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BBC NEWS | Technology | The web's future is a 'village'
Hewlett Packard Research Study finds that despite people's growing desire to have world of information at our fingertips and social networking pages that boast hundreds of "friends," our reality is very different
Tags: social, networking, study, BBC, village, psychosocial, identity, weak, ties on 2008-09-25 -All Annotations (7) -About
more fromnews.bbc.co.uk
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Bernardo Huberman, a senior fellow at HP labs has called this a return to the "dawn of the age of intimacy" following in-depth research into the intersection of social behaviour and technology.
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Attention is now the key commodity in this information explosion," said Mr Huberman at a breakfast meeting with Silicon Valley journalists to talk about his findings.
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"But what is extremely valuable is people's attention," he said. "The fact is, there is so much stuff to attend to and our capacity to attend to that is limited."
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A report by compete.com found that only 20 domains account for 40% of the time people spend online with social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook featuring prominently in that list.
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We noticed that there is an interplay between what people pay attention to and novelty. But novelty fades and the clicks on the Digg stories decay. We can predict the shape of that decay.
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"With Facebook many people boast of having 100, 200 friends but in reality only keep up or track a very few of them."
On this basis Mr Huberman concludes that we are returning to a time where we maintain close contact with a small number of people - enough people to fill a village.
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"This issue of exclusivity is going to be more and more predominant in a world in which anyone can have access to everything. I think that, to me, is the most interesting trend.
Shock as videogames deemed great social motivators - Gaming
PEW study finds 52% teen gamers drawn to games regarding global, social, ethical and moral issues----also gamers NOT loners, most play with friends, etc.
Tags: gaming, social, gamers, volunteer, ethical, global, issues, study on 2008-09-22 -All Annotations (5) -About
in list: Gaming
more fromwww.thetechherald.com
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a new study has this week praised gaming for encouraging teenage players to become more socially interactive with friends and the community.
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Notably, the study also found that gamers use educational software to help them learn more about important global issues.
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a whopping 99 percent of the boys and 94 percent of the girls actively play some form of videogame ranging from simple Solitaire through to sci-fi epic Halo 3 and sporting stalwart Madden NFL.
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the study found that 52 percent of the teens were drawn towards games that made them consider moral and ethical decisions, while 43 percent said they enjoyed videogames involving the governing of an interactive and evolving community, city or entire nation. A further 40 percent said they played games that helped them learn more about social issues.
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The study also deemed that teenage players regularly confronting problems through virtual communities were more inclined to volunteer for charity work, join a protest march, and remain on the information bell curve regarding the state of politics.
The Road to the Information Age
really awesome follow-up to Carr's Google Making Us Stupid article- traces back through digital revolutions of the past and intellectuals reactions to them as they came.
Tags: history, Atlantic, brainresearch, brain, study, google, cognition, attention on 2008-07-29 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.theatlantic.com
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Carr wonders whether the modern tendency to consume information online, through a constant stream of headlines, e-mails, and blog posts has eroded our capacity for deep, measured thought.
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Bush, who directed the Office of Scientific Research and Development during WWII, realized that the rapidly growing body of human knowledge would be of limited value to future generations without more efficient means of accessing it:
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He envisioned a system for searching the realm of human knowledge through “selection by association”—a mechanized process that would seek to emulate the way the human mind thinks.
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While clearly smitten with his new device, the author also recognized the hazards of relying on it too heavily. For one thing, Fallows warned, “Computers forever distort your sense of time.” When there were occasional delays, “ten minutes was intolerable when everything else happened in a flash.”
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oe explained that Wikipedia’s organizational model is particularly well suited to the online world:
Wikipedia’s communal regime permits growth plus organization and improvement. The result of this difference is there for all to see: much of the Internet is a chaotic mess and therefore useless, whereas Wikipedia is well ordered and hence very useful.
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The Google worldview “suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized.”
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By 2000 AD man should have a much better comprehension of himself and his system, not because he will be innately any smarter than he is today, but because he will have learned to use imaginatively the most powerful amplifier of intelligence yet devised.
Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com
GREAT article on literacy decline due to internet addiction/ reading? really great, comprehensive look
Tags: reading, brainresearch, research, study, literacy, internet on 2008-07-29 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.nytimes.com
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ike so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer
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She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters.
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Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
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others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.
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critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading.
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some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.
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In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.
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Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
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Last fall the National Endowment for the Arts issued a sobering report linking flat or declining national reading test scores among teenagers with the slump in the proportion of adolescents who said they read for fun.
