A Small, Skinny Idea
Boilerspace? Just trying to inspire…
Category: Digital News
Topical news on social media, web culture, digital humanities
Big, Fat Idea #1
Please bear with me as I try to communicate my thoughts. I’m quite ill today, so what I write might be slightly difficult to understand. I’ve been groping for a big, fat concept for our site, and maybe somebody can find some…
I’m a blogger afterall
Web logs, or rather blogs, are all over the internet as a means of doing something that was once thought lost; ordinary people publicly discussing various topics. A site called Change This was created in 2004 that supports open communication among regular…
Polls, Surveys, and Suggestion Box
I had another “bolt out of the blue” yesterday. People really like to know that their votes are counted, and they like to know if anyone else votes the same way. We could include polls on the class site…about anything…from minor and…
blog of note
David Weinberger has a blog…
Final project idea
Fleamarket, craigslist like environment-Robert Overlapping space, bring abstraction into the game-Zeynep and TJ Wiki-like site with tagging and mapping in a direct way-Scott Calendars and events–How do I locate what is available–Gabriel Process related information, class rating, travel board, electronic smalltown etc.–Brenda…
Bill Joy’s Vision of the Future
We were talking in class today abou the future of embodied computing and its philosophical foundations. Bill Joy, taking the path of those who believe that life is software by other means, concludes that the future could be really bleak: Why the…
Are We Homesteading or Pointing Outward?
As I was reading more of Weinberger’s chapter 5 this a.m., I got an idea. He says: Increasingly, a useful expert is not someone with (containing) all the answers but someone who knows where to find answers. He challenges us to point…
BoilerSpace.com? BoilerPlace.com?
I thought of two other possible domains for us to use that I feel would be more recognizable than www.peteslist.org. boilerspace.com and boilerplace.com are both available (as are purdoings.com, purdueings.com, and purduesnews.com). I really like so many of the ideas that have…
Idea for class project
The Purdue website has a very poor search engine. Our class project could have a better search engine on it that could serve the students in a more efficient manor. An embedded Google search engine could be a possible idea. The link…
Wienberger and Rheingold–similar?
One of the questions associated with the assigned readings was in reference to Weinberger and similarities associated with Rheingold or Seabrook. In the chapter entitled Togetherness by Weinberger differences are stated between the real world and web groups. I see thinking along…
Citizendium
Larry Sanger, Wikipedia’s confounder, is at it again. He decided to “fork” Wikipedia, that is to create another flavor, which includes more editorial control, of the famous online encyclopedia. I am part of the project, called Citizendium, and I hope to be…
Human Factors book: highly recommended
From Don Norman, the author of the famous POET (Psychology of everyday things) a word of wisdom about Human factors: I’m often asked for reading suggestions, especially for references to the literature on Human Factors and Ergonomics. In the past few months,…
Social Shaping of Technology
Here is an Amazon.com list for those interested in social shaping of technology!
Wiki-communitas
Communitas is an online journal that is a part of the wikimedia foundation. This journal involves community development for wiki with the common goal of good will. Can the term communitas really be applied to this website/fundraising project?
Dale Carnegie, Consumers, and Communitas
Is the Internet, as we’ve seen it described in our readings, and perhaps also as we’ve experienced it, a liminal state itself? Namely is the Internet a component or vehicle by which the process of liminality is being accomplished. As Turner (1995)…
Calhoun
This is the article about the interaction between online and offline worlds that was mentioned in my paper. Calhoun, C. (1986). Computer technology, large-scale social integration, and the local community. Urban Affairs Quarterly, 22(2), 329-349.
If a physical tree falls in the forest does that make the virtual tree more real?
In his postlogue/added chapter to his book, Rheingold asks whether the use of the “phrase virtual community is a perversion of the notion of community?” (2001, p.325). He then goes on to talk about Clifford Stoll as an example of someone who…
What does it mean to be human?
When it comes to the “dilemma of modernityâ€, namely, the tension between individual expression and community spirit (Matei, 2001) all the authors have an opinion on how serious it is and whether it can be resolved. Rheingold in a lengthy postlogue remains…
What IS the glue?
