Monthly Archives: May 2005

psychology of guilt – homelessness in San Francisco

Around 3AM the other night, i was walking home from “exercise” when a man asked me for a quarter. All i had in my pocket was a $20, some smokes, an ID and my keys. I shrugged and said, sorry, i didn’t have any money. And then i spent the rest of my walk tormenting myself about my reaction, about having lied.

The homeless situation in San Francisco haunts me. Nothing horrifies me more than the privileged folks i know who look at the folks on the street with disgust as though they deserve to be there for something they’ve done. Of the groups that i’ve talked to, there seem to be three distinct homeless populations:
– youth who come from abusive environments and escape to SF because the streets are safer than home
– mentally ill folks who would be better off in a care facility but since we don’t have that infrastructure, they’re on the streets
– folks who don’t have the network structure, skills or opportunities to get out of the perpetual state of poverty (think: Subdivision

I hate the part of me that immediately thinks “well, i earned my money; i deserve to keep it” because, frankly, that’s bullshit and i know it. So then i’m confused about what inside me runs to that excuse. Or to the million other excuses that my brain generates to justify why i am (not) giving money in a particular situation.

There are days when i find myself spending an extra $1 to take MUNI to BART so that i don’t have to walk by the homeless folks on 16th. It brings me great heartache to witness this level of struggle. And yet, what is that avoidance about? That’s not a healthy response either. And where does it come from? I know i’m not alone; folks run to their gated communities and suburbs to not have to deal. Of course, ignorance increases the problem. The visibility is critical for people to realize that this is a real endemic problem and seek solutions. But yet, ignorance is bliss.

I often give out food to folks, but sometimes i think this is more to assuage my guilt than to actually do any good. And that makes me feel more guilty.

What can one do? Homeless issues tend to be the key factor in my local voting choices, but look what good that is doing. ::sigh:: How do other folks resolve their emotions around this issue? How do you actually do something?

Perpetuating Intolerance: Microsoft and LGBTQ issues

I was horrified when i heard that Microsoft withdrew support for an anti-gay-discrimination bill. At first, i didn’t believe it. I always thought of Microsoft as being super queer friendly. They had won awards for civil rights issues; many of my friends at Microsoft are LGBTQ-identified. Only a few years ago, when i was thinking of going back to industry, Microsoft had done an amazing job of recruitment, involving my girlfriend in the process (and in a trip to a spa), introducing me to other LGBTQ employees and giving me a nice queer guide to Seattle upon arrival. I was exceptionally impressed.

As i dove deeper, i became outright angry and horrified. The justification offered to the LGBTQ group at Microsoft was that they chose to take a “neutral” stand on controversial issues. WTF? “’cause if you’re not trying to make something better / then as far as i can tell / you are just in the way” – Ani

Needless to say, queer folks everywhere got pissed. A prominent employee quit. Outrage poured in everywhere. Succumbing to pressure, Microsoft reversed its stance stating: “After looking at the question from all sides, I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda.”

On one hand, i’m glad to see that pressure worked. On the other, i think that some education has to happen here. Whenever issues of marginalization come up, folks often fuck up and when the marginalized population gets pissed, they evaluate if they cries are loud enough. This is not actually a progressive approach. It requires marginalized people to demand their rights, to work extra hard, to always fight rather than forcing privileged folks to do a privilege check and think about what they are doing.

This is particularly problematic in queer issues because the common refrain from the straight world is “keep your sex life out of the professional sphere.” It’s often accompanied by “I don’t bring my sex life to work, why should you?” There are a *lot* of problems with this. Most obviously, take a look at photos on people’s desks, who they bring to company events, who they talk about going home to. “But that’s not about sex!” Neither is a queer identity. The only reason straight folks think it’s about sex is because in order to grapple with a queer identity, they have to bring sex into the picture. Queer issues at work are rarely about sex – they are almost always about identity. It’s about being comfortable with who you are, having the right to love and be loved, having the infrastructure to support your loved one, etc.

