to do that MIT Museum had to have a firm commitment of
resources by early 2008. Unfortunately that did not happen and as a result MIT Museum decided not to go
ahead with the plan.
After the initial concept failed to survive financially, the project took a life of its own, transforming to an
open platform for digital augmentation of space based on contributions from all members of MIT
community. We called it Geo-Blog as in Geo-Localized platform for Blogging and this section is dedicated to
an overview of different stages of its design and development as well as a description of its different user-
interaction features and documentation of the technology that was implemented within the framework of
the mutated version of the project.
DESCRIPTION OF SYSTEM COMPONENTS
After intensive contemplation on different approaches that could be adopted in introducing functionalities
of system components, I decided to introduce the system from a user interaction point of view. As a result,
I am breaking the system to different aspects of user interaction and will try to provide description of each
aspect separately, explaining the concept behind the design, the factors that has been taken into
consideration of both conceptual design and implementation of each component as well as technical
specifications that actually made the described goal possible. At the end of each section I will also attend
to the question of possible ways to further improve the system functionality, or even add new components
or possible scenarios based on already implemented platform.
The user interaction can be broken down to two major categories of content contribution on one hand and
content retrieving on the other hand. Incorporation of a geographical information system consisting of geo-
localized floor plans of buildings on the campus is a part of both content contribution and content
retrieving since annotating the space through geo-tagging and attaching geographical information to a
piece of digital content and placing the content over specific spatial zones, exacts the existence of a
system that describes the space both in terms of the geometry of spatial phenomena as well as actual
geographical location of it. Location-sensing will be a sub-category under content retrieving since one
possible way of retrieving content is based on real-time sensed location of an individual that is physically
present in MIT campus premises and is willing to share his or her location with the system as the criteria to
be used in retrieving relevant content attached to the current location. With this description in mind the
structure of system components can be diagramed as follows:
DESCRIPTION OF SYSTEM COMPONENTS –ACCESS RIGHTS AND PROFILE GENERATION
The platform is only open to members of MIT community to contribute digital content. Although in the
mutated version of the project, the system is conceptualized as an open platform for contribution of user-
generated content without a preliminary editorial process to determine the appropriateness of the
contributed material, the concern for liability of individuals for what they are actually placing over digital
extension of a publicly shared space is still holding. A completely open system that does not have any
means of tracking who is responsible for placement of which content, or a top-down supervision of the
contributed material through censorship imposed by an institutionally appointed editorial board, can lead
to a social chaos since there is no way to hold individuals who are abusing the system by placing
inappropriate or offensive material on the digital extension of a publicly shared space like a university
campus, responsible for their actions. Thus, although the digitally augmented space hosts a democratic
spatial scenario, since the identity of an individual who is contributing a given piece of content is
transparent both for the fellow participants in form of a username chosen by the account holder and the
institution through track-ability of the MIT email account that the profile was generated using it, one is
automatically aware of the fact that although he is given the opportunity for un-censored self-expression,
he is still held responsible for his actions both by members of the community and the institution
authorities. I would call such system a controlled democracy, whereas individuals are free to express
themselves as long as their use of the provided freedom does not result in making a hostile or
uncomfortable environment for others, or violate their right to enjoy the digitally augmented, publicly
shared institutional space without feeling discouraged, insulted or intellectually harassed by the content
placed on the digital extension of the space.
Any individual with a valid MIT email account will be able to register to create a unique user profile on
GEOblog. The profile that is created upon registration will enable the user to upload digital content as well
as placing it over specified zones on the campus. On the registration form, the user is asked to provide a
valid MIT email account as well as a username and password that will be used to logon into the system and
get access to one’s profile in order to add new entries or edit previous entries listed in the user's profile. In
case that the user tries to generate a profile with a non-MIT email account or with an email account that
has already been used to create a GEOblog profile, the system will generate and error notifying the user
that the process cannot be initiated. Once the form with required fields is submitted by the user, the
system will automatically generate an activation key and will send it to the provided MIT email account on
the registration form. Upon validation of the email address by the user through clicking the provided
activation link in the auto-generated email, the user’s profile will be operational and ready to use.
The system will also keep track of the actual time that a profile is created. This piece of information will
enable us to determine the penetration rate of the system within MIT community and how fast the
introduced system was adopted by the community through time and what are the factors that affect the
adaptation rate of the system.
*As soon as the user tries to get to the Contribute page in order to start
uploading digital content to the system, s/he is directed to Login page
where he would be asked for a user-name and password specified at the
time that the account was created using a valid MIT email account.
* If the user does not have an account, s/he can choose to go through
registration process to create one. In registration form the user is asked to
provide a valid MIT email address as well as specifying a user-name and
password and these three pieces of provided information is going to be
used by the system to create a unique GEOblog profile that allows the
user to place his/her digital contributions over spatial zones throughout
the campus.
* If the user tries to create a GEOblog profile using a non-MIT email

account, the system will generate an error since the contribution aspect
of the system is designed to be open to members of MIT community, and
each member of this community is believed to have a valid MIT email
account. Thus, restricting the registration process to MIT email accounts
would automatically restrict the access right to content contribution
platform to members of MIT community.
* If the user tries to create multiple GEOblog profiles using the same MIT
Email account, the system will generate an error since the system is
designed in a way that each member of MIT community is only allowed
one GEOblog profile. This restriction can be justified from a psycho-social
point of view: One of the critiques of the post-human condition whereas
the hyper-modern individual’s social life finds its parallel in cyber space is
the opportunity of split personality that is offered to individuals at a
conceptual level. Cyber-life in online communities allows the participants
to lead parallel lives in the same environment using multiple profiles and
account. At some cases these parallel lives are even diametrically
opposed. Imagine a given user in an online community like second life;
one can lead the life of a male German investment banker through one
generated profile where as at the same time he/she is benefiting from
another cyber-life let’s say that of a female Russian astronaut. In GEoblog
as an online community that is also situated within physical boundaries of
an actual institutional entity, just as in physical version, the individuals
are considered unique and with an un-shattered persona, living a unique
life, having a unique identity.
* Once the registration form is submitted without an error, the system will
send a confirmation email containing a hyperlink that should be clicked at
to complete the registration process. This is a simple way to avoid identity
theft in the system. Thus, the system can be assured that the very same
person that is using an MIT email account to create the profile also has
access to the used email account. Under such circumstances individuals
cannot use a random MIT email account to initiate a GEOblog profile
without knowledge or consent of the MIT email account holder.
As a result of all the specifications of the login/registration process that has been summarized above the
conceptual design of the access rights would provide the following characteristics of the designed situated
digitality:
1. Restricting the contribution part to profile owners situates the content contributor within a social
context while the provided platform for spatial annotation and geo-tagging the content situates the
contributed content within the physical context that at the same time is fostering the social
context. Thus, at a conceptual level, situated-ness of the digitally enhanced spatial scenario
happens both in social terrain and physical terrain. Situating the participation of the individuals in
a social context allows for the possibility of holding the participants accountable for their actions
while the democratic aspect of the proposed scenario is maintained by omitting the institutionally
posed censorship.
2. Although the system uses the conventional profile-base membership, by limiting the membership
to individuals that have a recognizable social status within the framework of the institution, the
cyber- persona of the user is situated within the actuality of the social context that is fostered
within the physical space which is digitally augmented. Whereas the digital contribution is situated
within a physical context through the act of spatial annotation or geo-tagging the content, the
cyber-contributor is also socially situated within the psycho-social context-MIT Community- that is
fostered by the physical establishment-MIT Campus. Also, at a conceptual level, limiting the right
of contribution of members of the community, fosters the creation of a sense of place for members
of the community, where as the digitally augmented space rewards social presence or membership
over what I would like to define as social absence or lack of institutional ties to a physically
situated social establishment.
3. By restricting the profile creation to one profile per member of the community, the system
prevents establishment of multiple or parallel persona. Just like conventional spatial scenarios that
subjectivity of an individual is perceived as unique both for one’s self and for other subjectivities,
in a digitally augmented physical space the uniqueness and perceptual integrity of the persona of
a participating individual is maintained.
4. Limiting the content contribution to profile owners also enables the system to keep track of the
participants’ contributions through time in order to study how the digitally augmented space is
populated by individual’s contributions through time. Having access to such trajectory of spatial
participation provide plethora of possibilities for follow-up spatial analysis of the implemented
system. This item is going to be discussed in details in the section dedicated to follow-up analysis
of the system.
5. Although the contribution part is restricted to members of MIT community who own a profile on the
system, content viewing or retrieval is open to public. This is exactly the power/access structure
that is considered conventional for any given publicly shared entity in a civic context. Take an
urban street for example, although the street is open to all potential passer-bys, individuals who
actually have more attachment to the physical terrain than a passer-by are automatically granted
a specific right to the space. A shop owner is able to affect the spatial arrangement of the formerly
mentioned street through use of different signs, or an inhabitant of a neighborhood whose
domestic space happens to get its access form this very same street assumes being granted a
privilege over the passer-by. In a digitally augmented space, ownership privileges are translated
as community membership privileges, whereas still the passer-by maintain a different set of rights
of access to the spatial entity by the mere fact of being physically or cybernetic-ally present; the
right to retrieve and view contributed content.
DESCRIPTION OF SYSTEM COMPONENTS –CONTENT CONTRIBUTION AND DIGITAL ANNOTATION/DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTRIBUTED
CONTENT
The profile holders are able to contribute digital content after logging into the system. The digital
contribution can be in form of digital images or videos:
All file formats for digital images are supported by the system. But, due to concerns regarding operational
efficiency of the system the uploaded content will be automatically converted to a JPEG format as the
result of a function applied on the server side. In addition, all digital contributions are automatically scaled
down to fit in the maximum accepted frame by the system which is 800*600 pixels in dimensions. Also,
upon uploading an image file, a small version of the image scaled down to fit in a 50*50 frame is created
that will be used as an icon/thumbnail of the actual image, used in generating list of uploaded content – in
content contribution interface – or retrieved content – in content retrieval interface.
* Once the digital image is uploaded to the system, a

server side function automatically checks the size of the
digital image and in case that the dimensions of the
image exceeds 800*600 pixels, the system will scale
down the image to fit in a 800*600 pixel frame
* In addition to scaling the original contribution, a server
side function automatically generates a smaller version of
the image that fits within a 50*50 pixel frame to be used
as a thumbnail in listing of the contributed or available
content
* The first step to upload digital content is to

locate the files that are already saved locally.
Clicking on browse button will direct the user
to a “Choose File” window that allows the
user to chose the digital file intended to be
uploaded to the system.
*Once the file is located, clicking on “Upload”

button will result in automatic generation of
a thumbnail, that is listed in the “Media Files”
section. Whereas clicking on the “Delete”
icon on any of the listed thumbnails results in
the omission of the digital file from the
system. It is also worth mentioning that the
system allows for uploading multiple digital
images as part of a single content
contribution. All the uploaded digital files will
be listed under “Media Files”
*Double clicking on the thumbnail of an

uploaded file brings up a preview window
that contains both the digital image and its
original name at the time that it was
uploaded to the system.
*In addition to digital images, the user is

allowed to contribute video files. At the
moment, the only supported format is flash
animation. As soon as a video is uploaded to
the system, a thumbnail is automatically
generated and listed under “Media Files”.
Double clicking on the thumbnail will open a
conventional video preview window that
allows the user to navigate the video.
A possible extension of the system can be incorporating a server-side function to convert any given video
format to flash animation which allows the system to support other file formats as well. An implemented
case of such functionality is that of YouTube website that allows users to upload video files of various
formats whereas all these formats are automatically converted to flash animations before being stored on
the system.
It is also worth mentioning that the users are offered by the functionality of specifying a certain YouTube
entry as digital content. You Tube, the famous and widely used video sharing platform can be accessed by
the system to retrieve videos that are already uploaded to this platform.
Furthermore, the automatic resizing of the uploaded digital content is a try to address a fundamental
restriction of digitally backed up spatial annotation which is the limited dimensionality of the faculty of
perception in the digital terrain. Whereas in the physical terrain the limits of perceived dimensionality is
that of the sensory faculties- dimensions of the phenomena are perceivable as long as it is within the
perceivable range of the sensory faculty, for example how far is still visible for a naked eye- when
perception is limited to the extremities of the digital screen, this given frame becomes the limits of
instantaneous perception of phenomena. One approach would be maintaining the original size of the
digital image and allowing the user to navigate the content using scroll bars, in which case, the image
would not be perceived instantly as a whole but through time and as a multiplicity of fragments each of
which is limited to the dimensions allowed by the size of the digital screen. At the conceptual design
phase, it was decided that the medium should maintain the integrity of the message – in this case, the
digital image- and should offer an over arching view of the phenomena instantly which exacts the resizing
of the digital images that happen to be bigger than the conventional size of the digital screen, in order to
be fitted in this frame.
*Once single or multiple digital files are uploaded to the system, this
collection is treated as a single entry for which the user is allowed to specify
a name, the actual date that the story corresponds to, a temporal span
through which the narrative is going to be available for viewing, a multi-line
description, and various descriptive tags separated with commas. Also, the
user is allowed to specify who should be granted access to this specific
digital narrative.
*As far as temporal aspect of the digital narrative is concerned, user input is
allowed via a conventional date picker popup menu.
*Also the user is allowed to specify access rights to the contributed

narrative. The narrative can be accessible to general public- individuals that
try to retrieve digital narratives without logging in to the system- or the
accessibility can be restricted to members of MIT community – individuals
that have logged in to their GEOblog profile – or it can only be accessible to
the owner of the content.
Enabling the user to specify access rights for different digital narratives can be translated as a poetic
aspect of the digitally annotated space which addresses one of the dualities inherent in architectural
discourse that relates to the question of domestic/private spaces as oppose to publicly shared ones. A
domestic or for that matter private space is differentiated from a publicly shared one based on three major
criteria; that of ownership, access and transparency. Whereas any given domestic space is conventionally
privately owned, and is selective in granting access to inside both physically as in right of entrance and
visually through transparency, a public space is conceptualized as an spatial entity, publicly owned or
administered, whereas it is open to the public both in terms of rights of entrance and transparency. Of
course, variations in levels of access and transparency results in differentiations in how much public-ness
is intended for a given architectural space, resulting in conceptualization of different categories such as
private, semi-private, semi-public or public.
One can argue that modernist use of glass facades somehow shattered the classical notion of intellectual
bearings of use of opacity and transparency in defining domesticity, privacy, and publicness as attributes
of a designed architectural space. From a personal point of view, as an architect, I believe that Philip
Johnson’s “Glass House” is more of a political statement rather than a case study in actual implementation
of a modern domestic space whereas opacity of the inside for those who happen to be outside is not part
of the definition of architecturally prescribed domesticity. As a result, specifying different access rights for
different digital narratives is what actually defines how private or public is the digital narrative, and for
that matter the digitally annotated space.
For a given physical zone, if it is annotated with multiplicity of digital narratives, each digital narrative
redefines the physical space as public or private. The same physical arrangement can be considered public
granting the least level of sensational intimacy if viewed as the holder of a digital narrative accessible to
general public, whereas it can also be considered, domestic or private, offering the highest level of sense
of intimacy if recognized as the holder of a digital narrative which is not accessible to the public and which
is selective in to whom it is revealed.
One possible extension of the functionality of the system is to add more variations to the access rights,
enabling the contributor to be more specific about granting access to the contributed content; for example,
enabling him/her to choose from a list populated by friends, whereas the friends can be categorized based
on level of intimacy, or the type of friendship. Imagine the case that the user is able to choose if the digital
narrative is accessible to friends, close friends, colleagues, one’s classmates in a specific course, or even a
list of explicitly specified individuals.
Whereas, access rights can introduce parallel variations in terms of privacy and public-ness of a digitally
augmented space, specifying a temporal span through which a digital narrative is available, expands the
dimensionality of the augmented space along a fourth dimension which is that of time. As oppose to
conventional architectural space that is inherently perceived as fixed and inert, a digitally augmented
space is mutating through time. This transformation is perceived by the inhabitant of such space where
and when it is recognized that a given digital narrative that was retrieved at a previous incident is not
there anymore. The digital augmented layer is in constant transformation through time. The narratives
appear and disappear from time to time. The more one immerses one’s self in the digital layer, the more
one recognizes that this spatial entity has a life of its own. The inherent fixity of the physical context is
what gives the subject a sense of spatial orientation. In an ever-transforming augmented space, such
sense of spatial orientation is not attainable as easily, since the spatial context as a perceptual point of
reference is not fixed through time. For me, this subtle spatial disorientation can be considered as poetic.
To push the imagination to the extreme, imagine a hypothetical world, whereas the streets of the city are
reconfigured on a day to day basis. Dark City (1998) based on a story by Australian film-maker Alex
Proyas, who also directed the film, is a nightmarish narrative which pictures such scenario and its
perceptual and sensational ramifications for the human mind. Paroya uses the Gothic and claustrophobic
themes commonly and dark colors prevail during the film. Such setting conveys the paranoia resulted from
inherent spatial and perceptual disorientation that one experience if the physical spatial arrangements
were subjected to constant mutation through time. A man wakes up in a hotel bath tub, suffering from
what seams at the first glance some sort of amnesia. Throughout the movie the protagonist is in constant
struggle with his shattered, incoherent memories which lack external point of reference which is that of
physical spatial arrangements of the city that he is a denizen of. As the story unravels it becomes clear
that the city is run by evil creatures called “Strangers” which are able to stop time, erase the memory of
all inhabitants of the city, and completely reconfigure the spatial arrangement of the city through an extra
ordinary kinematic power. Of course as in most conventional Hollywood plots, the protagonist manages to
overcome the evil at the end. But, the point is how the plot connects the nightmarish paranoia of
perceptual amnesia to disorientation resulted from constant mutation of spatial arrangement of one’s
physical context. Whereas such drastic mutation of physical context results in severe paranoia, in a
digitally augmented space, the constant transformation of the overlaid digital layer, populated with digital
narratives can be considered poetic. One still maintains a sense of orientation within the physical space
that does not go through drastic changes on a day to day basis whereas his memory of the augmented
space is in constant transformation due to mutation of the digital layer from time to time. The subject feels
lost at a perceptual level whereas he is still certain about his location and orientation within the physical
space. This duality is what I consider the poetics of augmented space. The digitally augmented space is
always open to re-interpretation and re-configuration. Its animation and mutation through time gives free
reign to imagination. The inhabitant of such space is always expecting the unexpected, the un-determined,
the un-planned, that which is not there and is yet to come. The unexpected is not feared by the perceiving
subject since he is still able to locate himself logically within the physical terrain.
* “Dark City”(1998) picturing the * “Dark City”; the nightmarish aspect of a city that is in constant
evil “Strangers” mutation, the use of dark, claustrophobic Mise-en-scène hints on the
resulted paranoia of the implied situation.
The temporal aspect of digitally annotated space is not limited to the constant transformation of the
augmented narrative layer. The augmented space is granted with a memory of past things, in case that
the physically situated digital content offers an account of an event, or an incident that occurred in the
very same locale that the digital content is attached to. The digital screen becomes a time machine that
tele-ports the perceiving subject to the time of the occurrence of the story.
Such setting reminds me of a scene from the movie “Déjà vu”(2006) whereas the protagonist is standing in
front of a digital screen staring at the persona of a victim following how what had happened unfold. What
he sees is not a cinematic recording of a past incident but a real-time account of a past which is very much
present. The movie envisions a hypothetical case whereas what is told to be a technical aberration in a
research project has led to discovery of a “Time Window” that connects the present to a point in past
exactly four and a half days ago. The time of what seems to be happening in the account that is offered by
the digital screen is certainly a past time, yet there is this mind boggling twist that this past is very much
present since the perceiving subject has access to it via the portal offered by the discovered “Time –
Window.” The digitally annotated space offers such access to a present-past of the space. The subject
receives the space as a “Déjà vu.” I cannot help but wonder how poetic that can be at a perceptual level.
*Screen shot of “Déjà vu”

