In a weird twist of fate, I lost the www.hegemonyrules.net domain. I’m now blogging here – hegemonyrules.com. While trading the “.net” for the “.com” may seem like an insignificant change, I feel like I’ve just officially given up any Marxist leanings I may have had.
In today’s NYT ArtsBeat blog, Patty LuPone writes a letter defending her choice to chastise audience members who were using cell phones and flash photography during her performances. She writes:
Do we allow our rights to be violated (photography, filming and audio taping of performances is illegal) or tolerate rudeness by members of the audience who feel they have the right to sit in a dark theater, texting or checking their e-mail while the light from their screens distract both performers and the audience alike? Or, should I stand up for my rights as a performer as well as the audiences I perform for?
Reader comments generally supported Ms. LuPone’s position. I especially liked this one:
Welcome to the club. College profs have been putting up with this BS for the better part of a decade.
Students often wonder why I have such stringent policies regarding technology use within the classroom. I usually mention how it is distracting to lead class discussion and lecture when there are individuals surreptitiously writing text messages or e-mail on their phone. In labs, I have students turn off their computer monitors – if I didn’t, most of them would spend the class period doing a combination of surfing the Web, IMing friends, and obsessively checking Facebook. It’s not that no learning is taking place when students are doing this kind of multi-tasking, it’s that they’re paying continous partial attention to multiple tasks (what Linda Stone refers to as “semi-synch”). This makes deep, reflective learning difficult.
Taking a cue from David Silver’s Digital Media Production class, I’m going to be separating out technology-focused days from theory-focused days in my Introduction to Communication and Technology class in the fall. Fortunately, I’ll be teaching in a lab that has a large table with computers ringing the outside of the room – I think this structure will facilitate class discussion more readily and allow for a natural division between times we’re talking about technology and when we’re actually doing hands-on work. Hopefully, this will also encourage students to become a bit more conscious about their use of technology in the classroom.
My presentation on the discursive construction of the “user” within information architecture has been posted on Slideshare (and below). Please contact me (amassanari AT luc DOT edu) if you’d like the outline/crib sheet for this talk.
Judy Wajcman – (Life in the Fast Lane – British Journal of Sociology) – straying from submitted abstract
Impact of mobile phones and new forms of social relations – two sides: perpetual contact (boo) or perpetual contact (yay!). The question is the permeability of work and play that these devices encourage – but Wajcman suggests that this is mostly a discursive trope. She’s mostly interested in the idea of mobile phones as tools of coordination between family members and their practices.
“Family practices as mutually configured by mobile devices.” The question is the transformative nature of these technologies.
Few researchers focus on the role of gender and mobile phones – unlike traditional landline-based studies (me: Claude Fischer’s America’s Calling.
Sample: 1000 households – time diary, survey, phone log. Calls on mobile are mainly for social/family reasons. Women’s calls on mobile phones are predominantly social – even if you take into account employment status. People said that the mobiles were often used for coordination. Men were twice as likely as women to take their phones on vacation.
Interestingly, Wajcman found that people were able to control the boundaries between work and play – contrary to popular discourse around the blurring of these boundaries.
(me: Yikes, 1 hour for four papers is totally crazy….)
MOGI players – Christian Licoppe
GPS-enabled phones – players view a map on phone that shows collectable objects and other players. The idea is for Web-based players to guide mobile phone players in the field.
Location in this community becomes a public resource. “Unusual locations” become mentionable and often form the basis of interactions. There are also MOGI-specific form of greetings – not simply formulaic or void of meaning.
Of course, this has implications for studies of surveillance and privacy.
Making Work Public – Laura Foriano (Columbia U.)
(Thriving Office – CD for home businesses with sounds of business being conducted)
Wifi hotspots as mobile workspaces.
Some theories:
Ritual view of communication – Carey
ANT – Latour
Innovation Space -Moultrie
Foriano surveyed people with NYCwireless and Ile Sans Fils (Montreal) – also some responses from Budapest.
In NYC, top spaces: Starbucks, Bryant Park, NYC Public Library, and independent cafes.
Budapest, top spaces: Other/independent locations, McDonald’s (McCafe), Burger King, etc.
Montreal: Other/independent locations are at the top.
Wifi is a reason for folks to visit these locations. People stay 1-4 hours and are typically there between 12-9pm. Many people want to get out of their home and office.
Interviewed with various people – one was an SEO.
Feeling of being in a public space (surveillance) makes them feel more productive.
Paper forthcoming in Mobile Work and Technology.
Cultivating memory – enhancing the human with mobile recording devices – Lina Dib (Rice U.)
