Relevant History

Another reason to go back to Copenhagen

The new Copenhagen Concert Hall.

KONCERTHUSET - K3NC241HUS4T, via Flickr

This building, along with the national library (the so-called "Black Rock"), suggests that the Danes now have a thing for extra-interesting cultural monuments. The New York Times writes,

Like Frank Gehry’s 2003 Disney Hall in Los Angeles and Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie, now under construction in Hamburg, Germany, Mr. Nouvel’s new hall demonstrates that an intimate musical experience and boldly imaginative architecture need not be in conflict — they can actually reinforce each other....

Approached along the main road from the historic city, the hall’s cobalt blue exterior has a temporal, ghostly quality. Its translucent fabric skin is stretched over a structural frame of steel beams and tension cables that resembles scaffolding. During the day you can see figures moving about inside, as well as the vague outline of the performance space, its curved form embedded in a matrix of foyers and offices.

It is in darkness that the building comes fully to life. A montage of video images is projected across the cube’s fabric surface at night, transforming it into an enormous light box. Drifting across the cube’s surfaces, the images range from concert performers and their instruments to fragments of form and color.

This is the intoxicating medium of late-capitalist culture. You can easily imagine boxes of detergent or adult chat-line numbers finding their way into the mix.

Courtyards in Aarhus

I spent a lot of time noticing courtyards when I was in Aarhus.

In the courtyard of the hotel

The old city is full of buildings that have little passages, just big enough for a single car to get through. Some of them lead to spaces that are completely functional and uninspiring; but others have been turned into little gardens, or restaurants, or other interesting spaces.

One of the cooler courtyards

Looking out onto the street

I find this quite unexpected, and last night a question hit me: Do we have courtyards of this kind in the States? Is there anywhere in the U.S. a tradition of residential architecture that puts buildings together in a way that creates a common, enclosed space? I think not.

Looking into another courtyard

There's a restaurant!

In Philadelphia, we have row houses that have little private backyards, if you're lucky; but I don't know any row houses or apartments that form up into courtyards. Rittenhouse Square, and the other three parks that were part of William Penn's master plan for the city, have a bit of a European feel to them now: Rittenhouse is surrounded on all sides by tall apartment buildings, which gives it a very nice feel in the evenings-- lots of twinkling light through the trees, and a reassuring sense that the park is an active, visible public space-- but originally they must have been more like town greens transplanted to cities.

An entrance to something more private-looking

Chicago's apartment buildings have a little green space in front, and some very small courtyards sunk into the larger buildings for ventilation (thanks, Progressive Era housing reformers!), but again, the buildings tend to back onto alleys, rather than each other.

Looking from the street

A winter garden-turned-showroom

I haven't encountered any courtyards in Boston or New York, but you figure if they're anywhere, they're there.

The one place you see something like courtyards is in colleges, particularly dormitories built during the early 20th-century mania for Gothic architecture.

The entrance to this courtyard is on the right

Yet another little store

The closest thing we've got in America are certain kinds of commercial spaces, and arguably hotel atriums ("Courtyard by Marriot," that sort of thing). Do New Urbanism architects use them? Does Santana Row, for example, have them, or does it just direct public activity onto streets?

Doubtless there's some deep lesson here about American versus European notions of space, property rights, and consequent impacts on informal cooperative behavior or attitudes to traditional as opposed to formal rights. Someone with the combined instincts of Robert Darnton and Edmund Bacon could do something really interesting.

Technorati Tags: aarhus, architecture, denmark, travel

More from ITU

On Thursday I went back to ITU to do some more work before leaving to return home.

[via flickr]

Technorati Tags: cooperation

Walking in Copenhagen this evening

Today was pretty long: we caught the 7:30 train from Aarhus to Copenhagen, I did some work at ITU for a couple hours, then I had a longer-than-expected (but quite good) meeting with a potential client. Still, after dinner I decided to take a little time to walk around the city and take some pictures.

Greetings from Copenhagen, via flickr

Since I'm staying in the same hotel I was in last year, it's familiar territory, more or less.

The Palace Hotel

I walked out to the bridge, to see the National Library, which I've only seen at a distance, and keep meaning to go visit. Since it's called the Black Diamond, you can imagine it's not highly visible in the evening. Still, I managed to fiddle around with the camera settings, and came up with a half decent picture of it.

