Operational Media Online

In February 2010, I was inivited by the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture, to give a talk on what I called "Operational Media," information design which is used to make all sorts of decisions:

• what to purchase
• how to use our time
• how to respond to unfolding combat situations
• how to vote

I gave examples of design trends, relating them to business, the open government movement, and computer science. I also highlighted relevant skills for students who want work in this area.

During the lecture, I made available a companion site with additional sources and ideas.

• Lecture companion website
• Jussi Parikka blogged about my talk. He said:

Nathan's talk was able to introduce the general idea of computer assisted information retrieval and management which to me was a great way of branding a variety of trends into "operational media". He talked about visualisation of data, augmented reality, filtering of data, expert, crowd and computer assisted information gathering, and a variety of other contexts in which the idea works.

The talk was in providing [sic] really good material on the intertwining of such (bio)political questions in (online) media design.