socialcomputing - Yule Heibel on Diigo

20 Jul 08

Computer says get a life – and we have | Simon Jenkins - Times Online

Simon Jenkins ponders the seeming paradox that while music cd/ record sales plummet and prices for individual recordings drop as well, live concerts sell out at premium prices. He ponders other, related phenomena, too -- readings by writers, lectures, live performances of any kind: all seem to get more attention (and MONEY) than the products themselves.

He concludes and argues that people are willing to pay for what they want, and what they want is the real, authentic thing (i.e., person), not another technologically mediated simulacrum.

Two things: one, if he's right, this has dire consequences for visual art, unless the visual arts want to devolved strictly into performance art; and two, for those of us who are terrified of public speaking/ public performances, this isn't comforting news. Some of us like the internet because it preserves our sanguinity (if that's a word).

www.timesonline.co.uk/...article4276451.ece - Preview

socialcomputing socialtheory reality face_time business art_reception arts

Futurology seminars have long been obsessed with one question: what next after
the internet? The answer is always the same, a new electronic gizmo. There
will be a novel way of downloading into the ear or eye, a new web phenomenon
or interactive device. Since the invention of the telegraph and gramophone,
innovation is interested only in kit that yields profit. What is becoming
plain, even under the strains of recession, is that the futurologist’s
answer should lie in the realm not of electronics but of reality. It is in
reality television, reality politics, reality entertainment and sport, the
immediate, the active, the present, the live.
Recorded music became overnight what it had not been since the invention of
recording: publicity for live rather than live being publicity for
recording.
11 more annotations...
- What is happening is a reversal of history. Artists can no longer sell the
  products of their genius because the internet supplies it virtually for
  free. What can be sold is that genius in the flesh.
- Nor is the “rise of live” confined to high-profile music, art and sport. The
  fastest growing cultural activity in Britain is literary and music
  festivals.
- These are not financial extravaganzas and pay their performers little or
  nothing, but they draw big crowds to socialise and meet, or at least hear,
  celebrity performers. They generate turnover and employ people. The
  musicians and writers who are their staple input will soon earn more from
  live activity than from mass-produced versions of their work.
  - Ok, I do have a problem with this assessment: if these festivals aren't really making enough money even to pay the performers, what's in it for the performers? Elsewhere Jenkins suggests that performance will pay the bills, yet here he references festivals that draw on free talent. Will that talent make money "in the future" (how far off, anyway)? Is that something to bank on? It's quite a gamble, imo... - on 2008-07-20
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- when a poet’s work can be
  instantly disseminated on the web, the only real income will in future come
  from the gift book market and public recitals. The festival and lecture
  circuit, well exploited by retired politicians, may yet be many a writer’s
  chief source of income.
- Lectures – surely the most archaic form of public entertainment – now cram the
  London what’s-on schedules. Popular debating series such as IQ2 regularly
  sell out at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington.
  - Just as with music (and with the Pope, in the next paragraph below), these crowds are getting all this entertainment and experience for free. So where is the business model? (And I merely ask because Jenkins points out that the internet's making so many products *freely* available has wrecked a couple of older business models -- such as CD/ record sales.) So if "live" presence is an alternative to the internet's culture of "free," where is the business model if the crowds we're talking about still aren't paying? Or, in the case of music festivals, the organizers charge the crowds (who pay for tix), but don't make enough money to pay the performers? Hmmm? - on 2008-07-20
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- Cathedrals are booming thanks to the fame of their architecture and choirs.
  - THIS I find very compelling, and something to think about. I worried earlier about visual art, and about how it can compete unless it wants to be "performance" art.
    
    But here's the deal: if the art is *housed* in a building that is practically a performance -- i.e., that attracts an audience by virtue of its famous architecture -- then the art can use that sort of "live" or "reality"-based popularity as its frame or as a stepping stone to access public consciousness. - on 2008-07-20
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- One demonstration of this phenomenon lies in the oldest form of human
  communication, politics. In the early days of the internet in 1992, Ross
  Perot, the Texan tycoon, claimed that he would transform democracy by
  campaigning for the presidency on the web. Bill Clinton responded by
  campaigning old style, from the back of a train.
  
  Sixteen years later, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were still barnstorming
  around every key state in their primary election battle. They knew that
  people would not believe in them unless they were physically and visibly
  present on their territory.
  
  The difference of the internet to the campaign lay in sending messages and
  raising money. If it supplanted anything it was other media such as the
  letter post, radio and television. Obama’s online securing of $270m combined
  the e-mail with computer banking to sensational effect. As with show
  business, the internet supports live but is in no way a substitute for it.
  Clicking a mouse can never beat pumping flesh.
- The reason why public figures such as Clinton and Tony Blair can command huge
  sums for “personal appearances” is not that people are eager to hear their
  wisdom. That is available on the web for free. The reason is that people pay
  to be in the presence.
- Futurology has a built-in distortion towards technological novelty, while
  ignoring the continued appeal of what has gone before. It cannot recognise
  what the historian David Edgerton of Imperial College has dubbed “the shock
  of the old”. Our demands rarely change over time, only the way in which the
  market supplies them.
  