The National Library, via flickr

This is a tree in Tivoli, all wrapped up in lights.

A tree grows in Tivoli, via flickr

Time for bed. I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, and have meetings in the morning before I head to the airport.

This has been a very productive trip, given how short it's been.

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, denmark, travel

Back in the Alexandra

I'm back in my favorite Copenhagen hotspot, the lobby of the Alexandra Hotel. Not up for much longer, but I wanted to add some pictures to my Flickr, and do a quick update.

The Hotel Alexandra, via flickr

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, denmark, travel

Wireless down

When I came back from dinner tonight I was hoping to spend some time online-- my trips are turning into alternating periods of working, blogging, with a little eating and sleeping thrown in-- but the hotel's Internet connection has gone down. The Wifi still works, but the Net connection is broken.

Grrrr.

Amazing how cut off I feel. I can't get flickr, I can't get my e-mail, and I can't IM my family. It's a pain. And it's even more frustrating when the wifi signal is good. It feels extra deceptive.

Last night we went out to a Danish pub/restaurant a few blocks away from the hotel, in the old city. It was small and smoky, but the food was delicious, and it was good to have some local guides to explain what various dishes were. It's curious that a lot of the signage in public transit and public spaces have English translations, but it's much rarer in restaurants. Go figure.

Technorati Tags: aarhus, denmark, travel

At ITU

I'm now in Copenhagen, and back online. I'm spending most of the day at ITU, the Information Technology University, where the Innovation Lab now has a Copenhagen branch. A good neighborhood to be in.

I was offline almost all of yesterday, but will fill in details of the day.

[To the tune of Kim Hiorthøy, "Politiska Dikten Återvänder," from the album "Hei".]

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, denmark, itu, travel

Morning at Emmerys

I spent the morning at Emmerys, a cafe/bakery/restaurant place down the street from the hotel.

One of my hosts had pointed it out last night, and suggested I try it out. It turns out that the hotel gets its bread there.

So despite the fact that there was an unexploded hand grenade on the steps, I decided to check it out.

I think it was originally two stores, and the wall between them was knocked down to make this space.

Obviously, the sell lots of cool housewares-like stuff, in addition to having lots of walk-in traffic like me.

Eventually I settled into the leather sectional in the back and got to work.

[To the tune of Pink Floyd, "Money," from the album "Pulse (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: aarhus, cafe, denmark, travel

Rotisserie in Aarhus

Chickens...

...but they don't chick out.

[To the tune of Pink Floyd, "The Great Gig in the Sky," from the album "Pulse (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: aarhus, denmark, humor, travel

International calling

When I was a kid, I had the good fortune to spend some time in Brazil (my dad was doing his dissertation research, and I think funded another trip with a Fulbright). At that time, as a kid, going from the U.S. to Brazil was an exercise in leaving behind pretty much everything that was familiar to you, cultural and material products-wise: the food was different (though we all loved Brazilian food, so that was no hardship), movies arrived months later, and familiar brands were nowhere to be found (with the exception of Coca-Cola). And most things that were available in English were imported from Britain, not America.

It also meant No Talking. If you wanted to call the States, you had to go to an international telephone center, fill out a form, and then take a number; they only had a certain number of phone booths, and it took time for the operators to place your call. It goes without saying that it was also ferociously expensive. If you wanted to communicate with the States, you wrote letters.

Twenty years later, when I was in England doing my dissertation research, I called home very rarely. And when I did, I had to have a pocketful of 50-pence and pound pieces, because it was still about 50p a minute to talk to the States. Feeding those heavy coins into the English public phones-- those big, curvy, clunky things-- is one of my more vivid memories of communicating with home.

This morning, after getting up and checking the time-- "9:45 p.m. in California!"-- I logged into iChat to see if my wife was online. She was. I clicked on the audio icon, and in a few seconds we were talking. No operator, no dedicated infrastructure. The sound quality was no different than if I was in the office-- there was hardly even any latency, and no echo. And it was free.

Truly, the world is flat.*

*Okay, it's not exactly flat, or not everywhere for everything. Friedman makes a great case for those parts of the world that have been joined together by fiber optic cable and Cisco routers, but Manuel Castell's observation that the wired parts of the world have now become closer to each other than they used to be to their own nation's hinterlands still holds true.