Internet and mobile phones become all-pervasive in modern society - Telegraph
Britan Ipsos MORI Surveyed more than 2,000 brits and found that most spend as many as 30 hrs a week online- looks at how internet and mobile phones have become all-pervasive in modern society
Tags: internet, addiction, dependency, research, study, UK on 2008-07-29 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.telegraph.co.uk
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A comprehensive study of the importance of the internet in people's lives has
found that thousands spend as many as 30 hours a week online. -
The Ipsos MORI survey of more than 2,000 people, carried out across Britain
for the BT 21st Century Life Index report, found: -
And while nearly 70 per cent of us say we prefer face-to-face communication to
using the phone or email, nearly 80 per cent say we could not live without a
telephone; our mobile or landline phones. Nineteen per cent say they could
not live without the internet. -
The report found that users had begun to look to the internet for help on two
of the most pressing problems of the day – the environment and the credit
crunch. A fifth would like advice on reducing the amount of energy their
technological devices use, while, 23 per cent are using the internet to
compare prices before making a purchase. -
The authors of the report state: "In response to recent talk about
recession, internet users have become smarter shoppers, with almost a
quarter either starting to use online price comparison tools before making a
purchase or using them more often." -
A study by Duke University and the University of Arizona found that
people who used the internet intensively as a source of advice and to
communicate with "virtual" friends can suffer a decline in their
ability to confide in their real friends and families. -
"This change indicates
something that is not good for our society," she said. "Ties with
a close network of people create a safety net."
The relationship of players to their avatars in MMORPGs: differences between adolescents, emerging adults and adults
Article from Czech Republic on Virtual Worlds and differences b/w kids, teens and adults and their avatars
Tags: avatar, secondlife, virtual, psychosocial, research, study on 2008-07-23 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (2) -About
in list: Psychosocial
more fromwww.cyberpsychology.eu
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Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
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MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) are persistent virtual worlds falling within the fantasy genre, in which the player controls his or her character which subsequently becomes a part of the online fantasy world.
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32 players was obtained upon contacting players in discussion fora, where they were asked to fill in a web-based questionnaire in English. A battery of 12 questions was tested dealing with the various aspects of relationship between the players and their avatars.
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The motivation to succeed is significantly stronger among younger male players (i.e. adolescents) and among those who play more intensively. According to Griffiths et al. (2004), the intensity of playing (measured in the number of hours per week) is also characteristic of younger, adolescent players.
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From the player's viewpoint, the avatar is a kind of individual overlap owing to which they may experiment with their identities.
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the focal role of so-called images in one’s psyche (e.g. Hillman, 1997, Kast, 1992), which are certain complexes around which fantasies and emotions resolve and which can be experienced as certain independent parts of one’s psyche.
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it may mean that the player does not perceive the avatar as something “more” but simply as a game mechanism, i.e. something the purpose of which is to reach something else, such as entertainment, social contact, self-esteem, and self-efficacy through success etc.
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it is younger players who tend to identify with (i.e. not to distinguish from) their avatars, while the younger the respondents were, the stronger the phenomenon.
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“immersion” factor shows a deeper interconnection of the player and the avatar. This factor connects imagination, daydreaming of the game and avatar with the emotional relationship towards it, which has support in the psychodynamic approach considering imaginations and emotions as “two sides of the same coin”
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Wolfendale (2006) implies the existence of a stereotype that the attachment to the avatar is something negative and that it concerns socially isolated individuals (or that it leads to social isolation).
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majority of “gender swappers” are male.
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Adolescents demonstrated the highest tendency to identification of themselves and their avatars, i.e. they had the highest need to perform well in the game.
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there is thus a possibility that MMORPGs provide adolescents with space to complete their developmental tasks, typical of this age. Adolescents are focussed on developing the feeling of their own competence, which is strongly linked to the feeling that the individual was an actor and that success resulted from their own skill and capabilities: the perception of one's own performance is thus more important when developing a positive self-assessment that others' opinions.
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the importance of the compensation factor decreased with age.
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Our study shows that the age is, at least to some extent, an important factor affecting the style of playing MMORPGs, since there is a significantly lower level of identification among adults than among younger players.
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among adults, the motivation to play MMORPGs is represented by something else than their avatars (it can be, for instance, the social dimension of the game, etc.). On the other hand, for younger players, the virtual character may be an important motivation factor, especially from the viewpoint of performance and success in the game, as in case of adolescents.
Internet, Tolerance Spark Change in Urban Gay Communities - Academic Health Center, University of Minnesota
New Study at University of Minnesota finds that Internet is changing urban gay communities, making them quieter because of online dating, etc.