picturing the astonishment of
the protagonist when he finds
out that what he is witnessing is
not a recording of a past
incident but an account of what
is actually happening at a
present-past!
Furthermore, enabling the contributing party to semantically describe the contributed digital narrative and
assigning descriptive tags to it, offers the possibility of locating the narrative within the discursive terrain.
Human beings perceive stories through semantics. We think about narratives in terms of actual words. As
a result, I believe that any platform that enables the subject to annotate the physical space through
attaching content to specific localities should also offer the means to semantically describe and tag the
digital story. The provided tags and descriptive words will be used to retrieve content based on semantic
search in the content retrieving aspect of the project that will be discussed later on.
As it was mentioned before, in addition to providing semantic description of the contributed digital
narrative, the user is allowed to assign “Tags” to it to. In computer related discourse a tag is a non-
hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information. This kind of “metadata” helps describe an
item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are chosen informally and personally
by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system. On a website in which many users tag
many items, this collection of tags becomes a non-hierarchical informal structure to locate entities
perceptually. Tagging was popularized by websites associated with Web 2.0 services. “In 2003, the social
bookmarking website “Delicious” provided a way for its users to add "tags" to their bookmarks as a way to
help find them later. Delicious also provided browseable aggregated views of the bookmarks of all users
featuring a particular tag. Flickr allowed its users to add free-form tags to each of their pictures,
constructing flexible and easy metadata that made the pictures highly searchable. The success of Flickr
and the influence of Delicious popularized the concept, and other social software websites – such as
YouTube, Technorati, and Last.fm – also implemented tagging.”6 Currently web users are comfortable with
the concept and its accompanying applications and under such circumstances it was natural to adopt such
a practice in the design of yet another platform for collaborative user-generated content.
The last and most important aspect of contributing digital content is attaching it to physical locations
throughout the campus. Since this part is the most important aspect of the project, I decided to dedicate a
whole section to provide a historical background of the practice as well as an overview of the case studies
that I encountered during my research. At the end of the following section I will explain how the user-
interaction was conceptualized, designed and implemented for this functionality based on my prior
research in the field.
6
From entry for “Tags” in Wikipedia.org
DIGITAL ANNOTATION OF SPACE – ATTACHING DIGITAL CONTENT TO PHYSICAL LOCALE, DIGITAL ANNOTATION OF SPACE
The functionality that is offered by the platform which enables the users to place digital content within
actual physical locations in form of spatial zones can be considered as a form of Geo-Tagging. Geo-tagging
is the process of adding geographical information to various media such as photographs, video, sound
recordings or even websites and other internet related services like RSS feeds, and recently Wikipedia
entries or even blogs in the form of geospatial metadata. This data usually consists of latitude and
longitude coordinates, though it can also include place names, country, city, or even street addresses. A
parallel practice is the process of “Geo-coding” which is the process of finding the associated geographic
coordinates of an entity based on non-coordinate geographical identifiers, such as a street address.
Naturally, “Reverse Geo-coding” is the process of finding the associated non-coordinate identifiers or
meta-data of a piece of digital information based on the known geographical coordinates attached to it.
Geo-tagging allows people to specify rather precisely where the content of a given media is to be located,
but on some media platforms (such as Google Earth) it also gives the reverse ability: showing people
relevant media to a given location, allowing them to retrieve the geo-tagged digital data based on location.
The first step of the user interaction design was to decide what forms of digital content should be
supported by the platform. A quick online search helped to find out about the possibilities both in terms of
supported digital formats and how the content contribution and geo-tagging on one hand and content
retrieval based on location on the other hand is handled. Online services that allow users to share digital
content most of the time also allow the contributor of the digital content to include geo-location meta-tags
in their contributions:
Flickr, the well known image and video sharing website allows the users to geo-tag their contributions.
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2006/08/28/great-shot-whered-you-take-that/ explains how it works. Flickr added
geo-tagging functionality and location-based search to its service in August 2006. Adding location
information on Flickr is done through the Organizr, under the Organize tab. On Map tab one can drag
photos into a Yahoo Map interface. A marker will appear that shows the number of photos included with
that marker. Once one has a location s/he can use the Organizr to search photos and then drag them
individually or by sets into the map. On the other hand, users can search for photos by location in Flickr
Map. Once the map is set to a location (zoomable from world view down to street level) and a search query
is performed, markers will appear on the map with photos that contain that query in the tags or description
of the photos. The geo-tagging functionality allows the users to drag-and-drop photos onto a location
where they are automatically tagged with location information (city/state/country) as well as latitude and
longitude. It also allows the users to create a map-based view of all their photos or specific photosets, to
share with others. On the other hand, Flickr Map provides an interface to browse photos on a Yahoo! Maps
interface with easy to use navigational controls. As a result of the inclusion of the functionality, Flickr users
can now search for digital content by tag, text, time, group and location.
* The Map tab in Organizer page allows the

users to associate their uploaded digital content
with different physical spaces.
*The association or geo-tagging of the content

happens through dragging and dropping the
thumbnail of the content from the list populated
with user’s contribution on an interactive
navigatable map.
*Each entry can be placed at a unique location
meaning that the system does not support
multiple locations for a given digital entry. Once
placed on the map, after clicking on the
placeholder, the system will provide an overview
of the entry and also functionality of directly
editing the features of the entry from the map
interface.
What happens after a digital content is placed

on the map is automatic generation and
inclusion of geo-location meta-tags to the
entry.(geo:lat=***** geo:lon=********)
*Not only the user is allowed to geo-tag the

contributed content but also the systems allows
for exploring other’s contributions and location
based searching for content.
http://flickr.com/map provides the mentioned
functionality.
The interface is a navigatable map with all the

basic functionalities: zooming and panning
either through click and drag or using the
zoom/pan tool, and choices in terms of visual
aspects of the map (map, satellite image or a
hybrid of both). It also allows the user to
perform a semantic search for content based on
descriptive tags or locational tags like country,
state, city, or even zip code.
*Once a search is initiated by the user using any
of the offered search criteria, a list populated by
retrieved entries is generated while the location
of each entry is marked on the map.
*Clicking on a provided node on the map that

represents the placeholder of the digital content
will opens a popup window which provides an
overview of the chosen content. Reversely, once
a thumbnail is clicked upon in the list of
retrieved entries, the placeholder of the content
on the map is highlighted too.
One feature of the Flickr Map is capability of limiting a search to the area that is visible in the map at any
given moment. If while initiating a query the user types in “This Map” in “Taken In” text box. The query will
be geographically limited to the area that is visible in the Map interface at the moment.
Also once the user inters the Map in the organizer, the Map is automatically zoomed to the user’s
geographical location that is determined by the system based on IP address from which the user is
connected to the web. IP address localization is one of the most commonly practiced techniques for geo-
targeting in web services. Geo-targeting enables a given web service to deliver relevant information to the
users through determining their real-time location. I will attend to the question of location sensitivity of the
service in the coming sections of the report.
*In Content contribution part, the first step to
contribute content on flicker is to locate the
digital files on the computer and upload them.
The user interaction is quite convenient since
multiple files can be selected in one step. Also,
before uploading the digital entries one can
specify privacy and safety level of the content
as well as the type of the content.
*Once the selected entries are uploaded to the

system the user has the option to add
description and descriptive tags to each of the
entries or make a “set” of multiple entries and
specify descriptive tags and text for the whole
set as one entity
*Adding or deleting digital content to/from sets

is a matter of dragging and dropping associated
icons to different panels on the organizer
interface. Once a set is created and populated
the user can give it a title and description as
well as assigning descriptive tags to it
*Once a set is created and populated by multiple
digital content, it can be placed on a unique
geographical location as one entry.
In short, the flicker interface for uploading, organizing and geo-tagging content is convenient in different
aspects. The most interesting one is the possibility of uploading multiple entries in one step and creating
sets and geo-tagging sets as opposed to stand alone entities. One the other hand, the location based
content retrieving interface is well-designed in terms of user interaction: First of all, upon entrance into the
map interface, the map automatically zoom to the current location of the user that is calculated by the
system based on reverse geo-codding of the IP address via which the user is connecting to the website f.
Furthermore, The available content on the spatial zone that is framed in the current view of the
navigatable mapis offered both in the form of nodes on the map to which the content is attached to and
also a browse able list from which entries can be chosen.
The second case study that is of interest is the Freesound project which is a collaborative database of
sounds. Once a profile is created on the projects website at http://www.freesound.org the user is allowed to
upload digital sound recordings. The process of adding a digital recording to the site is as follows: An FTP
applet is provided to upload files. Wave, aiff, ogg vorbis, flac and mp3 files are supported by the platform.
Once an uploaded file is chosen the user can semantically describe the content of the file. After describing
files they will be placed in a 'moderation' queue. This means that a moderator will look at the file before it
will appear on the site. When the file is added, the user will be notified by email. The service is not rich in
terms of graphical user interface or for that matter user interaction design. Yet, the platform is worth
mentioning firstly because of the fact that it supports sound contributions and secondly because of how it
handles the monitoring of the contributions in terms of the appropriateness of the contributed content; the
contributions are not available online before they are viewed and approved by the editorial committee.
*At the time of the visit to the site it was not
clear for me how the user is able to geo-tag his
contribution. But the delivery method was a
Google map API in combination with a list
populated with all the geo-tagged entries. Once
an item in the list is clicked upon, the map is
zoomed to the location of the file on the map
whereas its corresponding click-able placeholder
is located. If the place holder is clicked a popup
menu containing the title, tags, and description
of the audio file will appear on the screen. The
popup also contains a flash applet to play the
sound.
Aside from graphical user interfaces, it is possible to add text-based locationall tags to digital information.
For example; Wikipedia allows the contributors to include geographical information with their entries using
a provided format. It is also possible to add geo-location tags in any tag-based service like Panoramio,
Flickr, and del.icio.us. with the provided standard; for example:” geotagged geo:lat=57.64911
geo:lon=10.40744”
Panoramio.com is another online photo sharing platform that makes use of Google map api to provide a
graphical user interface for geo-tagging the content.
*The retrieving of digital content based on

location is supported using Google Map API. The
user can search a specific place by typing in its
name or address. It is also possible to find digital
content by direct manipulation of the Map. At
any given point a list populated by
corresponding thumbnails of the retrieved
content is updated based on the interaction of
the user with the map. The visible portion of the
map is the criteria for automatic retrieval of the
content.
*It is also possible to choose a place from a list

of locational bookmarks that will direct the user
to the previously mentioned viewing page
whereas the Google map is already zoomed in to
the bookmarked place.
*Clicking on the thumbnail of a photo directs the

user to a webpage containing all the attributes
of the digital photo including the owner or
contributor of the photo, the location of the
photo displayed on a Google map, the semantic
tags of the photo and so on. This page also
allows the user to flag the digital photo as
“offensive” or “Best of Panoramio”. This
functionality offers a platform to receive limited
feedback from the users concerning the
appropriateness of the contributed digital
content.
Content contribution process starts with locating the file on one’s computer and uploading it to the system.
Once the picture is uploaded by the user it is automatically resized. In the next step the system asks for a
semantic description of the content to be typed in.
Once the uploaded content is semantically described, the user is offered by an interface built upon Google
map API to specify a geographical location to which the content will be attached to.
To attach the digital photo to a specific node on the surface of the globe, first the user needs to type in a
name corresponding to the location that he has in mind. Once a location is specified, a popup containing a
Google map with an automatically placed node specifying the current location that the content will be
attached to will appear. The interface allows the user to change the location of the node.
Each digital photo should be geo-tagged separately which means that multiple digital content cannot be
attached to one node in the space in one go. Of course there is a way around this short coming which is to
create multiple place holders for multiple pieces of digital content which are placed almost at the same
node on the map interface.
*Once the process of content upload is
completed the system is automatically directed
to the list of uploaded content.
To check the attributes of any entry, clicking on

the thumbnail of that entry will redirect the user
to a webpage containing all the information
regarding the chosen entry. A Google map is
also provided here that locates the digital
content in case that it is already attached to a
node on the surface of earth.
Thus in the case of Panoramio the user interface includes three separate views for uploading the content,
the list of all uploaded content and the attributes page of each content. Also for any give digital content,
location is assumed to be a unique node. The Google map API does not allow the user to specify more than
one place holder for the digital content or attach more than one digital content to a specified node. The
separation of functionalities on one hand and the fact that the place holders and digital entries have a one
to one relationship – One digital entry is attached to a one node- does not offer that much of convenience
when it comes to placing different digital contents relative to each other for example to make a digital
narrative.
As it is obvious from these and other cases for online services the location is mostly interpreted as a node
on the surface of the earth with a specific longitude and latitude, whereas through reverse geo-coding this
meta data can be translated to other forms of geo-location information such as place names, country, city,
zip code or street addresses and such. This approach towards understanding location is further popularized
by API’s such as Google map or Yahoo maps and alike that enable third party developers to easily
incorporate user interfaces for geo-tagging digital content as well as exploring the repositories of digital
content based on geo-locational queries.
http://wikimapia.org is another online service that allows the users to add digital information to specified
locations using a Google map API. The platform only supports textual digital information that should be
typed in. The interesting aspect of the interface is that the place holder of the contributed information is
conceptualized as spatial zones as oppose to stand alone nodes. If the textual information that the user is
contributing applies to a geo-spatial entity that is extended over a terrain then it is just common sensual to
allow the contributor to specify a place holder that corresponds to the spatial entity that is described by
the contributed information.
*The map is populated by multiplicity of zonal

place holders.
*Once a zonal place holder is clicked upon a

popup menu appears on the screen that delivers
the textual information attached to the clicked
upon place holder
*To add an entry to the map the first step is to
define the spatial zone to which the information
is intended to be attached to. This happens
through specifying the vertexes of a polygon via
mouse click. The user can add more vertexes to
an already defined edge by moving the mouse
over the edge and clicking on a point that the
newly added vertex is going to be placed at.
Once a zonal place holder is created and saved a