There is a hegemonic assumption of straightness and it penetrates this culture to the core. Last week, at the airport, a little girl with her mom looked up at me (traveling alone) and asked “Where’s your husband?” What was i to say? Instead, i stammered.

Straight folks ask me why queer folks always have to remind everyone that they’re queer. Guess what? Every marginalized population consistently reminds you of their identity. Queerness just isn’t written on the body in the same way. We remind you because we’re tired of being invisible. We remind you because invisibility is damaging at every level of society and the more invisible we let ourselves be, the more oppression occurs.

Companies think that they have no responsibility in social issues. Bullshit. Companies are societal infrastructure and when they choose not to get involved, they maintain status quo in the most conservative ways possible. Not getting involved is an act of making people invisible. Companies are hegemonic in their very nature and to be a progressive company, to be a company for the people means to recognize the inequalities and intolerance embedded in society and work to overcome that. It requires action because inaction perpetuates intolerance.

sitting in the boardroom
the i’m-so-bored room
listening to the suits
talk about their world
they can make straight lines
out of almost anything
except for the line
of my upper lip when it curls – Ani

The Significance of “Social Software”

This is an abstract of a paper that i would like to eventually write (although i don’t know for where). In the meantime, i thought i’d throw it up here for critique.

In 2002, Clay Shirky (re)claimed the term “social software” to encompass “all uses of software that supported interacting groups, even if the interaction was offline, e.g. Meetup, nTag, etc.” (Allen). His choice was intentional, because he felt older terms such as “groupware” were either polluted or a bad fit to address certain new technologies. Shirky crafted the term while organizing an event – the “Social Software Summit” – intended to gather like minds to talk about this kind of technology.

Although Shirky’s definition can encompass a wide array of technologies, those invited to the Summit were invested in the development of new genres of social technologies. In many ways, the term took on the scope of that community, referring only to the kinds of technologies emerging from the Summit attendees, their friends and their identified community.

The term proliferated within this community and spread on all fronts where this community regularly exercises its voice, most notably the blogosphere and various events, including the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference (Etcon). These gatherings, most notably the social software track at Etcon serve to reinforce the notion that social software primarily refers to a particular set of new technologies, often through the exclusion of research on older technologies.

Although social software events include only limited technologies, people continue to define the term broadly. Shirky often uses the succinct “stuff worth spamming” (Shirky, 10/6/2004) while Tom Coates notes that “Social Software can be loosely defined as software which supports, extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour – message-boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking” (Coates, 1/5/05).

Given the emergence of blogging over the last few years and the large audiences of many involved in the community of social software, this term and its definitional efforts have spread widely, much to the dismay – if not outrage – of some. The primary argument is that social software is simply a hyped term used by the blogosphere in order to make a phenomenon out of something that always was; there are no technological advances in social software – it’s just another term that encompasses “groupware,” “computer-mediated communication,” “social computing” and “sociable media.” Embedded in this complaint is an argument that social software is simply a political move to separate the technologists from the researchers and the elevate one set of practices over another. Shirky’s term is undoubtedly political in that it rejects other terms and, in doing so, implicitly rejects the researchers as irrelevant.

While the term social software may be contested, it is undeniable that this community has created a resurgence of interest in a particular set of sociable technologies inciting everyone from the media to entrepreneurs, venture capitalists to academics to pay attention. What is questionable, and often the source of dismissal from researchers, is whether or not the social software community has contributed any innovations or intellectual progress.

In this paper, I will explore the contributions of social software. I will argue that there have been notable technological advancements, but that their significance stems from the rapid iteration of development in ongoing tango with massive user participation. In other words, the advances of social software are neither cleanly social nor technological, but a product of both.

I will explicitly address three case studies central to the narrow scope of social software – Friendster, blogging and Flickr. I will discuss how tagging, audience management (such as ACLs) and articulated social networks are neither technological advances nor social features, but emerge as a product of collective action and network affects. While parts of these technologies have been built in research, the actual advances are impossible to construct in a laboratory due to the sociological effects necessary for maturation.

