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June 27, 2007

Dear esteemed members of the press,

Dear esteemed members of the press,

I am in the field collecting data and then will be attending a conference. I am not able to respond right now. Do not call my house phone. Do not pester my department. And do *NOT* hound my subletter. All press inquiries should be sent to press [at] danah.org. When I can, I respond. When I can't, I don't. Do not use other email addresses - I check the press one from my phone and answer them in order when I have spare cycles. Other requests are typically ignored.

The BBC coverage of my blog essay is hugely problematic. If you want to discuss what I've written, please read the essay itself. This is not a formal report. This is a blog essay based on observations from the field. And this is not a 6-month study; it is a 4-year study with a tide shift that I've noticed in the last 6 months. Again, read the essay. At some point, I will turn this into a formal article, but this is not that. Cover it as you see fit, but do not call it a report.

Thank you,
THE MANAGEMENT

Category: reflections & rants

Posted by zephoria at 8:12 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack (0)

knowledge access as a public good

Over at the Britannica Blog, Michael Gorman (the former president of the American Library Association) wrote a series of posts concerning web2.0. In short, he's against it and thinks everything to do with web2.0 and Wikipedia is bad bad bad. A handful of us were given access to the posts before they were posted and asked to craft responses. The respondents are scholars and thinkers and writers of all stripes (including my dear friend and fellow M2M blogger Clay Shirky). Because I addressed all of his arguments at once, my piece was held to be released in the final week of the public discussion. And that time is now. So enjoy!

• Michael Gorman's commentary
• My response

Below is a copy of the response I wrote over at Britannica:

As a child, I believed that all educated people were wise. In particular, I placed educators and authorities on a high pedestal and I entered the academy both to seek their wisdom and to become one of them. Unfortunately, eleven years of higher education has taught me that parts of the academy is rife with many of the same problems that plague society as a whole: greed, self-absorbtion, addiction to power, and an overwhelming desire to be validated, praised, and rewarded. As Dr. Gorman laments the ills of contemporary society, I find myself nodding along. Doing ethnographic work in the United States often leaves me feeling disillusioned and numb. It breaks my heart every time a teenager tells me that s/he is more talented than Sanjaya and thus is guaranteed a slot on the next "American Idol."

The pervasive view that American society is a meritocracy makes me want to scream, but I fear as though my screams fall on deaf ears.

To cope with my frustration, I often return to my bubble. My friends all seem to come from Lake Wobegon where "the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average." I have consciously surrounded myself with people who think like me, share my values, and are generally quite overeducated. I feel very privileged to live in such an environment, but like all intellectuals who were educated in the era of identity politics, I am regularly racked with guilt over said privilege.

The Internet is a funny thing, especially now that those online are not just the connected elite. It mirrors and magnifies the offline world - all of the good, bad, and ugly. I don't need to travel to Idaho to face neo-Nazis. I don't need to go to Colorado Springs to hear religious views that contradict my worldivew. And I don't need to go to Capitol Hill to witness the costs of power for power's sake.

If I am willing to look, there are places on the Internet that will expose me to every view on this planet, even those that I'd prefer to pretend did not exist. Most of the privileged people that I know prefer to live like ostriches, ignoring the realities of everyday life in order to sustain their privileges. I am trying not to be that person, although I find it to be a challenge.

In the 16th century, Sir Francis Bacon famously wrote that "knowledge is power." Not surprisingly, institutions that profit off of knowledge trade in power. In an era of capitalism, this equation often gets tainted by questions of profitability. Books are not published simply because they contain valued and valid information; they are published if and when the publisher can profit off of the sale of those books. Paris Hilton stands a far better chance of getting a publishing deal than most astute and thought-provoking academics. Even a higher education is becoming more inaccessible to more people at a time when a college degree is necessary to work in a cafe. $140,000 for a college education is a scary proposition, even if you want to enter the ratrace of the white collar mega-corporations where you expect to make a decent salary. Amidst this environment, it frustrates me to hear librarians speak about information dissemination while they create digital firewalls that lock people out of accessing knowledge unless they have the right academic credentials.