Brenda raises numerous questions, but “WHY?” is one that I think we were trying to answer in class today. There was a word on the tip of my tongue, and it wasn’t until I read some of Perloff’s “Introduction to Persuasion” at…
The WELL Experiment in Community
I ran across this quote the other day by Alan Bennett. I’m not sure who he is, but I believe he is a writer and humorist. He said, “We started trying to set up a small anarchist community, but the people wouldn’t…
Tangible Intangibilities
Perhaps it is my return to a small town format – or perhaps my background in non-profits and volunteers – or a history of having suffered or thrived (sometimes both) at the hands of various communities, or simply wanting to be a…
Markdown
This site is enabled to use MarkDown, a simplified syntax for representing web-friendly formatting. The syntax is very simple and if you do not feel comfortable with html it might come in quite handy. A description of the syntax can be found…
Kraut’s at it again
Robert Kraut and colleagues of “Internet loneliness” fame have been hacking at a research agenda focusing on stable and self-maintaining communities for some time. I ran into them looking for literature on how knowing more about your electronic environments can help you…
Silicon Valley Sleuth: Gates inducted into the Stalinist hall of fame
The man really is on the list… But so is Michael Gorbatchev, Henrik Ibsen, Albert Einstein or Michael Jordan… Silicon Valley Sleuth: Gates inducted into the Stalinist hall of fame Gates inducted into the Stalinist hall of fame Microsoft chairman Bill Gates…
Spaceaware: The Visible Past Version
Spaceaware is a research project I started a couple of years ago, which looks at how people make sense of information delivery experiences similar to the “hailing billboard” scene in Minority Report. (Remember the scene in which Tom Cruise is greeted by…
Why is Google a hypocrite? Because it ought to…
Follwing up on his smart Weekly Standard article , Andrew Keen posts on this blog, The Great Seduction, a very thoughtful comment on the Google-China debacle. The lack of guilt (doubled by an excess of guile) associated with how the cybergiant treated…
Differences in online relating
[posted by Lorraine] Joe Walther’s visit to Purdue University introduced us to a wide variety of theoretical approaches to relationships in online environments. The focus of his lectures was how people relate in online environments, or “how does communication behavior affect how…
Emerging technologies, spatial behavior and community belonging
New media and emerging technologies continue to change not only our communication (Gunn, 2006; Jones, 2006), but also our relationships, our work, and our communities (Contractor, 2006; Walther, 2006). At the same time, our societies and organizations – i.e. the bodies within…
Larry Sanger at Purdue
Larry Sanger’s talk at Purdue about the Future of Information is available. His talk summarizes his work in the area of mediated/stewarded collaboration.
Nosh on Social Networking
Nosh Contractor gave an interview to PRI’s To the Point on the virtues (and fallings) of online communication. The interview starts 24 min 30 sec into the show. Details about the topic.
Networks Class AT UIUC
SPCM 529, NC, “Communication Networks” Professor Noshir Contractor University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & Professor Peter Monge Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California Available via Access Grid and Polycom Videoconference 3 – 6 pm Tuesday, Central (4 – 7 pm…
Network forms of organizing: A MTML perspective
The metaphor of organization-as-networks directs attention to the dynamic nature of the process of organization as an emergent, evolving, and dynamic. At a global level, theorists have engaged with different forms of interdependencies, whether social, political or economic, as exemplified by Castells’…
Communication Networks
After interacting with Noshir Contractor this week and going through the readings on communication networks and new forms of organizing, if you’re interested in more on this subject, you might want to look at the (interdisciplinary) workshop he is presenting in Bloomington…
A project on Internet trust and credibility
Aligning with this week’s discussion of the credibility of information on wikipedia and other online sources, I ran across this project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, on credibility and trust in Internet settings, called the “Credibility Commons“. Interestingly enough, this research project…
Open content conference
If you’re interested, Steve Jones just announced a conference being held at University of Illinois-Chicago May 15-17 on open content (“Openness: Code, Science and Content”) sponsored by the First Monday group. Information at: http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/.