[To the tune of The Church, "Under the Milky Way," from the album "Starfish".]

Technorati Tags: aarhus, communication, denmark, globalization, history, travel

Greetings from Aarhus

Out walking in the main square.

Technorati Tags: aarhus, denmark, travel

More about the hotel

I'm in the lobby of the hotel, having something to drink and working on my slides.

This is a lovely little hotel. The last time I was here I was put up in the Hotel Royal, which is the kind of small yet grand hotel where an Agatha Christie mystery might take place; the Hotel Guldsmeden is the sort of place that might appear in E. M. Forester, or Alan Furst. (Apparently I'm a bit of a guinea pig for the Innovation Lab guys, who figure that I would be a good person to put up in, and then hear back about, Aarhus' non-corporate hotels. I take this as quite a compliment, rather than an excuse for cheaping out and not getting me the suite at the SAS.)

The lobby is a living-room sized room off the main entrance, with half a dozen tables and a buffet where breakfast is served in the morning. Candles on the tables, two or three different kinds of chairs-- thing match, but almost-- and Sade's latest on the CD. It's now raining, so the cobblestones outside the window are shiny and reflect the streetlamps and signs from down the street.

In a word, it's perfect.

My talk: I've got an hour tomorrow to talk about the future of design and its meaning for Denmark. This is a little like talking about the future of religion at the Vatican: the burden of history weighs very heavy in both places, and alternately feels like an inspiration and source of strength, and a restraint against innovation and change. My basic mission will be to explain why design is going to matter in the coming decade, and what it's going to be about-- essentially, to answer the "so what" question.

There are two big points I'm going to make. First, while it used to look like the future of technology was about making things smart, it now seems clear that it's going to be about making people smart. Design strategies that take full advantage of pervasive computing technologies, but also pay a lot of attention to interface issues, and also operate in ways that don't crowd out person-to-person interaction, will be especially compelling. I realized on the flight over that lots of different things I've studied over the last year-- ranging from the open source movement to aging in place-- share underlying technologies and aims that enable and/or encourage sociability and cooperative behavior. I want to try to flesh this argument out.

Second, that Denmark may be unique in having both world-class computer science researchers who are interested in pervasive computing, and an incredibly deep design community that extends from architecture and furniture through to toys and stereo equipment. Putting these together would work to the advantage of both.

Now it's just a matter of working out which slides to use, and how to structure the argument so it flows well. Increasingly, I find myself spending time working on the mechanics and rhetoric of the story, as much as they points themselves. Maybe this is a good sign, maybe not. We'll see tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: aarhus, denmark, design, travel

Hotel Guldsmeden

I'm at the Hotel Guldsmeden, a cool old-fashioned hotel with lots of twisty, curvy passages that all look alike-- kind of like that old computer game.

>

Pictures to come; in the meantime, I've started a Flickr set of pictures from this trip.

Technorati Tags: aarhus, denmark, travel

Technorati Tags: aarhus, denmark, travel

In Aarhus

I've made it to the Innovation Lab. All is well.

Technorati Tags: aarhus, denmark, travel

Stamped!

Last trip I was mystified at how I managed to get through Kastrup without going through customs, getting my passport stamped and bags searched, etc.. I get more scrutiny coming back to the U.S., where I'm a citizen. This morning, since I'd flown in from outside the EU, I did go through passport control. I stood in a line, handed my passport over to a nice person in a uniform, said "Good morning," and she stamped it. I've been scrutinized more closely on Caltrain.

I haven't actually actually looked at the stamp. Who knows-- it might be that they just validated my parking for two hours, and I'm now a fugitive.

I can't decide if this lower level of scrutiny is a sign of greater real safety in Europe, an indication of how much of what we go through in the U.S. is mere "security theatre," or proof of European laxity and decadence. Of course, answers of a "choose one from Column A and one from Column B" are not out of the question.

[To the tune of Yes, "And You And I (Live)," from the album "Yesyears (Disc 4)".]

Technorati Tags: denmark, travel

Greetings from Copenhagen!

(7:40 a.m., local time) Actually, I'm just leaving Kastrup airport, and heading into the city, thence on to Aarhus. But I am, in fact, in another country, on another continent. Again. For the second time in a month.