I entered the academy because I believe in knowledge production and dissemination. I am a hopeless Marxist. I want to equal the playing field; I want to help people gain access to information in the hopes that they can create knowledge that is valuable for everyone. I have lost faith in traditional organizations leading the way to mass access and am thus always on the lookout for innovative models to produce and distribute knowledge.

Unlike Dr. Gorman, Wikipedia brings me great joy. I see it as a fantastic example of how knowledge can be distributed outside of elite institutions. I have watched stubs of articles turn into rich homes for information about all sorts of subjects. What I like most about Wikipedia is the self-recognition that it is always a work-in- progress. The encyclopedia that I had as a kid was a hand-me-down; it stated that one day we would go to the moon. Today, curious poor youth have access to information in an unprecedented way. It may not be perfect, but it is far better than a privilege-only model of access.

Knowledge is not static, but traditional publishing models assume that it can be captured and frozen for consumption. What does that teach children about knowledge? Captured knowledge makes sense when the only opportunity for dissemination is through distributing physical artifacts, but this is no longer the case. Now that we can get information to people faster and with greater barriers, why should we support the erection of barriers?

In middle school, I was sent to the principal's office for correcting a teacher's math. The issue was not whether or not I was correct - I was; I was ejected from class for having the gall to challenge authority. Would Galileo have been allowed to write an encyclopedia article? The "authorities" of his day rejected his scientific claims. History has many examples of how the vetting process has failed us. Imagine all of the knowledge that was produced that was more successfully suppressed by authorities. In the era of the Internet, gatekeepers have less power. I don't think that this is always a bad thing.

Like paper, the Internet is a medium. People express a lot of crap through both mediums. Yet, should we denounce paper as inherently flawed? The Internet - and Wikipedia - change the rules for distribution and production. It means that those with knowledge do not have to retreat to the ivory towers to share what they know. It means that individuals who know something can easily share it, even when they are not formally declared as experts. It means that those with editing skills can help the information become accessible, even if they only edit occasionally. It means that multi-lingual individuals can help get information to people who speak languages that publishers do not consider worth their time. It means that anyone with an Internet connection can get access to information traditionally locked behind the gates of institutions (and currently locked in digital vaults).

Don't get me wrong - Wikipedia is not perfect. But why do purported experts spend so much time arguing against it rather than helping make it a better resource? It is free! It is accessible! Is it really worth that much prestige to write an encyclopedia article instead of writing a Wikipedia entry? While there are certainly errors there, imagine what would happen if all of those who view themselves as experts took the time to make certain that the greatest and most broad-reaching resource was as accurate as possible.

I believe that academics are not just the producers of knowledge - they are also teachers. As teachers, we have an ethical responsibility to help distribute knowledge. We have a responsibility to help not just the 30 people in our classroom, but the millions of people globally who will never have the opportunity to sit in one of our classes. The Internet gives us the tool to do this. Why are we throwing this opportunity away? Like Dr. Gorman, I don't believe that all crowds are inherently wise. But I also don't believe that all authorities are inherently wise. Especially not when they are vying for tenure.

Why are we telling our students not to use Wikipedia rather than educating them about how Wikipedia works? Sitting in front of us is an ideal opportunity to talk about how knowledge is produced, how information is disseminated, how ideas are shared. Imagine if we taught the "history" feature so that students would have the ability to track how a Wikipedia entry is produced and assess for themselves what the authority of the author is. You can't do this with an encyclopedia. Imagine if we taught students how to fact check claims in Wikipedia and, better yet, to add valuable sources to a Wikipedia entry so that their work becomes part of the public good.