Tags: gay, community, psychosocial, research, study, social, virtual, Minnesota on 2008-07-22 -All Annotations (0) -About
in list: Psychosocial
more fromwww.ahc.umn.edu
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Societal oppression, lack of rights, and the HIV epidemic were powerful reasons why gay men came together as a community in inner cities, which eventually became gay-identified neighborhoods, Rosser said.
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istorically gay neighborhoods appear to be disappearing, driven by high real estate prices, young gay people remaining in the suburbs, and greater integration of heterosexuals into inner cities. Achievement of civil rights also appears to play a role; young people in cities where they have equal rights may simply not feel the same need for community. Rosser noted that the changes are consistent with theories of social assimilation.
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n another study, Rosser has led a group of investigators to develop one of the world’s first online HIV risk reduction interventions, called “SexPulse.” A randomized controlled trial testing the effects of “SexPulse,” currently in progress, will be completed later this year.
Children and Internet Use: Social, Psychological and Academic Consequences for
A look at effects internet has on Low-Income children, especially.
Tags: psychosocial, children, internet, technology, lowincome, digitaldivide, APA, study, research on 2008-07-17 -All Annotations (0) -About
in list: Psychosocial
more fromwww.apa.org
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HomeNetToo is a longitudinal field study designed to examine the antecedents
and consequences of home Internet use in low-income families. Funded by an Information
Technology Research grant from the National Science Foundation, the project
began in the fall of 2000, when 90 families were recruited to participate in
the 18-month study. Families agreed to have their Internet use automatically
and continuously recorded, to complete surveys at multiple points during the
project, and to participate in home visits during which basic instruction on
how to use the Internet was provided. In exchange, each family received a new
home computer, Internet access and in-home technical support. -
Does Internet use affect children's psychological outcomes?
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the HomeNetToo project we focused on two types of psychological outcomes:
general affect and feelings of self-worth. More time online was associated with
less negative affect, but only during the first three months when home Internet
access was still a novelty. More logins were associated with more negative affect
throughout the trial, possibly because they indicate interruptions in Internet
activities. Feelings of self-worth began high and remained high. Using the Internet
had no effect on these feelings.
Journal of Virtual Worlds Research « University of Melbourne Library Intelligencer
Interesting new Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- proposes to start an international discussion forum on virtual worlds, their impact and effects on society and psychosocial development and a look at them and gaming.
Tags: psychosocial, virtual, secondlife, virtualworlds, research, forum, study, Australia on 2008-07-16 -All Annotations (0) -About
in list: Psychosocial
more fromlilyheart.wordpress.com
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we consider virtual worlds to be computer-based simulated environment where users interact with other users through graphic or textual representations of themselves utilizing textual chat, voice, video or other forms of communication.
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through this forum we are contributing to the development of specific space within the scholarly and creative communities for discourse on the wide variety of topic areas that are involved in virtual worlds research, including history of virtual worlds, cultural and social theory, quantitative research, qualitative research, virtual ethnographies, pedagogy, education and virtual worlds, development, experimentation, ideas and the intersection of virtual worlds and society.
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Co-Founding Editors:
Joseph Lopez & Jeremiah Spence
Journal of Virtual Worlds Research c/o ACTlab Department of Radio, Television & Film
1 University Station A0800
Austin, Texas 78712-0108Email: contact@jtlopez.com
Parents Say They’re Getting Control of Their Children’s Exposure to Sex and Violence in the Media – Even Online - Kaiser Family Foundation
Kaiser Family Foundation Report: Concerns of Parents about Children's relationship to media, internet
Tags: parents, study, brainresearch, brain, research, 2007, attention, learning, cognition on 2008-07-15 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.kff.org
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Nearly three out of four parents (73%) say they know “a lot” about what their kids are doing online (among all parents with children 9 or older who use the Internet at home).
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The report, Parents, Children & Media: A Kaiser Family Foundation Survey, is a national survey of 1,008 parents of children ages 2-17
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- Among parents with children age 9 or older who use the Internet at home, four in 10 (41%) say they use parental controls to block access to certain websites.
- Among those whose children use e-mail, four in 10 (39%) say they read their child’s email or look in their inbox.
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The survey was conducted from October 2–27, 2006.
Avatars As Communicators Of Emotions
Scientist looks at avatars as emotional communicators
Tags: avatar, psychosocial, communication, science, study, research on 2008-07-14 and saved by6 people -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.sciencedaily.com
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A PhD thesis presented at the University of the Basque Country puts forward the use of avatars or virtual Internet personages as an efficient form of non-verbal communication, principally focusing on emotional aspects.