Social software represents a new generation of social technology development – a generation that is dependent on moving beyond the laboratory and into mass culture. Its manifestations are already staggering – ABC declared 2004 the Year of the Blog as blogging challenged everything from political discourse to identity production. Social networking services in the hundreds have motivated millions of people worldwide to construct and negotiate profiles and grapple directly with the social awkwardness of being more public than one thought. By allowing people to easily stumble upon the work of others, media sharing services have prompted new ways of organizing information and playing with the intention of producing media. These advancements complicate critical theoretical ideas about the nature of the public(s), the role of relationships in sharing, and the collective desire to organize information.

In this paper, I will explicate those advances and unpack their implications both for digital social life and for our shared knowledge project. I will also argue that technological research’s unwillingness to account for the advances, contributions and challenges of social software have significantly limited their own advancements. While social software’s advances must be acknowledged, I will also present some of the limitations of the current approach – namely its inability to fully understand the sociological implications of its advancements. Reflexive failures limit the potential of social software since so much of its significance comes from the interplay between the technology and the use. Herein lies a question of our responsibility as researchers – when should we simply study these emergent technologies and when she we directly involve ourselves with the iteration?

Allen, Christopher. 2004, October 13. “Tracing the Evolution of Social Software” _Life with Alacrity_.

Shirky, Clay. 2004, October 6. “Blog Explosion and Insider’s Club: Brothers in cluelessness.” _Many-to-Many_.

Coates, Tom. 2005, January 5. “An addendum to a definition of Social Software.” _Plasticbag.org_.

updated the Ani site

Somehow, whenever finals come around, i find myself going through the bazillion lyrics corrections that people send me for the Ani DiFranco lyrics site. Usually, i’m much better at getting the new songs up but this semester has kicked my ass and i found myself putting up five new songs tonite, many of which have been out for a while. Still, thank you to everyone who has written with corrections and new lyrics! I really appreciate it!

The new songs are:
– All of Nothing
– Decree
– Millennium Theater
– Spade
– 78% Water

I’m particularly fond of the three political songs – Decree, Millenium Theater and Spade.

digital whiplash
so many formats so little time
while out in TV nation
under darkening skies
the resistance is just waiting
to be organized — Millennium Theater

seeking early Friendster screenshots

When i started “studying” Friendster, i wasn’t studying it. I wasn’t in school and i had vowed never to go back. By the time i started back in school, i had stopped studying it. The result is that while i have amazing amounts of data, i was not very good at collecting all of the data that i would like to have. One of the things that i’m missing is screenshots from early days of the service, such as when there was a popularity contest on the front page. Does anyone have a collection of screenshots of various Fakesters, front pages, anything? I would be stoked if anyone could send me any material they have from 2003 – friendster [at] danah.org

identity crisis: the curse/joy of being interdisciplinary and the future of academia

“Who’s the future?” It was a simple question that my friend asked but it has now bugged me for months. He wanted to know who the future of academia is, who will shift academia as the likes of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Nietzsche, Heidegger, etc. We started thinking of current scholars who really made huge shifts in academia – Butler, Haraway, … There are some brilliant scholars out there, folks who have really dove in and clarified an area of academia, developed new algorithms, etc. but have not really exploded the intellectual sphere. The last big explosion was really the French scholars circling around in 1968. Of course, there was a lot going on that year, a lot of reasons to really rethink everything.

As the conversation unfolded, we started talking about interdisciplinarity being the key to the next intellectual shift. The problem with disciplines is that they’re too narrow and all you can do is improve in one little niche arena. The key to intellectual shifts is the key to creativity. Ronald Burt talks about how social network bridges are super creative because they draw on ideas from disparate parts of the network. Of course, this is why i love the idea of apophenia – making connections where none previously existed. It’s all about building synaptic connections between things that were otherwise unconnected.