Herein lies a missing piece in Dr. Gorman's puzzle. The society that he laments has lost faith in the public good. Elitism and greed have gotten in the way. By upholding the values of the elite, Dr. Gorman is perpetuating views that are destroying efforts to make knowledge a public good. Wikipedia is a public-good project. It is the belief that division of labor has value and that everyone has something to contribute, if only a spelling correction. It is the belief that all people have the inalienable right to knowledge, not just those who have academic chairs. It is the belief that the powerful have no right to hoard the knowledge. And it is the belief that people can and should collectively help others gain access to information and knowledge.

Personally, I hold these truths to be self-evident, and I'd rather see us put in the effort to make Wikipedia an astounding resource that can be used by all people than to try to dismantle it simply because it means change.

Category: web2.0

Tags: gorman britannica wikipedia

Posted by zephoria at 12:15 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

June 25, 2007

woah.... omg. reflections on mega-viewership

Wow. ::jaw on floor:: When I posted my article last night, I sent it to some friends and academic lists figuring that it would stir a conversation. I figured that some usual suspects would read it and offer valuable critiques. I was not expected Slashdot, Digg, Metafilter, del.icio.us/popular, Reddit, and other aggregators to pick it up.

Meme flow on the web intrigues me. When I post a well-thought out, well-written analysis, I get a few thousands hits and maybe a BoingBoing mention. So far, I've received 90K hits for this latest piece, the most problematic of essays I've ever shared publicly. Figures.

I know that there are problems in that essay (and I tried to caveat and caveat away till I annoyed myself). So I am not surprised that folks are up in arms about all sorts of things. Still, the response is fascinating. I guess there's nothing like something problematic to get a conversation started, eh?

I can't decide if the response is good or bad. I'm clearly getting raked through the coals by lots of folks from lots of different perspectives. I actually find this quite constructive and helpful. I'm getting a lot of feedback from teens, parents, teachers, youth ministers, and other non-tech audiences which is extremely thought provoking. The feedback varies tremendously in tone and content. Some folks are saying I'm completely right; some are telling me I'm dead wrong. The latter clearly gives me an opportunity to follow up with folks that I'm not representing well and I hope that it'll be a chance to learn what I'm missing.

I think some folks misinterpreted this piece as an academic article. No doubt this is based on my observations from the field, but this is by no means an academic article. I did add some methodological footnotes in the piece so that folks would at least know where the data was coming from. But I didn't situate or theorize or contextualize this at all. It's more like publicizing field observations. There's much work to be done before this can be anything resembling an academic article. The "citation" note at the top of my pieces also confuses this. That was meant for when people picked it up and stole it whole from my page or when people got to it indirectly. I put that as a standard for my blog essays a while back because of this issue. I guess I see my blog as a space to work out half-formed ideas. I just didn't expect 90K people to read it. Blog essays to me are thoughts in progress, blog entries that are too long to be blog entries. But I can see where there's confusion.

I also clearly pissed off the academics by inappropriately appropriating academic terms in an attempt to demarcate groups. I intentionally picked two that have a political valence meant to hit at some of the crunchiness; I went back and forth with terms and decided to repurpose academic ones since they work as better metaphors than most everyday terms that I could think of. For example, I hate how poorer populations or marginalized populations are always framed as powerless so I appropriated an academic term ("subaltern") that comes from post-colonial studies when work was done to give power to the voices of subaltern soldiers in India. Still, I want better terms and am hoping someone has suggestions.

I'm still wading through the responses. I'm still floored by the responses. I've been in the air and offline all day so I haven't had a chance to go through everything. But in the next few days I will and I will respond. And I *really* appreciate the feedback and critique. I think some good can come out of this unbelievable feedback.

I also need to get my head around the fact that sharing something problematic has sparked more of a conversation and reflection than being precise. In some senses, this bothers me. At the same time, inciting people to think is exactly what I want. So I am feeling very bewildered. Is the way to make change to present something problematic so that people have to engage by disagreeing? Hmm..

More soon...

Category: reflections & rants

Posted by zephoria at 6:35 PM | Comments (65) | TrackBack (0)

June 24, 2007

viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

Over the last six months, i've noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That's only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it's not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Which go where gets kinda sticky, because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.

