Author Archives: zephoria

ethnography, ethics and the Internet

For the last month, a heated discussion has persisted on the mailing list of the Association of Internet Researchers. This list is comprised of researchers interested in studying internet behavior. The discussion began when someone asked about the ethics of data collection while lurking. There is no universally accepted answer on this one and the result was intense. The discussion is still going on and i’d strongly encourage anyone interested in issues of learning from behavior online (business people as well as researchers) to check out the May Archives.

The threads of interest include: “ethnography and ethics”, “ethics of recording publicly observed interactions”, and “Google is watching !”.

* Hallelujah *

::wiping sweat off brow::

What a two weeks it has been. Over 100 pages of text have been written: 2 long essays, 1 ethnography write-up, 1 workshop proposal, 1 panel proposal. 30 students x 3 papers each graded. A conference was hosted. And a slew of odds and ends – interviews, edits, and the like.

Important lessons learned:

Caffeine does not overcome hallucinations. The only thing that remedies hallucinations is sleep. This is quite frustrating when sleep is not really in the deck of cards. Of course, there’s something utterly fun about trying to write text when the text you are writing does not stay still, but floats around the screen. Very hypertextual.

Meatless chicken patties rock. I once lived on ramen soup for 10 days (the 8 for $1 kind – i had no money). To this day, i cannot eat ramen. This time, i lived on meatless chicken patties and burritos. Much better.

A cigarette break is not a celebration. There is nothing more depressing than completing a long essay and having only a cigarette break before moving on to the next one. Celebration is part of the key to relief.

Laptops are not the same as cats. Day 4, i decided that there was no reason to shower or leave my bed. I had 17 books piled on the bed and a stack of papers 8 inches deep. I left the bed to urinate, smoke and eat chicken patties. At the end of the night, i ducked under my covers, not removing any of the items on my bed. On Day 5, i woke up hugging and petting my laptop; i must have mistaked it for Marble. I sat back up in bed and began writing again. Marble meowed.

Blogs are a bigger distraction than IM. You cannot tell blogs to make you feel guilty for looking at them; you can tell friends to make you go back to work, or, because you are screaching at high pitches, they’ll run away. I uninstalled Shrook.

Self-reflection is a recursive curse. My advisor foolishly assigned me to write a self-reflective and reflexive write-up. A person analytic by nature should not turn their power inward; it becomes dangerous. I understand how Moby Dick was written. If you start down the path of description, you hit a point of recursion and it’s turtles all the way down. Why do you never hear reports of anthropologists going insane?

Personal libraries are key. My room looks like the result of a battleground between the Papers and the Books. I’m not sure who won, but there are many casualties. Thank goodness i have a ridiculously sized book collection and a fast internet connection to more references – i never had to leave my room!

Intellectual engagement != working. But boy can you justify it as such. Blessed be my friends who came to check in and brought me external stimulii upon which to thrust my spiraling brain. Somehow, the best conversations about philosophy, politics and religion always happen during finals. There’s something about feeling like you’re thinking intensely so it must be the same as finals to feel refreshed.

No qualitative analysis tool meets my needs. I tried every qual analysis/coding tool i could find for the Mac and was sorely disappointed. My mind is too hypertextual to handle the structure of these tools and yet my memory is not good enough to let me store everything internally. Mucho frustration.

Mountain Dew loves me: they re-released my beloved Tangerine. Last fall, when i learned that Mountain Dew was going to stop distributing the tangerine stuff (orange MD), i had my corner deli order me a few cases; they ran out before finals. When i went to the grocery store this week, i found out that they re-released the tangerine stuff.. and in 2 litre bottles!

Blessed be my mother. My mother is coming in 36 hours to wisk me away to hot tubs, massages, wine and all of the other pleasantries of a spa. For the last two weeks, whenever i felt exhausted and upset, i envisioned my mom arriving for many days of relaxation. Ahhh….

Sleep is not just for the weak. Or else i am weak… because gosh darnit i need it. G’nite.

paying for my sins

Finals are brutal. Particularly when you were as foolish as i was about my semester organization. 6 weeks of travel is brutal on top of 3 intensive classes, TAing (and then grading) 30 students in a fun class about social networking, the bright idea to organize a conference during the weekend between finals and an outstanding CSCW application. ::smacking forehead:: And of course i’m fighting a cruel cold that seems to encourage my body to hold on to jetlag as well.

I vow to be unresponsive. I have uninstalled Shrook. This is my last blog post until i’m through. Must get through. Looking forward to wine and massages with my mother.

Topics on the brain: critical technical practice (Agre) as it applies to HCI’s construction of context; the rhetorical debate between Searle and Derrida over Austin (considerations for interdisciplinary research); ethnographic write-up on negotiating audience; design considerations for digital identity representation.

Shrek 2 is stunning

Go see Shrek 2 when it is released on May 19 – it is stunning.

I love movies and i often see them opening night. When given the opportunity, i love going to movie premiers. Of course, the only movie premiers that i’m ever invited to are the ones with computer graphics in them. This doesn’t bother me because i love an audience full of geeks and/or animators. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the geek premier of Shrek 2. I admit, i was a little worried because a sequel is often horrifying. But, omg, i was totally impressed.

