The tourist experience of heritage urban spaces : Valletta as a case study

This article provides an understanding of how tourists experience heritage urban spaces by investigating features that influence tourist experiences most. It is framed within urban design literature which refers to three elements of urban space namely physical setting (or form), activity, and meaning. These elements are used to explore how urban spaces are experienced by tourists. Its findings are derived from an in-depth qualitative analysis of interviews with tourists to Valletta, Malta. The research suggests that the intrinsic qualities of the space are relevant to the tourist experience but what is even more relevant are the interactions of the tourist with different elements within that space, namely interactions with surroundings, interactions with others, and interactions with self/meaning. Within this broad conceptual model, the research identifies important sub-themes. Some of these reinforce the findings of existing work on tourist experiences, but others are often under-estimated or neglected.peer-reviewe

Social music in cars

This paper builds an understanding of how music is currently experienced by a social group travelling together in a car - how songs are chosen for playing, how music both reflects and influences the group’s mood and social interaction, who supplies the music, the hardware/software that supports song selection and presentation. This fine-grained context emerges from a qualitative analysis of a rich set of ethnographic data (participant observations and interviews) focusing primarily on the experience of in-car music on moderate length and long trips. We suggest features and functionality for music software to enhance the social experience when travelling in cars, and prototype and test a user interface based on design suggestions drawn from the data

Flight elements: Advanced avionics systems architectures

Space transportation objectives are associated with transporting material from Earth to orbit, interplanetary travel, and planetary landing. The objectives considered herein are associated with Earth to orbit transportation. Many good avionics architectural features will support all phases of space transportation, but interplanetary transportation poses significantly different problems such as long mission time with high reliability, unattended operation, and many different opportunities such as long nonoperational flight segments that can be used for equipment fault diagnosis and repair. Fault tolerance can be used to permit continued operation with faulty units, not only during launch but also, and perhaps with more impact, during prelaunch activities. Avionics systems are entering a phase of development where the traditional approaches to satisfactory systems based on engineering judgement and thorough testing will alone no longer be adequate to assure that the required system performance can be obtained. A deeper understanding will be required to make the effects of obscure design decisions clear at a level where their impact can be properly judged

On being aeromobile: airline passengers and the affective experiences of flight

The advent of heavier-than-air powered flight and the subsequent inauguration of regular passenger air services at the beginning of the twentieth century transformed not only the practical geographies but also the affective human experiences of travelling. Aircraft enabled passengers to accomplish journeys, which would once have taken many days or weeks to complete, in a matter of hours, and transformed the sensory experiences of being mobile. However, while much has been written about the development of global commercial aviation and the metaphorical compression of time and space air travel has effected, research into the individual embodied human experiences of being aeromobile remains relatively scarce. Drawing on powerful theoretical arguments inspired by the mobilities turn within the social sciences and recent concern with the ‘affective’ dimensions of everyday life, this paper uses firsthand written historical records of passengers’ experiences of travelling by air during the 1920s and 1930s to uncover the diverse kin/aesthetic and affective experiences of flight. While recognising that such experiences are shaped, at least in part, by gender, age, nationality, race, and past experiences of air travel, passengers’ descriptions of the unique bodily (dis)comforts, fears, and anxieties associated with flying are used to illustrate how aeromobile bodies experience their airborne environment in ways which have yet to be adequately addressed. The paper concludes by calling for a more nuanced understanding of air travel that recognises that the advent of powered flight has fundamentally changed our perceptions of time, space, distance, and speed, and transformed what it means to be mobile

Understanding spatial data usability

In recent geographical information science literature, a number of researchers have made passing reference to an apparently new characteristic of spatial data known as 'usability'. While this attribute is well-known to professionals engaged in software engineering and computer interface design and testing, extension of the concept to embrace information would seem to be a new development. Furthermore, while notions such as the use and value of spatial information, and the diffusion of spatial information systems, have been the subject of research since the late-1980s, the current references to usability clearly represent something which extends well beyond that initial research. Accordingly, the purposes of this paper are: (1) to understand what is meant by spatial data usability; (2) to identify the elements that might comprise usability; and (3) to consider what the related research questions might be

A western anthropology of sand

Sand has become such a powerful visual, emotive and experiential component of tourism. This essay ventures an ontological explanation for the Western world’s acquired and now gripping fascination with this particularly mundane material, and its robust current connection with the tourism industry. The paper argues that this engagement with sand’s materiality is a culturally determined response, an extension of an encounter with what is seen to be real, in the context of a contemporary experience that is increasingly given over to virtual objects and representations. An anthropology of sand—a conjunction of the cultural and material—with a particular focus on beach tourism, offers a complex, multi-layered experience where the real and the fictive are mutually constitutedpeer-reviewe

The software-simulated airworld: anticipatory code and affective aeromobilities

This paper is concerned with the way in which airspaces are organised, managed, and understood by virtual representations - software simulations that are tested and used both preemptively and in real time. We suggest that, while airspaces are often understood as simulations themselves - models and blueprints for real-world futuresöthey are among the most mediated of all contemporary social environments, produced not only through code, but based on scenarios which predict and plan for future events - real virtualities that might come true. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples of aeronautical software simulation employed by civilian and military aviation, we explore how code has become increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous in response to the challenges set by the mobilities the simulations model and the affective susceptibility of the corporeal body that uses them. The paper explores how software simulations work to structure and mediate behaviour by producing specific emotional and affective experiences in order to prepare the body for future encounters