Ambient Commons

The world is filling with ever more kinds of media, in ever more contexts
and formats. Glowing rectangles have become part of the scene; screens, large and
small, appear everywhere. Physical locations are increasingly tagged and digitally
augmented. Amid this flood, your attention practices matter more than ever. You
might not be able to tune this world out. So it is worth remembering that underneath
all these augmentations and data flows, fixed forms persist, and that to notice them
can improve other sensibilities. In Ambient Commons, Malcolm
McCullough explores the workings of attention through a rediscovery of
surroundings.

McCullough describes what he calls the Ambient: an
increasing tendency to perceive information superabundance whole, where individual
signals matter less and at least some mediation assumes inhabitable form. He
explores how the fixed forms of architecture and the city play a cognitive role in
the flow of ambient information. As a persistently inhabited world, can the Ambient
be understood as a shared cultural resource, to be socially curated, voluntarily
limited, and self-governed as if a commons? Ambient Commons
invites you to look past current obsessions with smart phones to rethink attention
itself, to care for more situated, often inescapable forms of information.