Not only is the storyline better than the last round (deeper connections to fairie tales, more nuanced relationships, greater opportunity for multiple textual readings), but the graphics just took another leap forward. I’ve never seen hair look so good, the lighting in particular; it’s starting to look actually porous. Speaking of porous, the skin, oh the skin. It’s been nine years since the baby in Toy Story scared us all into thinking that CG and humans were not meant to go together. PDI really took that baton and the increased improvement in skin makes all the difference. The subtle details really come through. Take pupil dilation – there’s so much information in pupil dilation.

This is not to say that it’s perfect – there are definitely flaws and room for improvement. But i’m definitely impressed. Of course, i will never forget what Ed Catmull told me when i was starting to work in computer graphics, roughly: “The CG may be great, but without a good storyline, the CG doesn’t matter.” In Shrek 2, the graphics just fade into the background.

Anyhow, definitely go see it opening weekend. (Remember: opening weekend box office receipts are often what determines the duration of the movie and they’re a really important indicator of support to the creators.)

Shrek 2 Trailer

Friendster’s plethora of high school students

Recently, i’ve been getting lots of SMS-style emails from people about Friendster. Usually, this means that they’re teens. So, i went in and did a search in Friendster for ages 61-71 in California with pictures within 3 degrees. Almost 1000 hits. Doing the same search in Singapore, i found over 600 hits. All teens.

They’re all underage (and it seems as though the most popular age to choose these days is 69). What surprises me is the emergence of Fakester High Schools (in order to collect all of those from the same HS). I’m stunned that Friendster was so vigilant in going after Fakesters because it was ruining search and they weren’t viable customers, but they ignore the Fakesters that could open them up to hefty legal suits.

I also got a great report from Singapore that students are creating images of their HS teachers to write testimonials about how horrible they are. Looking at a few of them, interests include things like “Shouting at ppl, Confiscating balls especially soccer balls, Catch students who are late for school.” Testimonials include things like “_|_ u sux! may ur dick not be wif u!”

A quick perusal of Friendster produced more Fakesters than i saw in the Fakester hayday. I find it utterly ironic – fakesters and teens everywhere and the early adopters are no longer participating. It seems as though their efforts to configure the users didn’t work so well. (Of course, today’s apathy is easy to explain… the Fakesters and teens aren’t nearly as visible to the friends and FoF of those in the Valley as they were 9 months ago.)

Erowid(s) bio/history

The Vaults of Erowid is the quintessential site for understanding everything about psychoactive substances, from their chemical structure to their effects on humans. Run by Earth and Fire Erowid, this site is dedicated to operate as a library of information on psychoactives. I have so much respect for the Erowids, who are constantly fighting trouble to get out information to the masses, to educate. Thus, i was ecstatic to find a bio on the Erowids in in the LA Weekly today. (Simultaneously, i was disheartened to hear that they are running out of money.)

Genevieve has a profile in the NYTimes

Today, in the NYTimes Circuit section, there is a profile of Genevieve Bell (a dear friend and mentor). As a anthropologist at Intel, Genevieve has been traveling the world to understand how different cultures consume technology. In turn, she has been challenging Western assumptions, most notably in areas concerning ubiquitous computing.

“We thought, there’s a group of people just like us all over the world who will buy the technology and have it fill the same values in their lives,” Dr. Bell said. “I was fairly certain that wasn’t going to be the case. I’m an anthropologist. Culture matters.”

Blogging out of context

Reflecting on Matt Webb’s post on designing social software, Ryan Shaw realized the significance of one of his lines: “Outside the context of [their creation], most of the weblog posts just don’t make any sense.” He argues that this is a pretty damning criticism of blogging as a serious alternative to journalism.

If i think of my own posts, very few are ever written to be used elsewhere. They are set of rambling commentaries based on what’s in my head and the only relevant context is me. The information that is useful to others is often the information that is part of an ongoing dialogue. Of course, it’s frustrating when you try to collect those thoughts. They require a massive rewrite to be truly valuable long-standing. What is it about this format that doesn’t permit us to collect our efforts into a coherent package? I mean, for centuries, professors turned lectures into books. Of course, they required editing too.

I don’t think of what i’m doing as journalism, but i do recognize the problems with persistence of information. As far as whether or not this is a damning critique…. i wonder if journalism is better off in a dialogue? I wonder if that means it’s a different kind of journalism? I mean, as much as i go back and read old newspapers, the information has a social/political context that’s really hard to get when you read back. So, even if the text makes sense, that doesn’t mean a lot isn’t lost. (Ah, Benjamin on translation….)

Vizster: beautiful YASNS visualizations

For his visualization class final project, Jeff Heer created Vizster, a visualization tool for online social networks. The tool allows you to explore the network and color-code the data to make easy comparisons. It’s built on top of Jeff’s toolkit called Prefuse.

(PS: Vizster is not currently available for download and Jeff is on a well-deserved vacation so don’t bug him until June. But definitely check out his other projects)