I've been trying to figure out how to articulate this division for months. I have not yet succeeded. So, instead, I decided to write a blog essay addressing what I'm seeing. I suspect that this will be received with criticism, but my hope is that the readers who encounter this essay might be able to help me think through this. In other words, I want feedback on this piece.

What I lay out in this essay is rather disconcerting. Hegemonic American teens (i.e. middle/upper class, college bound teens from upwards mobile or well off families) are all on or switching to Facebook. Marginalized teens, teens from poorer or less educated backgrounds, subculturally-identified teens, and other non-hegemonic teens continue to be drawn to MySpace. A class division has emerged and it is playing out in the aesthetics, the kinds of advertising, and the policy decisions being made.

Please check out this essay and share your thoughts in the comments.

Update: I wrote a response to the critiques concerning this essay. My hope is that this will help clarify various issues people raised.

Category: yasns

Tags: facebook myspace class youth

Posted by zephoria at 4:36 PM | Comments (318) | TrackBack (0)

June 23, 2007

"Sicko", Barack, and Danny Pearl

The last two days have been a complete trip. I woke up yesterday expecting to drive to Hartford to prep for my speech when i realized that New York was two hours from Hartford (or so i thought because i forgot about traffic) so i decided to "swing by" New York to see the premier of Michael Moore's new film "Sicko." I had watched a bunch of it online but i really wanted to see it live with people and i'm *so* glad i did. I made it to Manhattan in time to catch the 7:45 showing. Little did i know, Michael Moore was in the audience seeing how people would react. The women behind me "uh huhed" and "oh yeahed" and "you go girled" the whole way through - i think they approved. The audience loved it. I loved it. "Sicko" is hands down Michael Moore's best film to date and i strongly encourage everyone to get out there and see it next weekend for opening. For those who don't know how the film industry works, opening weekend means the world. How many tickets are sold that weekend dictate how long the film can be in the theaters. So if you watched it online, just buy a ticket for next weekend to show solidarity and support. It's critical that this film get seen far and wide in the US, or at least far enough for folks to make a stink.

Personally, this film is very important to me. As many of you know, i broke my neck when i was 16 in a freak accident. I didn't have health insurance. It cost $88K. That debt still haunts me. I wasn't able to get the right physical therapy because of money. My neck still causes me problems on a daily basis. I'm not eligible for independent health insurance and my fear of being uninsured makes me panic about a post-grad school future. I have often wondered who i would marry to get insured. There is no one to blame but when i had my accident, everyone told me to sue the school because of the medical costs. I couldn't justify this in my own conscience. It kills me that every accident requires someone to blame or else you aren't covered. I don't want to live in that kind of a society.

Luckily, i think that there's a health care theme going on in discourse these days. This morning, i had the great fortune of hearing Barack Obama speak at the United Church of Christ's Synod in Hartford (where i had the honor of speaking about why youth are using social network sites). It was truly inspiring to see Barack speak in person and he got a standing ovation when he announced that he would sign a universal health care plan into existence in his first four years should he be elected. He really energized the audience and it made me smile to see so much optimism (without the pure politicking) in a candidate.

After yapping with folks all day, i realized i needed to zone out or i was going to completely lose it so i went to see A Mighty Heart. I can't say the movie was brilliant, but it was good to see Angelina connect her politics to her films and the story of Danny Pearl is just heartwrenching.

Oh and while i'm being all daily life documentary here, apologies for the low blogging levels lately... i've been running around more chaotically than normal (even for me). I gave up this month and subletted my apartment. I will be traveling at near continuous levels between now and November 1. On the plus side, starting in November, i will be locking myself in my apartment (no conferences, no talks, no consulting) to write. The light at the end of the tunnel is starting to appear and i can't tell you how excited i am to begin writing the dissertation/book. I suspect to be gone from public life between November and June but i also suspect that i will be blogging more (as being locked up in my apartment tends to encourage that). But i will give you more updates on that as things progress. I hope everyone is well!

