The MEVoS, short for Mediated Events per Volume Second, is an experimental media measuring unit that I’m developing. In this blogpost I am exploring some of its properties.
It was mentioned it in my last post, but then I called it REVOS, for Reported Events per Volume Second: “Through the ever increasing density of the media ecology and through the increasing amounts of user-generated content and through the distribution of all the new organisms in the media ecology and their machine-generated content the REVOS rate of the world will continue to increase rapidly. At some places more so than at others, obviously.”
The MEVoS should allow to express in one unambiguous number the mediation density of a certain spacetime volume. To make this unit compatible with the wider system of physical measurement units, the volume part of the MEVoS is m3 (one cubic meter, equivalent to 10000 liters), and the time unit is the second.
How to define a Mediated Event? My current proposal is: any event that results into an electronic or mechanical system transporting a report of that event to another mechanical, electronic or cognitive system at a different location (however minute the distance), thereby potentially causing further events.
Event size…
But what is the size of an event? Would a fist fight count as an event? Or would you have to split it up in a series of blows, that are all seperate events? This question then means: what is the resolution of the report? (analogous to the resolution of digital picture: the amount of pixels per inch) In other words: the resolution of the report determines the size of the event. If one particular blow with a fist is reported seperately, it is obviously a seperate Mediated Event. If a fist fight is only mentioned as a whole, then that is the Mediated Event.
Fistfight
Hm. What if there is only one picture made of a whole fist fight? The picture only shows one blow… - not even that actually, because it shows only a time fragment of a blow, the size of which depends on the shutter time of the camera… But if there is only one picture, there is only one Mediated Event? With quite a rough resolution, indeed.
Ah -the the trouble is that in the expression Mediated Event a separation is being made between the event and its mediation. But the point of coming up with this MEVoS is not to measure the proportion of mediations in relation to events - it is to be able to describe the density of mediations, (and maybe in a later stage to see how mediation density plays a role in the construction of events and event narratives). So we’re talking about Mediation Events, not Mediated Events. The Mediation is the Event I’m talking about (it echoes of McLuhan)
Fridge
Let’s explore a not too political example. In the event that the internal temperature of my refrigerator raises above 5 degrees Celsius, the thermostat of the refrigerator will report that event (with the flip of one switch) to the pump, that will release pressured gas in the pipes, that will absorb the excess warmth in the fridge. When the internal temperature is 5 degrees again, the thermostat will again report that event to the pump, with the reverse flip of the switch. If the fridge door opens, the little light switches on, by an even more simple relais, but that is also a Mediation Event.
In this simple temperature sensor with a digital display, the bridge circuit removes the unwanted signal at 0°, which allows the ADC reading to equal the temperature
On a day when I’m home and I’m cooking, I estimate I open the fridge about 20 times. And the pump switches on and off about 3 or 4 times. The total internal volume of my fridge I estimate at 0.65 m3.A waking day has 16 hours, that equals 57600 seconds.So the MEVoS rate of my fridge is 28 reported events per 0.65m3 per 57600 seconds = 0.748 MicroMEVoS on an average day when I’m home. If I measured the MEVoS rate per hour, it would probably be about 0.03 MicroMEVoS for 15 out of those 16 hours (the pump switches on and off once per 0.65m3 per 54000 seconds) when I’m not cooking, and 1 CentiMEVoS (24 : 0.65 m3 : 3600 sec.) for the one hour I’m cooking.
A fridge that maintains different temperatures at different sections requires a finer system of sensors and switches, and has a correspondingly higher MEVoS rate for its total volume.
Statistic number
Ok. That’s not too hard. It’s a statistic number. To achieve at something meaningful, you need to choose both the space volume and the time volume properly.
Nairobi spacetime volume
Another example: the riots in Kenya, that followed the late 2007 elections, this would be a much more complex situation to put into MEVoS measurements. What volume would you want to measure? Let’s say the city of Nairobi, from the ground till three meters up, or so. What time volume? The first two weeks after the elections. What would be the Mediation Events? Pictures, written reports (sms’s, blogs, news articles, maybe even books) video’s, films, phone calls, sound recordings, etc. So, what’s the MEVoS rate of that particular spacetime volume? I wouldn’t know really. But through the application of the MEVoS concept, a lot of well rendered critical thoughts come up.
(more later )
Tags: MEVoS,
ubicomp,
hybrid world