popup menu appears that provides an interface
to type in the information that the user intends
to attach to the created spatial zone
So in short, the contribution part is a twofold: specifying the spatial zone, and attaching textual information
to the created spatial zone. On the other hand, retrieving the annotations is possible by clicking on a
spatial zone that has been annotated by information.
After studying the mentioned case studies and others the interaction scenario was devised for the system
that would support the following aspects. For the content contribution part:
The user should be allowed to upload multiple digital files in one go
The user should be allowed to create sets populated by multiple digital files. When the contributed digital
files intend to offer a coherent narrative about a specific location or entity in the space, more than one
digital content is needed to convey the intended message and it is just common sensual to offer the
contributor the capability of devising sets of digital content which represent different aspects or parts of a
narrative about a location.
The platform should allow the user to attach digital content or sets of multiple digital content to spatial
zones in space as opposed to geographical nodes. This design decision can be justified and furthermore
supported as follows: In conventional user-generated content sharing online platforms, the retrieval of the
content happens via a navigatable map interface. Thus, the spatial perception of the user of the geo-
tagged or annotated space is a holistic planar one. In such setting the individual perceives himself as an
outsider to the space represented by the navigatable annotated map. As a result, it is acceptable to
assume that narratives offered by digital content can be attached to discreet nodes on the
representational map. Although a map may have a structure similar to the structure of the territory; “the
map is not the territory.” This is a remark by Alfred Korzybski, encapsulating his view that an abstraction
derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Thus, if the representational map is not
the territory itself, if a metaphorical representation of a concept is not the concept itself; and if a specific
abstraction or reaction does not capture all facets of its source; then it is passable to assume that the
representation of the locationality of the placed digital content is not perceptually accurate either. On the
contrary, in GEOblog platform, the goal is to enable the participants to retrieve content while corporeally
present within the annotated space based on their real-time location. In such circumstances, the
perception of the space is direct and through corporeal sensory experience of the spatial phenomena
which is not mediated through a map. The subject perceives himself with in the annotated space whereas
the map ( the mental representation of the habituated space) and the space itself are one and the same.
Once within a spatial arrangement, the perception of the subject is perspectival. Spatial entities are
received as extensions along physically discernable dimensions. If the space is received as perceivable
extensions, assuming dimensionality and directionality at the same time, the medium that allows for
annotation of this phenomena should accommodate the dimensionality of the phenomena as well. As a
result annotation of a geo-taggable space whereas the retrieval of the geo-tagged content happens
through corporeal navigation of the augmented space should allow for placing digital content over
extensions or spatial zones as opposed to limiting it to attachment of digital content to stand alone nodes.
This way the physical boundaries of the spatial phenomena can correspond to the virtual boundaries of the
digital content that offers a narrative associated with the phenomena. This reminds me of the following
passage by Borges:
“In that empire, the art of cartography attained such perfection that the map of a single province occupied
the entirety of a city, and the map of the empire, the entirety of a province. In time, those unconscionable
maps no longer satisfied, and the cartographers guilds struck a map of the empire whose size was that of
the empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following generations, who were not so fond of
the study of cartography as their forebears had been, saw that that vast map was useless, and not without
some pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the inclemencies of sun and winters. In the deserts of
the west, still today, there are tattered ruins of that map, inhabited by animals and beggars; in all the land
7
there is no other relic of the disciplines of geography.”
Although the text has been referred to by the scholars in discussions of the exactitude of representational
techniques in sciences and how there is a cap on the acceptable accuracy of the representational
technique beyond which no matter how much resources are spent the representation would not offer more
to the target audience8, here I would like to read the text from another yet more poetic point of view. Lets
agree that the representational map no matter how accurate it can not be equated to the spatial
phenomena that it is representing. Also let’s assume that we agree that the digitally augmented layer that
is populated by digital contributions of participating individuals constitute a mental map which is as big as
the terrain. Although this digital map of the placed narratives is not the terrain that it overlays, yet it adds
another level of perceptual sophistication to the phenomena. GEOblog does not claim that it offers a
digitally backed up perceptual map of the terrain that is so accurate that it can be thought of as one with
the terrain. But, it can be claimed that a digitally augmented terrain is not a terrain any more but a Map-
Terrain; whereas it is not possible to detach the overlaid map and the augmented terrain from the
perception of each. They become a unified entity, a new hybrid phenomena different from both its
components, yet dependent to both in its existence and attributes.
Back to the discussion of zonal annotation of space as opposed to nodal version of the practice, if a digital
narrative is placed over a spatial zone as opposed to being attached to a geographical node, once the
subject crosses the extremities of the spatial entity, going beyond its boundaries in the physical terrain,
simultaneously he crosses the boundary of the associated spatial narrative in the digitally augmented
layer or what I would like to refer as the narrative terrain. Thus, the physical terrain and the narrative
terrain develop a series of perceivable spatial associations that will not be possible if the boundaries of a
7
From Jorge Luis Borges,in Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley 1999
8
From Gregory Bateson, in "Form, Substance and Difference," from Steps to an Ecology of Mind 1972
specific locality do not correspond with the boundaries within which a narrative about that specific location
is offered to the individual engaged in following the spatial narrative.
Whereas in node base annotation of space using an interactive map like Google map API the space is
assumed to be equal to the surface of the globe; as a spherical skin; GEOblog should incorporate the third
dimension. GEOblog conceptualizes the space as a 2.5 dimensional entity consisting of multiplicity of floor
plans stacked on top of each other.
*The user can navigate the horizontality of

the space using the zoom and pan
functionality of the interactive map.
Meanwhile; it is possible to navigate cross
different floors using the virtual elevator
tool.
If the space is treated as a two dimensional phenomena, no location is an unacceptable location to define
a spatial zone as a placeholder for the digital content. On the contrary, once the third dimension is
incorporated in the description of the geo-taggable or annotatable space, the created spatial zones should
be examined by the system to assure their acceptability within the three dimensional space. For example,
if a spatial zone is created on the third floor of the building the system should be able to compare the zone
against the extremities of the building envelope to make sure that the specified zone does not fall outside
of the building envelope on the third floor and into the void. Thus the system should be able to readjust
the spatial zone to acceptable areas. While the offered “ zone” tool allows the user to specify a circular or
polygonal zone, the system will modify the specified zone in reference to geo-localized plans of MIT
buildings and which floor the user has specified to place the zone on. On upper floors the areas of the
created zone that are outside of the building are going to be automatically subtracted.
All aspects of the user interaction should be offered in one coherent view for the user to support a
seemless flow of interaction scenario, as a result instead of different screens for uploading content, geo-
tagging the uploaded content, adding and vewing previously added semantic information and placing the
content on the map, all this information and interaction platforms should be incoorporated in one unique
view.
As a result of taking to consideration of the mentioned design criteria, contributing digital content happens
in 5 steps and in one comprehensive screen that accommodate all the steps at onc
*Specifying the spatial zone over which content is
placed at using the interactive navigatable map
interface
*Uploading the digital file containing the shared

content. Content in form of digital image and video
are supported by the platform
*Specifying the temporal duration through which

the content is going to be available for retrieval
*Adding semantic information or meta-data about
the shared content including Content Title, Content
Description and Semantic Tags
*Specifying access rights and whether the geo-