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In her PhD thesis, Avatars for emotional interaction, the use of avatars (virtual personages) is proposed as one of the best ways for computer systems to emit non-verbal information.
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As doctor Ortiz pointed out in her thesis, an avatar is a virtual person that enables a system to be equipped with an appearance (face, eyes, body, voice, and so on) and with behaviour that emulates interaction between persons.
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The IGARTUBEITI system consists of a virtual journey through history by means of digital narrations. In this way, history is experienced – transmitted through emotions – by means of the reconstruction with three-dimensional graphics and explanations of historical circumstances by a virtual guide
Attention class - The Boston Globe
Maggie Jackson writes about Attention, Michael Posner, etc.
Tags: Posner, Attention, research, study, Brain, Distracted on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About
in list: Brain Research
more fromwww.boston.com
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Researchers are finding that attention is crucial to a host of other, sometimes surprising, life skills: the ability to sort through conflicting evidence, to connect more deeply with other people, and even to develop a conscience.
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many scientists are drawing a much clearer picture of attention, which they have come to see as an organ system like circulation or digestion, with its own anatomy, circuitry, and chemistry.
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"If you have good attentional control, you can do more than just pay attention to someone speaking at a lecture, you can control your cognitive processes, control your emotions, better articulate your actions," says Amir Raz, a cognitive neuroscientist at McGill University who is a leading attention researcher. "You can enjoy and gain an edge in life."
» Violent Video Games Leave Impact - Psych Central News
Study at University of Indiana found that violent games actually have affect on brain shape, development
Tags: brainresearch, brain, research, study, gaming, neurological on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About
in list: Brain Research
more frompsychcentral.com
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study has found that adolescents who play violent video games may exhibit emotional arousal and diminished control, focus and concentration.
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“Our study suggests that playing a certain type of violent video game may have different short-term effects on brain function than playing a nonviolent — but exciting — game,” said Vincent P. Mathews, M.D., professor of radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
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Compared with the group that played the nonviolent game, the group that played the violent video game demonstrated less activation in the prefrontal portions of the brain, which are involved in inhibition, concentration and self-control, and more activation in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal.
Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic - New York Times
Article looks at numerous different studies being done on how technology has affected people's ability to focus, multitask.
Tags: brainresearch, brain, research, London, Meyer, Study, Multitask, attention on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About
in list: Brain Research
more fromwww.nytimes.com
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Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” said David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information.”
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René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.
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Recently completed research at the Institute for the Future of the Mind at Oxford University suggests the popular perception is open to question. A group of 18- to 21-year-olds and a group of 35- to 39-year-olds were given 90 seconds to translate images into numbers, using a simple code.
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In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.
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Erik Brynjolfsson of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of the paper, along with Sinan Aral of the Stern School of Business at New York University, and Marshall Van Alstyne of Boston University.
E-Mail Affects Brain More Than Marijuana ( Today’s technology has replaced the smo...)
Hewlett Packard/ University of London Institute of Psychiatry Study founds that constant e-mail use and texting lowers avg. workers IQ by 10 points, 6 points more than pot.
Tags: brainresearch, IQ, brain, research, study, London, email, texting on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About
in list: Brain Research
more fromwww.bio-medicine.org
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Conducted by scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, the study found that continual e-mail use and text-messaging lowered the average worker's IQ by as much as ten points. Smoking marijuana regularly, on the other hand, causes only a four-point drop in intelligence
How the Google generation thinks differently - Times Online
London Knowledge Lab Research on internet's impact on pupil's critical and meta-cognitive skills
Tags: brainresearch, internet, brain, london, study on 2008-07-10 and saved by35 people -All Annotations (0) -About
in list: Brain Research, Psychosocial
more fromwomen.timesonline.co.uk
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Rose Luckin, Professor of Learner- Centred Design at the London Knowledge Lab
and a visiting professor at the University of Sussex, is working on a study
examining the internet's impact on pupils' critical and meta-cognitive
skills. “The worrying view coming through is that students are lacking in
reflective awareness,” she says. “Technology makes it easy for them to
collate information, but not to analyse and understand it. Much of the
evidence suggests that what is going on out there is quite superficial.” -
This year, researchers at University College London reported the results of a
five-year study into the “Google Generation”. When they examined the
behaviour of those logging on to the websites of journals, e-books and other
sources of written information, they found widespread evidence of “skimming
activity”. Users viewed no more than three pages before “bouncing out”. -
their boredom threshold is falling.
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