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« June 2004 | Main | August 2004 » July 31, 2004The September ProjectA friend of mine is working on The September Project to bring together people around the country on September 11 to "share and discuss ideas about democracy, citizenship, and patriotism through public talks, roundtables, and performances." For the most part, these events will be taking place in public libraries. I think that's pretty rad considering that libraries are public spaces dedicated to making information more accessible and librarians have been some of the greatest activists in the fight against government suppression of knowledge. There are almost 200 events currently scheduled, with more popping up daily. This is a fun project to support, so if one's not scheduled in your city, consider organizing it! Category: fun links
Posted by zephoria at 2:43 PM | TrackBack (0) more diarists and Web logsNot all journalists learn from bloggers. My cranky rant and op-ed went unnoticed by the NYTimes, who proceeded to run an article entitled Wry Hoaxes Enliven the World of Web Diarists that talks about "Web logs." I should note that i'm by no means upset with the authors of either NYTimes articles, as i'm fully aware that they are at the whim of their editorial stuff. Unlike Xeni, i don't have a c'est la vie attitude about it. [Update: Xeni does not have this attitude and often stops working with editors who pull this shit. Apologies.] One way of asserting power and marginalizing people is to own the language by reframing the terms of the oppressed into the terms of the privileged, thereby degrading the original terminology (think 'liberal'). This is why one of the most powerful tactics of oppressed people is to reclaim their terminology, to own it as empowering (think 'queer'). The US civil rights battles were ripe with oppressive uses and reclaiming of black terminology (think 'nigger'). One of the rules of anthropology is to always use the terms of the people. By reframing a people's language into hegemonic terminology, the writer oppresses the people, owns the people. It is not only a lack of respect, but an attempt to assert authority and power. This doesn't just apply to anthropology. I continue to be cranky with the NYTimes. Category: blogging
Posted by zephoria at 3:34 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack (0) July 30, 2004online social networks & workXeni interviews a bunch of "unrepentant compulsive digital networkers" (including moi) for her latest article: Online social networks go to work - Where personal connections lead to professional allies. It's a fun candid read. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 1:00 AM | TrackBack (1) July 29, 2004Learning from Convention bloggingDan Bricklin's What we learn from the Convention blogging is a fantastic write-up about lessons learned. It is also exceptionally applicable to event blogging in general. Of course, it makes me gulp a little as i'm gearing up to blog SIGGRAPH. Of course, SIGGRAPH is always exhausting anyhow and i've done the party circuit in costume there before. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 6:06 PM | TrackBack (2) sympathetic voices... going to NY?Why is it that the only bloggers at the DNC are sympathetic to the Democratic party? What about other DNC attendees (other than protesters) - are they all sympathetic? Do non-sympathetic press cover the DNC? It strikes me as odd that everything i've heard back from people at the DNC is from people who really believe in the Democratic party or people who are paid to not express their personal opinion. I realize that the bloggers with credentials are probably pawns of the DNC who want to employ them to get the word out further. But i want to hear rational critical voices... i want to hear what thinking Republicans think about the DNC. I also had a realization this morning that i want to attend the RNC. I am not a good protester - i tend to get pretty upset with the type of herd mentality that emerges in those situations, even when i believe the values of the protest at my very core. So i figured that i wouldn't go to New York next month. But what i realized is that i really want to be at the RNC, inside the RNC. I want to talk to reporters about how their job works, how they perceive the bloggers. I want to talk to the passionate attendees about how they manage political information, about how they employ technology to share knowledge. More than anything, i want to be surrounded by thousands of people whose values and approaches to the world are fundamentally different than mine. It's so humbling and eye-opening to talk directly to people who disagree with me, not to argue but to understand... to see the world from their perspective. I think San Francisco is getting to me. But seriously, i wonder if there's any way that i'd be able to get into the RNC in New York. I wouldn't want to go to attack or protest, but to understand. I think it could be quite humbling to see the world from a different perspective for a few days. And goddess only knows that it'd be far more mind-expanding than spending those days in the Black Rock Desert. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 3:18 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack (2) July 28, 2004The New Blogocracy (Salon op-ed by moi)The New Blogocracy is a Salon op-ed that i wrote based on the blog entry Demeaning Bloggers. I tried to go deeper into my feelings about pitting journalists against bloggers. I think that it's a fun piece. If you don't have a Salon account, click the Free Day Pass. NARAL is definitely an organization worth supporting. Oh, and i've also decided that i *lurve* having an editor, particularly one as constructive as Andrew Leonard. Category: blogging