  I find this form of conservatism vastly encouraging. People like people. They
  crave the immediacy of human contact and congregation. They want to see
  those who inspire or excite them live, not digitised. And what they want,
  they will pay for.
- where is the money being made?
  For that’s where we should be”.
- The money is now being made in supplying a public craving not for technology
  but for human experience. It lies in flesh and blood. Live is live.

13 Apr 08

Why would teachers use Diigo? | Diigo Message System

This is an open thread on the Diigo "direct messaging service," which highlights some of the ways that teachers/educators on Diigo are using this application.

message.diigo.com/29443 - Preview

diigo socialmedia distributed_education education distance_education socialcomputing

11 Apr 08

" » What is “social media?”" from Pro PR

"Exploring social media and public relatons" = tagline. Includes an excellent new / reworked definition of social media by Joseph Thornley.

propr.ca/...what-is-social-media - Preview

socialcomputing apps public_relations pr thornley_fallis

Social media are online communications in which individuals shift fluidly and flexibly between the role of audience and author.
- - that works for me as a working definition. - on 2008-04-11
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To do this, they use social software that enables anyone without knowledge of coding, to post, comment on, share or mash up content and to form communities around shared interests.

10 Apr 08

Technology Review: Consolidating Your Web Banter

MIT Tech Review reports on Seesmic's purchase of Thwirl; this bookmark is page 2 from that article. I find this bit especially useful:
QUOTE:
"The past five years or so have seen a massive proliferation of user- generated content," says Bret Taylor, founder and CEO of FriendFeed. Tools that aggregate this information have been around for years, but so far they haven't been very good at filtering useful content from less-useful content. "Our theory is that people you know are the best filters for information," he says.
UNQUOTE
- This relates to my previous questions/ thoughts on filtering apropos the Clay Shirky/ Jon Lebkowsky interview in WorldChanging.

www.technologyreview.com/...page2 - Preview

mit_techreview twitter friendfeed thwirl seesmic filtering socialcomputing

"The past five years or so have seen a massive proliferation of user-generated content," says Bret Taylor, founder and CEO of FriendFeed. Tools that aggregate this information have been around for years, but so far they haven't been very good at filtering useful content from less-useful content. "Our theory is that people you know are the best filters for information," he says.
As Le Meur sees it, one of the keys to consolidating personal online communications is a programming standard called XMPP, an open platform that lets anyone develop instant-communication software. Google Talk, for instance, runs on XMPP, which allows it to be accessed in a number of different ways: in a Web browser, as downloadable software, and even via third-party chat-service aggregating software such as Adium.

28 Dec 07

Technology Review: Mapping Professional Networks

- more on reality mining...?

www.technologyreview.com/...19985 - Preview

mit_techreview reality_mining socialcomputing socialmedia socialnetworks

Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places (PDF)

The abstract: "The mobile phone has become the central node of the ensemble of portable objects that urbanites carry with them as they negotiate their way through information-rich global cities. This paper reports on a study conducted in Tokyo, Los Angeles, and London where we tracked young professionals’ use of the portable objects. By examining devices such as music players, credit cards, transit cards, keys, and ID cards in addition to mobile phones, this study seeks to understand how portable devices construct and support an individual’s identity and activities, mediating relationships with people, places, and institutions. Portable informational objects reshape and personalize the affordances of urban space. Laptops transform cafés into personal offices. Reward and membership cards keep track of individuals’ use of urban services. Music players and mobile devices colonize the in-between times of waiting and transit with the logic of personal communications and media consumption. Our focus in this paper is not on the relational communication that has been the focus of most mobile communication studies, but rather on how portable devices mediate relationships to urban space and infrastructures. We identify three genres of presence in urban space that involve the combination of portable media devices, people, infrastructures, and locations: cocooning, camping, and footprinting. These place-making processes provide hints to how portable devices have reshaped the experience of space and time in global cities."

www.itofisher.com/...portableobjects.pdf - Preview

camping cities cocooning footprinting locative_media mimi_ito mobility socialcomputing socialtheory urbanism

24 Dec 07

The Queen claims own YouTube channel (toronto star)

I wonder if Charles would have come up with this?
"The Queen, considered an icon of traditionalism, launched her own special Royal Channel on YouTube on Sunday. (...) 'The Queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people,' Buckingham Palace said in a statement. 'The Christmas message was podcast last year.' The palace said, 'She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries.'"
- the original 1957 TV broadcast is up, and worth watching.

www.thestar.com/...288281 - Preview

buckingham_palace media public_relations qe2 socialcomputing youtube

Buckingham Palace also began posting archive and recent footage of the Queen and other royals on the channel Sunday, with plans to add new clips regularly.
- - I bet this will become very popular very quickly - on 2007-12-24
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The footage of the Queen's 1957 Christmas TV broadcast will remind viewers that TV once was as groundbreaking a creation as Internet is today.
1 more annotations...
- "I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct. That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us," the queen said of television at the time.