tagged/shared content is available to everybody in
campus, just the members of MIT community or the
owner of the content in case he/she chooses so.
Once an entry is completed by the user it would be added to the list of previously completed enteries.
Thus from the same screen view the user can have access to other entries for further modifications. The
next section will attend to the question of dimensionality in a geo-taggable space which is trying to
incorporate the third dimension in the description of the space.
DIGITAL ANNOTATION OF SPACE – GEOTAGGABLE SPACE AND DIMENSIONALITY
Written over a century ago, Edwin A. Abbot's master piece, Flat Land, is the best introduction into the
manner of perceiving dimensions. Throughout the piece the reader is walked through the way in which the
inhabitants of Pointland (A universe perceived as having zero dimension), Lineland (A universe perceived
as having one dimension), and Flatland (A universe perceived as having two dimensions) inhabit their
universes. Based on this reading it gets obvious that us, the inhabitants of Spaceland (A universe
perceived as having three dimensions) by the mere fact of inhabiting this space have already faced the
three stages of transcendence – from the point to line, from the line to plane, and from the plane to
solid.(borrowed from Isaac Asimov overview of the piece-p.i) I believe that in any discussion of geo-
taggable space one should incorporate some scrutiny into the phenomena of dimensionality and decide
how many dimensions can be incorporated in description of a geo-taggable space. Also if we think of geo-
taggable space as a type of interactive or responsive space then the introduction of time as an element
contained in the phenomenological description of space exacts another level of transcendence from the
three dimensionality of the Spaceland to the fourth dimension which is time itself to what I call Time-Space
land.
The piece is a narrative of a two-dimensional entity – a square – and his personal account of the universe
that he is living in – Flatland – which is a two-dimensional universe or for that matter space. In the course
of the story the reader also follows the protagonist to the realm of Pointlnad – a universe with zero
dimension – Lineland – a universe with only one dimension – and Spaceland – the universe with three
dimensions which is basically the spatial arrangement that we are familiar with. What I would like to do is
to diagram this transcendental journey from zero dimension to one dimension, to two dimensions and
finally to three dimensions and layout a map of all the perceptual and experiential ramifications of different
dimensionalities on one hand and transcending one for the other on the other hand. At the end I would like
to attend to the following question: What category of space does a geo-taggable space belong to in terms
of dimensionality and what are the perceptual/experiential effects of inhabiting such a space by the
perceiving subject? I am going to start from Pointland moving towards Lineland, Flatland and finally
Spaceland, although this sequence does not chronologically correspond to the flow of the story in Flatland
and how our protagonist is exposed to these different universes experientially and perceptually.
Flatland, is also a study of human’s mind and its attitude towards limitation. If because of actuality of our
world, incapability of perceiving time as a dimension to space is inherent to the perceiving subject how can
one incorporate time as a phenomena in the architectural representation of space. And what if the
limitations are due to a gained habit of thinking? (borrowed from Isaac Asimov overview of the piece-p.iii)
Is our limitation in thinking of time as an inseparable aspect of conceptualization of architectural space a
gained habit of thinking or inherent in us as perceiving subjects? And either case, how can one gets around
this limitation through architectural representational techniques and for that matter technologies?
Although the unity of time and space thrusts itself upon the notice of scientists by the work of Einstein and
like throughout the twentieth century, still architects and designers and as a whole our whole culture of
architectural representation seems to be resistant to adopting the Time-Space notion.
Towards the end of the story, the protagonist – our two-dimensional square – has a reverie in which he
finds himself exposed to a universe with no dimensions or what he refers to as Pointland. With no
perceivable dimension, the universe diminishes to a Point, thus the name Pointland. This specific type of
universe is reffered to as “Lowest depth of existence, the realm of Pointland, the Abyss of No dimensions.”
(p.109) With no perciveiable dimensions, the inhabitant of Pointland becomes one with its universe of zero
dimension (p.109) This only inhabitant of the universe of zero dimension, this contained point that is
inseparable from its container, the king of Pointland is “self-satisfied.” He utters with himself: “ It fills all
Space, and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters that It hears; and It itself is
Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition…!” (p.109-10) So if I want to summarize our
understanding of an inhabitant of a universe with zero-dimension I will list the characteristics as follows:
1. The Universe does not have any dimensions.
2. Having no dimensions the idea of expansion or extension is alien to this universe since both of the
mentioned states happen, are experienced, and are perceived along a direction or within one or
more dimension and having no dimension at all Pointland is not able to accommodate such
phenomena.
3. Pointland is the case that the contained and the container become one. Assuming that this
universe has no dimension, it cannot contain anything since containment exacts the existence of
at least one dimension which grants the universe and inside as oppose to outside thus, capability
of containment.
4. Due to the fact that there is no inside conceived and for that matter perceived for Pointland, the
perceiving subject always locate himself outside of this universe which means that Pointland itself
has an outside. This is the only universe in our fourfold that the protagonist does not have an
insider view of it and always perceives himself as an outsider looking at this universe.
5. Distance, direction, location, measurement and all the related concepts are not perceivable for
Pointland/Pointlander since these are concepts that exact the existence of some level of
dimensionality that is absent in a universe of zero dimension by definition.
6. The only awareness of Pointland/Pointlander is a self awareness that does not need any sensory
faculty or what I would like to call faculty of consciousness like faculties of auditory, visual or
tactile senses since such faculty operates under the condition of dimensionality and senses
measure a phenomena which has extension in at list one dimension.
7. With no dimensionality incorporated in the system movement, in the sense of measurable change
in distances in a perceivable direction, is a concept that does not exist in a zero dimension
universe.
I think that in a geo-taggable space, our relationship with other locatable subjectivities provided through a
map interface is of this nature. Any “I” perceives other perceiving “non-I‘s” as inhabitants of Pointland
which are at the same time unified with their territory -Pointland- itself. Thus one find on a map interface a
multiplicity of Pointland/Pointlanders all contained and all looked upon from outside by the “I”. There is a
slight difference though. The Pointland/Pointlanders in this case are not self-satisfied, or self-contained, or
as is in the story unaware of the existence of the others. Although the actuality of their existence is limited
to their biological skin bag, their perceptual existence is extended through a digitally provided dimension.
There are points in a multitude of points that have real-time awareness of other points.
On the other hand, if I want to give an example of a Pointland/Pointlander that does not have any
awareness of what is happening outside it and its universe, I would go with the description of “Cellular
Automaton.” A cellular automaton (plural: cellular automata) is a discrete entity. The concept consists of a
regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states whereas the grid can be in any finite number
of dimensions. Every cell has the same rule for updating, based on the values in its neighborhood. Each
time the rules are applied to the whole grid a new generation is created. The cells being discrete entities
do not have an overview of the whole system or let’s say the arrangement of their surrounding but are
solely programmed to respond to a set of criteria that they sense at any given time t and respond to it
accordingly. A multiplicity of cells arranged in a grid change state separately and the result is an emergent
behavior that is observed by an outsider. Each cell just has a limited awareness of itself and its internal
governing rule and operates based on the rules but the multiplicity of them in operation –discreetly-, result
in a system operating in a non-hierarchical bottom-up fashion. In a way each cell is a Pointland/Pointlander
with one level of transcendence. Its awareness also includes an awareness of its immediate neighborhood.
In that sense the cell is a Pointland/Pointlander with extended awareness.
Back to our account of the story, the first level of transcendence happens in migrating of the perceiving “I”
form Pointland, the universe with zero dimensionality to Lineland, the universe with one dimension.
Lineland is a universe that is contained and at the same time contains. It is contained in the universe of
two-dimensions and contains elements of one dimension –lines- and elements of zero dimensions – points.
In the course of the story the readers are walked through another reverie of the protagonist, whereas he
finds himself outside of the two-dimensional universe of Lineland at first and tries to reach out to its
inhabitants by entering this universe. The entrance of a two-dimentional object to a one-dimentional
universe is conceptualized as an intersection. Since a one-dimensional universe lacks one dimension to
contain the whole of the two-dimensional object, what happens upon the act of entrance of the mentioned
object in the mentioned universe is that the universe at any given time is only receptor of sections or parts
of the object that it can afford to contain at that given time which as was mentioned before would be the
intersection of the two dimensional object with the one dimensional universe.”The linear realm of Lineland
has not Dimensions enough to represent the whole of an inhabitant of Flatland”…” In the same manner
the country of Two Dimensions is not spacious enough to represent a being of Three, but can only exhibit a
slice or a section of it” (p.84) that can be accommodated in the existing dimensions of that space. In the
case of our protagonist in this specific reverie– The square and his dream of the journey to the Lineland–
this intersection would be a line as the reader becomes aware of in course of the story. Another interesting
aspect of the story is the rule presented by the author as the only way of transcending a universe of n-
dimensions to a universe of n+1-dimensions. The transcendence is actualized by the movement of the
object in a direction contained in the dimension that does not exist in n-dimensional universe. In the case
of Lineland which only has two directions along its only dimension – South and North – the transcendence
happens when the mobile entity moves right or left along the dimension that is not contained in the
Lineland. For a linelander a straight line is where he passes his existence and is which constitute the whole
of the world, and indeed the whole of Space. Not being able either to move or to see beyond constrains of
this space, saved in his Straight Line, he has no conception of anything out of it. If in the same manner as
what I did for Pointland I would like to categorize the presented characteristics of Lineland these major
headings come to mind:
1. With only one dimension there are two perceivable geographical directions in Lineland: North and
South
2. Lineland can contain entities with maximum of one dimension which can extend along one
dimension and in two directions. Since dimension implies direction and measurement, with one
dimension the inhabitants of Lineland are able to measure phenomena in two directions along the
sole dimension of their universe. In LineLand measurements of length become the very
measurements of space, since “Space is Length”(p.67-8)
3. To conduct the act of measuring Linelanders use a sensing faculty that in this case is the sense of
hearing, and through the same faculty the measured dimensions is communicated among the
inhabitants: The inhabitant that wants to communicate his measurements sends an auditory
signals from what I call his two output devices located at its two extremities. The other inhabitants
“at this moment receiving the sound of one of [his] voices, closely followed by the other, and
perceiving that the latter reaches them after an interval in which sound can traverse a specific
length, infer that one of the subject’s extremes is that length further from them than the other,
and accordingly know the subject’s shape to be that length.” (p.68). So one can also inferred that
in a universe of one dimension shape is the measurable Length too. Another interesting issue is
that in a one dimensional universe the measurements of the sole supported dimension is not
directly perceived by the sensory faculty but is inferred indirectly via some level of mediation,
which is the calculation of measurements based on auditory differentiations.
4. In Lineland, all vision limited to a Point, and all motion to a Straight Line. (p.64)
5. “As each individual occupies the whole of the narrow path, so to speak, which constitutes his
Universe, and no one can move to the right or left to make way for passers by, it follows that no
LineLander could ever pass another. Thus “Proximity is an accident,” (p.63) and an irreversible one
for that matter. In Lineland when there are at least half a dozen intervening individuals between
the perceiving subject and the other that he is intended to communicate with , whome you can
neither see through, nor pass by(p.63) Distance is eliminated by means of the faculty of sound and
the sense of hearing (p.65). Thus again the same combination of input/output devices that are
used for measuring the phenomena in Lineland are also used as means of communication between
the inhabitants and the exchange of these measurements becomes a part of the communicated
phenomena.
6. In the field of visual perception, the length is not perceptible since it is the inside of the subject
(p.70) In Lineland to detect the difference between a Line and a Point by the sense of sight is in the
nature of things impossible; but it can be inferred by the sense of hearing.(p.67)
7. Movement happens in the direction of the extremities as opposed to the direction of one’s side. It
becomes more clear in the discussion of the protagonist and the King of Line land:
“King. Exhibit to me, if you please, this motion from left to right.
Protagonist.Nay, that I cannot do, unless you could step out of your Line altogether
King. Out of my Line? Do you mean out of the world? Out of Space?
Protagonist. Well, yes. Out of your World. Out of your Space. For your Space is not the true Space.
True Space is a Plane; but your Space is only a Line.”(p.70-1)
Furthermore the discussion also indicates that If there is no perception of a direction there is no
way to explain movement in that direction since movement is explained in terms of directionality
The next stage of transcendence is that of the universe of two dimensions or that of Flatland. Flatland is
where the two dimensional inhabitants move freely in the two dimensional world without the power of
rising above or sinking below it. (p.1) For a Flatlander everything appears as a line and in the occasion of
women viewed from a specific angle, a point; given the fact that female members of this hypothetical
society are straight lines.
In Flatland, identity is discerned via senses of hearing, feeling and sight.(p.3) Flatlanders cannot see
angles, they can infer them through sense of sight thanks to the existence of fog that dims the elements
based on distance, shading away as they get further away from the perceiving eye. Since dimension
implies direction in which it extends, it implies measurement, and the concept of more and the less. If one
does not know what to measure and in which direction one is incapable of perceiving the dimension. Thus
for Flatlanders the only geographical directions are Northward, Southward, Eartward and Westward. And
these fuor also are the only directionalities that are in accord with the idea of movement, extension and
measurement. The space is conceptualized in this case as an entity that extends indefinitely in two
dimensions.
In a Dialogue between a Flatlander and an intruding three-dimensional entity that later on we find out that
is a sphere intersecting with the plane of the Flatland, the two-dimensional entity describes the space as
that which is height and breadth indefinitely prolonged. (FLATLAND, p.80) and then the Flatlander proceed
furthermore in his scrutiny of the claim of the supposedly three-dimensional entity by asking: Dimension
implies direction and measurement, If I have dimensionality called by you as height, … measure my
“height”, or merely indicate to me the direction in which my “height” extends.(FLATLAND, p.83) In what
direction is the Third Dimension? (FLATLAND, p.80) First rule of thumb that comes to mind is that in order
to perceive an extra dimension the perceiving subject should first have a faculty by which it becomes
possible for the subject to become conscious of anything outsides the limits that are exacted by
dimensionalities of the universe or space that is inhabited by the subject, and second the subject should
posses means of moving out of the limits exacted by dimensionality of the inhabited n-dimensional space
in order to perceive the n+1th dimension. As a result, as long as the navigation of the subject and his
faculties of consciousness are confined within the dimensional limits of the n-dimensional universe, it is
impossible to perceive the n+1th dimension. Dimension implies direction in which it extends, implies
measurement, and implies the more and the less. If you do not know what to measure and in which
direction, you are incapable of perceiving the dimension. (borrowed from WM. Garnett overview of the
piece-p.xx) This requirement of a sensorial faculty that functions outside of the dimensional confinements
of space and also the navigational means and/or skills that provide movement in a direction outside of the
space with the limited dimension is well described in the scene where our narrator from Flatland meets an
inhabitant of the Lineland. The question that comes to mind at this point is whether the mentioned faculty
of consciences or means of navigation needs to be a part of natural configuration of the subject or can it
also be a prosthetic, for our case a technologically enhanced digital prosthetic that assist the subject in yet
another sensory and/or navigational transcendance to a dimension beyond the three dimensions of the
inhabitable space in our universe.
Another interesting phenomena discussed throughout the book is what I would like to call the collision of
universes with different dimensionalities. When a sphere descends upon the plane of the Flatland all that
the flatlanders perceive is a circle that grows through time driving the inhabitants outward and after a
certain point it contracts leaving their habitat un-obstructed again. Whereas for the two dimensional
subjects the phenomena changes through time, for three dimensional subjects it is the matter of
movement through time and not dimensional change. Thus in a fourth dimension collision with our three
dimensional space, all the changes that we experience and assign to flow of time is due to movement, the
whole future as well as the past always existing in the fourth dimension. (borrowed from WM. Garnett
overview of the piece-p.xvii-xviii) Contemplating the progression of the events, the intersection of a
moving square ( a two dimensional entity) perpendicular to the Lineland, and the intersection of a moving
sphere ( a three-dimensional entity) perpendicular to the Flatland, one can infer that when an entity with
n+1 dimension enters a space with n dimension what is visible to n-dimensional beings inhabiting the n-
dimensional space is the intersection of the n+1-dimensional entity with n-dimensional space and it is a
recognizable entity since it (the intersection) confirms with n-dimensionality, with a slight difference
though. The generated figure can transform in time: increase/decrease in dimensions through time to the
point of disappearance or perishing from the n-dimensional world, which is the point that due to its
movement in the n+1th dimension it seizes to intersect the n-dimensional world. So, the dimensional
transformation of the intruding n+1-dimensional entity is due to the fact that it is mobile or capable of
mobility in the n+1th dimension. (FLATLAND, p.106-7)
In Flatland, the flatlanders can not see angles, but can infer them with great precision(FLATLAND, p.22)
through sense of sight thanks to the existence of fog that dims the elements based on distance, shading
away into greater dimness as they get further away from the perceiving eye (FLATLAND, p.27,28) Thus in a
two-dimensional world for the two-dimensionally conscious subjects the second dimension is not detected
or picked up directly by the sensory faculties but is inferred based on the hints provided by the subjective
sensorium. Applied as a universal rule, the mentioned fictitious fact represents the other interesting aspect
introduced in the course of the narrative which is the fact that in a universe with n-dimensions n-1
dimensions are directly perceived by the sensing faculty and the nth dimension is inferred based on the
hints perceived by the perceiving subject through sensorial faculty. In a two dimensional world the second
dimension is not visually grasped but inferred through logical contemplation. When entered the third
dimension the second dimension is not just inferred but actually seen whereas the third dimension is
hinted upon by atmospheric phenomena: light and shadow, color, receding lines in the distance which we
call perspectival view and so on. On the other hand, Men, woman, child, thing – each is a point to the eye
of a Linelander, whereas for a Flatlander everything appears as a line and in the occasion of women
viewed from a specific angle, a point. (FLATLAND, p.63) With Loss of dimensions the sensory faculties
diminish in number too. Where as in the Flatland, identity is discerned via senses of hearing, feeling and
sight, in Lineland identity is only discernable by the sound of the voice. (FLATLAND, p.63) And following the
same line of ramifications the directionality of movement reduces accordingly. For example in LineLand as
each individual occupies the whole of the narrow path, so to speak, which constitutes his Universe, and no
one can move to the right or left to make way for passers by, it follows that no LineLander could ever pass
another. Thus in Lineland All vision limited to a Point, and all motion to a Straight Line (FLATLAND, p.64)
Also there is a direct relation between the number of navigatable directions and the number of dimensions
of the space. For example in Lineland with one dimension where measurements of length become the very
measurements of space, since “Space is Length”(FLATLAND, p.67,68) the only navigatable geographical
dimensions are North and South and moving right or left is something that is imperceptible for an
inhabitant of this two-dimensional universe. In the same manner a Flatlander is incapable of perceiving
any movement upward or downward since the only thinkable geographical dimensions are North, South,
East and West. If there is no perception of a direction there is no way to explain movement in that direction
since movement is explained in terms of directionality. This observation becomes more clear at different
points throughout the narrative, once when the two-dimensional entity which also happens to be the
narrator of the story fails to explain the second dimension for a one-dimensional entity, living in a one
dimensional world in terms of movement to right and left and in another incident when a three-
dimensional entity is trying to communicate the concept of the third dimension to our two-dimensional
narrator, when he is incapable of perceiving upward and downward as directionalities that are different
from North and South. Upward does not exist as a direction in flatland, just as left and right are non-
existant directionalities in Lineland. (FLATLAND, p.108)
Aside from the difficulties that an inhabitant of a n-dimensional universe has in understanding another
possible direction of movement in the n+1th dimension, which is the representation of movement in the
n+1th dimension in a n-dimensional universe, the perceiving subject is obstructed in representing an
entity that has an extra dimension. For example, The linear realm of Lineland does not have dimensions
enough to represent the whole of an inhabitant of Flatland… In the same manner the country of two
dimensions in not spacious enough to represent a being of three, but can only exhibit a slice or a section of
it (FLATLAND, p.84) that can be accommodated in the existing dimensions of that space.
The other interesting moment in the story is when the sphere (The three dimensional entity that intrudes
the two-dimensional universe) explains for the square (our two-dimensional narrator) how is it possible to
get an overview of a two-dimensional space by simple act of moving out of it.“You could leave this plane
yourself… A slight upward or downward motion would enable you to see all that I can see. The higher I
mount, and the further I go from your Plane, the more I can see, though of course I see it on a smaller
scale… This is when I am ascending”(FLATLAND, p.90) The description reminds me of my experience with
Google-earth, Google-map or any other large-scale mapping engine on a day-to-day basis. I feel that my
experience of zooming in and out has the same experiential bearing as ascending and descending of a
two-dimensional entity who defies the limits of the dimensions of his universe, flying above the plane that
constrains him and looking back at his very own universe from the out…
Going through all the ideas presented by the narrative I believe that this is the time to locate my discourse
about geo-taggable space within this taxonomy of space regarding dimensionality: Going back to the
definition of a geo-taggbale space; we already defined it as a space that is geographically describable
where as any contained entity can be described in terms of its location, dimensional extensions or
measurements and directionality in an objective, universal and quantitative manner. Also in the case of a
geo-taggable space within which the contained entities are locatable at any given time we can conclude
that a geo-taggable space that has real-time awareness of the mobile entities contained in it is also a
monitored space where as the space can detect the location, dimensional extensions or measurements
and directionality of the mobile agents in real-time via its monitoring or location/direction/extension
sensing agents. Now based on my reading from Flatland I would like to attend to the question of
dimensionality of such space.
The first aspect is the question of directional extension of such space. Based on the reading of the piece
we can conclude that an n-dimensional space is an entity that extends indefinitely in n dimensions and in
2n directions. For example a one dimensional space or Lineland extends indefinitely along its sole
dimension in two directions: north and south. Or a two-dimensional space is an entity extended indefinitely
in two dimensions and four directions : northward and southward in one dimension and eastward and
westward in the second direction. Furthermore, the dimensions that bear the extensions of the spatial
entity are the very same dimensions along which movement, and measurement of phenomena is
supported too. To my view the dimensionality of a geo-taggable space depends on the technology that is
used for geo-referencing the space on one hand and geo-locating of the contained mobile entity within the
space on the other hand.
As I mentioned before the technologies that have been considered in this study is of the type that describe
the location and direction of the physical phenomena in terms of longitude and latitude assuming the
existence of a virtual grid overlaid on the surface of the globe in reference to which all the fixed and
mobile geographically describable phenomena are located and mathematically described in terms of their
geometrical relativities. Apparently this grid has two discernable dimensions and four geographical
directions for that matter. The difference between this two-dimensional space and Flatland is exactly the
concept of Flatness. Since the grid is overlaid on the globe although there are two dimensions to it, it does
not constitute a flat surface but a spherical one. Since a spherical form always turns back to itself thus it
does not have what we call extremities from which it can extend indefinitely in the case of Flatland. Such
space is not an extended or extendable space. Although it gains another spatial property that I would like
to define as expandability. Although a spherical surface is not extendable it can increase its measurable
surface area through expansion or scaling of the sphere itself. This geo-taggble space is an expandable
space as opposed to extended space. One example of expandability of geo-taggable space is the
experience of zooming in and out on a Google-earth or Google-map interface. Zooming-in corresponds to
virtual expansion of the spherical phenomena and zooming out is in accord with the concept of contraption
of phenomena. And as oppose to an extended space that is extended indefinitely by definition and the
status of extension is in its nature, an expansion is not a part of the definition of the spherical two-
dimensional space, but expandability is a property of such space. Thus this property can change through
time and the change is reversible too. Such space that is expanded so to speak through the act of zooming
in can in turn be contracted at a later time through the act of zooming out, thus indefinite expandability
and not indefinite extendedness is the property of such space. Expandability as opposed to extendedness
also implies the notion of time and change through time thus a two-dimensional expandable space by
nature also has a third dimension which is time. If we agree upon the fact that time is a measurable
phenomena that has directionality and that there are entities that can be conceptualized as moving along
the directionality of time and are measurable in terms of time then we are talking about a dimension that
obviously is not of the same type or contained in longitude and latitude. Thus geo-taggable space is a
three-dimensional space with longitude, latitude and time as its dimensions, besides, this space is
indefinitely expandable in two directions which are longitude and latitude where as it is already indefinitely
extended in the third dimension which is time.
Now that we decided upon what sort of space is a geo-taggable space in terms of dimensionality, I would
like to move on to another aspect related to our recent finding which is that of the location of subject in
relation to the space that we just described in terms of dimensionality. I think that the subject can be
discussed in three different states in relation to the geo-taggable space. First is the subject that looks at[
the representation of ] such space through a map-interface, second is the subject that is aware of the fact
that currently he is contained within such a space and at the same time has the luxury of viewing this
space from an outsider point of view – via the map interface – while still being contained within the space.
And, third the subject can also be discussed in terms of being a three-dimensional entity with length,
width and height as the dimensions, that is inhabiting the three-dimensional space again with latter
mentioned trio as its dimensions, where as it is also augmented with the mentioned geo-taggble spatial
entity. How can the subject at the same time perceive himself both as a conventional three dimensional
entity and also the one with two of the conventional dimensions accompanied with an extension in time as
the third dimension? It seems that for this subject the space contains two parallel universes coinciding
both spatially and temporary: The physical three-dimensional space and the augmented geo-taggable
space still three dimensional but different in the nature of its dimensions.
Thinking of the subject as an outside observer is the one that tries to retrieve and view content placed on
different areas of the campus using the map interface( either when he is within the premises of the
campus or not) reminds me of the experience that the Protagonist of the Flatland novel has when with the
help of the Sphere he is able to get out of his own two-dimensional space flying above his planar universe
looking down upon it. The map-interface is the means of such transcendence for the participating subject
in the case of GEOblog. In case that the participant is physically present in the premises of the campus,
and the system delivers digital content based on his real-time sensed location, at the moment that the
subject’s attention turns from the map interface to the retrieved content, is when the subject is brought
back to the universe that he is inhabiting, of course in this case the descend is willful and not mentally or
physically painful by any means. This perpetual change of status from the state of transcendence to the
state of containment is an experiential aspect of the project for the participants which can be loaded
sensationally based on the message offered by the digital content that is being
viewed.
Another possible scenario is the case that the participant wanders

around the physical space hunting for content placed at different
locations throughout the campus without actually caring for the
representational map. That is the case that I believe the participating
subject is maintaining two parallel lives in the two parallel coinciding
spaces. As a conventional three-dimensional entity in a physical three
dimensional space he perceives the perceivable phenomena in his
adjacency through sensory clues as three-dimensional objects;
whereas in his parallel life in the geo-taggable universe, the entities
are geometrically two-dimensional entities or zones with an extension
in time. The zones are perceived as entities constructed from boundaries
that can be transcended. Once the boundary is transcended, the subject
finds himself within the zone and capable of having access to the content that is
placed in this zone. Thus in a way, in the geo-taggable universe, the geo-locatable persona of the subject
perceives the “non-I’s” which are the zones containing the accessible digital content as lines or boundaries
that can be passed or transcended, which bears similarities to the perceptual structure that was presented
to us earlier in our reading of Flatland.
The last issue that I would like to attend to in this section is the idea of the third physical dimension in the
geo-taggable space. Although I presented the implemented geo-taggable space in the case of MIT
GEOblog as having only two physical dimensions, in reality the system differs between different floors of
the campus buildings and as mentioned before in the introduction of the features of the implemented
system, the participants can place the digital content and for that matter the zones containing digital
content on different floors. Although the third physical dimension is not incorporated in the spatial model
of the geo-taggable space, this space is conceptualized as what I presented before as a 2.5 dimensional
space or stacked two dimensional planes. Thus, our geo-taggable universe consists of multiplicity of
spherical spaces with two physical dimensions and time as their third extended dimension, that are
stacked. In the case of planar entities if I were to talk about their stacking I would use the term “stacked on
top of each other” but in the case of spherical surfaces I wonder what would be the correct terminology. Is
the surface representing all the second floors of the world really stacked on top of the surface representing
all the first floor of the world and so on? If I want to diagram the concept I will end up with a visualization
consisting of concentric spherical surfaces.
I intentionally insist on the entities being surfaces because although in the diagram it seams that
each outer surface contains the inner surface, in reality it is not the case; since these entities are surfaces
and not volumes. Thus our geo-taggable space is a universe parallel to the conventional universe, with
three dimensions that coincide with it. It is a multiplicity consisting of phenomena each of which has two
physical dimensions in which it is expandable and time as the third dimension in which it is indefinitely
extended. The multiple entities are stacked in relationship to each other in a concentric configuration on
top of each other if the term can be used in this case for the lack of a better terminology at the moment.
Thus geo-taggable space is a 3.5 dimensional space, expandable in two dimensions, indefinitely extended
in the third dimension, stacked on top of each other thus the .5 outward dimension!
DESCRIPTION OF SYSTEM COMPONENTS – LOCATION-BASED RETRIEVAL OF CONTRIBUTED DIGITAL CONTENT
Once the augmented digital layer is populated by contributed content, participating parties can retrieve
them in three different ways:
*Retrieving content based on semantic search:

If the participant types in a key word and hit the
search button, the system will look for the
searched word in content title, description, or
semantic tags and retrieve the relevant digital
content.
*Retrieving content using interactive

navigatable map interface: The participant can
specify a location in space to retrieve content
that has been geo-tagged to or placed at that
location. In order to do that, one can use the
zoom and pan function on the map to navigate
the plan or use the virtual elevator to navigate
between different floor plans.
*Retrieving content based on self-initiated, real-
time location reporting of the user: The
participant can decide to report his or her real-
time location so that the system retrieve and
deliver digital content accordingly.
Just hitting the Find Me button would result in calculation of the real-time location of the participant based
on IP address which would inform the system about which campus building the participant is in. As a result,
the system would locate the participant at the middle of that building. Using the Java applet in combination
with Find Me button will result in locating the participant with a higher precision based on continuous
screening and reporting the Wi-Fi Access Points' Mac Address, and signal strength from which the
participant is connected to wireless network. Before going further in the course of the report I would like to
give an overview of how the system is technically implemented and what the implemented system keeps
track of through time and how these temporal logs of different aspects of the system can be used in post-
implementation user study and follow up analysis of the system.
GEO-BLOG TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION – GEOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF SPACE
GEOblog is all about location. It is a location-base content contribution and retrieval system. By definition
such system needs to be implemented using GIS technology. A GIS or geographic information system
manages and presents data that refers to or is linked to location whereas data management is defined as
capturing, storing and analyzing the phenomena that we refer to as data. Data is any digitized variable
that can be located spatially whereas location may be described by x, y, and z coordinates of longitude,
latitude, and elevation. Different kinds of data in map form can be entered into a GIS system.
In a GIS, geographical features are often described as mathematical, machine readable datasets that in
computer science are referred as vectors. In such system the spatial phenomena consists of features that
are geometrical shapes. Different geographical features are expressed by different types of geometry:
1. Zero-dimensional points are used for geographical features that can best be expressed by a single
point reference; For example, cities on a map of the world would be represented by points rather
than polygons. No measurements are possible with point features.
2. One-dimensional lines or poly-lines are used for linear features such as rivers, roads, railroads,
trails, and topographic lines. Line features can measure distance.
3. Two-dimensional polygons are used for geographical features that cover a particular area of the
earth's surface. Such features may include lakes, park boundaries, buildings, city boundaries, or
land uses. Polygons convey the most amount of information. They can measure perimeter and
area.
Each of these geometries are linked to a row in a database that describes their attributes including
semantic description of the phenomena. In GEOblog multiple GIS tables are incorporated by the
architecture of the system. The first table is populated by geo-localized floor plans of all the buildings in
MIT Campus. Each location with a recognizable boundary in the whole campus is represented as a unique
entry in this data set. Each record in the data set includes the following information about the spatial entity
that it is associated with: A unique identification number, the geometry of the location in form of a two-
dimensional polygon, the name of the space according to the naming convention that is consistent all over
the campus – i.e. w85-1201 refers to the room 201 on the first floor in building w85; the calculated area of
the polygonal object; the calculated perimeter of the polygonal object; the name of the building that the
space is located in, the floor or building level that the space is located on, and the type of the space
(whether it is a class room, a corridor or connecting space, a service area, a student residence, a lecture
hall or a lobby). This data set was extracted from a raw dataset that was previously generated for the
whole campus by MIT Building services.
The second table is populated by the location of all the Wi-Fi access points around the campus. The raw
dataset that this table was extracted from again was provided by MIT building services. Each entry in this
dataset include the following information about the access node that it represents: The unique mac
address of the node, the name of the node, the name of the building that the node is installed in, the floor
or building level that the node is installed on, the name of the room or space that the node is located at,
and the geographical location of the node in form of a point object.
Once a zone is created by a participant as the place holder of a digital file, an entry is created in a third
dataset that is associated with this zone. This entry include the following information about the spatial
zone that it represents: a unique identification number that helps the system to refer to the entry, a binary
field that specifies if the zone is a circular one- if not, the system will assume that it is a polygonal feature-
, a reference field that associates the spatial zone to the digital content that is being attached to it and is
stored in another data table – the data table that all the digital files are stored in – and finally the actual
geometry of the created zone in form of a polygonal object. Upon creation of the zone by the user, the
system compares the boundaries of the zone against the geo-localized floor plan and will subtract the
areas that fall outside the building envelope on the building level that the zone is placed at.
Since through the first mentioned dataset any given point on the campus is geographically described, and
via the third mentioned data set any spatial zone that is created by the user is interpreted by the system
as a geographical entity, the digital content that is attached to the defined spatial zones by the user are
automatically associated with geographical locations on the campus.
On the other hand, for the content retrieval aspect of the project, if the user chooses to retrieve content
based on self-reported realtime location, a java applet will monitor all the available Wi-Fi access nodes and
sends a list of the mac addresses of the available access nodes as well as the wireless signal strength of
each of them to the server. The system calculates the real-time location of the self-reporting entity using a
spatial triangulation procedure based on the provided data. The following graph shows the principals of
location sensing based on spatial triangulation:
When the location of the self-reporting agent is calculated as a geographical point with known longitude
and latitude, the location of the point can be compared against the geographical description of the spatial
zones stored that contain digital contributions. The system will then automatically identify the spatial
zones that contain the calculated geographical point that represents the real-time location of the self-
reporting agent. Consequently, the digital content that is associated to these spatial zones is going to be
retrieved from the data base and made available for viewing.
DATA TABLES – DESCRIPTION OF DATA SETS AND RELATIONS
This section is dedicated to the preliminary design of the data base and the relationship between different
data sets that was incorporated in the realization of GEOblog system:
Authorized User Log is a table that keeps track of all the created user profiles:
• “id” field is a unique assigned number which functions as the primary key of
the table which allows the system to refer to each record that represents a
unique profile owner
• “username” field keeps track of the actual user name chosen by the profile
owner at the time of profile creation
• “first_name” field stores the first name of the profile owner
• “last_name” field stores the family name of the profile owner
• “email” field stores the MIT email that the profile has been created using it
• “password” field stores the profile password chosen by the profile owner at the
time of registering with the system
• “is_staff” field clarifies if the profile is owned by an individual that is using the
system or an individual that is an administrative of the system who has access
to backbone structure of the system
• “is_superuser” field clarifies the access rights of a staff member. A super user
has full control on the data base to modify fundamental characteristics of the
system architecture
• “is_active” field clarifies whether the profile is currently active or not. This field
can be used if the system is designed in a way to deactivate a user profile in
case that it is detected by the system that the user is placing inappropriate
content on the digital layer of the campus or if the user himself decide to
deactivate his profile temporary or permanently.
• “last_login” field keeps track of the exact time and date of the last time that a
profile owner has logged into the system
• A “date_joined” field keeps track of the exact time and date of when an account
has been created. This information is of great help to identify the pattern of
adaptation of the system by the community and how the system becomes more
popular within the community. One assumption in analyzing this data through
time is that the more the digital layer is populated by early adopters of the
system the more it will penetrate the community. Or maybe picks in the
adaptation of the system correspond to certain dates for example the first of the
semester or summer break or some other critical time in the life of the campus
that is not known to us at this moment. This assumption is yet to be justified
through most implementation analysis of the system.
“Contribution Zones ” is a table that stores the information about the zonal place holders that are created
by users to attach digital content to:
• “id” field is a unique identification number assigned to each entry to access

each created zone on the system
• “circular” field stores the binary information about whether the created zone is a
polygon or a circle
• “floor” field stores the information about which floor the zone has been created
on
• “geo_info_id” is a foreign key which corresponds to the identification “id” of

each digital contribution in the table to create a relation between each spatial
zone and the content that is attached to this zone by the contributors
• “geometry” is a field that stores the actual geometry of the created zone as a
polygonal object
The system is designed in a way that a given contribution can be attached to

multiple spatial zones, whereas a contribution is a set of digital files that are
uploaded as one entry as a set. Thus, each set can have multiple spatial zones
associated with it.
“Contribution Sets ” is a table that stores the information about each contribution set created by the
profile owners:
• “id” field is a unique identification number assigned to each entry, used to

access each created contribution set in the system
• “name” field stores the name of the contribution set specified by the user in
contribution form at the time of creating the entry
• “description” field stores the description of the contribution set specified by the
user in contribution form at the time of creating the entry
• “created_date ” field stores the actual time of the creation of the contribution
set automatically added to the record by the system
• “modified_date ” field stores the actual time of the last modification of the
contribution set automatically updated in the record by the system
• “taken_date ” field stores the historical time of the contribution set specified by
the user in contribution form at the time of creating the entry
• “expired_date ” field stores the time beyond which the contribution set is not
going to be retrievable by prospective viewers specified by the user in
contribution form at the time of creating the entry
• “publishing_date ” field stores the time from which the contribution set is going
to be retrievable by prospective viewers specified by the user in contribution
form at the time of creating the entry
• “owner_id ” field stores the identification number of the owner of a contribution

set. This field connect the table to the “Authorized User Log” table via “id” field
in that table
“Contribution Tags” is a table that stores the all the descriptive tags generated by the contributors to
describe their contribution sets:
• “id” field which is a unique identification number for each tag
• “geocontent_id” field which stores unique “id” of a contribution set that has
been tagged by a given descriptive word. This is the field that connect the
record to the corresponding record in “Contribution Sets” table via the unique
“id” of each record in that tale
• “tag_id” field that stores the actual tag word
At the time of the creation of each contribution set, all the comma separated tags
specified by the user are going to be stored in this table by the system and
associations with the corresponding contribution set in the “contribution sets” table
is created by the system.
Storing the tags in a separate table allows for more efficient handling of semantic
search for the content. At the time that a semantic search is being performed by a
user, the system with compare the query submitted by the user against all the
entries in this table, upon identification of matches the system retrieve
corresponding records from “Contribution Sets” table
“Media Files” is a table that stores the information about all the digital files that have been uploaded to the
system by profile owners:
• “id” field which is a unique identification number for each digital file that is
uploaded to the system
• “content_path” field which stores the actual address that the file is stored on the
server
• “preview_path” field which stores the actual address that the automatically
generated thumbnail is stored on the server
• “original_filename” field which stores the original name of the uploaded file
• “type_id” field which stores the type of the digital file whether it is jpeg or flash
animation. Also youtube enteries can be submitted as digital content. In this
case the youtube content index should be submitted as the address of the
content. i.e. if the entery’s address is ” www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI
“, “Yu_moia-oVI “ should be submitted by the user in the content contribution
phase and the same data is going to be stored in the data table in the
“content_path” field as the unique part of the address of the file on the net. As it
was mentioned before all the digital images are automatically converted to jpeg
format before being stored on the system
• “geo_info_id” field which associates the digital file to a contribution set in

“Contribution Sets” table. Multiple digital files can be associated with one record
in “Contribution Sets” table which means that a contribution set can contain
multiple digital files
• “height” field which stores the height of the digital file after it has been resized
to fit in the acceptable viewing screen size which is that of 600*800 pixels
• “width” field which stores the width of the digital file after it has been resized to
fit in the acceptable viewing screen size which is that of 600*800 pixels. As
mentioned before each digital file is automatically resized by the system to fit
the acceptable viewing screen before it is stored on the server
There are other datasets in the system that maintain a log file of all the activities that are accommodated
by the system through time:
“Location Log” is a table that keeps track of how a location is specified by the user in content retrieval
phase:
• “id“ is a unique automatically assigned identification number for each entry in

the table
• “date“ keeps track of the time that the location of an agent has been reported
to the system
• “ user_id ” keeps track of the identity of the user that is using the platform. In
case that the user has logged in to system this entry can be associated to the
corresponding registered user, if the user is a member of general public that
does not have a profile on the system a generic code will be entered into this
field
• “ method “keeps track of the method that is used by the user to specify a
location, the system differentiates between specifying the location on the
navigatable interactive map by dragging the location indicator on the map,
specifying the location on the navigatable interactive map using the virtual
elevator tool to navigate between different floors, specifying the location via
choosing the retrieved content through semantic search, reporting the location
via IP address localization, or reporting the location using the java applet and
Wi-Fi based triangulation of the space.
• “floor” keeps track of the floor associated with the reported location
• “location” keeps track of the geographical coordinates of the reported location

as a point object with known longitude and latitude.
“sessions_key” associates each location reporting to the session during which the
reporting is happening. Each time that a given user access the geo-blog site, the
duration that the user is using the service is identified by the system as a session
and a unique identification id is assigned to each session for the purpose of tracking
the activities of the user through time.
This generated data set allows us to detect connections between the manner the
digital layer is populated by community member’s individual digital contributions
and how the space is inhabited and frequented by users of the system and how the
digitally augmented layer affect patterns of movement and inhabitation in the
physical space.
Furthermore since the system differentiates between different modes of specifying

the location for which the relevant content is being retrieved. Some comparative
analysis can allow us to identify the incidents where the individuals that are using
the Wi-Fi locationing applet to report their location, use some type of interaction
with the interactive map to correct the error in the location sense by the system.
“Viewing Log” is a table that keeps track of which content has been retrieved/viewed by whom and at
what time:
• “id“ is a unique automatically assigned identification number for each entry in

the table
• “date“ keeps track of the time that the a given digital content has been viewed
by a given user
• “ media_id ” is the unique id of the digital file that has been viewed. This id
associates the entries of the “Viewing Log” table to the entries in “Media_File”
and for that matter “Content Sets”
• .user_id keeps track of the identity of the viewer of the content. If the user has
been logged in his profile, the entry will be associated to the corresponding
entry in “Authorized User” table. If the user is retrieving content anonymously
the system assigns an a generic number to the entry in this field.
“session_key” associates each each content viewing log to the session during which
it is happening. Each time that a given user access the geo-blog site, the duration
that the user is using the service is identified by the system as a session and a
unique identification id is assigned to each session for the purpose of tracking the
activities of the user through time.
This generated dataset will help us to monitor the behavioral patterns of the
individuals who are using the system in order to draw connections between the
frequency and duration of the visits to the augmented digital layer and the
physical/spatial specificities’ of the terrain that is augmented by this layer on one
hand and how it can again affect the manner in which the augmented space is
inhabited by the individuals who are using the service.
”Campus Network” is a table that stores the information about the wireless network of the campus :
• “address” field specifies the range of dynamic IP addresses that are

automatically assigned by the network to any system that is connected to
internet via this network i.e. 18.183.0.0/16
• “building” field stores the name of the building in the campus that is covered by
a given network
• “information” field stores the information of the network i.e. NETWORK W84-
DYN 18.251.0.0/16 Building W84 Dynamic
This is the table that enables the system to maintain localization functionality based
on IP address. Once the user connects to the web interface via campus network, the
system will determine the IP address of the client that is accessing the website and
compare the IP address against the records of this table. As a result, a low accuracy
locationing system is applied to locate the user within the campus at building level,
since each IP address family correspond to one of the campus buildings.
”Campus Access Points” is a table that stores the information about all the Wi-Fi access nodes of the
wireless net work of the campus along with their geographical location as well as the name of the actual
room or identifiable space that the access node is installed in:
• “mac” field specifies the unique mac address of the access point
• “name” field stores the information associated with the access point including
the building name, floor and room name of the location that the access point is
installed in
• “building” field stores the name of the building
• “floor” field stores which floor of the building the access point is located at
• “room” field stores which room or identifiable space in the building the access
point is located in
• “position” is a geometry field that stores the actual point in space that
correspond to the geographical location of the access point in terms of its
geographical longitude and latitude.
This is the table that is used by the system as a refrence frame in Wi-Fi locationing.
Once the user specifies that s/he want to use the Wi-Fi locationing applet to report
her/his real time location, the applet will monitor the list of the access points that
are available to the Wi-Fi card of the viewing platform – in this case personal
computer or Laptop and calculate the location though triangulation of space based
on the known geographical location of the access nodes retrieved from this table
and the strength of the signal received from each of the available access points. The
reported location will be the criteria to retrieve digital content that has been
attached to the space in the vicinity of the reported location.
”Campus Floor Plans” is a table that is populated by geo-localized floor plans of all the campus buildings.
This is the data set that is used by the system to generate the flor plans that are used as the backdrop of
the navigatable/interactive map of the web interface. The flor plans are used by the map as a reference
frame in self-reported or specified location of the user in content retrieval and the created content zones in
content contribution part of the interaction of the user with the system. These floor plans are also used by
the system to calculate the acceptable parts of a content zone once it is created by the user. Each content
zone is compared against the floor plans is adjusted to the building envelop on the floor that the zone is
placed at. The areas of the created zones that are out of the building envelop on upper floors are
subtracted automatically by the system.
• “id” field specifies the unique identification index of each identifiable physical
space
• “geometry” is a geometry field that stores the the actual shape of a physical
space in form of a polygon with all the geographical information of tits points in
gis format
• “building” field stores the name of the building that the space is located at. In
case of MIT campus this information also include the building name and the floor
on which the space is located at i.e. 10-400 is the name of the room 400 which
is located at building 10 on the fourth floor.
• “floor” field stores which floor of the building the identifiable space is located at
With all the major data tables of the system being introduced the following graph illustrates how each of
the tables are being used by the system and how records are associated cross different tables:
GEOBLOG - FUTURE DIRECTIONS - ADOPTABILITY AND EXPANSION
1. Applicability of the system to a different [institutional] site: The system is designed in a

way that through changing the geo-server to one that is populated by floor plans for another
spatial entity on one hand and also updating the database table corresponding to geo-location of
WiFi Accsess Nodes on the other hand the system automatically will adapt itself to the new site.
2. Expandability of the system via new additions to Geo-Server entries and other data sets
: With physical expansion of the campus in the case of future acquisitions, or transformation of the
digital landscape due to the applied modifications on the infrastructure of the connectivity and
Networking of the site, the augmented digital layer can also expand via adding the new entries
both to geo-server and data-sets containing geo-location of newly added Wi-Fi access points
GEOblog, uses three different geo-spatial tables to geo-localize the physical space that is used both as a
refrence frame while contributing and geo-tagging content and while the user self-reports his/her real-time
location to retrieve relevant content in situ.
Another look to the structure and nature of the data tables makes it clear that there are three different
tables in the system that allow for geo-localization of the physical space and augmented digital layer:
1. Campus Network that offers a list of all the wireless sub networks around the campus and the
range of dynamic IP addresses that are assigned to a system that connects to network which is
unique for each of MIT Buildings which allows for a low- accuracy locationing based on reverse geo-
coding of IP address of the user that is connecting to the GEO-blog server. As it was mentioned
before this locationing procedure locates the user at the middle of the building that the
automatically assigned IP address correspond to its Subnet based on associations that are made in
this data table.
2. Campus Access points that in collaboration with an applet that allows the user to self-report his
real-time locationing allows for a high resolution location sensing based on Wi-Fi wireless network
of the campus. This table consist of all the Wi-Fi access nodes as well as their geographical location
( the longitude and latitude of the point in space that the node is installed at)
3. Campus Floor Plans, which is a table populated by all the geo-localized floor plans of the buildings
in the campus. This table contain the geographical information of the shapes that constitute the
over-all floor plans of the campus. The enteries of this data table will populate a
navigatable/interactive map interface which is used as a refrence frame both to contribute and
place digital content over specified spatial zones and specify a physical location interacting with
the map to retrieve content that is relevant ( placed over, or attached to ) the specified locality.
It is obvious that all these three data tables are site specific and the content of these tables will differ from
one physical site to the other. But the point is that the system has designed in a way that its functionality
is independent from the content of these tables meaning that for a new site, as long as these three site
specific data sets are updated with the information pertaining to the new site, the system will
automatically adopt itself to the specificities of the new site.
Thus for any given physical [institutional] site, if
1. there is a dense wireless network in place that operates using Wi-Fi access nodes
2. there is a complete data set of the geographical location of each Wi-Fi access node which also
associate the access node with the name of the building/floor/room that the access node is
installed in, on or at.
3. there is a complete data set that is populated by geo-localized floor plans of all the buildings in the
site
4. there is a complete data set that associates the automatically assigned IP addresses pertaining to
the subnets provided by the network employed all over the site with the physical entities and
actual places like buildings, rooms etc.
And if these three tables replace their corresponding tables in GEOblog data base, then the system
automatically is going to adapt to the new physical site and its spatial specificities.
Based on the same line of reasoning, after GEOblog platform is employed for a given site. In case that the
site of the project expand due to further acquisition of real-state by the institution, or the digital landscape
of the site changes to addition or omission of Wi-Fi access nodes or the change in the process of assigning
dynamic IP addresses y the implemented Network, adding the new entries to the three previously
mentioned data sets of editing the existing entries will result in adaptation of the system to the modified or
extended digitally augmented landscape.
GEOBLOG – FUTURE DIRECTIONS - IMPROVEMENT OF LOCATIONING FUNCTIONALITY
1. Improvement of Location-Sensing Technology through incorporation of material