Posted by zephoria at 12:04 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (5) i'll double my contribution to Kerry if...This morning, i got an email from a friend saying that he would double his contribution (i.e. give $500) to the Kerry contribution if 10 of his friends contributed. I contributed. I'm going to return the favor. If 10 of you contribute directly to the Kerry-Edwards Campaign within 24 hours, i will double my contribution. Note: I believe that Thursday is the last day for citizens to offer private contributions to Kerry; after that, it's public-funding only! Category: politics
Posted by zephoria at 2:35 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack (4) July 27, 2004so what's the convention like?Obviously, I can't speak for the delegates, protestors, service providers, real journalists or even for other bloggers, but for me it's a lot like going to a sports arena and watching a sport that consists of talking loud. -- David Weinberger ROFL. I love David. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 5:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) July 26, 2004Demeaning bloggers: the NYTimes is running scaredBlogging has terrified mainstream media for a while now. Journalists want to know if blogs are going to degrade their profession, open up new possibilities or otherwise challenge their authority. This also means that whenever the press writes about blogs, one must critically consider what biases are embedded in their reporting. This morning, the NYTimes took their bias to the headlines: As i've written before, blogging is rhetorically situated between journalism and diarying. Most often, people label blogging as one or the other in order to degrade it. The NYTimes pulled this act today because they have a professional interest in portraying convention bloggers as "low-brow" and unworthy of reading, while the NYTimes will present the real "high-brow" convention story. By framing bloggers as diarists, the NYTimes is demanding that the reader see blogs as petty, childish and self-absorbed. They further perpetuate this view by pasting a picture of a youth on the front of the article to suggest that bloggers are all inexperienced and naive, further implying that their reports will not have the value of the more "adult" perspective of "real" journalists. The entire spin of the article focuses on how bloggers are like children in a candy store - naive, inexperienced and overwhelmed by what is now available to them. The article focuses on the minutia of blogging, emphasizing that bloggers won't really cover the real issues, but provide the "low-brow" gossip. (I somehow suspect that the NYTimes is far more likely to cover what various attendees are wearing than the bloggers.) The article does proceed to share its stance on bloggers through the voice of one subject: "I think that bloggers have put the issue of professionalism under attack." (Not Jason Blair?) I am horrified by this article. Not only does the NYTimes reveal their naivete about blogging, but they use their lack of clarity to demean a practice that they perceive as threatening. No wonder their professionalism is under attack. [Also posted at M2M.] Category: blogging
Posted by zephoria at 2:07 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack (16) July 25, 2004cool camera phone?OK... i may have succumbed. I'm going to be blogging SIGGRAPH and i really want a camera phone so that i can auto-Flickr-Blog. I mean, i could do it via a digital camera, but when i realized that i could email pictures to Flickr and it would automatically blog it, i was in heaven. This is the only way that i'm likely to photoblog and i know it. Specific purpose, target audience. So, this means that i need to accept that i will purchase a camera phone. Crazy, eh? But the fact is that i know little about camera phones. I want one with a high enough quality that it will be reasonable for blogging. I don't want a PDA device. I'm currently on Sprint. I'm always half tempted to switch, but i never do it... at least not in the last 7.5 years. Probably, i'd want a Sprint phone... and preferably one that didn't cost a fortune. One alternate option would be to buy the camera for my sidekick - anyone know anything about that? Anyhow... i'd love thoughts and suggestions. If i've learned anything about gadgetry, it's that everyone has an opinion. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 12:36 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack (5) July 24, 2004SNS and impersonation, deception, kidnappingA message is going around Orkut that a woman in Brasil was kidnapped and that the details available through her Orkut profile helped the kidnappers. [See Jeff's descript.] Yesterday, when speaking with a friend, he asked me if i thought that identity theft would be made easier via SNS tools. At this point, i hope that most people realize that the term "six degrees of separation" is not a referent to Milgram, but to a play. I think that folks forget what the premise of that play is. A young man comes to a family's home, professing to be a friend of their son's. He enchants them by knowing so much about their son that they trust him completely, even though it's all researched. Deception and impersonation are nothing new to social networks; it just went digital. Category: yasns
