Emerging technologies

The 2009 Horizon Report is out.  It’s a qualitative study which tries to predict which emerging technologies will take root in educational and research environments.  The predictions are that within the next year cloud computing and mobiles (mobiles have been in the last three reports as well) will be standard fare in school and research settings.  And within the next 2-3 years Geo-Everything and The Personal Web will become commonplace. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for those two, but I’d like to hope the report is correct on the cloud computing front.

This is always an interesting report to read – although, I am a sucker for trends and hype – but their qualitative research seems to pay off.  Their predictions on data-mashups in 2008 are ahead of schedule – for one example see the mashup map of California’s Prop 8 supporters that appeared online after the US election last year.  In 2007 they highlighted social networking as an emergent technology – I think many people would agree that twitter (as just the first thing that comes to mind) plays a significant role in sharing information between groups of academics…at least ones who work with digital media… hmmm… so perhaps it hasn’t seeped very deeply into the academic community then.

This week in sustainability news

Big: Literally big – giant islands of rubbish floating on the surface of the oceans.  The NYTimes reports.

Interesting: 100 bloggers simultaneously post reviews of books printed in an eco-friendly fashion.  Check out the links to the reviews on Eco-Libris.

Eye-opening: Rachel Pike provides a glimpse into the huge amount of scientific research that underlies the newspaper headlines on climate change.

PhD comics

Ha.

See more here.

Notes from IPF09 II

Live from IPF09 Conference – live stream here – you can also follow on twitter with the #ipf09 tag

A warning up front if you’re reading this:  these notes are just for my mental retention – they are filled with indecipherable abbreviations and misspellings that I don’t want to take time to fix…

Sat afternoon @ 5^th Ave

 

Biella Coleman

Fsck Purity – lessons about the politics and pleasures of free software

Despite moral narrowness of FS, it has behaved in radical ways

Will use research in FS to look at the contemp pol moment in the public sphere

How has FS functioned politically??

-worked to smakdown int property law

-punctured mystical foundation of the law

-(derrida “mystical authority of law”  – performative nature of law – keep up standing b/c performed, not b/c theyr’e just

- R Selwick punctured law through FS liscence – bypassed courts, lawyers

-so how to FS fit with other bypasses of the law?  Strikes, etc

-transposable model of FS – ran against grain of econ…

but why did this model serve as an icon?

-were’ent trying to be pol, but ended up intervening in the contemp sphere

current pol moment is founded on extreme polarisation and ghettoisation

-somehow FS escaped this political labelling b/c it was pol agnostic and narrow moral agenda

-pol of FS is not ‘against’ anything, but do realise that it can make a diff in world

so….. “promiscuous circulation and orgy of inspiration” – all kinds of groups turned to FS and repackaged it and retranslated it (the poss of this is what sepereated it from other mvmtns)

FS and comp hacking became “iconic of unalienated bliss pleasure joy”

Unpacking hacker pleasure:::::

-some are part of ‘craft traditions’

-eudamonia –aristotle – virtua dn happiness emerging from the self directed realisation f skills goals and talents

but “coding is a bitch x 100” – this turns up when you actually look at their practice – see dialectical relation of bliss emerging out of overcoming the bitch part

there is a shared ethose:  fs is balance b/tw ind and collective – centrifugal: individuation: fragmentation: multitude.  “cEntripetal forces produce shared stamp ofattention and minimise frag”.  Don’t separate reason from passion, politics and realism, etc – actually very unusual in general.  Is collution of pleasure, play and politics.

Disunity witin unity

Individualism with collectivism

Talking about pol activism today:

We are fscked (fucked)

In dig media there is an explosion of projects,  actions and pol groups.  There is a pol ferver, but the typog is one of silos (diff from FS?)– separate – so there is a concomitant moral economy and this is one of competition for materials and attn –  some of these groups were trying to federate, but it fell apart because couldn’t agree on everyting/ FS were happy to disaggree on some things and unite around what they had in common

Final pol question:  How can we link peoples passions for what they do to issues that may exceed their partic plain.  How to inspire them to go beyond their predic to exploit their skills while not exploiting them – -how do we federate labour in order to build a more united front???

