Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

How pervasive digital devices--smartphones, iPods, GPS navigation systems, and their networks--us formulate a sense of place and refine social relationships

How do pervasive digital devices--smartphones, iPods, GPS navigation systems, and cameras, among others--influence the way we use spaces? In The Tuning of Place , Richard Coyne argues that these ubiquitous devices and the networks that support them become the means of making incremental adjustments within spaces--of tuning place. Pervasive media help us formulate a sense of place, writes Coyne, through their capacity to introduce small changes, in the same way that tuning a musical instrument invokes the subtle process of recalibration. Places are inhabited spaces, populated by people, their concerns, memories, stories, conversations, encounters, and artifacts. The tuning of place--whereby people use their devices in their interactions with one another--is also a tuning of social relations.

The range of ubiquity is vast--from the familiar phones and hand-held devices through RFID tags, smart badges, dynamic signage, microprocessors in cars and kitchen appliances, wearable computing, and prosthetics, to devices still in development. Rather than catalog achievements and predictions, Coyne offers a theoretical framework for discussing pervasive media that can inform developers, designers, and users as they contemplate interventions into the environment. Processes of tuning can lead to consideration of themes highly relevant to pervasive computing: intervention, calibration, wedges, habits, rhythm, tags, taps, tactics, thresholds, aggregation, noise, and interference.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. ix)
• Introduction (p. xiii)
• Temperament
• 1 Intervention (p. 3)
• 2 Calibration (p. 19)
• 3 Wedge (p. 47)
• Everyday
• 4 Habit (p. 73)
• 5 Rhythm (p. 91)
• 6 Tags (p. 107)
• 7 Taps (p. 129)
• Commonplace
• 8 Tactics (p. 143)
• 9 Threshold (p. 169)
• 10 Aggregation (p. 187)
• 11 Noise (p. 203)
• 12 Interference (p. 223)
• Notes (p. 241)
• References (p. 287)
• Index (p. 317)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Studying the impact that technology has on society as a "tuning" process is a novel idea. "Musicians tune musical instruments, mechanics tune internal combustion engines, and managers 'fine tune' their budgets," argues Coyne (architectural computing, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK; Cornucopia Limited, 2005; Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age, 1995). Now the author proposes that technology, via "microadjustments," tunes the interactions and places of individuals. His proposition brings to mind Newton's third law, "for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction." Does technology tune people? To answer this question, Coyne organizes the text into three sections: "Temperament," "Everyday," and "Commonplace." The first attempts to explain the metaphor of tuning; sections 2 and 3 focus more on the metaphor's application in society. The author introduces the conceptual framework and provides definitions for a variety of related terms that make up subsequent chapters (i.e., "Wedge," "Habit," and "Threshold"). The book is not for the faint of heart; but the result is a strong argument supporting the author's proposition that technological microadjustments tune people and places. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students through professionals. B. G. Turner Faulkner University