Posted by zephoria at 12:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) uh-uh, no they didn't
Oh baby, they did. They really did. On Main and Folsom. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 12:08 PM | TrackBack (0) July 23, 2004good ole danah logicI'm not good at being ill. After much internal struggle and because of my confidence in Christopher Allen, i responsibly stayed at home last night; Christopher took my place at the CMU event. This morning, though, i operated via danah logic... that's the kind of bass-ackwards logic that gets me into trouble. I figured that i needed to go to the doctor, the doctor was in Berkeley, BlogOn was in Berkeley... If i went to BlogOn, i would definitely go to the doctor. If i didn't go, i probably wouldn't visit the doctor. I knew that i needed to visit the doctor, so obviously it made complete sense to give my talk at BlogOn, right? Besides, i was no longer contagious so why the hell not? In many ways, i'm glad i went. I had fun sharing my reflections on the linguistic connotations of my blog panel title - the dark side. I told the audience that i had asked people what came to mind when they heard the term 'the dark side.' Everyone kept saying Darth Vader... Star Wars... evil. I was annoyed. I was being asked to talk about people and their practices - is that really the evil side of social media? Conference organizers told me i was being pessimistic. Another conceptualization of the dark side kept coming up - Pink Floyd. When you think about the dark side of the moon, you think about the side upon which the sun has yet to shine. Perhaps my role at BlogOn was to share the perspective that people and their practices have yet to be considered. This was my way of providing optimism. I don't know if anyone got anything out of the panel, but it was interesting to me. The sad part was that i didn't really get to stick around for BlogOn. Immediately after my panel, i went to the doc's because i was having a really hard time breathing. There, i got to breathe foul tasting stuff for 5 minutes and that opened up my lungs - thank goodness. The doctor was nice (for once), although it was a bit eerie to realize that he was my age and looked like a friend of mine. I love doctors at universities because they draw pictures and explain what's going on. Of course, i found myself wondering if this doctor blogged his experiences at the urgent care like the guy who writes Gross Anatomy. 2 hours of BlogOn did seep in. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 4:29 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0) July 21, 2004lessons from this week...I received 6 emails for not blogging recently. Bleh. My lesson of the week is that strep throat + bronchitis is a deadly combination and definitely requires a doctor visit. I am sick, in bed and sweating profusely. The only creative thoughts that have emerged from my head involve figuring out how to get food without fainting. This is not a recordable experience. Instead, let me share with you the events that i would've attended if i were healthy so that you may attend without me since they all involve good people: - CMU West Speaker Series: The New Phenomenon of "Enabled Social Networks:" Social, Commercial, and Political/Civic Implications Enjoy and perhaps i will have more interesting things to say shortly. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 6:34 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0) July 16, 2004Street Talk and Jane McGonigalIt only took three years of hearing about Jane McGonigal before we were finally in the same room together at Intel's Street Talk: An Urban Computing Happening. The conference was most magnificent because it was a gathering of some of my favorite researchers, all talking about what urban life meant, how pervasive technologies were evolving, gaming and other constructions of sociability in a digital world. Fun fun fun. Yet, meeting Jane was just such a pleasure - it took far too long and too many misses. Everyone out there who was determined that we should meet was right-on. She's got immense amounts of spunk and she puts together creative public games; she studies performance and bridges the digital/physical divide in a total complementary way to me. Even better: she has a pet word that is awfully similar to my own. Pareidolia is "a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct." [My favorite word is apophenia: "the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena."] Category:
Posted by zephoria at 9:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (3) July 12, 2004optical illusions
You gotta love optical illusions. Click here for more. (tx Eric) Category: fun links
