initial impression of Yahoo 360

Today, Yahoo invited a handful of “influencers” to have early access to their new product 360 degrees. Apparently, i’m one of them so i got to sit around a table at Yahoo, learn about the product and speak my mind. I have to say that i’m impressed that Yahoo folks wanted to hear all of our crankiness head-on rather than waiting for it to appear in our random ramblings online. Even better: they didn’t make us sign any NDAs so we can blog all we want. I lurve that.

So, the tool comes out in like a week. I don’t know how final the version that we saw today is, but i thought i’d offer some impressions based on what i saw since i know folks out there are curious.

360 will be invite-only but they are not seeding through employees, rather, they are seeding through active Yahoo users. This is actually very important because frankly, 360 isn’t meant for people like me (or like you). It’s meant for your average not-technically inclined individual who is scared of blogging but wants to share their thoughts, photos, and recommendations with their friends. Thus, before we all get into a blogizzy, it’s important to remember the target.

The feature set that i saw included integrated YIM, a blogging tool, a recommendations engine (linked to local), photos (linked to Y photos, not Flickr) and a social network. It’s all very integrated and emphasizes Yahoo products (although they were talking about connecting it with other products and they are doing some RSS stuff). Throughout all of this are heavy controls for privacy/publication, although it is all strict categorization schemes where you can make things available to groups (think: LJ).

Of course, it has all of the social problems of bi-directional, articulated social networks (nothing solved there). And the controls are really overwhelming. In fact, a lot of the product is overwhelming for the not-technically-savvy and i think that this will be their major problem unless they figure out how to slowly expose things (one of our strongest recommendations). For the techgeek, it will feel like they didn’t go far enough, didn’t have enough features, etc. That’s actually a lot easier to solve than the overwhelming problem and i expect they’ll build new features soon so i think that the techgeeks should wait. But i’m really worried about the novice user because it has many of the problems of blogging, privacy and social networks rolled into one big problem. Plus, you really need to be heavily integrated into the Yahoo network for it to really make sense.

Frankly, i think that they should take the word “blog” out of the picture entirely. While the service allows you to share your materials with layered groups of friends, the term ‘blog’ is intimidating to the mainstream who see it as publishing or otherwise uber-public. Since Yahoo isn’t requiring uber-public, i think that they should get rid of the term. We’ll see what happens.

I also think that it makes much much more sense connected with photosharing and i really wish that they would wait on this product until Flickr is connected with them – there’s going to be so much overlap and confusion 🙁 Plus, while there are huge problems with Flickr’s system of privacy management, there’s a lot that they have going for them interface wise. For example, you don’t have to click stupid edit buttons – you can edit while consuming. This is soooo cool. I wish more folks would have fun with javascript.

Anyhow, my general impression is that i’m wary, but i don’t think that this is for me and i think it will be nice for the heavily integrated Yahoo user.

guantanamo: honor bound to defend freedom

“Guantanamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom'” is a British play that originally opened in London to protest the US’s abuse of human rights in citizens who were taken to Guits Guantanamo Bay prisons. The play tells the stories of 9 British antanamo under questionable pretenses, never told why and kept there for over two years. Seven were released without trials, still with no explanation. The play uses testimonials of the prisoners, their letters to their families and the testimonials of their families. Rumsfeld’s speeches are also included. Every word in the play (except the meta-commenter) comes directly from those involved in this nightmare.

The play recently opened in New York and tonite was the first preview in San Francisco (at Brava Theater running until April 17). While they still have some theatrical kinks to work out, the play was definitely a good reality check, a good reminder of how easy it is as an American to tune out to the human rights abuses that the government is executing in our names. The play is clearly written for a British audience, yet it is so essential as Americans to wake up and listen, listen to the actual people abused by our systems. This is especially critical as Abu Ghraib trials continue. If you’re in SF, make sure you go out and support this play and use it to think about what’s going on.

That said, i wish i knew the next step. I certainly would’ve loved it if Brava would’ve given out more information, action items, etc. Political plays need to give you a direction otherwise it’s just heart wrenching. Still, heart wrenching for a good cause.

(A story of one detainee is in the NYTimes today.)

HICSS: Persistent Conversations

HICSS may look like a boondoggle (it is, afterall, in Hawaii) but one of the reasons that i keep applying to it is because the Persistent Conversation track has amazing researchers interested in visualization, social technologies and privacy. The track is meant to bring together people interested in the implications of persistent, archivable, searchable data surrounding communication. What do you do with it? How do you study it?

Anyhow, the abstract deadline is March 31 (abstract – 250 words). If you have research that you need to write up, consider applying to HICSS: Persistent Conversations Minitrack. In addition to good research, there is still a beautiful beach.