properties of architectural elements: The wireless signal strength drastically changes in its
attributes while travelling through different architectural elements with different material
properties which effect the precision of location-sensing procedure. One possible direction can be
incorporation of material characteristics of the architectural elements as a field entry of Geo-
Localized Floor Plans used in the location-sensing procedure to achieve maximum level of
precision.
2. Improving of Location-Sensing Technology through incorporation of tracking the self

reporting agent in the space through time: Each self-reported or sense location is compared
by the system to the trajectory of the movement of the mobile agent in the space, in the case that
a drastic change in location is sensed over a short time interval it is an indication of a possible
error in location-sensing which the system can rely on to correct itself. Also, through time the
system can learn from such incidents to develop sensitivity about the areas that such indication of
error or inaccuracy is more frequently detected.
Theoretically triangulation of space based on Wi-Fi signal

reception can yield very accurate result in sensing real-time
location whereas the digitally augmented space is an open
terrain and nothing obstruct the line of sight between a given
Wi-Fi access node and the Wi-Fi enabled device that uses the
strength of the signal received from the access point as a
criteria in calculating its real-time location. But, in a built
environment it is quite common that the signal has to pass
through the thickness of architectural elements to get to the
Wi-Fi enabled device.
Under such circumstances the signal strength drops each time
that it passes a physical barrier and if a procedure is not
incorporated in location-sensing code that take this
phenomena into account, the weaker signal will translate to
bigger relative distance between the Wi-Fi access node and Wi-
Fi enabled device that is receiving the signal.
Thus the calculated location will be mistakenly shifted towards

the Wi-Fi node with stronger signal. Assuming that this node is
the nearest to the location of the Wi-Fi enabled device since in
an unobstructed terrain the strength of the signal is
proportional to the distance that the signal has to travel to get
to the device. Where as in reality distance is not the only factor
that play a rule in the strength of the signal when it is received
by the device but each time that the signal passes a physical
barrier and travels through its thickness, there is a drop in the
strength of the signal.
Given the mentioned facts, one possible future direction can focus on how this phenomena can be taken
into account in calculating the real-time location using Wi-Fi triangulation. One possible way is to find a
way to incorporate the material characteristics of the architectural elements that are spatially dividing the
terrain and obstructing the streightline between the Wi-Fi node and the Wi-Fi enabled device. If at any
given point there is a way to take into account how many barriers the signal has to cross and what is the
impact of each one on the signal strength, the accuracy of the location sensing will improve. This exact
the nedd to identify how many barriers are passed by the signal and what is the materiality of each barrier
and how and to what extend crossing a physical thickness of such materiality will affect the strength of the
signal.
Another possible way to improve the location-sensing functionality of the system is to compare each
detected real-time location against the past trajectory of the mobile entity in the space. If a drastic change
is detected within a short time span it would be flagged by the system as an improbable reading of the
real-time location. Such system can be designed as intelligent meaning that it learns from behavioral
patterns of the inhabitant through time.
GEOBLOG – FUTURE DIRECTIONS – FURTHER ENHANCEMENT OF USER EXPERIENCE, BENEFITING FROM THE IMPLEMENTED
TECHNOLOGICAL PLATFORM
1. Adding more features to GEOblog Platform: In the context of the platform that has
beenimplimented for GEOblog, with minor changes or additions other scenarios can also be
supported by the platform that will enhance the user experience in a physical space that is digitally
augmented. Two og which I would like to discuss here which are : Virtual Hopscotch and Digital
Story Lines
Virtual Hopscotch: This interaction mode allows the participant to navigate the data space, overlaid on a
physical space different from the immediate space that the he/she is inhabiting based on the the roaming
of a fellow participant in another location ( Any participant owns a virtual avatar and a virtual shadow of
her/his own. The virtual avatar represents the normalized location of the participants in the augmented
space and the shadow represents the normalized location of the participant in the data-scape. By dragging
one’s shadow to the location of another participant’s avatar, one would initiate a request to virtually
hopscotch to the other subject’s location in the data-scape, getting access to what the other subject has
access to as opposed to what s/he would have access to, had s/he decided to follow his own root in the
hard-scape corporeally.) This mode of experience brings to mind the situationist’s experiments with
psycho-geographic maps of the city by navigating one city with the use of the representational map of
another city. Furthermore connections can be drawn from “Hopscotch” which is a novel by Argentine
author Julio Cortázar. It was first published in English in 1966 three years after it was written.
The piece is written in an episodic, snapshot manner. The novel has 155 chapters, the last 99 being
defined as "expendable." The book can be read either in direct sequence from chapter 1 to 56, or by
“hopscotching” through the entire set of 155 chapters--except chapter 155--according to a table provided
by the author that leaves the reader, finally, in an infinite loop between the last two chapters in the
sequence.
There are several other ways to read the novel, such as reading only the odd or even pages, or choosing
chapters in completely random order. Some of the "expendable" chapters fill in gaps in the main story,
while others add information about the characters or record the aesthetic and literary speculations of a
writer named Morelli .
Narration and the persona of the narrator is an important part of the structure of the book. In part one,
From the Other Side, it is implied that Horacio is the narrator and the ‘writer’ of the story, especially since
it is repeatedly mentioned that La Maga is his muse and eventual literary salvation. However, in part two,
From This Side, the introduction of Morelli as a character seems to hint that he is the true ‘writer’ of the
story, especially in the ‘Morelliana’ of the expendable chapters.9
The idea of this shift in the persona of the narrator and the fact that the novel is written in a way that
allows the audience to “hopscotch” cross different chapters of the book was the inspiration for the design
of the functionality for “Virtual Hopscotch” for GEOblog platform
Digital Story Lines: Right now the platform allows for contributing stand alone instances of an
accordance in form of digital media that has documented it. If a tracking system is also implemented the
users can also contribute story lines that consist of multiplicity of story zones along a defined path. When
retrieving content the user can specify that he/she wants to retrieve digital content that pertain to a
specific story along a path and the system can guide the user through the space to follow the path of the
story that consist of mile stones along a path in the physical space. An interface should be designed that
offers a graphical representation of the actual path of the user in the physical space and the desired path
that should be taken to follow the flow of the locational digital story line on one hand and the give a hint to
the user when and where the subject is deviating from the desired path on the other hand.
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayuela
In case of digital story lines whereas a specific navigational
path becomes the desired path to take. The question is
what is the best way to represent the augmented space in
order to guide the user along a specified path in this space?
A fundamental aim of the conceptual design of such mode
of interaction with the system is to attend to the question
of whether we really need a map if the territory is the map
itself? If we look at the project as a new way of navigating
the space not based on Cartesian coordinates which
requires a representational map but based on different
levels of accessibility to geo-tagged digital content which I
call Hertzian coordinate, do we really need a map of the
Cartesian space? Do we really need a map if the map is as
big as the territory and we are in the map? This way
instead of a map, what one needs is a diagram of our real-
time navigation in the Hertzian space representing which
data one has access to and to which direction one needs to
keep moving to if the desire is to follow the path that
corresponds to the path of the digital story line.
2. Using the implemented campus wide location sensing platform as a back-bone for other
context-sensitive services for the benefit of MIT community : One can think of multiplicity
of scenarios in which a coherent spatial system hosts different spatial scenarios or delivers
relevant services to its inhabitants best on real-time knowledge of their location and orientation in
the space.
An example of Using the implemented campus wide location sensing platform as a back-bone for other
context-sensitive services is, MIT Ping which is a proposal for a location‐based community text
messaging platform that provides a text based communication interface for the members of the
community that happen to be in physical proximity of each other at a given time. This communicative
portal offers an interface for the participating individuals to share location specific information with
each other, through geo‐tagging the text message to a specific zone in the campus making it available
to the fellow participants that happen to be in the vicinity of the participant that is initiating the text
message or within the specified zone that the text message is placed at.
Web Interface : MITPing is conceptualized as a facebook applet. The interface consists of three different
panels:
1. iping is the part of the interface that enables the user to inter the body of the text, specify the
time span that the text is valid – after the expiration time of the text message it is not going to be
available – and specify the spatial region that the text message is tagged to – the fellow
participants that their location happens to be outside of the zone that a specific text message is
tagged to, are not going to have access to the geo-tagged text message.
2. palping is the part of the interface that list the available text messages that have been generated
by one of the members of the participant’s social circle- the list of friends is retrieved from the
participant’s friend list on his/her facebook profile. The list can be sorted based on temporal
distance- chronologically- or spatial distance- calculating the distance between the current position
of the user and the node in the space that the text message was initiated from.
3. Mitping is the part of the interface that list the available text messages that have been generated
by other members of MIT community that are not in the participant friend list retrieved from
his/her facebook profile. This list is also sort-able both spatially and chronologically.
Once the participant chooses an item in the list,
the system will provide a map interface
representing the current location of the user and
the node in the space that the initial message
has been generated from. The user is also
provided by the option of relaying the message
with a pre-defined spatial extension radius –
specifying a circular area with the current
location of the participant at its center that the
selected text message is going to be relayed
over- and temporal extension – a predefined
duration of a availability of the message.
Added value for the community if implemented : MIT community has always supported the concept
of sharing resources and information. There are some informational items and resources that are valid
within a specific region and at a given time, the following scenarios are indicative of some of the cases:
1. Sharing found Resources
2. Asking for Resources
3. Sharing/Asking for location specific information
4. Initiating a social event
Research potentials of the proposal: In order to be able to benefit from different features of the
system, the participants choose to voluntarily report the system on their current location every time that
they initiate a message or retrieve one. As a result the researcher is provided by a set of interconnected
public zones (MIT campus) that the inhabitants are willingly and continuously reporting back their location
for that matter their pattern of movement. Assuming a reasonable penetration rate for the offered system,
the generated datasets consisting of the time and location of the users can be used for various spatio-
behavioral analysis, the following list consist of some possibilities but of course is not exhaustive of all :
1. Analysis of patterns of movement in the space
2. Analysis of the patterns of co-habitation, crowed formation and dispersion through time
3. Identifying the shared spaces that are heavily used during different temporal spans
4. Identifying the patterns of dissemination of information in the space. Imagine the case that a
specific piece of information is being tracked by the system to analyze how it is disseminated
throughout the campus via relaying- The text message is initiated at a specific node in the space
and is disseminated through the users once they decide to further relay the information to their
one vicinity.
5. Monitoring the patterns in which the provided digital layer (the geo-taggable space) is populated
by the community of users and how one can draw connections between the specificities of the
physical space that is overlaid by this digital layer and the detected patterns of populating the
digital layer through geo-tagging.
6. To what extent individuals that share the same virtual social space – having mutual friends in their
facebook friends list- tend to occupy the same physical social spaces- publicly shared zones [of the
Campus].
Of course MIT Ping is not the only possible context sensitive service that can be built upon the
implemented locationing system.
GEOBLOG – FUTURE DIRECTIONS – CROSS PLATFORM DEPLOYABLITY OF THE SYSTEM
At the moment the platform has been developed as a web interface in combination with a JAVA applet or
an executable file – a driver for wireless card – that allows the system to get access to the Wi-Fi readings
for calculating the real time location. Furthermore it is assumed that the target audience will connect to
the website via a laptop or desktop computer. Since the major part of the system has been developed in a
way that it is not platform specific it will be easily achievable to convert the system to one that is
accessible and operational cross platforms on any Wi-Fi enabled device that is able to connect to the World
Wide Web including a plethora of hand held devices like smart mobile phones.
Two extensions/modifications are needed to be taken to consideration with such an aim in mind:
1. The web interface should be modified in a way that the size and resolution of the graphical
interface automatically adopts to the specifications of the viewing screen of the device that
connects to the platform via internet.
2. For each operating system a different Java applet or a different driver should be included that will
provide the require access to the wireless network card of the system which allows for Wi-Fi
readings that are required for the system to locate the device in real-time.
MOVING FORWARD - POST-IMPLIMENTATION LONGITUDINAL USER-STUDY
GEOblog is an implemented casestudy that is a try in transforming the public space to a content sharing
medium through digital augmentation of the space with geo-taggable, content holding layer. The question
to be asked is: How does the augmented digital layer changes the perception of the sociability,
inhabitation, spatial navigations and boundary conditions in urban public terrain?
For the contemporary man, one of the functions of public space is being a place where a deliverable
service is delivered to him/her while the whole deal is visible and accessible to thepublic consisting of the
multitude of the subjects that are co-habiting the same space at the same time for the very same reason
of having access to the same deliverables; consider a theatre, a concert hall, a museum, or a library
whereas the deliverable is the cultural content. There are two types of public spaces; the public spaces of
transit which are perceived as spaces allocated to the act of passing through and the public spaces of
temporal equilibrium and settlement; places that are assigned to stay in and pass time while receiving a
specific deliverable service whereas this service can consist of cultural content or else.
The public zones of transit and the public zones of settlement get their perceivable description and socio-
spatial definition partly based on their socially assigned function and /or their urban typo-morphology; for
example an airport is a public space of transit by functional definition whereas
a street is a public space of transit due to its linear morphology and also partially because of a collective
perception of it as such. There are some points in the life of a public space that these assigned roles of
transit and rest change or shift due to circumstances; urban festivities and also revolutions and social
unrests are among these incidents. In the course of both incidents the function of the public arena turns
out to be that of delivering a specific content or narrative; consider a Jazz festival held by residents or local
commerce in a neighborhood in which case the incident is organized around cultural content, or an urban
upheaval whereas the content is that of grass root generation of self-expression in its individual and/or
collective form and as a multiplicity of emergent patterns of behavior concerning the concept of socio-
political resistance. As an example from my own culture, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the
idea of collective prayer which is a ceremony being held every Friday in the streets of Tehran whereas
major urban arteries change function from transit axes to places of gathering and sit-in for half a day every
week during Friday morning prayer. It seems that narrative and content has this magical capability of
shifting or transforming the transitory public spaces to the spaces of rest and collective contemplation.
Inter-subjective behavior or discursive interaction between the subjects is not likely to happen while the
subjects who are cohabiting a public arena consider the space as a transitory space, since the first rule of
interaction is the criteria of engagement and the subject is less prone to engage while in transit.
Aside from these series of psycho-sociological assumptions we have the current state of affairs with in
which the contemporary public space is a monitored space where the absolute or relative locational,
temporal and/or contextual coordinates of the subject can be calculated in real-time. Once it is possible
through the current technological constructs to monitor the real-time spatiotemporal specificities of the
subject, it is reasonable to assume that any monitoring system has real-time access to the subject,
capable of delivering data to the subject as well as gathering data about the subject from the subject since
the relation of the one that is watching and the one that is being watched is a bilateral relationship . As a
result, the very same subject that is being surveilled in real-time can be accessed and be granted access
to the flows of information, adding a digital layer augmenting the other layers of infrastructure of the
urban spaces. The monitored aspects of the subject’s behavior and his/her spatio-temporal specificities are
delivered to the surveillance system as packages of data and at the same time through the same portal,
content packages can be delivered to the surveilled subject. As a result whereas in the old days access
was assumed to be a matter of private space, connected to TV sets and telephone land lines, and Internet
cables, in the contemporary form of it, access is implemented within the context of mobile subject, thus
the subject who is present in the transit public spaces of city.
If we assume that deliverance of content can transform the mode of subjective perception of a public
space on one hand and that it is possible to deliver content to the contemporary subject through the
bilateral relationship between the surveillance technologies and the surveilled public on the other hand,,
then it is reasonable to assume that any system that enables some sort of content delivery to the subject
on-the-run who is the subject passing through the transit public spaces of the city would both changes the
perception of the subject of the urban space with in which the content is
deliverable and also the function of this public terrain, while this new conceptualized layer of the urban
public spaces is going to be affected by spatial drivers ( the physical specificities of the urban terrain) as
well as psycho-cultural factors.
Thus, as mentioned before GEOblog as a test bed for the mentioned assumptions as been implemented to
include the following practical components:
1. A website component through which the user is enabled to upload content and attach the content to a
specific location within the physical space using a planar map. The user is provided by two different tools
for geo-tagging the content: content nodes and content zones. When content is attached, embedded or
geo-tagged using the node tool, it means that it is placed at a specific node in the planar space, or urban
terrain perceived as a two dimensional plan, and that it is accessible by viewing platform with in a default
or predefined radius (distance from the node to which the content is attached to). When the content is
placed in the physical space using the zone tool, it is more concerned with the zones or areas of the
physical terrain that the place of relevance or occurrence of the content is perceivable or in the visual field,
for example whereas the content pertaining to Graduate School of Design building is reasonably supposed
to be attached to a node within the footprint of the building, its zone of
visibility can be anywhere in Quincy street based on what sort of the relationship the sharing subject want
to develop with the narrative of the shared content.
While the conventional geo-tagging interfaces on the web enable the user to attach standalone content to
standalone nodes in the planar representation of the space, the designed interface in this research would
allow the user to treat the content as a phenomena that extends beyond a specific node transformaing to
an augmented spatial that offers a narrative a narrative extended through time and space.
2. A platform or interface to access the data (in this case the shared and geo-temporally tagged content)
on a wifi-enabled device i( in this case personal desktop or laptop computer in the physical space which is
augmented with a digital layer of uploaded content, on the run and in situ or off-site.
There is a spatial database that is populated through uploading and geo-tagging the content using the
mentioned geo-tagging tools via the web interface. Thus, some location-based data field is a part of any
data record entered in the spatial database. As a result, if we assume that the Wi-Fi enabled device that is
aware of its location with some level of accuracy through both hardware and software components on one
hand and that it is able to connect to this spatial database populated by content and location data
pertaining to each content on the other hand, then the device can report its location to a procedure on the
server that the spatial database is located at. Once the device reports its current location to the server
space wirelessly, a procedure is executed on the server side that will query the spatial database in order to
retrieve data that is tagged to the relevant reported location of the device. Once the dataset including the
relevant content is retrieved from the spatial database, this set of content can be transmitted from the
server and received by the client software on the viewing device through wireless connection, thus
rendered accessible to the subject holding the device.
The combination of the following two interfaces/platforms would provide the public terrain with an added
digital layer that can be populated by the users of the public terrain with user generated digital contents
and stories. The idea is that providing the user with the mentioned geotagging tools as opposed to
traditional node-based geo-tagging tool would result in different patterns of populating the digital layer,
which has different or shifted patterns of density. The fact that how this augmented digital layer is
populated , and what sort of density typology would be the result of this populating pattern would affect
the patterns of movement and use in the augmented public space. Whereas in conventional cities, the
urban form and its density has a direct effect on the patterns of movement and use of the inhabitants of
the public terrain, the morphology and density of the augmented digital layer can have a indirect effect on
the patterns of use and movement of the digitally augmented physical terrain. It is interesting to find out
what would be the corresponding definition of different conventional urban phenomena (their
corresponding counterparts in the augmented digital terrain) for example what is a landmark, a
neighborhood, a street, an urban node, an urban access, and if there is a relationship or a way toinfer the
form of one in the physical terrain from the form of the other in the digitally augmented layer populated
with user generated content.
Once the platform is implemented, a sample group of subjects (most probably MIT Undergraduates who
are assumed to be both comfortable and willing to adopt new technologies) would be provided by an
already gathered set of content that is relevant to different locations in MIT Campus (MIT hacks and
pranks) and would be asked to geo-tag them using the set of provided geo-tagging tools once off-site and
using the web interface and once while on-site using the interface when the space itself becomes the map
or medium of geotagging.
On the other hand the study group would be asked to navigate the space with the device accessing the
same set of content that has been geo-tagged by other subjects. The two different data sets generated
from the geo-tagging behavior and the navigational behavior of the subjects
within the digitally augmented/tagged space will be analyzed to address the following questions:
1. Is there a relationship between the density of the augmented digital layer and the resulted forms of the
process of population of this layer and the physical space and the specificities of the physical space that is
being augmented by this digital layer? Can the form of one layer be logically drawn based on the
observations about the other layer?
2. How does the tagging behavior of the user changes when he is asked to tag content to a space while
mobile in the space as oppose to being provided by the tagging interface off-site and trough a planar
representational map?
3. How does the user’s behavior changes in the physical space in presence of a digitally augmented layer
of user generated content as oppose to absence of such a layer?
4. Does augmentation of the urban terrain with digital content in the form of zones of accessibility or
visibility for content result in a shift of boundary of public zones for the perceiving subject. How does the
perceptual boundaries of the urban terrain changes due to the experience of the subject in the process of
being introduced to a digital layer containing geo-tagged content. Once augmented by a digital layer
populated by user generated
content, does the public terrain transforms from a zone of transit to zones of public engagement,
participation and interaction?
It is also worth mentioning that once the system is implemented and made open for public use in the
campus it is possible that the platform is adopted by enough number of users that it would make it
possible to do some more generalize post-implementation study outside the sample group, with in the
student body in MIT campus. So the sample study group is proposed to secure a minimum amount of data
to be analyzed within the framework of the proposed research and development project.
Implementing the design guidelines that are devised in the theoretical-conceptual framework of the study,
the research is intended to attend to a longitudinal post-implementation user study of the case, monitoring
the levels and patterns of the participation of the members of MIT community and perhaps the visiting
individuals in the experiment. The user study will involve analytical visualization of the quantitative data
retrieved in the process of longitudinal monitoring of the space. There is an irony in choosing such
methodology for post-implementation user study of the case: It is assumed that any augmented space
logically is a monitored space, since delivering of any data to a mobile user with locational, temporal
and/or contextual sensitivity, exacts a need for monitoring the patterns of mobility of the user and sensing
the users’ locational and temporal coordinates, in relation to other subjectivities and objectivities. So in
order to actualize digital augmentation of the space the first step is designing and implementing the
monitoring infrastructure, and again the researcher is back to this surveillance aspect once it is time to
analyze the socio-spatial impact of the implemented augmentation and the generated hybrid space.
Aside from attending to the question of how an augmented shared space is received and appreciated by
community and what are the characteristics of the generated public sphere when the public space is
enabled to accommodate various communicative acts through monitoring the space, there would be
questionnaires which would focus on cross-referencing and navigational aspects of the project attending to
following questions:
In the case of Geo-temporal referencing and the designed interaction and interface for this matter, which
approach is more desirable or intuitive for the participants: to treat the place holders as nodes of existence
on the physical terrain or zones of accessibility and/or visibility? Different aspects of this qualitative
comparison should be studied both for the participants who are using the geo-temporal cross referencing
interface on the web to upload/tag/share their content and the participants who have participated in
navigating the augmented space and accessing and viewing the uploaded content on the hand held
device. The questionnaire in this case would address the issue of eligibility of the logical connections of the
overlaid semantic/memory terrain and the physical terrain both when the connections are conceptualized
as nodes of existence or zones of accessibility/visibility.
In the case of the level of appreciation and how the augmented shared space is received and perceived as
a medium for interaction with other subjectivities, objectivities and/or the shared territory, and inter-
subjective communication, a questionnaire and/or a set of conducted interviews is going to be designed
which would focus on the following issues: To what level the participants were engaged with the adjacent
territory trough navigating the memory terrain? To what extent the participants were willing to or
comfortable with using the platform (the augmented shared space) for self-expression or (spatial-
blogging)? To what extent the augmentation of the shared space would encourage participation in design
and implementation of the digital layer? To what extent taking part in augmenting the space in the form of
content generation, spatial-blogging, or spatial story-telling, on one hand and navigating the geo-tagged
memory terrain of the shared space on the other hand encourages the members to engage in fleeting
interactions with strangers in the space without getting personal during the course of interaction?
The presented document has tried to walk the reader through the steps that has been taken in conceptual
design and technical implementation of the system that provide a platform for showcasing the potentials
of digital augmentation of a publicly shared space. Studying the modes in which such platform is perceived
and received by the community provide a valuable resource of scholarly research in the field. The
participants contribute to the scholarly goals of this project at two different levels:
1. Involuntary participation through the digital traces that individuals leave through time
unconsciously with adopting and using the system:
The system keep track of three major phenomena in the digitally augmented space through time:
i. When GEOblog profiles are created
ii. Where spatial zones are places as place holders of contributed digital content which allows
the researcher to monitor how the augmented digital layer is populated through time and
how this patterns relates to the specificities of the physical space that is being augmented
by digital layer
iii. When, where and by whom the digitally augmented space is visited by individuals. The
system keeps track of the locations that are specified on the map or reported by the
locationing system through time. This information allows the researcher to draw
connections between the specificities of the physical space and the digital layer and how
such specificities exact a certain pattern of navigation – virtual or corporeal – of the space
through time
iv. When, where and by whom digital content has been retrieved by individuals and what is
the criteria for searching and retrieving digital content which allows for studying the
impact of the message of the content, the place that the content is placed at and the
procedure of the locating content within the augmented space on each other
2. Willful participation of the individuals in the research via participation in the online pool or the
designed experiment that are designed to identify different aspects of the experience and validate
several assumptions that are made by the researcher about how such system is received and
perceived by the participants and how their experience of the spatial phenomena and the social
inter-subjective communications that are housed in such hybrid space – digitally augmented
publicly shared space - can be enhanced using the provided platform.
Through the implementation of the proposed guidelines within the framework of the proposed case
study it is expected that providing the subjects with a well-designed platform for spatial content
sharing in shared augmented spaces would generate a discursive public sphere which would provide
denizens with a space for eventful, constructive, and engaging inter-subjectivities in the form of, peer-
to-peer, content-oriented (as opposed to object-oriented) democracy; making the space a social
medium in addition to conception of it as a social production. Lefebvre sees the space as a social
production and now, by using peer-to-peer networks it is possible that people contribute in constant
real-time transformation and transfiguration of the hybrid (augmented) urban spaces, adding another
feature to space as a social medium.
The hypothesis is that the participants will find geo-temporal referencing of the content more intuitive
if the place holders are being conceptualized as zones of accessibility rather than nodes of existence
on the semantic/narrative memory terrain. The content of the online questionnaire along with the
description of each question and also the content of the designed experiment are attached to this
report in appendix A and B
APPENDIX A- POST-IMPLEMENTATION USER STUDY-ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE
At the moment, the system is at its final implementation phase and system debugging process. Once the
system is fully implemented and operational, it will be available in the public domain @
http://senseable.mit.edu/geoblog/.
An online questionnaire is also available as a part of the website. The users can choose to participate in
this online poll. The research questionnaire focuses on the behavioral/experiential/perceptual ramifications
and of enabling the individuals to share narratives in form of digital content spatially via a geo-tagging
interface, which allows the users to place digital content on a layer overlaid on spaces that are conceived
as shared spaces. This questionnaire is designed with both location sensitive content contribution and
content retrieval in mind. If the user has not used either of the interfaces, – the content contribution
interface as well as on-location content retrieval interface or if the user chooses not to participate in the
poll it is not obligatory by any means to do so. The questions are as follows:
The first set of questions asks for the background of the poll participant and his/her general experience in
using blogging, user-generated content sharing and geo-tagging platforms.
1. Is your educational and/or professional background in architecture, urban design or interior design?
(I t is assumed that participants who have a professional/academic background in

