Seen from Graphisoft Park
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Ph.D.
I study people, technology, and the worlds they make
Month: June 2008 (page 1 of 5)
I made it to my hotel, the Hotel Kalvin House. It may be the coolest hotel I've ever stayed in. Basically, imagine the abandoned building that Nexus 6 designer J. F. Sebastian lived in, turned into a central European pension. That's this place.
I got here a little after midnight, and got dropped off about half a block from the hotel. I walked down the street, and found the entrance- a big wooden door, no porter, no big welcoming sign. After a little hunting around, I found an apartment buzzer; there were about a dozen buttons, all but one of them blank.
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I buzzed, and the door unlocked. I walked in… to almost total darkness. After a few seconds, the motion sensor picked me up, and lights went on. There was a sign pointing to the left. I walked over, and there was a staircase surrounding a tiny elevator. The lights clicked off.
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I took the elevator to the second floor, and got out. No signs directing me. After a minute, the door to my right opened, and the proprietor checked me in.
My room is on the top floor, essentially the attic. The decor is basic Scandinavian hotel modern, with a few more traditional central European touches. There's free wireless, which is very cool- I was wondering about that, but happily it's becoming the standard these days.
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After my technology transfer breakfast, I went back to my room, packed and checked out of the hotel, and then headed out for a walk. I first braved the crowds and stopped at Boots to pick up a couple things. From there I went on to Blackwell’s, because… well, it’s a huge bookstore. (There’s a Caffe Nero on the first floor of Blackwell’s, but they makes Starbucks’ over-roasted coffee seem like a light refreshing brew.)
I wandered downstairs to what’s (accurately) called the basement, only to discover that the “basement” occupies about half the block, and seems to stretch under the Balliol College gardens. It was very cool.
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I picked up a copy of Donald Braden’s and Susan Greenfield’s latest books, then wandered over to the Bodleian Library, and around the Radcliffe Camera and St Mary’s Church.
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After that I got some lunch. I never had the hearty English breakfast that I usually start the day with when I’m here, so I had to have some fish and chips to make up for it.
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After lunch I walked around New College and their very nice gardens.
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The last place I stopped was Hereford College. It turned out that they were filming an episode of Antiquities Roadshow.
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There were a lot of cops there. I wonder, are they there because people try to front stolen goods there? Because antique collectors are an especially violent lot? I never found out.
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I landed in Budapest just before midnight, breezed through Customs, and now I’m on my way into town. I arranged for a ride with an airport shuttle through Expedia, and so far the experience has been good. Of course, we’re 10 minutes frmo the airport, so we’ll see how things go from here.
We just passed a car with a DVD player built into the ceiling. I’m conditioned to seeing Pixar movies on those screens, and it seemed odd that kids would be out this late. As we passed, I got a second’s glimpse. No kids in the car. The driver was watching it. And it’s a porn video.
Welcome to Budapest.
The place seems darker than London, in terms of the amount of public lighting that’s used (or available).
My Nokia N95 seems to be getting reception here fine. I bought a Vodaphone pay-as-you-go account, and I think I enabled the international calling feature, and though it’s about $1.50 to connect a call when you’re outside the UK, I think it’s worth it if it helps me avoid problems. Plus, just being able to keep up with the family is a huge thing. I called home when I was in Heathrow, and chatted with the kids for a couple minutes; they’re not very conversational on the phone, since they can’t see themselves like on iChat or Skype, but still. I like being able to do it.
My Mac is seeing a steady stream of wifi signals as we drive along. It’s pretty interesting. When I was here last, I was struck by how unwired the place is, even though I couldn’t get a power converter on a Sunday to save my life.
I'm heading out shortly to get the bus from Oxford to to Heathrow 5, for my flight to Budapest tonight. It's mid-afternoon, but I'm leaving a lot of time because 1) I don't want to get stuck in unexpected traffic, 2) Heathrow 5 is said to be a lot better, but still could be a disaster, and 3) Oxford is so packed with tourists you can't turn around.
Not that I've gone native or anything- I find I get more American rather than less when I'm in England; if I were here for a month, I'd probably end up dressing like a cowboy- but it really is very crowded.
Besides, I need to do some work for my workshops on Monday and Thursday, having been distracted by things back at the office. The difference between going an academic conference when you're an academic, and going to a conference when you're, well, me, is that when you're an academic, you don't have regular work still going on, and other people needing you to do things.
Had breakfast with an SBS student who’s doing a summer project on technology and IP transfer. It was a good time: I find the SBS students interesting to talk to, both because they’re working on cool stuff, and because they’re useful informants about the local culture of the business school.
One of the things we talked about was the degree to which you could think about intellectual property as something akin to a manufactured object, or something that’s inherently social. If it’s the first, the challenge people who want to facilitate intellectual property have to deal with involve reducing transaction costs and asymmetries, because IP is something that you could move as easily as an iPod moves from the factory floor in China to your door. If it’s the second, though, and if the transfer of intellectual property is more a process of social negotiation in which creators and users of IP create a common understanding around pieces of IP, then you need to design a very different system: one that facilitates relationships between creators and users, rather than facilitates transactions between anonymous buyers and sellers.
I’ve finished packing, and now I’m going to go check out, walk around for a while, then take the bus from Oxford to Heathrow Terminal 5. I’m going to leave ont he early side, to make sure I get there with plenty of time; then I figure if I have a long wait, i can wander around T5 and take pictures, while my clothing disappears into some strange black hole.
I got a decent night’s sleep last night, and woke up without yesterday’s confusion. I’m having breakfast with someone I ran into in SBS- a graduate who’s doing some work on innovation in Asia, and overheard me talking about the subject- then I’ll finish packing, and get things together to leave this afternoon.
I’ll spend a little bit of this morning playing tourist, but mainly I’m going to work on things for the Budapest and Vienna workshops.
Add REST: WHY YOU GET MORE DONE WHEN YOU WORK LESS to your Goodreads shelf
My books on Goodreads
The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul
reviews: 78
ratings: 316 (avg rating 3.53)
ratings: 316 (avg rating 3.53)