SIMS career fair

Do you work for a company that is interested in hiring information school students (think: hybrid between tech, social, business) either full-time or for internships. My department is throwing a career fair on April 1. They asked me to suggest companies but i figured it might be useful to ask y’all if you want to hire folks.

For those who don’t know, SIMS has a Master’s program and a PhD program. The Master’s folks tend to be more interested in actually building products and working in tech companies than us pie-in-the-sky PhD folks who just critique the shit out of everything. At the same time, they have a variety of different useful skills – development, business management, ethnography, usability, information organization, etc.

Anyhow, if you want to participate on April 1, let me know and i’ll recommend you to my department. This is a low-key event (i.e. folks interacting not scary huge recruitment kiosks) and is particularly useful for Bay Area local companies.

SXSW, why i attended and marginalized populations

(updated 03/17/05)

OK, SXSW was awesome. I’m sure the Flickr photos show the amount of ridiculousness that went on. There was more. I could pretend to discuss the panels but, let’s be honest, i didn’t attend many. I did however miraculously make it to mine. I spent a lot of time talking with people, hearing people’s stories. I got to meet lots of bloggers i didn’t know, got to hear about what other people loved about certain technologies and learn about a few new ones.

Malcolm Gladwell made the entire trip worth it for me. OMG… to have a speaker who was able to speak to the issues of marginalization at a tech conference in a way that people listened by focusing on the experiments took my breath away. I hope at least a fraction of the packed room heard the implications of what he said, of what Blink says. Take his key example: orchestras thought that they were judging men and women equally and that women were just not as good. When they started putting up a curtain at the auditions, suddenly, the ratios changed. Drastically. We have biases in every interaction, unconsciously. And in order to level the playing field, we have to actively work to deal with those biases because we have to change the social structure in order to rid ourselves of the biases.

Speaking of which, i feel the need to address the why sxsw post by Liz and David’s why etech post. I chose to go to SXSW. I was actually part of the 5% who applied to etech, only my application was rejected because it wasn’t emerging. That’s fair. But as an academic, i can only go to conferences that i present at. I wasn’t even thinking about SXSW until Tantek approached me to speak on a panel there. At first, i hesitated at his puppy dog eyes. And then i started talking to the gals and realized that it would be a great opportunity to meet up with folks. And then when i saw the program, i got ecstatic to see that issues of identity and other risque topics were going to be actively dealt with, all in the topical structure of SXSW. And there were going to be diverse keynotes, not all of which were technically focused, but applicable to the tech crowd. This made me very very very excited.

David argues that the reason that Etech should be forgiven is because their applicant pool was dismally lacking diversity. I think he’s wrong. Of course it is dismal and not due to a lack of talent out there but due to social networks. Lots of people don’t even know that they can submit proposals. Almost all of the speakers at this year’s Etech were floating around Etech last year. They’re already part of the in-crowd. What percentage of Etech applicants attended Etech in a previous year? Given that a small number of women attend the conference, there’s going to be a poor representation in applicants. And there were even fewer people of color.

More importantly, marginalized populations often don’t think that their voice matters as much as the dominant voices. If we’re not part of the social network, we’re going to think that even less. I didn’t know you could apply to be at Etech until after i was invited to go – i never would’ve even considered applying. And i didn’t know how SXSW panels magically appeared until two days ago.

It’s socially and culturally not an equal playing field. You can’t build a meritocracy on top of that and one doesn’t exist. There are biases at every level. And if you want diversity, you need to actively go after it. Conference organizers – reach out to the women and people of color you know and ask them to brainstorm with you. Actively invite marginalized groups who you know are doing great stuff (or get your friends who are women, POC to do so). Make sure you have diversity on your board. Put together identity-driven BOFs. Invite diverse groups to the low-key events where they’re underrepresented so that they can meet and greet (because not all get-togethers are conferences). Do *NOT* expect them to come to you. When you do so, you perpetuate hegemonic forces – you become part of the problem. Meritocracy doesn’t emerge by just pretending it exists and without equal grounding, it is not possible.

Update: After a conversation last night, i wanted to clarify a few things. In conferences like SXSW and Etech, there’s no clear delineation of what is an acceptable topic or not (as opposed to say CHI). I mean – what is interactive or emerging? Additionally, the review panel consists of a very small number of people (all of who are pretty much guaranteed a slot). At CHI, there are hundreds and hundreds of blind reviewers. At SXSW and Etech, the metric is “interesting” – this is where we get ourselves into trouble. Interesting to whom? To the un-diverse review committee?