architecture/urban design have a deeper understanding of spatial phenomena; spatially when it
comes to understanding a space mediated via a representational map.)
2. Do you maintain a personal blog?
(Bloggers are already familiar with the practice of self-casting to the on known world. Bloggers
become intimate with total strangers –sharing with the unknown world what they think and what
they feel while maintaining their privacy.)
What do you usually blog about?
( If the participant is a blogger it will be interesting to know what is it that they share with the
unknown audience.)
3. What is interesting about blogging for you?
( If the participant is a blogger it will be interesting to know what aspect of blogging, self-casting,
self-expressing to the unknown audience is of appeal to them.)
4. Are you currently using any web-based user generated content sharing platform? Please specify
which platform you use to share your content
( Participants that are already using a web-based user-generated content platform, have familiarity
with the process of tagging, describing, naming and uploading digital content. Thus, they pick up
the user interface easier and in a more intuitive manner.)
5. Have you ever tried any content sharing platform that allows the user geo-tag the content? Please
specify which platform(s) you have used.
( Participants that are already using a geo-tagging web-based or client application, have a prior
understanding of idea of annotating the space, or attaching digital content to physical space. It is
assumed that for the most part this prior knowledge is limited to using nodal place holders that is
offered by platforms like Yahoo maps, Google maps, Flikre, etc.)
6. If you have ever used geo-tagging interface, which approached did you use before?
A. Placing the content on a map through specifying the point where you want to place the
content by clicking on the map or drag and dropping the content to a point on the map
B. Specifying the street address, city, country or other locational information as a text-based
tag or in the description of the content i.e. My friends in Paris!
C. Specifying geo-tags in form of longitude and latitude at the point that you would like to
place your content
(It is interesting to know if the user is familiar with the idea of thinking about space as a
geographical phenomena, is this geographic entity conceived as nodes identifiable on a
representational map, absolute longitude and latitudes, or descriptive names of identifiable places
as in name of the cities, street addresses, etc.)
7. What is the nature of the content that you usually geo-tag?
(What is the nature of the data that the participant feels the need to attach or associate it to an
identifiable geographical entity or node in space? Is it the data pertaining to the characteristics of
a space? Is it digital photos that represent the participant’s memory of a specific geographical
location?)
8. What do you find interesting about geo-tagging or adding locational information to the content that
you share with others?
(What is interesting about associating non geographical data to geographical locations? Is it a way
for the participant to spatially locate their memories mediated and stored via digital medium?)
The users are asked to answer the following questions if they have used GEOblog Interface to upload, geo-
tag and share content.
1. Using Geo-Blog, the stories that I share are about:
A. Things that happened before
B. Things that are happening right now
C. Things that are going to happen in the future
D. Things that do not have any specific time
(Where one locate the digital memories that are associated with a physical place temporally?
When one feels the need to make such spatial association? Is it the past occurrences, things that
are just happening or things that are yet to come? Or maybe there is no need to locate phenomena
temporally for it to be associated with a physical place?)
2. Using Geo-Blog, the stories that I share are related to:
A. Me
B. My family and friends
C. MIT community
D. Anybody who visits MIT campus
E. Nobody in particular
F. Other, please specify
(What sort of stories are shared with others? Personal, relating a more limited social circle, a
community that one feels social associations with, general unknown public.)
3. What is the format of the digital content that you contribute to the Geo-Blog platform?
A. Photo
B. Flash Videos
C. Videos uploaded to youtube
( Photos are messages that can be conveyed instantaneously whereas videos are perceived
through time. Which type of digital messages is being associated with physical spaces, the
instantaneous ones or the ones with duration?)
4. Using Geo-Blog, I geo-tag my content to:
A. Locations which are related to the story
B. Locations which are crowded even if they are not related to the story
C. Locations which are frequented by me and/or my friends even if they are not related to the
story
D. Other, please specify
( What is the criteria for placing digital content over physical spaces? Association of the message
conveyed by the content to the place that it is attached to? The place being frequented by the
others that are the target audience of the message conveyed by the content? Or, one is more
prone to place the content on places that it is most possible for it to be retrieved by unknown
others whereas the criteria is the highest possibility of exposure as opposed to relevance?)
5. Using Geo-Blog, where do you usually place your content?
A. Outdoor courtyards around or within the campus area
B. Streets surrounding the campus area
C. Indoor Corridors
D. Lobbies
E. Studios/Classrooms/Lecture Halls/Laboratories
F. Public places with sitting areas i.e. in front of the Café
G. Student Lounges
H. Administration Offices
I. Residence Halls
J. Other, please specify
(Are participants prone to place content in more public places or more private ones?)
6. If I am able to specify who can access my content:
A. I will limit the access of all my content to my friends
B. I will limit the access of some of my content to my friends
C. I will limit the access of all my content to MIT student body
D. I will limit the access of some of my content to MIT student body
E. I will not limit the access at all
(Is the participant prone to limit who is going to have access to his contributions, self-casting, self-
expression?)
7. Do you use initiation and/or expiration date for your content? Why?
( While placing the content in physical space, is the user also associating the content to a temporal
span? Does spatializing the message exacts the need for temporalization of it as well?
8. Do you think that there should be an editorial board which decide which content is appropriate to
be shared using the platform? Why? **
(What do members of the community feel about having control over the provided communicative
platform? Do they believe in absolute freedom or institutional control over the contributed and
shared content?)
9. Do you prefer your identity as the owner or contributor of the content be disclosed to the public?
A. I like my identity disclosed to everybody
B. I prefer to contribute anonymously all the time
C. I like my identity disclosed to my friends but I like to remain anonymous for the general
public
D. I would like to have the choice to disclose or hide my identity for each content separately
(Whereas one uses the platform to share content with possible strangers does he/she want his/her
identity to be disclosed to the unknown audience?)
10. When geo-tagging my content,
A. I use zone tool to specify the area over which the content is overlaid as a polygon
B. I use node tool to specify the center of the area over which the content is overlaid as a
circle with a specified radius
C. My choice of geo-tagging tool depends on the nature of the content or other factors. Please
explain what are the factors and how they relate to your choice of geo-tagging tool?
(It is assumed that zone tool is naturally the better choice to attach digital content to physical
space over node tool. Since, the platform is implemented in a way that participants can retrieve
content while physically in space as oppose to using a two-dimensional representational map.
Under such circumstances, since the space is perceived as perspectival, and the user is corporeally
navigating the digitally augmented terrain to fish for content, it is intuitive to place digital content
over spatial zones as opposed to attach it to standalone nodes in space. This question is examining
the mentioned assumption and whether it is validated in practice.)
11. Have you ever specified multiple zones for a piece of content? Describe one of the cases and
explain why?
(It is assumed that under the circumstances, retrieval of geo-tagged content in situ where as it is
possible for the contributor to attach it to spatial zones as opposed to stand alone nodes, the user
is prone to attach content that is related to a specific place to zones from where that specific
location is visible. Since for a given physical space or entity, there can be multiple spatial zones
that the entity is visible from, it is assumed that there are cases that the users attach the same
digital content pertaining to a physical entity to multiple spatial zones from where it is visible.)
12. When using the geo-blog interface, which statement is through about you?
A. I geo-tag content to the relevant location; (the location that the content is about it)
B. I geo-tag the content to the location that the people I want them to see the content are
mostly there, even if the content is not relevant to that location
C. It depends on the nature of the content, Please give an example of a case that you use the
approach specified in the option B:
(Is it more important for the user to associate the content to the relevant physical space, or is it
more important to attach it to places that allows for maximum exposure sine the place is highly
frequented by the target audience?)
13. Please read the following scenario and choose which option is the closest to your reaction in such a
case: Imagine that you have a set of pictures about the great dome at MIT campus. Great dome is
the one on building 10 which is visible from Killian court. Where would you place the two
mentioned geo-tagging interfaces? (Googlemap where people are retrieving your contribution
navigating a representational map vs. GEOblog Interface where it is possible to retrieve youre
contribution while physically present with in campus area based on real time reported location of
the retrieving party)
A. I will place the content on an area in Killian court that the dome is visible from
B. I will place the content on the Great dome
C. I will place the content in Lobby 10
( The question is designed to validate the assumption that when the user is aware of the fact that
the geo-tagged content can be retrieved in situ to the others based on their real-time location, it
becomes more intuitive to associate content to spatial zones as opposed to the exact node in
space that the content is related too. For example, in geo-tagging a digital photo taken from Great
Dome in MIT campus using a Google map interface, the user will possibly attach the content to a
node on the dome itself, whereas on GEOblog, it is assumed that the user will attach the content to
a spatial zone over Killian Court – the open space from where the Great Dome is visible.)
The users are asked to answer the following questions if they have used GEOblog platform to retrieve
digital content while in location based on self-reported real-time location
1. When you retrieve multiplicity of content while on location, what is your criterion (criteria) to
choose which content to view?
A. I check the content at locations that I find interesting
B. I check content that is most recent
C. I check content that has been contributed by somebody I know
D. I check content that I gather it is interesting based on the title or description
E. I check content at locations that I can comfortably sit and use my computer there
F. I check content at places that has lots of content available
G. I check content at places that are crowded
H. I check content at places that I stay for longer periods
(How does the participant prioritize when offered multiple digital content in situ. Is the adjacency
of the context of the message conveyed by the content to the real-time location of the participant
impact his choice of viewing? Is it the temporal immediacy? In which locations the participant is
prone to use the platform for in situ retrieval of content? Places that are more frequented by
others? Places that it is practically more convenient to use the retrieving device in this case
personal laptop? Places that the digital layer is more densly populated by digital contributions?)
2. Where do you usually retrieve content while on location?
A. Outdoor courtyards around or within the campus area
B. Streets surrounding the campus area
C. Indoor Corridors
D. Lobbies
E. Studios/Classrooms/Lecture Halls/Laboratories
F. Public places with sitting areas i.e. in front of the Café
G. Student Lounges
H. Administration Offices
I. Resident Halls
J. Other, please specify
(Which type of spaces is more interesting when it comes to navigation of augmented digital layer?
Public, Semi Public, Private?)
3. While retrieving content in a location, do you check the shape and/or of the zone(s) that the
content has been attached to on the map interface? If the answer is yes, give an example of a case
that the shape and or location of the zone(s) was interesting for you
(While retrieving content in situ, is obvious that digital content that is attached to locations in
space acquire physical measurable dimensions. Moving from one location to the other the user has
a vague perception of the boundaries of the digital content as a spatially extended entity, whereas
crossing the boundaries will result in the situation that a content that was available just a minute
before disappears from the list of available content once the participant moves beyond the
extremities of the spatial zone that the content is attached to it. If geo-tagging the content and
attaching it to spatial zones result in granting the phenomena measurable, discernible physical
extensions, are these extensions of interest if the medium for retrieving content is not the physical
space but a two dimensional representational map of the space. Is how the digital message
extend within the physical space subject to scrutiny in the case that the observer is out of the
augmented space looking at it within a holistic view from above. Is the geo-tagged content still a
spatial entity even if the perceiving subject is not accessing it with in space and through corporeal
navigation of the space?)
4. Is it confusing for you if the content that you retrieve in a location is not relevant to that location?
why?
(When retrieving digital content in situ, based on real-time self-reported location, does the user
expect the retrievable content t have some contextual association with the location? Is it going to
be confusing if it is otherwise?)
5. Have you ever experienced the case that the same piece of content shift location from time to
time?
(Not only the other participants can delete a contribution package from the system or it can expire
meaning that it is not available for retrieval beyond a certain date, it also happens that slight
changes in the result of real-time locationing will result in shifts in the location of the attached
digital content in relationship to the actuality of the physical space. Is such phenomena
discernable for the participant?)
6. Have you ever experienced the case that a piece of content disappeared completely?
(As mentioned in previous sections, the digital layer is ephemeral and subject to change through
time. The temporality of the digital augmented layer results in discernable change in the content
offered at different locations of the campus from time to time which makes an augmented space
an entity that is in constant mutation. Does this perpetual transformation obvious for the
participant?)
7. How frequent do you think the system sense your location inaccurately in the following locations
on the campus?(Always, Often, Half the Time, Not Often, Never)
A. Killian Court
B. Lobby Seven
C. Infinite Corridor
D. Upper Floors
(For practical reasons that are going to be discussed in coming sections of the report, at times the
location sensing is not as accurate all around the campus. For open spaces the inaccuracy is due to
lower density of outdoor Wi-Fi access nodes. For indoors, the inaccuracy is due to the thickness
and materiality of architectural elements that has drastic impact on the signal strength of a Wi-Fi
Access node. This question investigates whether the inaccuracy of locationing system is
discernable for the participant and where it is more obvious all around the campus.)
8. In a scale of 1 to 5 how frequently you think the arrangement of the placed content change on the
campus.
9. What is the nature of the content that you will prefer to actually go to its location in order to check
it out as oppose to retrieve it off-site using a map interface?
(This question is designed to investigate whether the nature of the message conveyed by geo-
tagged digital content plays a role in the choice of the participant to retrieve the content in situ via
self- reporting of real-time location or off-site through interaction with representational map. The
assumption is that in case that the message of the content pertain to a specific locale, it is more
intuitive for the participant to be more prone to retrieve content in situ as opposed to off site.)
10. How often do you use the Geo-Blog platform for either placing/sharing or retrieving/viewing
content?(Never, Occasionally, Frequently, Everyday)
A. Content Contribution/Sharing
B. Content Retrieval/Viewing
(This question is designed to check what is the level of the familiarity of the participant with the
different interfaces for content contribution on one hand and content retrieval on the other hand.)
11. How long have you been using the Geo-Blog platform?
The proposed questionnaire tries to cover all the experiential aspects of the platform based on the user’s
experience of interacting with the interface. In addition to this online poll a experiment is also designed
that focuses more on how the users make use of zone tool to associate digital content to physical space.
The next section of the report is dedicated to introducing this experiment.
APPENDIX B - POST-IMPLEMENTATION USER STUDY-GEO-TAGGING EXPERIMENT USING ZONE TOOL TO ASSOCIATE DIGITAL CONTENT
TO PHYSICAL LOCALITIES
This experiment focuses on how study subjects use the zone tool to associate digital content to physical
locale. In a one hour long experiment the participant is provided with the set of digital photos of different
student hacks that has been created all around MIT campus through time. The hacks has been chosen in a
way that they create a coherent path though MIT campus, with making a seamless spatial narrative as the
goal.
The spatial narrative starts