Oh, and go see Sicko!!! Pretty please!

Category: reflections & rants

Tags: sicko barackobama health insurance

Posted by zephoria at 9:39 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

June 17, 2007

Vodafone Receiver #18

I am happy to share that the folks at Vodafone Receiver decided to mashup some of my blog entries and my AAAS talk for their Issue #18. The piece, called Socializing digitally won't be new to many of you, but i still find it exciting to see a morphed version of my writings. What's even cooler is that it's published alongside some work that i think is uber cool. The other pieces in this issue are:

• Phone Call (interview with The Faint)
• Homecasting – video-sharing as a cultural practice (by José van Dijck)
• Connected strategies for connecting homes (by Mark Newman)
• Keeping things simple (by John Seely Brown)
• Appliances evolve (by Mike Kuniavsky)
• How users take communication technologies home (by Leslie Haddon)
• The new television (by Louise Barkhuus)
• Pleasant, personalized, portable – the future of domotic design (by Fausto Sainz de Salces)

My apologies for everyone for the sound on my piece. This is not my fault. And i agree that it sucks that you can't turn it off. For those with a sound aversion, here's a PDF version of my piece

Category: academic

Posted by zephoria at 11:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 13, 2007

let the stalking begin

I regularly receive press releases from companies that i promptly delete as a new form of spam. Today, i received one that stopped me in my tracks:

You can now load software in your kids' BlackBerry and/or cell phone that will be your watchdog (to prevent them from being approached by someone potentially trying to molest them)

How it works -- the program will send the parents a text message when a foreign IM, text message or e-mail comes into their child's phone or PDA (anyone not on an approved phone contact list).

The concept was thought of by Bob Lotter, a software publisher in Orange County, because he was so alarmed to learn that 56% of kids receive unwanted cell or PDA solicitations (which they don't tell their parents about). (Sixty percent have been approached.) Lotter has also created a homepage for parents on resources they need to track strangers.

It was a peculiar press release because the company (a known PR agency) did not include any links and i can't find much about Bob Lotter other than he seems to be connected to the scientology world.

I've been waiting for mobile stalking software for a while. We already have GPS-driven stalking software that will let parents figure out where their kids are. (Kids have figured out how to circumnavigate this by sending their phone off with their friends.) And i've met plenty of parents who obsessively scour the phone bill to see who their kids are talking to and for how long. But i'm quite impressed with this new level of parental stalking software.

I'm also absolutely fascinated by the assumption that "your kid" will have a Blackberry and that this software will prevent your kid from being approached by a molester (at first, i thought that the advert was going to be for mace). This software is not about protecting children from strangers that they meet face-to-face - it's about giving parents control over who their kids talk with rather than teaching them how to navigate people. Of course, i can't wait until mobile text message spamming kicks in. Kids will be getting hundreds of messages from people that they don't know and thus their parents will be notified and notified and notified. There's nothing like a bit of spam to make this a complete mess.

Anyhow, this just infuriates me and i can't even offer a proper analysis except to scrunch my face in disgust. As i've written about before, the stats on predators is pretty clear: it's people that children know not strangers. I kinda suspect that the #1 child molester (the parent) is not going to be on the list of people blocked.

Surveillance destroys parent-child relationships - technology does not solve relationship issues. And yet, we keep building technology. Why? Fear sells. These people will inevitably make money off of parent's fears. Le sigh.

Category: youth culture

Tags: mobile surveillance stalking

Posted by zephoria at 10:51 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)

June 7, 2007

The Devil Came on Horseback

After WWII, my grandfather and grandmother moved to Khartoum in what is now Sudan. My aunt was born there but they left before my mother came into the world. My grandfather often told me that political tensions were already rising when he left, but he isn't one for talking details about these things. I've always been quite intrigued (and often disturbed) by what has and is happening in Sudan.

