I’ve begun a new project page, accessible from the frontpage of mollusc.org. It’s called Farmer’s Market Technology, but it’s really a general investigation of technology for urban agriculture. We coined ubifarm here, but Brian’s brilliant wordsmithing has also suggested pervasive agriculture and communicative soil. Whatever the term, let’s keep investigating how sensors, locative technology, RSS feeds, etc. can support pervasive urban agriculture.

Having more or less completed my first project, Seasonal Feed, I’m realizing something Malcolm covered at length: Information is only useful when you have context. Technologists love to talk about universal access. “We’ll be able to access the web from anywhere,” they say. But we don’t want universal access — we want contextualized access. We don’t want all of the information; we want the information that will be helpful given where we are.

With Seasonal Feed, I have successfully grabbed a list of seasonal vegetables from a regularly updated site, and transformed it into an RSS feed that can be used for any number of new projects. But I don’t want that general/universal information. I want the information in relation to my life. What vegetables are available at my local farmer’s market right now? Seasonal Feed can’t tell me that collards aren’t on the list (even though they’re in season). It can’t tell me that Hanson’s farm at Davis Square still has peaches, even though they’re almost out of season. The first solution I can think of requires people and community. It requires that I interact with the market manager at my local farmer’s market, and offer to help in the production of contextual information. Sort of cool, when you think about it.