The architecture of information:
It’s not just your apps in your phone that are tracking you so they can sell your attention to the highest bidder. If you live in London, soon your city will too. Per The Verge, an enormous screen installed in Picadilly Circus includes hidden cameras that will analyze aspects of the environment — the colors of cars, physical characteristics of pedestrians — to serve up advertising messages targeted to them.
Picadilly Circus is a very busy urban environment. How does this screen work? What criteria does it use to adapt content to what it senses in the environment? What effect does placing such a large information display have on the attention of drivers and pedestrians going through the place? How does it change how people understand their relationship to the environment?