The social shaping of knowledge
The social shaping of knowledge through collaborative authoring tools I grew up in a household with a set of encyclopedias prominently displayed in the family room and frequently used as a resource– for our education, to consult during family discussions about issues,…
Songs of the Mock Turtle: Ways of knowing in an online world
For many, the democratic and liberatory promise of the internet lies in the potential to allow collaboration, interaction, and exchange of information, ideas, and resources at a scale not otherwise possible (or at least, not highly probable) in a simple offline world.…
Wikipedia v. Brittanica
In regard to our recent Wikipedia conversations, wanted to share an interesting post on a listserv referencing Nature’s latest response to the Wikipedia v. Brittanica debate. To Britannica’s repartee there was an answer from Nature it
The SOCIAL affordances of the web
In the context of Larry Sanger’s meetings and talks at PURDUE this Newsweek issue points to the onging “we” revolution on the web. How did we get from the “Daily Me” to the “US” services such as delicious, flickr, etc.? This is…
Museums Begin Offering Cell Phone Tours – Yahoo! News
An interesting and predictible spin on the location aware concept… Museums Begin Offering Cell Phone Tours – Yahoo! News Museums Begin Offering Cell Phone Tours By DAN GOODIN, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 17, 2:56 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO – Art lovers,…
U.S., Google Set to Face Off in Court – Yahoo! News
The US vs. Google lawsuit is looming. At first sight the issue at stake is the US government’s right to demand US media companies to provide data about the aggregated habits of US consumers. In the background, the issue seems to be…
Revisiting propinquity in interpersonal and intergroup dynamics
Drawing on the earlier notion of electronic propinquity as postulated by Korzenny (1978), the role of several factors like communication skills, bandwidth, information complexity, mutual directionality, to name a few, all play a part in determining the amount of propinquity achieved in…
Speed is good
I tried for a couple of weeks Yahoo’s new email interface. It promised to do a lot of things simple web interfaces could not. Dragging and dropping files and messages, complete listing of messages, faster searches, etc. Most of the functionalities resembled…
McCain beats on Google and Yahoo!
McCain takes a stance in USA TODAY on the Google-China story: We believe that American companies must develop and agree to abide by a code of conduct governing their interactions with repressive regimes, and we applaud the suggestion by some companies that…
Wired for Speech: a tool for reinforcing stereotypes?
Dr. Moira Gunn’s interview with Dr. Clifford Nass of Stanford University discusses a decade of research Nass has done on the role of the voice in human-computer relationships. In addition to work that recognizes the differential response our brain exhibits to sounds…
The Golden Age of Audio or the Biotech Century: How about the age of BioSound?
Nass (in conversation with Gunn, 2006) commented that the first sound a human being recognizes is the mother’s voice when it is in the womb. Other studies have revealed tentative findings of early literacy emerging in children whose parents read to them…
History of emerging technologies
Most of us commonly discuss the emergence of mainframe computers in the 60’s. It’s hard to believe that it was actually 60 years ago (Feb 1946) that the ENIAC computer was introduced, and that its development was tied to military needs of…
Moira Gunn
Moira Gunn, the NPR technology correspondent, will start her visit at Purdue’s “Perspectives on Communication and Technology” graduate seminar later today. In addition to giving two lectures in our seminar she will give a public talk tomorrow, at 3 PM, titled “The…
A call for librety would sound…
… as loud by any other spelling… SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0) – Google (Research) is getting lambasted online for its new policy of accommodating China’s Internet-censorship rules. But with its new Chinese search engine, Google.cn, Google isn’t living up to its reputation…
Filtering politics, sex, booze and humor
Here is more information on just what Google is filtering in China, by way of CNET news.com, confirming the point that political and cultural ‘streams’ are under tight control in China. See this link for a table demonstrating what is and is…
The Economist puts its spin on the Google situation
The Economist thinks that there is a silver lining in the Google-China story… The fact that Google will indeed use disclaimers and will not unroll services that will make it vulnerable to collaboration with the secret police is something that deserves attention.…
Internet usage strengthens social networks
Pew’s Internet and American Life Project released a new report today, “The Strength of Internet Ties,” confirming previous research that suggests that Internet use “supplements, rather than replaces, the communication people have with others in their network.” Their release states: The Pew…