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« December 2003 | Main | February 2004 » January 31, 2004why Orkut makes people insecureI was talking to a friend about my Orkut rant. Orkut really bothered him and he was trying to tease out why. He knew that it bothered him more than Friendster and it wasn't simply because it was Google. In fact, he really likes Google. As far as he could tease out, it bothered him mostly because the YASNS phenomenon has been around for a year at this point. Many of the weaknesses have been publicly discussed, particularly around Friendster. "Google had the opportunity to learn from Friendster and the other YASNSes, solving their known issues, but instead they released a tool that was broken in exactly the same way as its ancestors. This doesn't advance the art, it doesn't provide new value to users, and, because of Google's popularity and credibility, it foists the YASNS problems (like the Economy of Bullshit and the social awkwardnesses) on an even larger user-base. Friendster had the excuse that they were breaking new ground and discovering new problems. What's Google's excuse?" Of course, he's not the only one uncertain about Orkut. Chris articulates his insecurity based on his feelings of being disrespected.. Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 6:20 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) banned from Orkut?I keep hearing about folks who have been kicked off or "jailed" from Orkut. I'd love to hear more about this. Who all is getting banned? Why? Are you given explanations? What happens when you try to fight? Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 5:02 PM | Comments (33) | TrackBack (11) January 30, 2004what is beta in the context of social software?What does the term 'beta' mean in social software? It's become an ongoing joke since Friendster is *still* in beta. From my, admittedly limited, experience in software dev, alpha releases were almost always internal, hugely buggy releases. Betas were distributed to a small, reliable group of people meant to give constructive feedback. Of course things are buggy in alpha/beta, but rarely is any software project ever truly complete. Bugs are always found and new versions are released. The weird thing about social software is that systems are distributed publicly as beta. Thousands (if not millions) of users appear on beta systems. Most of them are not trying to give feedback, but they do push the social and technological limits of the technology. Lessons are to be learned. Of course, lessons are to be learned in software ALWAYS, regardless of the labels. I find it quite disconcerting that people want to label their distributions "beta" for over a year because it hasn't been perfected, because new versions are coming out. This, to me, seems like an abuse of the term beta. New versions always come out. Is beta simply an excuse? What does beta mean in the context of social software? Should we forgive technological imperfections? What about social consequences? What about apparent design decisions that seem to persist? [This message is in part in response to this rant on why we should be lenient on Orkut because of its alpha status.] I am really uncomfortable with public distributions of software being labeled as beta (or alpha), particularly when the population joining it is not aware of it being truly an alpha/beta. For example, would it be OK to completely scrap the data inputted because it is an alpha/beta? Are structures really going to change that much when it is in the hands of the public? Category:
Posted by zephoria at 10:49 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack (9) Genevieve on mobile cultureGenevieve Bell is one of my favorite researchers. Today, she spoke at Stanford and you can listen to her talk. In June of 2002, Malaysian newsstands carried the latest issue of "Mobile Stuff" -- a magazine geared toward Malaysia'' growing population of mobile phone subscribers. On the cover, two young Malay men in clothing that suggests more LA hood and less KL suburbs, hold out their mobile phones to the camera beneath the banner headline "Real Men Use SMS." Six months later, billboards in Shanghai carried the image of a woman's shapely calves and ankles, bound with black patent leather ankle straps; positioned beneath one strap is her mobile phone. Beyond their utility as a technology of information exchange, mobile phones it appears have inserted themselves into the cultural fabric of societies across the world. Using comparative cases from Asia, this talk explores how mobile phones, and their various accoutrements, have become key symbolic markers of identities. I argue that mobile phones, rather than facilitating an idealized universal communication, actually contribute to the re-inscription of local particularity and cultural difference as dimensions of a larger political economy of value. Making sense of the different ways that cell phones are articulating with daily life provides an important perspective on the ways in which cultural patterns affect technology use. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 9:22 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) orkut pissyness, round 2Wanna see a big phat privacy hole on Orkut? Go to messages. Click compose. Click "friends and friends of friends." Click next. Copy & paste all of your friends and their friends' email addresses. Oh, but don't worry, you can't delete either your account, your photos or any of your friends! (update: i am wrong about friends.. see comments) So, do you really trust the friends of those friends who keep adding everyone and their mother to the network? Don't worry, when everyone gets the hang of it, you'll get to deal with your Orkut inbox because everyone in any community you're in, or any friends of friends can send you messages there. As if you didn't get enough virus mail this week. Note for those who explicitly emailed me to ask why i'm particularly cranky about Orkut, why not other sites... 1) I am notoriously critical of all of the YASNS sites; 2) i made the reference to Jar Jar for a reason.... when you hope something is going to be really good because you have respect for the company behind it and the creation comes out to be insulting to the core, you can't help but walking out of the theatre feeling sick to your stomache. Sure, i realize that it's alpha. But there are enough shitty YASNS out there for Google to join in and insult us through privacy violations, a dreadful ToS, non-functional software and poorly thought out social consequences. Update: Chris posted a response from Orkut in the comments. They say that it is not a privacy hole because only the names of your friends that make their email addresses available are shown. On one hand, it is really good to hear that this is a known and intentional approach. On the other, this is not the perception that i would imagine people would have when they see that long list. This is a good example of actual privacy vs. perceived privacy. While one might think that users should just get it, this is an example where the owner should really be better about explaining what's going on and giving people an option to opt-out. Speaking of which, can i opt out of the friends-of-friends sending messages to me? Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 5:25 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack (11) venting my contempt for orkutAs i write this, it's down again. But that doesn't mean that i haven't been thinking about it. And dear god, everyone and their mother has written about it. At the bottom of this rant, i've included some of the ones that have been making me think (and i've been reading a *lot*). OK... so my take on Orkut. 1) What the hell is up with the elitist approach to invitation? That's just outright insulting and an attempt to pre-configure the masses through what the technorati are doing. Social networks are not just a product of technologists. Everyone has a social network and what they do with it is quite diverse. To demand that they behave by the norms of technologists is horrifying. 2) Are trustworthy, cool, and sexy the only ways that i might classify my friends? (Even Orkut lists a lot more in his definition of self.) And since when can i rate the people that i know based on this kind of metric? And goddamnit CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT. Cool as a techy? Cool as a party kid? Trustworthy along what fucking axes? 3) Explain to me why one must be a friend to be a fan of someone? The role of fan is inherently a power differential, not an equalizer. (Don't get me wrong: on Orkut, there's definitely pressure to reciprocate.) The people that i'm a fan of are not my friends; they're idols; they're people that i read on the interweb but do not know. It is sooo weird to read which of my friends are a fan of me. Does that mean that the rest are only following social custom in linking to me? Does that mean that they don't really respect me? [Or does it mean, like it means to me, that it's too bloody weird to consider checking off that fan bit?] And worse... i can see who is a fan of others. This means that i can check on my friends and figure out that they're using the fan feature... just not on me. Hello, socially awkward. 4) What's up with the popular crowd hierarchy both in visual and Friends/Communities listing? Have we not learned that this motivates bad behavior? 5) Hell, haven't we learned ANYTHING? We still have articulation. But worse, now that everyone is paying attention to this, the network isn't growing naturally. You jump on. Fast. And connect to everyone you recognize. WTF? And what the hell are you supposed to DO once you get on the damn thing? 6) And boy is it irritating that everything is broken. I know it's an alpha, but it's too popular to withstand the interest. Can't change picture on certain parts. Can't delete account. Can't get rid of picture. And what's up with the regular crashes? 7) And then there are the Terms that show contempt for academics. There's a blanket ban on robots, collecting information, reverse engineering, and other "unauthorized" use (hello, fair use). You can't even link from the damn thing (i.e. i can't identify myself outside of the constraints of Orkut... like on my own site or identifying a research project in which i'd like people to participate. Thus, i can't use a social networking tool to fucking social network). Of course, there's not much appreciation for anyone else either. THEY OWN EVERYTHING YOU POST!!! You CAN'T OPT OUT! Complete registration only. And don't worry... they can modify the ToS without any notice.
Boris - traffic stat comparisons of Orkut vs. other sites Anne on why she deleted her account. [Also, i want to read the link to the failure of social networks, but they've reached their bandwidth limit. Stupid fucking ISP.] Jill on the patchwork view of one's network Jay on a fantastic metaphor, paralleling Orkut with a hotel lobby or cruise ship Foe Romeo on a social network ideal Anti-Mega on why Orkut lacks innovation David on the politics of the ToS wrt ownership of identity Marc Canter on being banned from Orkut Wired on Social Nets Not Making Friends Liz - an Orkut analysis Ross on why Orkut doesn't work for him Weinberger on the problems with the expectation to increase nodes Clay on the Orkut craze Dina on her blog as her social network (and why Orkut) Update: additional references Jeremy on why Google needs Orkut Lee - another good rant on Orkut Mary on building a social network site in 24 hours... on privacy... and on collecting baseball cards Halley on Orkut invitation frustration Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 12:49 AM | Comments (62) | TrackBack (77) January 29, 2004identity reflection by identity constructionLoic has a great entry on understanding your identity by engaging in behavior that helps you construct it, offering a socially connected mirror to help you understand. This is absolutely fantastic reflexivity through circular logic... and i love it! Category: social observations
Posted by zephoria at 11:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (4) invites to Orkut on eBayOnly on eBay.... An Orkut invite went for $11. [There are other ones for sale still.] Also, for $10, you can purchase "How to make money using ORKUT.com." Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 11:17 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (4) elements of bloggingChandrasutra is a writer interested in the issue of differentiating blogs. She has a great piece talking about the elements of blogging, collecting different discussions on the topic. Category: blogging
