Fascinating entry by Digital Urban: Connected to the World but not to the City – The Local Cloud
At the heart of the argument is the desire for information, to be part of a wired society and to feel connected to the city not only on social and retail level but also architecturally. We want to be able to walk past listed buildings and to tap into local information existing at that location. It comes down to not connecting to the globe or even connecting to information via RFID tags or Bluetooth but local clouds of information.
Local Clouds would provide local services accessible within a small radius around specific points, with tailor made information this would finally allow us to connect to the city at a street level….
This is what I want technology to be able to do for me. It should endow the local, which is felt and experienced and lived immediately, with data that has the same properties.
That’s why I’m fascinated by sites like outside.in — or YourStreet (which I just learned about via MIT’s Technology Review article, Mapping News). I managed to sign up with outside.in and even managed to get a few local sites mapped — even though I’m in Canada, and therefore excluded from the above services, which currently are US-only.