The Tuning of Place: Sociable Spaces and Pervasive Digital Media (Hardcover)

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 handheld 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.

普及的數位設備，如智慧手機、iPod、GPS導航系統和相機等，對我們使用空間的方式有何影響？在《場所的調音》一書中，理查德·科因（Richard Coyne）認為，這些無所不在的設備和支援它們的網絡成為在空間中進行漸進性調整的手段，即調音場所。科因寫道，普及媒體通過引入微小的變化，幫助我們形成對場所的感知，就像調音樂器一樣啟動微妙的重新校準過程。場所是被人們居住的空間，有人們的關注、記憶、故事、對話、相遇和物品。場所的調音——人們在彼此互動中使用設備——也是社會關係的調音。

普及程度的範圍非常廣泛——從熟悉的手機和手持設備到RFID標籤、智能徽章、動態標誌、汽車和廚房電器中的微處理器、可穿戴計算和假肢，還有正在開發中的設備。科因並不是列舉成就和預測，而是提供了一個理論框架，用於討論普及媒體，以便開發人員、設計師和用戶在考慮對環境進行干預時能夠參考。調音的過程可以引發對於普及計算非常相關的主題的思考：干預、校準、楔子、習慣、節奏、標籤、點擊、策略、閾值、聚合、噪音和干擾。