somewhere around student center
and continues through infinite
corridor passing by Killian Court,
Open Space near Stata Center and
ends at the Open Space near Media
Lab.
All the digital photos are presenting

Hacks and student pranks that were
installed in Campus at some point and
their location is on the specified route
or visible from the areas points on the
route.
The result submitted by the

participants’ of the experiment will be
studied to see how the participant will
use the zone tool to attach each set
of content pertaining to one Hack to
places on campus. Are they going to
attach the content to the exact place
that it occurred or are they going to
place the content over the spatial
zone from where one can have a clear
view of the location where the Hack
occurred. For example for the
content package about one of the
Hacks of Great Dome, are the
participant attaching it to the actual
place of Great Dome on the map or
are they attaching it to areas of Killian
court from where the pictures seem to
be taken and also it seems that one
can have a clear view of the Dome
from these areas.
The following is the actual content of the document that is handed out to the participants during g the
experiment:
INFORMED CONSENT AND DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT*
Please consider this information carefully before deciding whether to participate in this research.
Purpose of the research: To examine how individuals geo-tag content in case that the retrieving of the
content is supposed to be performed on location as opposed to using a map interface. It is assumed that a
location sensing technology sense the current location of the user and reports back to the system. The
system in return will retrieve all the content that is available for that specific location. The user can then
view the retrieved set of content.
What you will do in this research: In this study you are provided with 34 content packages. Each
package contains a set of pictures and description of one of the mit hacks that has been organized by the
student body all around the campus at different times.
The descriptions and illustrations of hacks are mostly retrieved from hacks.mit.edu/ which is a website
dedicated to documenting the history of hacking at MIT. If you are not already familiar with MIT Hacks,
hacks are “usually clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical jokes, which is both challenging for the
perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!).” according
to this website.
You are required to place each content package on a map that is also provided as a part of this study
package assuming that you are geo-tagging this content in order to share it with other individuals who are
going to be able to access the relevant content depending on their location.
You have three different tools in order to geo-tag the content: You can either use the polygon tool which
allows you to specify a zone in the shape of a polygon or you can use the circle zone that allows you to
specify the center of a circular zone and also the radius of it, or you can use a point as the holder to which
you want to geo-tag the provided content package. For each content package that is provided here, you
have an illustration of mit campus map that you can draw the zone(s) and/or node(s) that you want to
attach the content package to it(them). For each content package you can have multiple zones or nodes to
which you geo-tag the content.
Time required: Participation will take approximately 60 minutes to complete.
Risks: There are no anticipated risks associated with participating in this study.
Benefits: At the end of the study, we will provide a thorough explanation of the study and of our
hypotheses. We will describe the potential implications of the results of the study both if our hypotheses
are supported and if they are disconfirmed. If you wish, you can send an email message to
[nnabian@gsd.harvard.edu] and we will send you a copy of any manuscripts based on the research (or
summaries of our results). Also the content that is provided as the base material for the exercise is a
compiled visual list of the mit hacks and pranks that going through it will provide you with a nice over view
of this unique aspect of mit culture.
Compensation: You will receive $20 for participating in this study.
Confidentiality: Your participation in this study will remain confidential, and your identity will not be
stored with your data. Your responses will be assigned a code number, and the list connecting your name
with this number will be kept in a locked room and will be destroyed once all the data have been collected
and analyzed.
Participation and withdrawal: Your participation in this study is completely voluntary, and you may
withdraw at any time without penalty. You will receive payment based on the proportion of the study you
completed. You may withdraw by informing the experimenter that you no longer wish to participate (no
questions will be asked).
Contact: If you have questions about this research, please contact [Nashid Nabian, Doctoral Candidate ,
Harvard Graduate School of Design, tel: 857 204 3379, email: nnabian@gsd.harvard.edu]. You may also
contact the faculty member supervising this work: [Carlo Ratti , Research Scientist and Director of the
SENSEable City Laboratory at MIT, Department of Urban Studies , tel: 617 253 7926, email: ratti@mit.edu ]
Agreement: The nature and purpose of this research have been sufficiently explained and I agree to
participate in this study. I understand that I am free to withdraw at any time without incurring any penalty.
Signature: _____________________________________ Date: _______________________
Name (print): ____________________________________________________________________
*The content of this form has been adopted from HARVARD UNIVERSITY COMMITTEE ON THE USE OF
HUMAN SUBJECTS Sample Informed Consent form retrieved from
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~research/hum_sub/#aahrpp
Definition of the concepts: In digital content Geo-taging is defined as adding information pertaining to
the geographical location of a digital entity, for example defining the actual location that a digital picture
has been taken. In the case of geo-tagging of a taken photograph, the location can be described in
multiplicity of ways:
One can describe the location by giving the actual address of the point that the photograph was taken;
i.e.“I took this picture in Harvard Square, right in front of the Bank of America Branch.”
One can also define the location of the photograph using a geo-tagging interface using a representational
map that is programmed to be geo-taggable, by placing the icon or representation of the digital file on the
provided map; the example of this approach is the Google maps API that enables the user to place pointers
on a Google map and attach photographs and textual description to them.
Another option to define the geographic location is to use geo-tags in the form of longitude and latitude.
For example Flickr website enables the users to add locational information to the photos by adding
longitude and latitude of a point in the form of Geo-Tags; i.e. "geo:lat=36.11108150, geo:lon=-
115.17366130" .
In the last two options the digital photography is virtually placed at a point in space. In the last approach,
the geo-tagging platform provides the user with a set of tools to annotate the space geographically again
using a representational map interface, that enables the user to define zones and areas both polygonal
and circular as place holders of the digital content. i.e. mscaper is a beta version of a geo-tagging software
developed at HP Research Lab that provides a user friendly platform for artists to design and implement
location-based media installations.
Geo-tagging digital content aside from adding extra information about content, makes it possible to
retrieve the geo-tagged content based on location. One can perform a semantic search on a search engine
to retrieve digital photographs of a specific geographic location, or can use a representational map like
Google map API to retrieve or represent location specific digital content, or finally one can benefit from
technological platforms that incorporate a location sensing technology, and will retrieve digital content
based on the current geographical location of the user. For the latter case it is less probable for the user to
find digital content that has been placed at a specific node on space since it is easy to miss a point with an
exact longitude and latitude in the space. In this cases there are two approaches; either the digital content
should be place over an area or zone as opposed to being attached to a standalone node on the space, or
the location-base content retrieval service will retrieve all the digital content that are attached to nodes
which are within a pre-defined or user defined radius of the user’s current location sensed by the platform.
This research focuses on placing digital content, and for that matter geo-tagging the content, using zones (
polygonal or circular) as opposed to nodes as place holders of the content in the digitally annotated space.
Participant’s Information: ……………………………………………………………………………………..
Academic Background: ………………………………………………………………………………………..
Are you familiar with the campus and History of mit Hacks and Pranks? ………...…………………
Have you ever used a geo-tagging interface on the internet? Please specify the website(s):
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
If so, how would you usually geo-tag the content?
a. Placing the content on a map through specifying the point where you want to place the content by
clicking on the map or drag and dropping the content to a point on the map
b. Specifying the street address, city, country or other locational information as a text-based tag or in
the description of the content i.e. My friends in Paris!
c. Specifying geo-tags in form of longitude and latitude at the point that you would like to place your
content
Are you performing the experiment in the actual locations?
IMPORTANT NOTE: While placing the provided content on the map bear in mind that you are geo-tagging
the content in order to make it available for retrieval for other individuals based on their actual location on
the campus, as oppose to retrieving it off site through clicking on a representational map
*Please place your created zones on this key map of MIT campus

GeoBlog Report

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CONTENTS

Project Description.................................................................................................... .......2

* The project major components of the system as

* Nokia N800 was the proposed hand-held device

* Implimented interface for iFind by MIT SenseAble

* If the user tries to create a GEOblog profile using a non-MIT email

* Once the digital image is uploaded to the system, a

* The first step to upload digital content is to

*Once the file is located, clicking on “Upload”

*Double clicking on the thumbnail of an

*In addition to digital images, the user is

*Also the user is allowed to specify access rights to the contributed

*Screen shot of “Déjà vu”

* The Map tab in Organizer page allows the

*The association or geo-tagging of the content

What happens after a digital content is placed

*Not only the user is allowed to geo-tag the

The interface is a navigatable map with all the

*Clicking on a provided node on the map that

*Once the selected entries are uploaded to the

*Adding or deleting digital content to/from sets

*The retrieving of digital content based on

*It is also possible to choose a place from a list

*Clicking on the thumbnail of a photo directs the

To check the attributes of any entry, clicking on

*The map is populated by multiplicity of zonal

*Once a zonal place holder is clicked upon a

Once a zonal place holder is created and saved a

The user should be allowed to upload multiple digital files in one go

*The user can navigate the horizontality of

*Uploading the digital file containing the shared

*Specifying the temporal duration through which

*Specifying access rights and whether the geo-

1. The Universe does not have any dimensions.

Another possible scenario is the case that the participant wanders

*Retrieving content based on semantic search:

*Retrieving content using interactive

• “first_name” field stores the first name of the profile owner

• “last_name” field stores the family name of the profile owner

• “id” field is a unique identification number assigned to each entry to access

• “geo_info_id” is a foreign key which corresponds to the identification “id” of

The system is designed in a way that a given contribution can be attached to

• “id” field is a unique identification number assigned to each entry, used to

• “owner_id ” field stores the identification number of the owner of a contribution

• “id” field which is a unique identification number for each tag

• “tag_id” field that stores the actual tag word

• “geo_info_id” field which associates the digital file to a contribution set in

• “id“ is a unique automatically assigned identification number for each entry in

• “location” keeps track of the geographical coordinates of the reported location

Furthermore since the system differentiates between different modes of specifying

• “id“ is a unique automatically assigned identification number for each entry in

• “address” field specifies the range of dynamic IP addresses that are

• “building” field stores the name of the building

1. Applicability of the system to a different [institutional] site: The system is designed in a

Thus for any given physical [institutional] site, if

1. Improvement of Location-Sensing Technology through incorporation of material

2. Improving of Location-Sensing Technology through incorporation of tracking the self

Theoretically triangulation of space based on Wi-Fi signal

Thus the calculated location will be mistakenly shifted towards

1. Sharing found Resources

2. Asking for Resources

3. Sharing/Asking for location specific information

4. Initiating a social event

Signature: _______________ Date: _