Posted by zephoria at 11:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) on compliments (musings)I am notoriously bad at receiving (and giving) explicit verbal compliments. After two days of awkward compliment situations, i started thinking about the structure of compliments in the worlds in which i run. This first obvious parallel is to Mauss's "The Gift." When a gift is given, it is socially impolite, if not offensive, to fail to receive it. Furthermore, to continue the relationship, the receiver is expected to reciprocate. The gifting pattern is affected by a variety of other things, including temporal rhythms and expected magnitude of gift. Compliments are much the same way. My failure to receive compliments creates an awkward social situation because it sounds rude. Thus, my blushing and being squeamish to indicate my inability to properly receive said compliment lets me get away with a lot. From here, it's important to consider two different structures of compliments. First, if the complimenter has power over the recipient, the compliment is meant to empower the receiver and not necessarily be reciprocated. It's a status compliment that makes the complimenter feel really good giving and often makes the receiver glow. My undergrad advisor had an amazing ability to do this. He'd say something simple like "good job" and i'd float for days. Then there are the compliments amongst equals. Quite often, reciprocation is necessary, but it's not appropriate to mimic the recently given compliment. [Think "i love you" "ditto." Eventually, the "i love you" gets annoyed at the "ditto" and doesn't take hir seriously.] Immediate reciprocation is not appropriate in this kind of relationship, but what is the appropriate temporal element? This is particularly tricky because often compliments are put forward to be reassured. For example, the "i love you" really wants to hear the same in return. Of course, s/he wants to be reassured now while simultaneously suggesting that the other person should initiate that same set of compliments later. Hmm... perhaps another angle because this makes me think about what we compliment people on. When we, as an expert, compliment a novice on their movement towards our expertise, this is a really uplifting compliment (i.e. my old advisor). Yet, in the "i love you" example, we're complimenting based on purported shared emotions. Perhaps that's a bad example. Consider its cousin "you're beautiful." How often do people say "you're beautiful" to hear the same in return? I think back to the middle school world where the less fashionable girls say to the cool ones "wow, you're beautiful." Of course, the cool girls might say "Thanks" or "I know." But what would it do to the situation if the cool girl returned the compliment? How often do we compliment others based on what we need to hear ourselves? Did this magnify the awkwardness of the reciprocation process? There's a certain level of falseness if the cool girl reciprocates and tells the less fashionable one that she's beautiful. Given the structure of how the compliment occurred, it seems false, not genuine to reciprocate. Furthermore, i think it's weird that we compliment primarily on our weaknesses in equal relationships given that there is a certain obvious awkwardness. Say the cool girl is far less confident about her intelligence than her looks. Assuming not a complete separation of status, if the less fashionable girl complimented the cool one on her question in class, this is far more likely to make everyone feel better. And reciprocation is not really necessary if that's the giver's strong suit. Of course, does complimenting via our strengths end up creating a different level of insult amidst equals? Category: social observations
Posted by zephoria at 11:25 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (1) January 28, 2004juarez: a call to actionIf you know me, you know how much V-Day means to me. Tonight, i spent a tearful night with Eve Ensler and gang at the San Francisco Premier of the movie. Absolutely moving. It opened at Sundance a bit ago and due to popular demand, a second showing happened. And then the press wanted a third showing. The movie with premier on Lifetime on February 17 (commercial free!). Well, there are lots of V-Day events coming up (it IS V-Season after all). First, i'd like to strongly request that if you haven't seen the play and you love me, you'll find out where it is in your community and see it. Support your local community working to end violence! Second, there are two major events that i'm doing my darndest to go to. First, there is an all-trans V-Day production in LA on February 21. But, more pressingly, there is a march on Juarez scheduled for February 14. For those of you who don't know, hundreds of women have been abducted, raped and brutally murdered in Juarez. And the government is not responding. The march is to make the government take action against this ongoing violence against women, to create awareness of this situation. Juarez is just across the border from El Paso (think cheap Southwest flights). If you aren't able to get involved in any of these events, but want to support an amazing organization, help keep the movement (and safe houses) alive by donating what you can. Join me. Join V-Day. Help end violence against women and girls worldwide! [Update: One of my readers suggested the book Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future. I don't know the book, but i'm curious to learn more.] Category: gender & sexuality
Posted by zephoria at 10:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) January 27, 2004reclaim the streetsCheesebikini just posted the link to Reclaim the Streets, a giant street party intended to make people think on February 14, 2003. Category: politics
Posted by zephoria at 10:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) Wanted: personal social network coordinatorJason Kottke posted a fake ad on Craigslist that perfectly encapsulates the sentiment i have towards the YASNS phenonmenon these days. Wanted: personal social network coordinator
Your primary responsibility will be managing my accounts with various online social networking sites including, but not limited to, Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe, Orkut, Ryze, Spoke, ZeroDegrees, Ecademy, RealContacts, Ringo, MySpace, Yafro, EveryonesConnected, Friendzy, FriendSurfer, Tickle, Evite, Plaxo, Squiby, and WhizSpark. Specific duties include: - approving or rejecting invitations of friendship - managing a database of usernames and passwords for each of the social networking sites - sending out friendship invitations - keeping my social network synchronized; that is, invite friends from one social networking site to be friends in all of the other social networking sites - handling requests by friends to be introduced to another friend that they might not know - keeping track of my current likes & dislikes and updating my personal information within each service accordingly - writing testimonials for friends - various "damage control" functions when rebuffed "non-friends" become upset due to non-acceptance of their offers of friendship - continually browsing my friends' 1st and 2nd degrees for potential new friends and business contacts - participating on any of the sites' message boards on my behalf Future duties may include discouraging companies and individuals from starting new social networking sites so that additional staff won't be necessary in the future. Past employment as a bouncer, "heavy", or hired goon may be helpful in this regard. Benefits include addition as my friend in all of the social networking sites I belong to.
Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 10:53 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) neurotic pressure: from inside or out?I hate having a backlog of things that i intend to post to my blog. And of course, me being me, i start thinking meta about that backlog. So, who am i posting things for? It used to be solely for me, but that's just too haphazard right now... i feel like things need comments, not simply links. Of course, is that me thinking about how you might perceive me? Am i self-inducing my own neurotic state because of my wacked readings of the unknown audience? Or am i writing because i should share the backlog because it may be of interest to you? But most of you already know half of what my backlog is... You all know about Orkut. And while i have interesting things to say on the matter, i'm still waiting for it to pop back up since i went offline only hours after it came up. You all know about Clay Shirky's brilliant writings. You all know about Many-To-Many (and if you don't, you don't care about that segment of my posts anyhow). So then am i feeling self-induced pressure to post links that you already know about simply to prove my own status within the blogging community, to show appreciation of others' brilliant writings? Am i trying to be validated by validating? Even worse, by being untimely, am i only showing my lack of fashionability, my inability to keep up with the times (otherwise known as my decision to go offline for 4 days)? God, it's a neurotic day in the life of danah. Or, since i'm back in classes, let's just call it a reflexive one. Category: reflections & rants
Posted by zephoria at 6:04 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) how was she?Ever wanted to know how good a girl was in bed before you nailed her? Don't worry - that service is available. Check out how was she. ::groan:: Category: gender & sexuality
Posted by zephoria at 10:43 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) January 26, 2004today i understand teens (fucking spam)When Melora Zaner told me that teens didn't use email, she was talking about the generational gap of preferred communication methods. Although i'm anxiously awaiting her actual report on this, it doesn't surprise me in the least. Around 1998, colleges stopped giving out email accounts and pretty much everyone reverted to free accounts (Hotmail, Yahoo and the like). Hotmail purports to have about 1/4 of all email addresses worldwide. This week, i got the first spam burst that has truly crippled me. Normally, i'll get a burst of like 10000 messages; it'll piss off my ISP, make a mess out of my phone and whathaveyou. But this current round is unbearable. Some spam system is hitting random things like joe [at] danah [dot] org and ben and a lot of other random first names. I used hundreds of names at my domain name for specialized addresses. I have no clue which ones i use. But i do know that i can't handle this, my phone can't handle this, and i'm utterly uninterested in coping with it. Personally, i'm horrified by technological communications. My voice mail crashed this week. My email is a wreck. Fucking spammers have inundated my blogs. I just want face-to-face interactions without having to deal with organizing them. This is when i really wonder what life was like before the phone (or even the telegraph). I definitely have romanticized notions of moments of showing up a the town pub when i want to be social. ::grumble::grumble:: Category: youth culture
Posted by zephoria at 6:51 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (2) January 24, 2004economics of crack (or how i learned to despise broadband)I was at a party last night, telling a friend that i was going up to Tahoe to work for the weekend. As our conversation progressed, i asked him why he doesn't use AIM. He told me that it is equivalent to putting crack in front of an addict so he refuses to install it. This is how i feel about broadband and cable in general. In theory, i could turn off broadband. But i never do. And even when i'm in a remote location, avoiding the Internet, the first thing that i do is see if i can get connection. There's something nice when it says "no" in return. I feel this odd sense of relief, mixed in with the normal anxiety about being offline. I miss having to log in to the Internet. There was something ceremonious about it, something that made it feel like a connection instead of an addiction. By default, i was offline. I could CHOOSE to go online. Now, it's an addiction and i have to avoid it. Frankly, i miss the time when there was a cost to logging in. I felt the clock ticking, felt the cents running away as i paid per minute. This motivated me to engage with the Internet with a purpose, not to lag. Get the answers to my questions and move on. Now, there's no hurry; i pay per month. I would pay someone to charge me per minute for my broadband, someone to force me to self-regulate, to gain control. Of course, it's always the institutions that shouldn't encourage me to avoid that do this most successfully. Take BART. I often fail to take BART because i haven't pre-paid for it.. i might as well drive. But if i had a monthly pass, i would never drive. Why is it that public transit knows how to motivate me to not participate while the Internet just calls me in. Ah, economics and the twisted way in which our society encourages us to be commercial. Category: social observations
Posted by zephoria at 1:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1) January 23, 2004on orkutOK... the social networking phenomenon has screamed again. This time, orkut. [Read the CJNET article.] Personally, i'd like to see where they're going with this. As it stands, it doesn't look much different than any of the other YASNS pieces and there are still kinks that are irritating. But one thing's for sure... if Google can't figure out how to optimize a network computationally, no one can. I'm just still so uncertain about sites that do explicit articulated networks. And i'm certainly not motivated to contact friends and beg them to join. Of course, if you're on there and want to find me, i'm using the name i use for all sites that refuse lower case names. Update: Please note that i'm purposely not commenting on Orkut for a few days. Of course, i'd love to hear your thoughts, but i'm holding my tongue for a bit. Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 2:10 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) social networking software + me = EtechFor those who will be at Emerging Tech this year, i'll be giving a presentation on the tension between users and creators in the social networking software space, focusing on how users repurpose technologies to meet their needs. In addition, Joi Ito, Mimi Ito, Howard Rheingold, Scott Fisher and i will be on a panel about social mobility. Also, Liz and i are going to gather folks who want to talk about categorizing blogs. And finally, i'm psyched to attend the Digital Democracy Teach-In. I hope to see some of you there! Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 10:34 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) January 22, 2004avoid diebold: register absenteeAvoid the questionable Diebold machines. Register as an absentee voter so that you can have a receipt of your vote. In many states, this takes quite a while so DO IT NOW. [I'll still love you even if you vote for someone i don't like, but i'll be very angry with you for not voting.] If you're in California, here's the form. It takes all of 30 seconds to fill out. Category: politics
Posted by zephoria at 9:57 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (6) January 21, 2004Until the Violence Stops screeningV-Day is going to do a San Francisco Premier screening of "Until the Violence Stops" on January 28th. This is a benefit screening of the film that premiered at Sundance. If you believe in ending violence against women, this is a good way to help out. Attend the screening, support women and help raise money to end violence worldwide. TICKETS AVAILABLE BY CALLING THE BRAVA THEATRE - 415-647-2822 Category:
Posted by zephoria at 4:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) on deceptionWhen i was 14, i learned what it meant to be deceived by someone i loved. I saw lie after lie unfold in front of me in complete horror. It clicked and, since then, lying is about the biggest sin you can commit in a personal relationship with me. I've always told friends and lovers that i can get over cheating/chaos/anything, but i can't get over lying, so just don't magnify stupidity with cruelty. Deception has so many levels. All too often, people lie to themselves, convince themselves of their lies and by the time they lie to you, they genuinely don't believe it's a lie. (Anyone see the State of the Union?) It's all a matter of perspective, right? I'm certainly not innocent of this. But there's something so painfully demoralizing about feeling enthusiasm fade to exhaustion as the pieces of an intricate web of deception through avoiding the truth unfold. It's not as cruel as an intentional lie, but it's impossible to feel any form of trust or respect at the other end. ::sigh:: Category:
Posted by zephoria at 1:37 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) January 20, 2004misbehaving nominated for a bloggieSometimes, i amaze myself. When i saw that BoingBoing was nominated for a Bloggie, i scanned the list. I didn't even think to look for any of the blogs that i'm involved with. Later, i was talking with Cory and he made some remark about how we're up in the same category. I looked puzzled and he informed me that misbehaving was up for a Bloggie. How funny. It never even dawned on me that our venture into hellish conversations around gender & tech would be recognized, but i have to admit that it brings me great joy. So, if you support us, please go and vote! Category:
Posted by zephoria at 4:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) beautiful music visualizationsOf course, not entirely sure how it's working, but it is pretty. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 4:11 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (8) your critical book list?I'm still shocked that so many people read my musings here. I also know that most people who read this don't post. Yet, if you keep coming back, you must be interested in some cross-section of the topics that interest me. So, now i have a question for you... What books have changed your perspective on the world? What books do you think EVERYONE must read? And, more importantly, for those of you who see holes in my arguments, what would you recommend to fill them? Category:
Posted by zephoria at 12:55 AM | Comments (35) | TrackBack (0) January 19, 2004Why Blogs Aren't a Safe SpaceIt was 1996 when my friends and i started getting attacked online for being queer. Before that, in our niche of the cyberworld, we were invisible to everyone but ourselves. It was a public space, welcoming to all queer folks. It was a safe space by the virtue of shared values, ideas and the underlying goal of supporting one another. There were no walls; it was safe through underlying social norms. But it was destroyed because rigid barriers are necessary to keeping hate outside. We eventually escaped to the eGroups of the world before fading into oblivion. In 2001, i popped into various queer communities, talking to youth about their experiences online. They recalled stories that horrified me. Stories of older men preying on them, stories of the Christian right telling them that they were going to hell. Always on the search for safe space, these kids didn't have what i valued so much about the online world in high school: inadvertent safe space, simply by being, sharing, supporting. Even in gay.com, they felt afraid. This saddened me. I'm in awe of the networks of queer LJs that i see. I know that i don't see all because much of what is shared is for friends-only, but it gives me great joy to realize that kids are finding new ways to construct semi-public safe space and support one another through the process of grappling with one's identity. Yet, i know that what i see is only a limited segment of the digital queer youth. I wonder how kids feel about coming out online now, how they find that safe space, how they create friend groups out of nothing. It was so much easier in the 90s. All you needed was access to IRC, Usenet or BBSs. Of course, only a fraction of kids were online then. When we started getting attacked, i felt the need to defend us, to maintain the safe space. But online, speaking to your attackers is like speaking to a blank wall. You can't possibly defend yourself because they're against you at their very core. Topics like queer identity and abortion will never go anywhere online. People aren't willing to hear one another. Eventually, i gave up, exhausted, saddened, depressed. Since then, i haven't engaged in debates online; i've only lurked. When i wrote to a mailing list, it was almost always neutral material: information about an event, a