"Quantified Self About Town" ---this is Tong's blog for the course
How can we take advantage of the connected technologies transforming individual data to massively larger scales in time and space? From smartphones to wearables, from social media to quantified self, the aggregation and geo-location of data is becoming a major part of how our spaces, cities, and regions are assessed and planned.
In this class, we’ll look at how we can design and deploy with some of the most commonly hackable instruments - microcontrollers, sensors, and phones– that collect environmental, social, biological, and personal data. Students will learn to access the computing and geo-visualization resources they need to deploy their own data collection instruments in the urban environment.
The class will kick off with findings from a January 2015 workshop at MIT called “Physical Computing and Urban Studies,” in which students will consider the political, historical, and social underpinnings of how sensors are used in urban studies and planning. MIT and NYU students will be encouraged to advise each other on issues around collection and analysis of geo-located bio-data.