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I'm Adriana de Souza e Silva. And, well, my area of research is basically-I think there
are two major trends in my research; one that looks into how people use mobile technologies,
like cell phones and PDAs, wireless devices, but specifically, location-based technologies,
which are technologies that-or cell phones that know where you are. And how the use of
these technologies influence the way we experience spaces, and especially urban spaces, how we
communicate with each other in these spaces, and how people perceive their cities differently.
The other side of my research, I actually am looking into how low-income communities,
they appropriate technology, and specifically the use of technologies in the developing
world. So, I'm originally from Brazil, and so part of my research has been looking-doing
a series of interviews with people who live in slums, in Rio, to kind of see how they
use cell phones and how it's different from other developed countries and how social and
economic factors influence their use of technology. So, this is kind of the general area of my
research, and I generally teach classes on-that deal with internet and society, or mobile
communication. And also game studies, part of my research is on location-based games.
So, basically, when I was doing my Ph.D., I was thinking that I was going to look into
the design of virtual worlds, or how people socialize with each other online. So how to
design virtual worlds for sociability. Today you have things like Second Life, but before
you had environments like MUDs and MOOs, where basically textual environments that people
would, you know, meet other people. And, so, when graphic interfaces became popular,
one of the things that I started thinking about is how to design model spaces or computer
worlds that would facilitate this kind of interaction.
So, I was doing this research in Brazil, where I started my Ph.D., and then I went to UCLA,
to work in the design and study in the Design Media Arts Department. And one day there I
was talking to my advisor, Victoria Vesna - she was the chair of the Design Media Arts
Department-and I was describing my research and talking about the design, designing environments
for cyberspace. She looked at me and said, "Oh, don't you think this word, 'cyberspace,'
is something from the '90s?" It's already outdated. Because today, when
you have all these devices like cell phones, that allow you to connect to the internet
while walking around, how does that change the way we connect to the internet? Right,
that you're not just sitting in front of a screen and sitting statically, but you're
actually walking around and connected, everywhere you go.
And then I started actually thinking about it. I was like, "Whoa, yeah, maybe what we
are looking at is this change of interface, that, and the way we connect online." We're
not static, in front of the computer anymore; we're walking around, and experiencing this
connectivity everywhere we go. So how does changing from a fixed to a mobile interface
kind of also changes the way, first of all, one, we experience the internet, and second,
the way we interact with other people? Right, both, in physical spaces and in digital spaces.
And actually that led to the idea that physical and digital spaces are not separate from each
other anymore, right? They are kind of intertwined. And that's why I came up with the idea of
hybrid spaces. So, when I got here to NC State, there was
mostly one class that was not one of the core classes that I could teach, there was "Internet
and Society." And basically, I've been teaching that course; I've taught already five or six
times. And it is kind of a survey, it's a 400 level course, and it's a survey of internet
use. So I generally, I really like to see things from a historical perspective.
So, in that course, we started looking at the history of computers as interfaces. So
how personal computers emerged as, you know, the mouse, the keyboard, the screen, and then
where-who invented these interfaces, the graphic user interface. And then the internet, look
at the history of the internet. So we get to the idea of sociability online and how
people started communicating with each other online, through chat, email, and virtual worlds.
So I think these would be one of the major applications, that there is a vast field to
be covered, still, because it's still beginning and people don't really know how to use this,
or how to develop applications. So I think we need to develop tools that enable teachers
and professors to be able to create their own location-based experiences, and engage
students in doing that. There's, I mean, the idea that students can
exert their creativity, too, and creating things that are kind of also practical, not
just writing papers-which they have to write in my class a lot, but they have to do both.