reference, whatever. And then, my journals became blogs and read by an audience that i don't know. And i got invited to help out with other blogs. Suddenly, i had to address a flurry of email and comments about what i wrote. Most of it was curious, supportive. But then again, it was rather unbiased. Yet, every time i write anything with an opinion on it, or truly want to work out a dilemma, i get attacked or the ideas do. I can take it far more when the ideas are attacked, but i truly hate the anonymous emails telling me that i'm a terrible person. I continue to be reminded that blogging is not a safe space for me. There's no common understanding, common ground. Even when i build up the gall to post what's on my mind, i'm deconstructed based on what's not said. My blog is not an academic paper. I'm not reflexively positioning myself every time i post. I'm not fleshing out all of that which i feel should be assumed simply because this is MY blog, MY post. I take a lot for granted and i only wish that people would realize that these posts are constructed in the context of me. I'm not trying to be a journalist; i'm not trying to address an unknown population from an unknown position. I'm trying to share my thoughts, ideas, life from my perspective. While i may feel attacked here, in my own digital home, i feel outright demolished at misbehaving. Unlike many group blogs, this one has an identity. It's a blog about women and tech. It's a blog by women involved in tech. It's a blog by thinking women who think, say, and create far more than a few posts a month on the site. There is an unspoken context. These are things that i take for granted. I try to keep posts short, but in doing so, i fail to lay out the framework and thus i'm attacked both for what i say and what i don't say. Instead of creative suggestions, "perhaps you forgot this," i usually see you're wrong/foolish/inappropriate. Sometimes i wonder if we created misbehaving as a tool to increase our masochistic lashings. It's certainly not a forum for interesting conversation in a safe space. One thing that we're missing as disconnected souls reading each other's words is a shared social structure where we can intuitively understand when to critique and when to support. The blog world too easily lends itself to a forum for attacking each other, purportedly to critique ideas. How often are anonymous critiques truly constructive? How easy is it to tear apart someone you don't know? Stanley Milgram learned that ages ago... if you feel like your responsibility is to critique, you can do so infinitely, regardless of how another might feel. And the further removed you are from witnessing the horrific reactions, the more you can continue on. Sometimes, i think we're all a bit sadistic. But it truly saddens me that blogs aren't safe space. They don't sit in a context; they don't have a set of shared norms. And sometimes, it's just simply not fun to constantly fight for the right to speak from your own perspective. It's in moments like this where i remember why some people have no desire to speak up, no desire to fight. I remember asking my mum why she didn't run for office; she laughed and reminded me that not just anyone is willing to be put through the ringer for the chance to spend every day being hated. I continue to reconsider whether or not i should blog, or if i should only post uncontroversial material. While i've met some amazing people this way, i've also seen the increase in my insecurity about sharing what i know. Yet, often, my attackers are anonymous and i should know not to take them seriously. I can intellectually tell myself that it is foolish to let them affect me, but anonymous attackers hurt my soul even more so than actual people. With actual people, i can have a conversation, attempt reason, understand where they're coming from. Anonymous attacks are just there, unable to be addressed personally, unable to find resolution in me. I will never forget the girl who asked me why i blogged, why i wanted to be a public target? I still can't answer her.
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Posted by zephoria at 11:48 AM | Comments (30) | TrackBack (18) January 18, 2004categorizing blogsI've been trying to wrap my head around the umbrella term "blog" - quite unsuccessfully at times. Who blogs? How do you categorize blogs? Why should you categorize them? For example, bloggers may see LJ folks as part of the blogging world, but not all LJ folks would agree. How do we address this? Well, Liz and i were lamenting. Bless her for a good idea. As much as this conversation can go round-and-round online, it'd be most interesting to have a good RL conversation about the topic. Plot 1: Bring the interested Etech folks together to have an interesting conversation. Although i realize that this will be dominated by a particular kind of blogger, hopefully we can get folks thinking outside of the box for a bit. Plot 2: Hold a workshop at a conference where we can attract a more diverse segment of bloggers/journalers. Plot 3: Do a bit of ethnography as necessary Plot 4: Publish our findings. So, if you're interested in this conversation, come join us at ETech! Category:
Posted by zephoria at 5:33 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack (7) mailing list visualizationsOn the visualization thread, i was psyched to see "Social Circles" - a tool to watch mailing lists. I'm just a bit wary of how it is set up, given that it asks you for a mailing list to watch. I'm also a bit weirded out that i can see the converation patterns of other people in other mailing lists. I think that it is a bad bad bad idea to assume that all mailing lists are meant to be public. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 4:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1) why visualize social networks?While my blog was down, i was stoked to see Clay write about visualizing social networks. He references a great, albeit older (2000), overview article about visualizing social networks. In comments, folks also bring up Tamara Munzner's thesis. I'm in awe of all of the efforts to visualize social networks, but not surprisingly, i have my biases on this topic. The big question for me about visualizations is WHY? Most answers to this question fall into two camps: to efficiently understand massively complex data sets or because it's cool. Both are super valid reasons, but the approaches that evolve almost always focus on visualizing data for some outside third-party, unrelated to the data. Of course, all of us who do visualize are also obsessed with visualiing our own data, but we don't count. Although we weren't able to deploy our visualizations to too many people, Fernanda/David and myself/Jeff were interested in what it means to visualized data for the people visualized. What would people do with these artifacts? How could ethnography be done with such tools? The folks at Info@Vis! emphasize four basic elements of social network representations: presence, identity/affiliation, interaction, and communication. Personally, i find it peculiar that there is no discussion about the audience of the visualizations. Perhaps they are presuming that they are only visualizing for social scientists. But, even for social scientsits, another purpose of visualizing data is to engage those being visualized. It operates as a mirror and having that artifact provides you with such a grounding artifact upon which stories can be told. Although i was unable to go to Hawaii to present out paper, Fernand tells me that it was quite well received there which makes me super happy. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 4:08 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (1) breaking things, danah styleSo, as you may have noticed, my blog has been down. For a while. In typical danah style, i managed to figure out how to break things in a weird configuration that tormented everyone. So, you see, the CGI processes on MT last for a long time, taking up a lot of memory and time. Due to a really bad situation with spam bots who were running CGI scripts on my server, the admin decided to limit scripts, figuring that anything that was running too long was probably a big bad ugly mistake or a cruel bot. They weren't prepared for MT. Or for my use of it as i tried to merge two blogs and rebuild >1000 entries. Oops. So, down and down the spiral went. Bless Boris, Glenn and Ben for putting the pieces together. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 3:43 PM | TrackBack (1) the joys of communityToday, i had the joyous opportunity to speak at Storm Sessions, a local conference of San Francisco collectives trying to understand how to think about community and relationships. The conference is particularly valuable because so many cross-collective relationships are built. The morning started out with a Ethan Watters sharing his thoughts on Urban Tribes with the crowd. Even when i disagree with him, i really love listening to Ethan. He's so articulate and so interested in hearing dissenting opinions. It's clear that he loves this topic, that it's personal and that he really wants to understand it from all perspectives. That's quite refreshing. The next two sections were split between different panels and i sat in on the panel on polyamory and the one on cooperative housing. It was interesting to hear people that i know talk about topics that i have once lived... Finally, Howard Rheingold and i wrapped up the day with a discussion about digital technologies and community. I think we were supposed to focus on online communities, but i quickly derailed us into a discussion based on what i felt was missing by some of the other talks: the issues that emerge when communities try to form cross-generationally because of the differences in communication structure. We talked about SMS, IM, the Well, meetup, Friendster/Tribe.net, etc. But more than anything, we took questions from the audience and had a group discussion. It was really nice. I'm so used to talking to public audiences that it was great to sit on a couch that was part of a household that i know well and talk to a group of friends and friends-of-friends. And it was fantastic to have Howard there, sharing his experience with folks who have the same goals, but come from different eras and experiences. It made me thrilled! A giddy girl bringing together friends with common threads. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 1:26 AM | TrackBack (0) January 17, 2004my black friendstersOMG. This kills me. If only i hadn't heard this rhetoric before... Category:
Posted by zephoria at 1:33 PM | TrackBack (0) my so-called blog
January 11, 2004 My So-Called Blog hen M. gets home from school, he immediately logs on to his computer. Then he stays there, touching base with the people he has seen all day long, floating in a kind of multitasking heaven of communication. First, he clicks on his Web log, or blog -- an online diary he keeps on a Web site called LiveJournal -- and checks for responses from his readers. Next he reads his friends' journals, contributing his distinctive brand of wry, supportive commentary to their observations. Then he returns to his own journal to compose his entries: sometimes confessional, more often dry private jokes or koanlike observations on life. Finally, he spends a long time -- sometimes hours -- exchanging instant messages, a form of communication far more common among teenagers than phone calls. In multiple dialogue boxes on his computer screen, he'll type real-time conversations with several friends at once; if he leaves the house to hang out in the real world, he'll come back and instant-message some more, and sometimes cut and paste transcripts of these conversations into his online journal. All this upkeep can get in the way of homework, he admitted. ''You keep telling yourself, 'Don't look, don't look!' And you keep on checking your e-mail.'' M. is an unusually Zen teenage boy -- dreamy and ruminative about his personal relationships. But his obsessive online habits are hardly exceptional; he is one of a generation of compulsive self-chroniclers, a fleet of juvenile Marcel Prousts gone wild. When he meets new friends in real life, M. offers them access to his online world. ''That's how you introduce yourself,'' he said. ''It's like, here's my cellphone number, my e-mail, my screen name, oh, and -- here's my LiveJournal. Personally, I'd go to that person's LJ before I'd call them or e-mail them or contact them on AIM'' -- AOL Instant Messenger -- ''because I would know them better that way.'' Only five years ago, mounting an online journal or its close cousin, the blog, required at least a modicum of technical know-how. But today, using sites like LiveJournal or Blogger or Xanga, users can sign up for a free account, and with little computer knowledge design a site within minutes. According to figures released last October by Perseus Development Corporation, a company that designs software for online surveys, there are expected to be 10 million blogs by the end of 2004. In the news media, the blog explosion has