 

 

 

Fred Turner – Dreaming the end of Bureauracy

Disses the peer production consessus

Stop thinking about networks and institutions as sep things – need to look at their intersections

Says buroc is good – even though its under attack from all sides

The peer prod consesus is pernicious – the fallacious assumptions:

-occurs outside market relations

-works equally well across soc domains

-prod egalitarian relations among collaborators

-is psychologically gratifying, therefore good

-is driven by new digital networking techs

the ‘50s critique of buroc:

-institutional centralization –mil/indust, centralization, specialization

-sociologists said that it led to soci an dpsych fragmentation

-demands that society get broken down into silos; can’t make the complete society that we all want

peer production consensus tells histrical story in which…

-prodcution moves from instit to networkds/ from centralisaiton to dectral

-the worker can be his whole self because work is play

-society as a whole becomes person-centred

but person centred societies are a problem

and this history traps us in a certain debate – collective replacing factories, can see the end of buocs.  Based on analytical presumptions that networks challenge burocs and networks are open inclusive and egalitarian (neither are necessarilty true).  Also when you loose all rules, culture becomes the defining def of group, and they usually rely on cult stereotypes (communesa as sexist)

his points:

-           burocs exist and they do good – when he goes to a hosp he wants rules and hierarchies (conclusion, there is a place in the world for burocs)

-           networks have always been intertwined with networkds.  Soc networks present problems that burocs were bilt to overcome (feudalism)

so need to ask some Qs about networks :

-who benefits, on what basis

need to analyse networks and buroc simultaneously – how can we use the benefits of each toghether – in order to persist, to concentrate material and legal resources, to distribute resources ethically, to improve the perfomance of burocs, and need to look at how networks become institutions

need to remember that burocs and networks go together – civil rights mvmts ie, networks but need the legal ground with which to claim social resources..

should be looking to research where burocs and networks meet and where the civil good is at stake ( the peer to patent project, the Guardian’s crowdsourceing of corruption, Drupal journalism projects)

“ the challenge of our decade is to use the power of peer production to amplify that of the institutions on which our civil society depends”

**we are the privileged citizens in our society and we have an obligation  (and have the tools) to look at the sites where networks meet institution and burocs which involve our civil society/civil rights/social justice****

–there is a notion that we are anonymous online and in networks, but its just not true     (WELL is an example) officially anonymous but not really – in WELL an english woman never got a response b/c WELL members could tell she wasn’t sanfran bay by her lingo and lack of inside jokes.  This is what happens when you push regulation away from rules because it ends up being based on clture, and if you don’t have the culture capital then you don’t get to play.

Notes from IPF09

Live from IPF09 Conference – live stream here – you can also follow on twitter with the #ipf09 tag

A warning up front if you’re reading this:  these notes are just for my mental retention – they are filled with indecipherable abbreviations and misspellings that I don’t want to take time to fix…

Sat morn session @5^th ave: Internet governance – where digital labour determines digital freedom

Laura DeNardis:

Internet governance framework – tasks historically managed by govt now covered by private institutions.

Only focusing on one aspect of internet governance – technical standard setting – not just tech design, as muc about politics

Often the biggest issues facing internet governance are civil liberties

What are some of the standards from edl:  mps, http, bluetoothe, etc,

“standards are politics by other means”  janet nabotay

-points of control over global info archetectures, set by private institutions, not by lgislatures

-how can they set politics/ policies::::

-civil liberties, privaacy

-govt services —- ncryption policies, problems with services – - Nasas loss of Mars Orbiter ie – - using the metric system & us sytem

-shows how standsard  can cause loss of faith with govt services – after hurricane katrina, couldn’t register for FEMA aide unless on Microsoft explorer

-political processes – - how we engage with our democracy –ooxml format, ie – -will elec govt archives be available?  Are they in proprietary formats that are controlled by private co??

-implications for developing countries – - can face process barriers as well as financial barriers, issues with intellectual prop – unlevels the playng field

-innovation and competition policy – - openness of a standard can help or hurt competition and free trade – lobbying arms of main vendors – standards can also create obstacles to trade –

So, standards have imp political and econ implications – - leads to question who decides and how they decide:::::

-ind actors, private institutions, vendors – polit process of estab protocals with public policy implications – decisions impacts users rights, etc

-ISO, ITU, IEEE, W3C, IETF, ECMA – none of these orgs share procedural norms – varous levels of transparency, membership, due process, treatment of intellectual prop rights, diff levels of open document access

SO, what gives these institutions the legit to make these design decisions???  Since they have pub pol implications

-legitimation derives from other values – openness, consistency, etc

Advocates for greater openness for standards settings:

-standard is open in its development – all can participate, open in its implementation – have it available to innovate and use it; minimal int prop restrictions

Jonathan Zittrain:

Minds For Sale – mentions the TweenBot experiment

Put his book (the future of the intenet and how to stop it)cover up for an internet contest – $150 was the prize –  loved the idea “wikipedia kumbaya” but got nervous about distributed labour – why???