So, i’ve attended 10 job talks this semester in two purportedly interdisciplinary departments. I have to say, i’ve been utterly disappointed. Each scholar talked about a very very niche body of research that, at best, simply didn’t fit into other disciplines. None were revolutionarily new ways of thinking, not even close. These were job talks at a premier academic institution and some of the candidates couldn’t even make an argument. Only one did i really think that i would learn quite a bit by (although i disagreed with the premise of his argument and thought that he was fantastically utopian in his understanding of sousveillance). Why aren’t there scholars right now who make my jaw drop?

I think that it’s hard to be interdisciplinary. I think everyone *wants* to be interdisciplinary but that seems to mean draw haphazardly from different disciplines, throw into the blender, add a few spices and voila interdisciplinary gazpacho. I want a chemical reaction dammit.

The problem with being interdisciplinary is it that means staying in a state of perpetual identity crisis. I think that this is fundamentally hard for academics. Many of us grew up as ostracized freaks and geeks and felt such glory in fitting in. There’s something desperately comforting about fitting it, about being amongst peers. Staying in-between, outside and perpetually bridging any dichotomous definitions is exhausting. I think about how many people i know who identify as someone in-between (fe)male but eventually chose to identify as one or the other. Alternatively, i think about inter-racial identities and how some of my friends happily proclaim the identity of hapa. When no identity out there works, you end up developing a new one. Of course, this happens in academia all the time. There are new interdisciplinary departments popping up daily in academia.

Of course, what does this solve? Most of the times, interdisciplinary schools spend years trying to resolve their identity. I’ve taken place in plenty of these conversations because they’re intellectually engaging – what is information? what is hci? what is performance? what is new media? They never actually get resolved.

I think that i relish staying in a perpetual state of identity crisis. Well, i go back and forth. Sometimes, i desperately want a cohort, a community. But every time a journalist asks me how to label me, i laugh. I’m certainly not a computer scientist any more. I’m definitely not a librarian and while i can swallow labels like sociologist and anthropologist, i’m sure that everyone who actually identifies as such rolls over in their graves when they see that label placed on me. Maybe my label should be a symbol – i can be the Prince of academia.

So, if i think about what the next revolution in academia will be, it will have to be interdisciplinary. It will not be possible to label the next round of revolutionary scholars and they won’t be trapped up in conversations and defining disciplines or securing methods. You still can’t really label Foucault and if you talk about his methods, it all gets very hairy. I like to say that he does hypertext. But seriously, who is the next Foucault? Who will help me see the world from an entirely new perspective? And what is the future of being interdisciplinary?

“Move Over Friendster…”

One of my favorite aspects about MySpace is how little attention it has gotten during the whole YASNS thing. It has in many ways grown organically, based on actual networks, usage and whatnot. It is far less of a fad than any of the other services because those who joined it weren’t doing so because of mainstream fad behavior.

So, waking up to the Mercury News exclaiming Move over, Friendster. There’s a hotter site on the Web made me ROFL. Hotter? To who? By what standard?

If you follow this space, you know that MySpace has had more traffic than Friendster for a long time. They have fewer accounts, more loyalty, more freedom and generally a much more youth-friendly culture. Their popularity is mostly amongst users who never got into the fad of Friendster: goth kids, indie rock kids and youth. In the last six months, most of the urban teens i talk to talk about MySpace. If you’re in college, you’re on Facebook but if you’re in high school, you’re probably on MySpace. The only reason to say “Move Over Friendster” is because Friendster never really recovered its hyped status in the States and while its popularity overseas continues to grow, the media here has declared it a fad.

I must say that it’s funny to see things circle back again and again in this space. Was this was the Boom was like?

crashing Tiger, hidden dragons

I should know better than to upgrade things. I was all proud of myself for succeeding in getting Tiger working, no problem. I had heard all of the Mail.app problems but given that i had already destroyed Mail.app on my Mac and had never succeeded in getting it working, i didn’t let this bother me – i’m still using pine. I love the Dashboard, i love the iCal/Addressbook connections. I still don’t get Safari RSS but so it goes. Everything seemed fine, seemed totally cool…. And then it didn’t….

