Ambient commons is an investigation of human attention against the backdrop of an increasing intermingling of information technology with the (physical) environment. The author builds on elements drawn from a variety of disciplines and sources. As such, this is a work of much breadth, but only occasionally of satisfactory depth.

The book is divided in two parts. Part 1 reviews the background and presents motivations ranging from common (but seldom-probed) perceptions of “information superabundance” to attention and design issues. Part 2 is a more firmly grounded discussion of the impact of information technology on the environment, those who inhabit it, and the “commons,” from the perspectives of architecture, design, and norms. Pervading both parts is a recurring call for users (and designers) of technology to pay greater attention to their surroundings.

Chapter 1 invites the reader to reflect on the changes caused by pervasive information technology, how these changes might affect our interactions with the world, how they have turned attention into a scarce resource for which advertising and communications media compete, and how a reexamination of the concept of “ambient” may be needed. The author asks a number of pertinent questions (for example, “Do increasingly situated information technologies illuminate the world, or do they eclipse it?”) not often asked in a society where technology has achieved a quasi-religious status. However, despite the variety of references it evokes (Enlightenment science, ancient history, phenomenology), the text never really investigates these questions in depth.

The following chapter, on information, takes a similarly broad view, but discusses principally issues of overload, superabundance, and overconsumption. Once again, the reader encounters a mixture of philosophical questions and sensationalistic quotes (such as a CEO’s claim that “every two days, we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization”) taken, it seems, at face value. This has the unfortunate effect of trivializing an otherwise interesting investigation.

The chapters on attention and embodiment address mostly cognitive issues and, to a lesser extent, their design implications. Chapter 3 views attention as a resource to be managed and, increasingly, protected. Embodiment is viewed not as the act of giving physical expression to an abstract quality, but as the act of using one’s environment as a cognitive resource. This perspective has become influential in design circles, in complementarity and sometimes opposition to the traditional cognitivist perspective, through theories such as activity theory and distributed cognition. The former is discussed, but strangely, the latter is not even mentioned. The chapter closes by revisiting issues already discussed, and speculating about the effects of the physical environment on attention and other cognitive processes. This is complemented by an interesting chapter on the importance of “fixity” (as provided by architecture) for cognition.

Part 2 develops this idea further, taking the concept of “tagging” to a broader environment, drawing parallels with signage and graffiti in public spaces (chapter 6). It considers new forms of display technology (chapter 7) and “atmosphering” (chapter 8) in architecture and visual culture, and it takes an excursion into the topic of smart cities (chapter 9). A kind of synthesis of these ideas is outlined in chapter 10, where the author seeks to reconcile the concepts of environment and information through historical lenses.

Chapter 11 deals with regulation of common spaces against a background of “information superabundance” and its attendant ill effects. The author starts by drawing a parallel with visual pollution and its subsequent regulation with the rise of environmentalism in the 1960s. This is a compelling parallel, well grounded in historical analysis. In the topic addressed next, the ethics of information, the author returns to the issue of attention, discussing putative rights threatened by abuses in advertising. The core of this chapter draws on the work of Ostrom [1] (the chapter is titled “Governing the Ambient”) to discuss how a commons that encompasses information and attention, besides physical environment, can be regulated and managed.

Chapter 12 sums up the book, and the epilogue is a nice eulogy for silence.

This is an uneven book. The text seems to oscillate between caution against the negative aspects of ubiquitous information technology and expressions of enthusiasm for its possibilities. In the first chapter, one reads that “unlike the soot and din of a bygone industrial age, many of these [media] feeds have been placed deliberately, and many of them appeal to the senses.” The comparison is largely positive, but the reference to soot and din is equally telling. Incidentally, this quote also illustrates a trait this book shares with much technology writing in the “developed world,” namely, a blind spot for “the rest” (in actual fact, the majority) of the world’s population, for whom the era of “soot and din” hasn’t quite passed.

On balance, I believe the book should be of interest to those concerned with what the author calls “information overconsumption” and to designers who aim to break this trend.

More reviews about this item: Goodreads