Posted by zephoria at 10:22 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (3) July 9, 2004commissioned Fakesters?Andy reports that all of the Anchorman characters appear on Friendster as Fakesters while a banner ad for the movie runs in the advert section. Has Friendster stopped its ban on Fakesters so long as they're commissioned? Update: Friendster really is supporting this. And they don't see the irony in it. "What Friendster is doing with these movie-character profiles is actually a brand-new paradigm in media promotion." Oh dear god. Category: friendster
Posted by zephoria at 10:44 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack (1) July 8, 2004the 20 questions dayIf you have a weakness, it is your inability to say "no." While your peers respect you, they find it difficult to resist taking advantage of your positive attitude and eagerness to take on work. You depend on a good manager to keep you from sinking under the weight and burning out. This is from 20 Questions to a Better Personality. I took it while procrastinating the additional paper that i took on earlier this evening. Hrmpft. Of course, this was the second time that the concept of 20 questions passed my desk today. The first was a social software site called twenty questions. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 11:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (4) flickr colorsFlickr color tags like orange or green or blue are sooo beautiful. Sophie Calle would be proud! [For those who aren't familiar with Calle's work, she is fantastic. Read Double Game. But in reference to this, Calle ate only one color of food each day and took photos of that food. What a beautiful exhibit.] Category: social software
Posted by zephoria at 4:02 PM | TrackBack (1) more thoughts on CaPiTaLiZaTiOnI'm still fascinated by the CaPiTaLiZaTiOn that appears online. When i posted about it last, folks gave me some *great* pointers. Since then, i've followed up on the Azn style and started talking to people. I talked with folks about different spelling styles that emerged with chatrooms and BBSes. I talked with folks about the motivation for spelling words phonetically. Some of this has obvious technical roots - like pager culture. There's also a desire to be writing in an encoded fashion so that outsiders can't tell what is being said. Folks also write this way because it's cool or because it lets them personalize text. When thinking about it, i realized how much this was common even in class notes. Remember the hearts above the i's or the backwards slanted writing? It was all about personalizing the communication - giving it character. Digital modes of textual presentation are very prescriptive. You have a choice of the following n fonts. Each letter looks the same. There's no emotion in the letters. It's sooo boring. No wonder folks have come up with ways of expressing themselves through the typography as well as the text. Think graffiti. By doing this, people are pushing against an emphasis on the text. They are challenging that text as text is nothing; it's all about the surrounding features of the text. There was once an art to typography; people haven't lost that. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 3:57 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (1) July 5, 2004from HTML to Wiki?I have a very popular site that consists entirely of Ani DiFranco lyrics. I've been maintaining this site since 1996. People send me lyrics corrections; i adjust the lyrics, etc. Each page is a simple HTML page. This is sooo the ideal case for a wiki. Only, the idea of converting everything to Wiki format, getting rid of all basic HTML and losing all of my URL addresses does not appeal to me. Right now, an ideal tool would let me list all HTML pages that should be converted into a Wiki and it would retain everything that it knows about the page while simultaneously wiki-ifying it and not losing the pages and thus pagerank. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 1:10 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack (3) ghosts in the machineGhosts in the Machine is an article about online identities that represent people who have died. In particular, the story follows a Friendster user whose profile represents his state of mind when he passed away. Category:
Posted by zephoria at 12:33 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (2) are MUDs and MOOs dead?I thought MUDs and MOOs were dead... or at least only used by the same folks who have been using them since the 80s or the new folks that have to play with them for some academic enterprise. The only folks that i know who use MUDs and MOOs are academics - the folks who have been studying them. Sometimes, i wonder if they are studying each other engage in what MUDs and MOOs are supposed to be about. Anyhow, does anyone have a good status report on MUDs and MOOs? Category: privacy
Posted by zephoria at 11:32 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (2) July 2, 2004into the blogosphereInto the Blogosphere is a collection of articles about blogs from multidisciplinary approaches. I haven't read them yet, but i'm super psyched that they are being published. Category: blogging
Posted by zephoria at 12:23 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) |