When Bich Ngoc Cao told me that i absolutely must see The Devil Came on Horseback, i decided to take a break from my current state of workaholicism to see it. Her recommendations are usually spot on and this film is mind-blowing. I knew of the atrocities in Darfur, but this film does an astounding job of really personalizing the stories of the people involved. It's deeply disturbing, showing the horrifying images of genocide through the lens of an American Marine Captain who is assigned to document the lives of but not protect the people of Darfur. At one point, he can no longer sit by and watch and so he returns home to the States to rally American politicians. He figures that if they just knew, they would be in there to stop it. Or if the American people just knew, they would make their government do something. As we know, the tragedy in Darfur continues.

On top of the amazing depiction of what is taking place, there's a simple message: raise a fuss, contact your politicians, make them know that you care and that you want them to do something. I am trying to convince myself to believe this could work, although i admit that i'm feeling very disillusioned with our political structure. Still, i do believe that it is important for the American people to understand what is taking place there. This is genocide and it is horrific. People are being brutally murdered because they are of the wrong race. The women are raped and tortured and people are burned alive. And, just like with Rwanda, we have turned a blind eye while China continues to fund this atrocity. I really recommend checking out this movie when it comes to your town (currently, it seems to be on the film festival circuit). Also, check out Save Darfur for more information on what's happening in Darfur.

Category: politics

Tags: darfur film

Posted by zephoria at 4:12 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

June 2, 2007

list of non-english social network sites

I'm trying to track down a list of all major non-English social network sites (definitions below). My interest in collecting this information is for an academic article on social network sites, but i suspect this information would be useful to others as well.

Cyworld: Korean
- launched 1999 as a forum, SNS by 2001
- 20 million accounts (Nov 2006)

Hevre: Hebrew

Lunarstorm: Swedish
- launched 2000
- 1.2 million accounts (Nov 2005)

Mixi: Japanese
- launched 2004 as a diary tool, SNS ?
- ?5.7 million accounts (2004)

StudiVZ: German
- launched in Oct 2005
- 950,000 accounts (Nov 2006)

QQ: Chinese
- launched 1999 as IM, SNS ?
- ?160? million accounts

If you know of ones that i'm missing, could you please add them in the comments? I will update this entry with additions. Ideally, i would also like to know a few things about each non-English site (including the ones above):

• What do they call "Friends" (both natively and English-translation)?
• Do they allow people to comment on the profile?
• When were they launched?
• Approximately how many accounts do they have?
• What is the primary age group that uses it?
• Is there anything significant or unique about the site?

Definitions:

Major: I am looking for the sites that have attracted a core population in that language. They should be relatively large in proportion to the number of speakers of that language. Think MySpace instead of Tagged.

Non-English: I realize that most sites are used by non-English speakers. I'm looking for sites that are dominant in one language where the site's infrastructure is in that language. If there are multiple languages, i want the dominant one (i.e. Cyworld as Korean not Chinese). Sites like orkut are on the fence because while it is an English site, it is the dominant Portuguese site.

Social Network Site: To count as a social network site, the site MUST have 1) a public or friends-only profile system; 2) a publicly articulated list of "Friends" who are also on the system (not blogrolls). Friends must be visible on an individual's profile and it must be possible to traverse the network graph through that list of Friends. If the site does not let you "comment" on Friends' profiles, please indicate that. This is not necessary although it is a common component. I'm not interested in dating sites, community sites, or blogging tools that do not have public profile + friends that are displayed on profiles.

If you have a site that you think fits this, please list it in the comments. The more information you can provide about the site (including links to data but not to the site), the better. I need to confirm these and it's rather hard since i don't speak most languages. Please don't put the site as the URL in your comment - place the name in the actual comment.

Finally, please, i beg you, don't use my comments as a place to advertise your new startup. I hate deleting comments but i will delete posts people make to advertise sites (as i always do). You don't get any Google juice from my comments but you do piss me off.

Category: yasns

Posted by zephoria at 11:22 PM | Comments (47) | TrackBack (0)