Firefox and Safari both seem to crawl trying to load pages and i can’t figure out why. OK. This is irritating but so what. And then the worst thing happened. I can’t print. I try to print from Preview or Word and down they go, crash bang booom death. Why? Why on earth can’t i print to any IP printserver? It reminds me of when i used to crash the fileserver using Photoshop – it just crashes the program and doesn’t explain why or what’s going on. Grrrr. Is anyone else having this problem?

activism and violence

This afternoon, an activist friend of mine who has been very involved in Critical Mass approached me concerning my stance. Unfortunately, due to the context of our interaction, the conversation escalated unnecessarily and i found myself unable to articulate my feelings. So instead, i brought them home to chew on.

Her key points are all exceptionally valid and i agree with her wholeheartedly:

1) Critical Mass is an “open source” activity where you cannot have a central organization with rules.
2) Many people have had their eyes opened by Critical Mass to the issues of bicycles in cities, probably more than have been negatively impacted.
3) Cars exercise violence on bicycles every day – running them off the road, not looking when opening doors; car culture also exercises power through the law and norms.

The combination of her points helped me clarify where i stand on activism in general these days and why the situation on Friday still upsets me.

I am definitely one of those people who had my eyes opened by Critical Mass’ activities – i learned a lot more about biking laws, situations through 2nd hand accounts of their activities. Having lived in Amsterdam, i’m perpetually horrified by the car power that goes on in this country and i’m very much supportive of non-hierarchical structures of change.

All that said, i can never ever support violence. At the core of my body, i cannot accept violence because violence has been committed against you. I will never forget being 13 and deciding to not punch back as one of my classmates threw punches at me. Nothing would be gained by returning the blows – only increased hostility, a deepening of sides and an increase in intolerance. I cannot support activism that permits violence as one if its tenants. I was so disgusted by some of my classmates who felt as though they became activists when they brawled with the police; at the last protest i went to, i gave the police donuts and talked to them about the protest from their perspective.

No matter how much i believe in revolution, no matter how much i want to see changes made, i can’t accept moving in that direction through deplorable means. I also cannot support pack behavior on either side – what the crowd does under and umbrella name is often terrifying. As much as there are thousands of non-violent Critical Massers, the idea that the name and event has a violent side to it is enough to alienate me. I can’t stand behind events that accepts violence as even a minority group or where that group has the right to use the name to instigate their pack behavior. I think that this is how folks who would believe in the cause of anti-WTO folks get alienated by the violent protests.

As much as i appreciate my friends’ point that i should not disrespect a movement for the behaviors of some, i have a hard time actually feeling that way. Those few aggressive voices go far which is why they need to be actively squelched in a non-violent movement – the two cannot go hand in hand.

How can we move forward activism that doesn’t use violence? Am i a fool for thinking that’s possible and for not supporting groups that allow violence to occur?

Vizster

When Jeff Heer and i started talking about Friendster, we talked extensively about the practices of users – what they were trying to do, why, how, etc. Jeff used my ethnographic findings to build a visualization of Friendster that would enable users’ practices while giving them a new view of the data at hand. We used my data and his data (everything that was visible to our accounts last year) on top of Prefuse to build an interactive visualization that we deployed at Liquidate. The result is beautiful and those who were very active Friendster users found the tool utterly fascinating as they reinvestigated their networks. Of course, those who were never impressed by Friendster simply saw Vizster as another pretty toy. My favorite quote from one of our non-heavy users in the user studies was “Friendster gives you your two hours of fun, and this doubles it.”

Anyhow, it’s a great experiment in the ways in which visualizations can be connected to ethnographic work and then reinserted into the community. For those interested in more, here’s the Info Viz paper we submitted and the Vizster project page.