20 Dec 07

Technology Review: What Your Phone Knows About You

Sandy Pentland, professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, talks about "reality mining."
- this is page 2 of a 2-page article

www.technologyreview.com/...page2 - Preview

cell_phones mit_techreview sandy_pentland socialcomputing socialnetworks socialtheory

You can really see things in a way that you never could before--a God's-eye view. One of the examples I've been stuck on recently relates to how transformative Google Earth has been. Imagine having something where you can see all the people moving around on a map. Think about SARS in Hong Kong. What if in a particular apartment building, nobody left for work that day? You could identify a major health problem in 12 hours instead of two weeks. Another example is the social health of communities. It's known that social integration, or how well people mix, correlates with whether or not a community is thriving. With reality mining, you can actually see social integration, as it happens or doesn't happen. Once everyone can see it, then you can start to have transparent political discussions. Why isn't the mayor putting more sidewalks and crosswalks in this area? Could more community events make the area more livable?
- - that does presuppose that EVERYONE has a cell phone, though, and I'd bet that there are plenty of instances where populations that are vectors for contagious diseases don't typically carry cell phones, for example. Not to mention that (as the interviewer says in the next question), "this all gets very creepy very fast." - on 2007-12-20
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But we definitely need to talk about it and figure out a new deal for privacy--to use this data and not be abused.
- - d'uh, no kidding, Sherlock! - on 2007-12-20
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2 more annotations...
- You know, excuse the example, but I've been in a downtown somewhere and I don't know where the nearest bathroom is, or it's raining and I'd like a taxi. I'd give up a little bit of personal information to find these things.
  - - but there are urban services being introduced where you can pull that information from your cell phone, w/out giving your cell phone all sorts of access about yourself. - on 2007-12-20
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- Reality mining will help us see ourselves and, in an anonymous way, compare ourselves to peers. And I see organizations and companies using this to help people collaborate more effectively and do their jobs more efficiently.
  - - jeepers, just when I thought Michel Foucault had become really unfashionable, here're shades of Discipline and Punish! It's like Jeremy Bentham's Panopticum gone digital! Brrr... - on 2007-12-20
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Technology Review: What Your Phone Knows About You

Sandy Pentland, professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, talks about "reality mining." Pay attention, interesting stuff!
- this is page 1 of a 2-page article

www.technologyreview.com/...19968 - Preview

cell_phones mit_techreview sandy_pentland socialcomputing socialnetworks socialtheory

Based on phone calls and the devices' physical proximity to other people's phones (as measured by Bluetooth), Pentland and researcher Nathan Eagle developed social-network models that were more accurate and more nuanced than those constructed from the subjects' self-reports.
Sifting through cell-phone data to get at the truth of people's social interactions falls under the umbrella of an emerging field that Pentland has dubbed "reality mining." And he thinks that social networks are just the beginning. The same techniques can be applied to other sets of cell-phone data to help people communicate more effectively, manage their time better, and even make their neighborhoods more livable. And it's all thanks to the ubiquity of cell phones--the ultimate data-collection machines.
4 more annotations...
- the generalization is that maybe it can know lots of things about you. Take your Facebook friends as an example. The phone could know which ones you socialize with in person, which ones are your work friends, and which friends you've never seen in your life. That's an interesting distinction, and reality mining can make it automatic.
  - - and by making it automatic, you make part of an algorithm... - on 2007-12-20
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- It's about making the "dumb" information-technology infrastructure know something about your social life. All this sort-of Web 2.0 stuff is nice, but you have to type stuff in. Things are never up to date, and unless you consciously know about something, you can't put it in. Reality mining is all about paying attention to patterns in life and using that information to help you do things like set privacy policies, share things with people, notify people when you're near them, and just to help you live your life.
- Today's cell phones are on us all the time, and they come with hardware that can act as sensors for your environment. For instance, if Bluetooth is turned on, then the phone can see and be seen by other Bluetooth devices. You can start to make a record of the Bluetooth-enabled devices you encounter throughout the day. Then you can figure out, based on the frequency [with which] you encounter other people's Bluetooth phones, what sort of relationship you have with them.
  - - I think I get it, although it does sound a bit strange to let a device figure out what kind of relationship I have with someone...! - on 2007-12-20
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- And all phones have built-in microphones that can be used to analyze your tone of voice, how long you talk, how often you interrupt people. These patterns can tell you what roles people play in groups: you can figure out who the leader is and who the followers are. It's folk psychology, and some of the stuff people may already know, but we haven't been able to measure it, at such a large scale, before these phones.
  - - ok, now it's starting to sound a bit creepy... - on 2007-12-20
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09 Nov 07

