Ubiquity: A paranoid manifesto

Ubiquity is a peer reviewed journal for creative and transdisciplinary practitioners interested in technologies, practices and behaviours that have the potential to radically transform human perspectives on the world. The title refers explicitly to the advent of ubiquitous computing that has been hastened through the consumption of networked digital devices. The journal anticipates the consequences for design and research in a culture where everyone and everything is connected, and will offer a context for visual artists, designers, scientists and writers to consider how ubiquity is transforming our relationship with the world. In embracing these aspirations Ubiquity recognizes the transgressions and trauma that are implicit in the inevitable cultural shifts that will follow. As well as providing opportunities for enriching human experience these technologies and entangled practices bring with them neurosis and paranoia. The journal aims to create new dialogues between disciplines that utilize these technologies and to consider these activities within a social/cultural context. Ubiquity will not only focus on creative disciplines but will provoke a critical engagement with science, computing and socio/economic studies, emphasizing the impact that design and technology has on every- one’s lives. Seeking new methodologies for interfacing with the world, a series of practical and theoretical design processes are beginning to emerge from a wide variety of industrial, academic, scientific and creative contexts. These new methodologies are collapsing previous distinctions between science and art, and are constructing new transdisciplinary vocabularies for understanding a social, environmental and technical sense of ‘place’ that was previously understood through the limited and discrete parameters of time and space.