Pyramid graph – top of pyr, really brilliant =lots of $// bottome of pyr, lots of people, price decreases

-           examples moving down the pyramid

-           point seems to be to treat people’s minds like more automated machines, but they still manage to make their ind stamp (mech turk pics, ex)

-           google bought e.s.p. game (no pay) to do their image search labeling

-           search engines form the very baseof the pyramid – -use people’s labour to create their earch engine listings – but the peole didn’t intend to work, they were just ogin about their normal day

So, what is there to be worried aobut::

1. from participants pt of view – surveillance, what your labour will be used for (ethical use of your labour/tech),

1. systemic concerns – astroturfing, mech turk, co’s get in on these systems to buy ratings, info, etc – skews public perceptions – ie could use these methods to generate outrage through phonecalls, etc for your congressman and you would get extra cash if you can keep them on the phone over 5 min – suddenly pol discourse is inauthentic

Is this all a good thing or a bad thing – case by case, but need to be conscious of  how these types of labour can be used/utilised (id iranian dissidents vs those scanned words for old digital books)

Solutions, —ran out of time— but how to apply guidelines when you don’t even have to pay people to do this work???? Perhaps discloser, opt outs, etc

Quick notes from recent articles

Redclift, M 2009  The Environment and Carbon Dependence: Landscapes of Sustainability and Materiality. Current Sociology 57(3):369-387

Thoroughly summarises the evolution of the idea of ‘sustainability’ and the intersections with business, politics, and environmental movements.  Also discusses various approaches to thinking about sustainability, including social constructivist perspectives, writing “The argument is that the social construction of nature thesis emphasizes the discursive aspect of human–nature relations, in the process destabilizing the classic enlightenment dualisms of nature/society and culture/environment”

Article also covers issues surrounding the democratisation of ‘environmental knowledges’ – for instance the way it is used by lay people and experts alike.

Brockington, Dan 2008  Powerful Environmentalisms: conservation, celebrity and capitalism. Media, Culture & Society 30(4):551-568

Discusses the media’s relationship with environmentalists and the tensions between environmental movements and dominant economic and political paradigms.  Separates different forms of environmentalism – those rooted in an experience of place and those that are ungrounded but are rooted in representations of place.  The article asks why/how do people come to love these representations of nature enough to support the cause of saving or protecting them?  Celebrity endorsements of environmentalist causes are used as one way to address this question. Brockington argues that “…celebrities enable people to cope with the alienations from nature which they experience in their every- day lives,” and additionally can create an emotional and familiar link between the person and the non-local, distant environmental cause they are supporting.

 

Talking about life online

Charles Ess, digital media scholar/refiner of internet research ethics/philosopher of online life , gave his inaugural lecture in September at the Institute of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University.  He is also president of the Association of Internet Researchers and just published a book this year, Digital Media Ethics.

Watch below:

ASAANZ conference abstract

The Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand is accepting abstracts for their 2009 conference, Re-thinking Community in Contemporary Anthropology.  The stand-out thing about this year’s conference is that people are encouraged to participate by creating you-tube presentations.  For me it means I can present a paper without having to fork out the cash to fly back to NZ – always, always appreciative of this feature at conferences.

Anyway, here’s my abstract for the Anth of Higher Ed panel:

View this document on Scribd

Tactical art for social shaking

Last night at the Tactical Art For Social Shaking talk Leonidas Martin, artivist and professor of new media and political art, was introduced with a brief speech about how activism and politics boils down to the art of persuasion.  What Leonidas Martin does is use mass culture, humour and spectacle to meet people half way; to bring the political to them in order to persuade them that there is an alterate way to imagine the world.

He has been involved in projects like Yomango and Prêt a Revolter, among others (see this page for a complete list of his projects).

Brief notes from the presentation:

• emphasis on collaboration -  seem to emphasise not just creating a spectacle, but using it to facilitate a reaction and open discussion
• creating new images of protests and social activism – want to produce new media image and visual discourse surrounding protest movements
• managing the media – needed to be active media producers – knew what the dominant images of anti-globalisation protests were (people clothes in black breaking things) and sought to counter them by providing their own images of what these movements could look like

This week in sustainability news

Stripping supermodels and climate change:  Joe at Cognitive Policy Works highlights how important it is for social activists to understand how the human mind operates by deconstructing this 350.org video to examine the metaphors it uses to get its point across.

Salon interviews Al Gore:  Gore remains hopeful on climate change and discusses America’s environmental politics and policies.

Leah Lamb of CurrentTV has been in Hawaii attending the [re]think: Hawaii Conference – a high tech conference with an eye towards sustainability, as she puts it.  She has posted a series of videos from the Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii Authority that talk through the sustainability issues on Hawaii’s Big Island and the relationship with geothermal energy.

An unfocused NY Times article on the proliferation of the qat plant in Yemen and the resulting water shortage around the country prompts Barbara Miller at anthropologyworks to call out the article for its breadth of topics, but lack of historic depth and lack of awareness about the impression this scattershot approach would leave with the reader.