As my wife so eloquently put it, "You are insane."

The flight over was much better than it should have been, given that I was wedged in between a 70 year-old Asian woman in full I Don't Give A Damn Mode, and a woman who looked to be about 9 1/2 months pregnant and REALLY resented my existence in her space (or maybe just my existence, period, but she had a lot weighing on her... um, mind).

The key to such a situation: Get out of your seat as soon as the captain turns off the seat belt sign, and don't get back in it until the plane starts its descent. Stand in the galley in the back, be respectful of the flight attendants, and generally give the impression that you know it's their space and you really appreciate their letting you share it. After an hour, one of them brewed me my own pot of coffee.

It was enough to let me outline tomorrow's talk on the future of design. (Of course I've given a couple of these before, so i could just cheat and reuse one; but while I think that it's okay to reuse specific slides, or a few in a row-- if they lay an argument particularly well-- giving exactly the same talk to very different audiences is cheating, especially if money is changing hands. Of course, when i'm famous and arrogant, i'll feel quite differently.) In the absence of any decent in-flight movies, in the last year or so-- dating from my last trip to Denmark, in fact-- I've developed a ferocious ability to work during a long flight, so long as there's not a lot of turbulence and I can get a little space to set my papers down.

Come to think of it, the chance to be in an environment that's totally free of everything in my normal life-- office, family, Simpsons reruns-- but still encourages writing (indeed, what else is there to do on a plane?) is now one of the great attractions of travel. Not that I would trade my normal life for anything, of course.

The next thing I've got to work on is getting more rest during my stay. I tend to run-- or try to run-- on just a couple hours' sleep a night when I travel. A little of it is the desire to wring every last minute out of a unique experience; but some of it is just stupidity and bad time management, and the fact that I've recently had a hard time getting to sleep on the road. This trip I've brought along a t-shit and sweat pants, my normal sleepwear, to see if that helps me get more rest.

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, denmark, travel

Morning train

(8:35 a.m. local time) The last time I was here, I managed to travel between Copenhagen and Aarhus either in the late afternoon, or the evening. As a result, a fair amount of the countryside remained shrouded in darkness. This time, though, I've got a morning train, so I get to see it all-- and people doing their morning commute.

Since we're at a fairly high latitude-- about the same as Edinburgh, Scotland-- the sun comes up late: when we landed at 7 this morning, the dawn was just breaking. Now the sun's up, but low in the sky.

My initial impression last year that a lot of this land looks like eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in its combination of foliage and rolling hills, still holds. Maybe this opinion is influenced by the fact that that's where most of my train experience has been, and all train views have a certain family similarity.

But I suspect not, and that either the geology and climates are similar enough for the resemblance to be real, or after a couple centuries of work by northern European immigrants, the American mid-Atlantic has been reshaped in the image of the Old Country.

The trees are changing; autumn is in full swing here.

[To the tune of Yes, "Awaken," from the album "Keys To Ascension (Disc 1)".]

Technorati Tags: denmark, travel

Greetings from Dulles

I'm now in IAD, otherwise known as Dulles International Airport, waiting for my flight to Copenhagen. I've got an inside seat for this flight, which is going to be murder. Five transatlantic flights this year, and I don't seem to merit preferential treatment.

There seems to be some kind of secret handshake club of the traveling pants that knows how to get aisle seats on full flights, or get bumped up into business class at the last minute.

Well, it'll be just more reason for me to stay up and do more work on my talk.

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, denmark, Dulles International Airport, travel

SFO in the predawn hours

I'm in SFO, starting my trip to Copenhagen. I'll be there for several days, doing a talk at a conference on the future of design, and working with my friends at the Innovation Lab on some projects for 2006.

I realized from the last two trips-- to London and Aspen-- that while in general I like travel, I don't like the parachute-in, give a keynote and leave sorts of trips. (If I were paid a lot for them, that would be different.) I far prefer to be able to stay a few days, and to spend an extended amount of time with whoever I'm working with. Last year's Innovation Lab trip was excellent in this regard; so was my June trip to England.

Some short trips are an unavoidable part of the job. But I'm definitely not volunteering for any, or going somewhere when I can't spend a few days and be a participant in whatever I'm speaking at.