CARPE (digital computer systems that can supplement the human memory)
“What counts as remembering?” – archiving, rather than deleting
(me: again, my battery is dying. great session, though.)
Once again, I’m breaking all of the blogging rules, and blogging my notes from 4s. I’m currently in a session moderated by danah boyd about youth and participatory culture.
Notes from Sarita Yardi’s/Amy Bruckman’s – trying to understand the problem with teens not being interested in science, technology and engineering fields. They’re researching how SNS might be used to encourage interest in these fields.
Questions
(1) current practices of teenagers’ online – interviews with 25 students in ATL area
(2) how these practices might be shaped to encourage teens to gain computational skills
Definitions of computing – expert based
What do you do on the computer?
- On all day, on Facebook, chatting with friends
- Internet not seen as influencing future careers
Fewer people wanted to be artists than computer programmers…
Computing (seen as hardware/software) is not the Internet (seen as fun).
Computing is antisocial – not people-centered.
Computing is hard.
Main takeaways:
(1) Teens should be taught computational literacy based on whatever they’re already doing (like classes using Facebook’s API).
(2) Teens represent the future of technology.
There’s a range of computational literacy…
Narratives of Self-Teaching – What do children learn by participating from online/media cultures? (Patricia G. Lange, USC film)
Method: Ethnographic study of video podcasts, interviews, and participation in the YouTube
“Self-taught” – often used by community members as a way of distancing themselves from traditional, social learning resources
Narrative – Portelli 1991 – the structure of these narratives and inherent contradictions are important.
“Massaging public identity”
“Self-taught” is used to “portray a technical identity and competence” and distance oneself from certain social forms of learning.
Questions – one audience member suggested the “self-taught” stuff is very much tied to DIY/punk aesthetic. But of course, there are adjustments made to these cultures by those with “elite” status within the community.
Sonja Baumer – YouTube
(me: “Broadcast yourself” – an interesting tagline)
(1) Understanding tools for creating/sharing
(2) UX and motivation, and modes of production
(3) How do these different modes of participation support the culture of YouTube
Gaming aspects of YouTube – social points/scoreboards for attracting viewers, comments, etc.
Four types of motivations for using YouTube:
(1) Self-expression
(2) Self-promotion
(3) “Random” entertainment
(4) Interest driven
Modes of participation:
(1) “Expressives”
(2) “Fame seekers”
(3) “Casual Users”
(4) “Enthusiasts”
More than a Web app – “a community of users”
“Composed conversations – teenage practices of flirting with new media,” Christo Sims – UC Berkeley
Mediated practices used:
(1) attempt to figure out whether romantic attraction is shared
(2) mitigate the possibility that they lose face in a more “private” sphere
Ellison, Heino, and Gibbs (2006) – use Goffman to understand the impression management practices of adults on personal sites
Social information processing theory – Walther (1992) – supported by Sims’ work
Flirting is conducted through asynchronous/synchronous writing – comments on public sites or over IM – participants felt they had “more control” over their presentation of self. This would precede F2F meetings. Rejection is relatively non-confrontational and allows individuals to save face more easily.
Individual messages should be interpretable in multiple ways – and short. This means that individuals scrutinize small cues. This also means that those producing comments spend a lot of time projecting a “casual” attitude.
There’s also tensions between the perceived privacy allowed by online flirting, but there’s also a significant amount of surveillance that can occur, as individuals share these flirtations with their friends, even composing messages with others.
Mediating the Generation Gap – Heather A. Horst
Collaboration – commitment to values of equality, democracy, solidarity, cooperation, shift from hierarchical to lateral relations.
Are kids able to leverage their experience with technology to equalize the power relations within the family?
…more later – my battery just died…
I’m officially a PhD, as I passed my defense on June 1 and filed my dissertation (with minimal edits) on June 8. It’s strange to be done. Mostly nice. But definitely strange.
ANYWAY, I’ve been spending much of my time catching up on the pop culture I’ve been missing the last few months (and visiting sites like this) and relaxing. I’m going to be restarting my freelance UI/UX/usability consulting business again, and I’m also planning on redesigning and refocusing this blog to focus on sustainable interface design. Of course, I’m still going to have to post the odd photographic find and/or pithy commentary every now and then.
More to come…
First draft = 68,378 words = 1,503 paragraphs = text + 4 tables + 10 figures + 10 appendices + bibliography + abstract = 225 pages
typeface (headers): GoudySans 12, 16, 14, and 18 pt
typeface (body): Garamond 12 pt
1.5 line spacing
The conclusion is totally messy and incomplete right now. But, yes, a first draft of the dissertation is complete and has been sent to my advisor.