been portrayed as a transformation of the industry, a thousand minipundits blooming. But the vast majority of bloggers are teens and young adults. Ninety percent of those with blogs are between 13 and 29 years old; a full 51 percent are between 13 and 19, according to Perseus. Many teen blogs are short-lived experiments. But for a significant number, they become a way of life, a daily record of a community's private thoughts -- a kind of invisible high school that floats above the daily life of teenagers. Back in the 1980's, when I attended high school, reading someone's diary would have been the ultimate intrusion. But communication was rudimentary back then. There were no cellphones, or answering machines; there was no ''texting,'' no MP3's or JPEG's, no digital cameras or file-sharing software; there was no World Wide Web -- none of the private-ish, public-ish, superimmediate forums kids today take for granted. If this new technology has provided a million ways to stay in touch, it has also acted as both an amplifier and a distortion device for human intimacy. The new forms of communication are madly contradictory: anonymous, but traceable; instantaneous, then saved forever (unless deleted in a snit). In such an unstable environment, it's no wonder that distinctions between healthy candor and ''too much information'' are in flux and that so many find themselves helplessly confessing, as if a generation were given a massive technological truth serum. A result of all this self-chronicling is that the private experience of adolescence -- a period traditionally marked by seizures of self-consciousness and personal confessions wrapped in layers and hidden in a sock drawer -- has been made public. Peer into an online journal, and you find the operatic texture of teenage life with its fits of romantic misery, quick-change moods and sardonic inside jokes. Gossip spreads like poison. Diary writers compete for attention, then fret when they get it. And everything parents fear is true. (For one thing, their children view them as stupid and insane, with terrible musical taste.) But the linked journals also form a community, an intriguing, unchecked experiment in silent group therapy -- a hive mind in which everyone commiserates about how it feels to be an outsider, in perfect choral unison. For many in the generation that has grown up online, the solution is not to fight this technological loss of privacy, but to give in and embrace it: to stop worrying and learn to love the Web. It's a generational shift that has multiple roots, from Ricki Lake to the memoir boom to the A.A. confessional, not to mention 13 seasons of ''The Real World.'' The teenagers who post journals have (depending on your perspective) a degraded or a relaxed sense of privacy; their experiences may be personal, but there's no shame in sharing. As the reality-television stars put it, exposure may be painful at times, but it's all part of the process of ''putting it out there,'' risking judgment and letting people in. If teen bloggers give something up by sloughing off a self-protective layer, they get something back too -- a new kind of intimacy, a sense that they are known and listened to. This is their life, for anyone to read. As long as their parents don't find out. It was early September, the start of the school year in an affluent high school in Westchester County, just north of New York City, where I was focusing my teen-blogging expedition. The halls were filled with students and the walls were covered with posters urging extracurricular activities. (''Instant popularity, minus the hazing,'' read one.) I had come looking for J., a boy I'd never seen, though I knew many of the details of his life. (J., like most of the teenage bloggers I interviewed, insisted he not be identified, in part because his parents didn't know about his blog.) On a Web site called Blurty, he kept an online journal, titled ''Laugh at Me.'' In his user profile he described himself this way: ''I have depression, bad skin, weight problems, low self-esteem, few friends and many more reasons why I am angry.'' In his online outpourings, J. inveighed hilariously against his parents, his teachers and friends who had let him down. ''Hey everyone ever,'' he wrote in one entry. ''Stop making fun of people. It really is a sucky thing to do, especially if you hate being made fun of yourself. . . . This has been a public service announcement. You may now resume your stupid hypocritical, lying lives.'' I was half-expecting a pimply nightmare boy, all monosyllables and misery. Instead, J. turned out to be a cute 15-year-old with a shy smile. A little bit jittery, he sat with his knees apart, admiring his own Converse sneakers. He had chosen an unfortunately public place for this interview -- a stairwell near the cafeteria and directly across from the teacher's lounge -- although he insisted that we were in an obscure location. J. had had his Blurty journal for about a year. He called it ''better than therapy,'' a way to get out his true feelings -- all the emotions he thought might get him in trouble if he expressed them in school or at home. Online, he could blurt out confessions of loneliness and insecurity, worrying aloud about slights from friends. Yet despite the fact that he knew that anyone who wanted to could read his journal -- and that a few friends did, leaving comments at the ends of his posts -- he also maintained the notion that what he was doing was private. He didn't write for an audience, he said; he just wrote what he was feeling. Writing in his online journal was cathartic for him, he said, but it was hardly stress-free. A week earlier, he left a post about an unrequited crush, and an anonymous someone appended negative comments, remarks J. wouldn't detail (he deleted them), but which he described with distress as ''disgusting language, vulgarities.'' J. panicked, worried that the girl he liked might learn about the vulgar comments and, by extension, his attraction to her. It was a somewhat mysterious concern. Couldn't the girl have read his original post, I asked? And anyway, didn't he secretly want her to read his journal? ''Of course,'' he moaned, leaning against the banister. ''For all I know she does. For all I know, she doesn't.'' J.'s sense of private and public was filled with these kinds of contradictions: he wanted his posts to be read, and feared that people would read them, and hoped that people would read them, and didn't care if people read them. He wanted to be included while priding himself |
My so-called blog