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, travel

Last trip pictures

A few pictures from the flight back.

The kids' play area at Copenhagen Airport. I never used to notice this kind of stuff. Then I had kids, and never stop looking for it

Somewhere west of Iceland

I'm baaack

Sitting at the Millbrae Caltrain station, waiting for the 4:36 to Redwood City. Elizabeth has a Nutcracker dress rehearsal today, so I'm going to meet them at the Fox Theatre and get a sense of the place, since I'll be there most of tomorrow, helping shepherd-- I mean chaperone-- a group of lambs. Who I think are actually children in lamb outfits.

The flight was pretty uneventful. I had a 4 year-old sitting beside me, but she was a great little traveler, aside from being completely suspicious of me, and huddling closer whenever I tried to interact with her. There were also about two dozen people, almost all men, tending toward thin pale and cardigan-wearing, reading various medical journals and printouts of articles. If they had had name badges and tote bags, it wouldn't have been more obvious that they were flying over for a conference. Turns out the world's biggest hematology conference is in San Diego.

This was a really terrific trip. At one point on the plane I was listing out the various deadlines I've got, things I need to write, and so on, and thought a bit wistfully, "Back to my regular life." Then I wondered: why can't my regular job me a little more like this? Especially right now, as we're moving into our new, open plan quarters-- why can't it have some more of the positive, "this is really interesting stuff and these are really interesting people" intensity that this trip had?

Don't get me wrong: I always like my job, even at the worst of times. But this trip, and the conference, suggest some ways the good times could be made even better. I've got a bunch of ideas about cool, useful things to do in the space; even more ideas for projects to do in Denmark and Scandinavia; and more than a few about what I should be doing in my job. There's nothing like a combination of sleep deprivation and really good treatment to make you think big.

Over Greenland

We're flying over Greenland now. This flight doesn't have quite the otherworldly, sealed off from reality quality of my flight to Paris. This is partly because I'm going home, and partly because we're chasing the sun: even at this far northern latitude, it's still sunset.

I also notice that this crew is more in control of the galley than Saturday's flight. There were a number of us who spent most of the flight standing around in the rear galley, talking or reading, and pillaging the food carts. Maybe that's more common on overnight flights.

I've got a seat at the very back of the plane, which turns out to have two virtues: I'm very close to the bathrooms, and there's a wall right behind my seat that I can use to balance my Powerbook on my seat's headrest.

Greetings from Frankfurt. Stand over there, please

I'm now at Frankfurt Airport, the Land Without Power Outlets. There are probably a dozen of us in the waiting area for the flight, many of whom look around for electrical outlets, then give up.

Security here is what I expect in an airport: grim, thorough, performed by guys wearing either navy blazers or olive-colored commando sweaters, and backed up with other guys with Uzis. You have to take everything out of your pockets, and that doesn't mean everything that might set off the metal detector. They mean everything: wallet, plastic comb, handkerchief (yes, my handkerchief), all of it. Since I was wearing one of my shirts with about 14 pockets (which, for the record, I am always going to wear while flying, for the rest of my life-- they're just too practical), my ability to pull things out of yet another pocket occasioned a certain extra degree of skepticism from the security guard. I felt like the guy in the Saturday Night Live skit who tries to go through a metal detector with a hundred pens, a pocketful of nuts and bolts, fishing tackle, and about $500 in change (and he's followed by someone wearing medieval armor).

Despite the overall tone of You Can't Trust These Self-Loading Cargo, the full-body search I got was very friendly, of the "Is that a passport in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" variety. I felt loved. But it turned out it wasn't anything personal: even the flight crew got a personal search, though maybe a bit less hands-on, out of respect.

Then it was on to passport control, where I finally got a stamp. Hooray. Now I feel like I might get back into the States without having to prove that I didn't just, I don't know, go through customs twenty minutes earlier.

From descriptions, I expected Frankfurt Airport to be some kind of aviation Valhalla, the greatest airport I'd ever seen. It's certain very big, but the interior design and general aesthetic more resembles that of a good subway arcade-- the underground shopping areas that you sometimes see in New York and dating from the Lindsay administration, but seen more commonly in cities in other parts of the world-- than a cool modern airport. Lots of knobby black non-slip floor, dropped ceilings, and florescent lights. However, it works, which ultimately is what matters. And maybe one day, if I'm really really really lucky, I'll discover that the first class areas are as cool as I hear.