Technology Review: Mapping News

www.technologyreview.com/...19695 - Preview

mapping_apps mit_techreview outsidein reference socialcomputing yourstreet

29 Aug 06

"Social Networking" - Dave Pollard, How to Save the World

blogs.salon.com/...27.html - Preview

socialcomputing tool

I'm using Dave's page to demonstrate diigo's potential in collaborative up-marking... - lampertina on 2006-08-29

we're too busy
tools don't solve (and can exacerbate) this underlying problem of ineffective interpersonal skills.
5 more annotations...
- Many of these tools are unintuitive and hence not easy to learn to use.
- The
  digital divide seems to grow ever wider, not narrower, and if a tool as
  simple, free and intuitive as Skype can't replace the telephone even
  for tech-savvy users, what hope is there for more complicated,
  sophisticated tools?
  - - I do think it has s.th. to do with the education model, with the teacher who has to get this factory-class of x-number of kids to all be "on the same page." This has retarded us. - on 2006-08-29
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- When during the meeting did we agree to do that?
  - - which kind of suggests that collaborative tools have the intention of bringing everyone to the same page (i.e., agreement over what was done). This sounds a bit like ...school, and what the teacher does ("now, class: everyone open their texts to page XYZ..."). Hmmm...? - on 2006-08-29
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- Why are
  conversation and collaboration tools so underused? Is my list of 7
  reasons missing anything? Are any of the reasons predominant?
  - I liked the comment on the writely document that said: "Learning how to use such tools never seems urgent, and there are always workarounds (like sending an email) that get the immediate task done." For me this gets at the "open your texts to page XYZ" problem: you want to cut to the chase quickly, you've spent years in school being bored out of your mind waiting for everyone to open their text to page XYZ, and you're not gonna take it anymore. So when you encounter a tool that seems like your worst boring teacher nightmare, you drop it... - on 2006-08-29
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02 Apr 06

EDUCAUSE REVIEW | November/December 2005, Volume 40, Number 6

www.educause.edu/...erm0561.asp - Preview

elearning socialcomputing

competition
There’s also considerable value in what I call “the explaining voice,” the voice that performs understanding. The explaining voice doesn’t just convey information; it shapes, out of a shared atmosphere, an intimate drama of cognitive action in time. The explaining voice conveys microcues of hesitation, pacing, and inflection that demonstrate both cognition and metacognition. When we hear someone read with understanding, we participate in that understanding, almost as if the voice is enacting our own comprehension. In other words, the explaining voice trains the ear to listen not just for meaning but for evidence of the thought that generates meaning.
5 more annotations...
- consider Todd Cochrane’s assertion: “Podcasting represents a new way for individuals to communicate about the things they love. They can actually broadcast content that comes from their hearts.”¹⁰If a mass-market text on podcasting begins by stressing the affective dimension of this new medium, educators would do well to think about how they might harness that energy in their teaching and learning practices.
- podcasting can reveal to students, faculty, staff, communities—even the world—the essential humanity at the heart of higher education.
- One of my colleagues at Mary Washington, a cognitive psychologist, insists that audio is a poor channel for conveying information to learners because the learner cannot control the pace. The listener is at the mercy of the speaker’s tempo. I take the point, but I wonder if that necessity doesn’t have a virtuous dimension. Perhaps it is sometimes a good thing for the learner not to control the tempo, particularly if one wants to lead the learner away from habitual patterns of perception and cognition. Perhaps listening attentively to the pace of another mind, revealed in voice, can help train the learner to be more attentive generally.
- potential to be uniquely immersive, to evoke the intimacy and focus of a study carrel deep in the stacks of a library. One emerges from those dark, womblike spaces blinking and perhaps a little disoriented:
- “Podcasting, done the right kind of way, can . . . make a newspaper sound like a human being. Because that’s what newspapers are: they’re a collection of human beings.”

Yule Heibel's Library tagged socialcomputing → View Popular

Computer says get a life – and we have | Simon Jenkins - Times Online

Why would teachers use Diigo? | Diigo Message System

" » What is “social media?”" from Pro PR

Technology Review: Consolidating Your Web Banter

Technology Review: Mapping Professional Networks

Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places (PDF)

The Queen claims own YouTube channel (toronto star)

Technology Review: What Your Phone Knows About You

Technology Review: What Your Phone Knows About You

Technology Review: Mapping News

"Social Networking" - Dave Pollard, How to Save the World

EDUCAUSE REVIEW | November/December 2005, Volume 40, Number 6

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