At CPH

I made it to the airport without incident. The train from downtown takes less than 15 minutes, and it stops at Terminal 3, where it looks like 90% of the international flights board; so it's simplicity itself.

Once you get through security (and once again, other than checking that I actually had one, no one in a uniform did anything with my passport), there's a big seating area with wireless. Not enough power outlets, though. I'll have to look for some in Frankfurt.

Oops, turns out you have to pay for it (60 kr an hour, about $10). So much for that grand experiment.

Breakfast

I'm in the hotel restaurant, having a quick breakfast before heading off to the train station and thence the airport. It's rainly and cold this morning-- the kind of weather that makes it easy to return to California. Still, I've found this an eye-opening visit, despite some serious sleep deprivation, and I think it's one of those trips that's going to turn out to be the starting-point for a lot of interesting later developments.

And later this morning I get to see how Frankfurt Airport compares to Paris. I have a friend who raves about Frankfurt, but he always flies first class, so the experience may be somewhat different for me.

More conference pictures

The Next2004 lecture hall

Me, virtual hero

One of the most popular exhibits was something called "Kick Ass Kung Fu," in which a digital camera projected you onto a game screen, and you could fight against several opponents.

En garde!

The playing field consists of a long fighting area, with large displays on either end, showing you where you and your opponents are. The monitor in the foreground gives you a clearer version of what's projected on the displays.

Of course, I had to try it.

Trying a fencing approach (I know, right arm should be up)

It was easy to lose your orientation, and get confused about which direction your enemies were coming from

I enjoyed it, but found it exhausting. After two rounds I was so out of breath my sides hurt.

You must learn the ways of the Force, if you are to become a Jedi like your father

Another "Copenhagen"

It's the name I've given to the iPod Mini that the Innovation Lab guys gave me this afternoon. Apparently one of them reads the blog, and followed (doubtless with some amusement) my travails with my iPod.

I'm blown over. It's a terrifically thoughtful gesture, and I'm really touched by it.

Of course, once I got back to the hotel I ripped open the packaging like a dog attacking 50 pounds of kibble. Though I didn't growl or slobber. As much.

Simona Maschi on "Creativity at Ivrea"

Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Ivrea is an independent nonprofit sponsored by Telecom Italia and Olivetti (2000). Goal is to humanize technology. "We are not interested in designing the next generation of technology... we are interested in applying creativity to technology." The campus, as John Thackara put it, is "something between a monastery and an airport."

People. Faculty and students all over the world, representing different cultures and disciplines (55 people from 22 countries).

Activity. Three areas are 2-year MA program in Interaction Design; design research about innovative products and services, conducted with companies, EU; knowledge sharing consisting of seminars, conferences, etc..

Ivrea approach. Advocate an approach that is not technology-push (tech to marketing to design, in which designers execute a brief outlined by others) or market-pull (marketing to tech to design).

Rather, Ivrea advocates a "balancing act" of innovation in which one thinks in terms of partnership rather than technology; context rather than marketing (and ethnography/qualitative rather than marketing/quantitative); solutions rather than design (industrial, product, interaction, whatever).

Design is a mentality, not just a tool for solving a problem. (There's also a certain STS / heterogeneous engineering element to this approach.)

Underlying approach. What do the student projects share? What do they suggest about an emerging Ivrea approach?

• Enable existing social behaviors and dynamics
• Find new design spaces in between the private and public spheres
• Communicate the innovation the point of view of the final user
• Quick and rough (experience) prototyping
• Design open platforms for people to try, adopt and shape
• Use design skills, attitudes and tools to define the problem setting, before moving to the problem solving

Finished

I think it went reasonably well. I was within the time limit (okay, within two minutes of it), and didn't foam at the mouth or fall on the floor. We'll see from the audience feedback later on.

I remembered to bring my business cards, and some copies of the 2004 Map of the Decade, which has become the Institute's calling card.

At the conference

I'm now in the Base Camp, the site where the Next2004 conference is being held.

I speak in, I think, about half an hour. I've nearly finished my talk.

But then again, there's lots of that purposeful activity you see before any exhibit: people rebooting computers, testing sensors, using power tools in a last-ditch attempt to get something that really SHOULD fit to get into that damn rack.

I hope people stop riding the Segway once things get underway. It's rather distracting. (Though I wouldn't mind a ride on it myself later.)

Dinner

I wimped out tonight and went to the Brasserie Muhlhausen, which is located in the hotel.

My adventure in Danish cooking: a Coke Light

Part of me has always believed that eating at the hotel restaurant is like wearing sweat pants all days: it says, "I've given up." On the other hand, it wasn't a restaurant; it was a brasserie, which Alan Furst writes about.

So it must have been cool. If you set aside the fact that it's going to a baseball game because you've read about the sport in Bernard Malamud. Yes, it's in books. No, it's not obscure. Get back in line.

Okay, if not exactly cool, literary. It's like reading Eloise, then going that... place she lives in... some hotel.

A spectacular, incredible dessert: lemon pie with milk marmalade. And a really good cappucino, to make up for that swill on the train

Now I'm revising my talk, which during dinner I figured out how to streamline and improve dramatically. I would have loved to go out on the town with my hosts, but to do a good job for them tomorrow, I needed to concentrate tonight.

There seems to be a documentary about saunas on the TV. From what I can gather, it's about how the sauna is both a hygienic and spiritual experience. And possibly a pagan ritual.

Back in my hotspot

A.k.a. the lobby of the hotel. They're probably a little tired of me being down here, but they're probably glad I'm not using my iSight to chat with colleagues any longer.

I've been listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong here. It fits.

[To the tune of Ella Fitzgerald, "Begin The Beguine," from the album "The Cole Porter Songbook (Disc 1)".]

My trip to Malmo

Here are pictures from my trip to Malmo, Sweden. We start in the Copenhagen Central Station (wasn't I just here?)  (Update, 10 May 2005: The DSB's online trip planner has train schedules, fares, etc.. It's really excellent.).

Look at that woodwork!

Very impressive stuff

In the interests of keeping the front page of the blog from getting overloaded, I'm moving the rest of the pictures to after the jump.

ITU Copenhagen

This morning, after Thomas and I finished breakfast, he escorted me down to ITU Copenhagen. The university is somewhat to the south of the city center, and we got there by Metro-- the new underground system that is being built, apparently at pretty substantial cost.

I'd seen pictures of ITU, but was blown away by the place when I got there.

The ITU main building

Back to Copenhagen

On the train back to Copenhagen. Malmo is pleasant-- lots of interesting historic buildings, and a cool mix of early modern civic space and 20th century industrial and shipping-- but I think I like Copenhagen better. But I didn't spend enough time there to get used to the place.

Malmo University is pretty cool: on the outside it kind of looks like an American community college-- it's much more functional than decorative, and the campus runs right into (and architecturally speaking, fits right in with) a light industrial zone; yet there seems to be some pretty cool stuff going on there.

I met with an interaction design professor names Jonas Lowgren, who's just published a book with MIT Press on the intersection of interaction theory and design. Thanks to a screw-up with my e-mail, I didn't actually manage to confirm the meeting beforehand, so I showed up and one of his colleagues ended up calling him in: either foreigners get a little more slack, or Americans have such bad reputations, so everyone was a bit confused but gracious about it. I'll have to find a place to review his book.

Costs

Food is somewhat more expensive here than the states: my shwarma, fries and Coke last night was about $9, and a bottle of Coke Light is close to $3.

On the other hand, the trains aren't any more expensive than Amtrak, and nicer.

Lost my scarf

I lost my scarf on the train from Aarhus last night. It's dark blue, with a red and yellow stripe. If you see it, please e-mail me.

On the train again

This time I'm going to Malmo, Sweden. I had breakfast this morning with a friend of mine from Stanford, who now is in charge of the National Medical Museum. I think it's probably been ten or twelve years since I've seen him last (barring our crossing paths at a conference), so it was pleasant to catch up.

Then it was down to the Information Technology University, to meet Jorgen Staunstrup, the dean of the faculty. The place is incredible. Pictures later.

I'm now headed to Malmo to meet a pervasive computing researcher named Jonas Lowgren, who's coauthored a book on design and interaction research. Though the chance to go to Sweden is a big attractor, too. Just being able to add another country to my list....

If I'd visited when I was younger, I would have tried to find a way to live here for a while. I once made a halfhearted attempt to get a fellowship to go to Amsterdam, but after that, never looked for other opportunities. Silly of me. I'll consider myself a success as a parent if my children spend at least a couple adult years living outside the States.

Twenty minutes into the ride, and we're now on a bridge. I think we're crossing over the Oresund. Again, where's the passport control? This whole EU thing is pretty confusing.

Signing off

Okay, I'm taking a shower and going to bed.

[To the tune of Yoshiko Kishino, "Siesta," from the album "Siesta".]

Walking around tonight

After getting my stuff put away, I went out to explore and find some food.

Going out for the evening

The view from the hotel

Walking to the hotel

The walk from the train station to the hotel was pleasant.

Tivoli Garden

The busy street. Notice how many bikes there are

Copenhagen train station

I got into Copenhagen's Central Station around 8:22-- exactly 8:22, actually; these people know how to run trains on time. (Update, 10 May 2005: The DSB's online trip planner has train schedules, fares, etc.. It's really excellent.)

The station turns out to be really lovely, if you like train stations.

The platform

Back down in the lobby, aka my wifi hotspot

Wifi definitely isn't reaching my room. I may have to switch rooms tomorrow.

Pictures to come shortly. Assuming Typepad's photo album page will ever come up. Is it just me, or is this part of the service unusually, nay painfully, slow?

Blogging in a bar

So my wireless doesn't seem to work in my room. So I'm down in the bar, having the smallest beer one can consume in Denmark, and using the hotel's wifi network.

There's some weird trance music playing. So far, it seems to me that Copenhagen has weird music things going on: the shawarma place I was in tonight (which I stopped in because I feel I can pronounce "shawarma" more reliably than any Danish food, and I also understand more or less what goes in it) was playing some kind of Euro-Arabic hip-hop (I swear I heard an accordion and oud), then Shania Twain's "I'm Gonna Getcha Good."

Unusual. Their iPod must be on shuffle.

By the way, the beer is excellent.

More on Google

And it doesn't remember my preferences. I guess they're country-specific or something.

I thought the Internet was global? Well, I guess it is

I just did a search in my Firefox search window, and the results came up-- in Danish.

Looking at Google in another language is a bit strange.

Political epiphany

Denmark is a blue state. It has all the stuff we elitist, overeducated knowledge workers admire: great design, good universities, terrific infrastructure, a sense of social consciousness, alternative energy, generally liberal (but now somewhat Blairist) politics, and Volvos.

Except it's 5,000 miles away from the rest of the United States.

And people who live here are ineligible to vote in elections.

Is it unpatriotic to think well of a European country? And isn't it a sad state of affairs when such a question makes any kind of sense?

[To the tune of Santana, "Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile)," from the album "Viva Santana! (Disc 2)".]

In Copenhagen

I've made it to Copenhagen, and had to walk all of about three blocks to my hotel. A stroll out the amazing central train station, down past the Tivoli, two blocks up Hans Christian Andersens Boulevard, to the Hotel Alexandra.

Another very nice hotel, very centrally located. A smaller room, but a bigger city-- all in all, a very fair trade.

Time to go find some dinner.

Globalization hits home

Last night I turned on the TV, and just surfed through the channels. My impressions of Danish TV:

• One of the networks plays "Spiderman" as often as Bravo runs "Scarface."
• Apparently, "OC" and "Seinfeld" are more universal in their appeal than I realized.
• Something called "soccer" is a very popular sport.
• If the hotel menu is an accurate indicator, porn in Denmark is now imported from the United States.

Think about that last point for a minute. Isn't this like importing Finnish wood to North Carolina to build furniture? Isn't there a legendary Scandinavian porn industry (at least according to American adolescent male lore)? What happened? Has local porn fallen prey to globalization? Are flickering images of Southern California condos and poolsides now to be found on screens in Brazil and Estonia and the Netherlands?

You'd think this was an industry where local produce could compete perfectly well against globally-produced goods. Or are high-volume, low-cost imports killing off local competitors? Has local porn been destroyed by the welfare state? Don't these people have any work ethic? (Or am I thinking of Sweden?)

I think when economists talk about how Americans have to retrain to become more globally competitive high-wage service jobs, this isn't what they had in mind.