At CHI, everyone who is working in the field of HCI knows about it and gets to decide whether or not they appreciate the scope. Many of us in the margins grumble regularly, but still submit our work there. Not everyone working on emergent or interactive knows about Etech and SXSW. A few small percentage of people in each field go. Who goes is very very driven by social networks. Given the homophilous nature of social networks, the longer you go without diversifying, the less diverse it will get and you will have to work harder and more explicitly because you will not get random diverse applications when it’s seen as non-diverse. Thus, you have to be explicit to counter that process. People who apply to these conferences have mostly gone to it before or been recruited. If your audience is not diverse, you won’t have a diverse application pool.

One concern that was raised regards the % of women working in these fields. We’re not talking computer science – not everyone at Etech/SXSW is a CS person. We’re talking technology-related. And there are lots of folks who can inform emergent and interactive that aren’t CS folks, especially when you have huge tracks that are supposedly on social. I know so many women working in the social tech field – they just aren’t part of that network. Most of the social tech events that i go to and throw are more like 40/60 – just not the ones that are part of the “social software” network.

Additionally, i don’t believe that the % in the field is a good metric for a conference – i believe you have to surpass that through explicit effort in order to affect the field as a whole. Conferences are networking events and need to be treated as explicit social activities meant to diversify the field. I’d bet most people who attended Etech or SXSW came home with a lot more contacts and relationships, even if only built on beer. Those are people that we’ll all run into again, we might even work with simply because we had contact to personalities (not just resumes) at a conference. And if that group isn’t diverse, it will affect our work environment as well as our social and general professional.

This is why i’m so invested in this. I’m not an idiot – i know that i get invited to talk partially because i’m a woman. But i believe in opening up the tech field, i believe in diversifying it. And to do so requires more than motions towards meritocracy. If i can be a tool to aid in that activity, fine, but it also doesn’t have to be me. It just has to be someone.

sidestepping the question

Well, a decision came down on the the EFF / Apple blogging case and it’s a little disturbing. Basically, they ruled that no one (digital or paper) journalists have the privilege to protect their sources when trade secrets are involved. In other words, the rights of companies trump the First.

This sidesteps the blogger vs. journalist question entirely. Which is partially good because, like i said, it’s the wrong question. But, it’s partially bad, because people didn’t declare it to be the wrong question, just one worth sidestepping.

As far as the case is concerned, i’m concerned. On one hand, i understand that people shouldn’t have the right to leak information that they know is private and expect protection. On the other, the reason that the First exists is to protect powerful systems from oppressing the people under their structure. In other words, it’s OK when information from inside the government is leaked because it’s a matter of checks and balances. But there are no checks and balances for corporations right? What constitutes a trade secret? How can you tell? Now we have two loopholes to allow for continuous oppression – trade secrets and government security. And you can’t even actually check this. It may be true in a few cases, but there’s so much room to be abusive.

Goodbye dear freedoms… it was nice knowing you…

affirmative action: diversity in universities and conferences

In the techno-centric, meritocratic culture that i live in, i’m often faced with logic processes that make sense given a set of accepted axioms, but fundamentally fail due to the lack of an entire picture. One of my favorites is affirmative action. It still bugs me to a core that i’m at a University that eliminated affirmative action from its admissions process and i’m really frustrated that the flawed logic that undermined affirmative action in this State is getting perpetuated more broadly.

The anti-affirmative action logic is simple because it’s based on a meritocratic principle – the best people should be admitted regardless of race, class, gender, etc.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few missing components, many of which were brought up in the debates. Most obviously, there is a question of whether or not people have an equal and fair chance of acquiring the skills necessary to achieve. This logic asks us to look at the potential of an individual, removed from the context in which they were born and raised. Herein lies a deeper problem – can we remove people from that context? There’s an amazing book called Prejudicial Appearances: The Logic of American Anti-discrimination Law that covers this beautifully.

What is missing in all of the debate, as far as i can tell, is a clear analysis of what things like universities do. When i was in high school, i was often advised to attend the local or state school because i would get just as good of an education there as at any hoity toity private school. The fact of the matter is that’s really bad advice. What those “elite” colleges offer has nothing to do with curriculum or formal education – it has to do with social networks. First, by being far away from family and the local networks, students are faced with a myriad of fresh faces from very different parts of the world. One’s social network expands tremendously in such settings. Plus, in those private institutions, many of your fellow students are heavily connected (through their parents) to all sorts of powerful business people, politicians, etc. Going to such an institution allowed me to jump socioeconomic class in a way that never would’ve been possible otherwise.

College may appear to be about education, but it is primarily about creating the social network that will help you begin your adult life. For this reason, leaving out any group of people continues to marginalize them, limiting their ability for socio-cultural shifts. Let’s be honest – the jocks didn’t get in for their brains – they got in because they play an important social role in the coherence of the university. And alumni’s kids? They too play a critical role in maintaining the social network. Yet, institutions cannot be all about one group of people – this would further homogenize the social network. It needs to be as diverse as possible to alter the networks of all involved, particularly at the most formative years. This is how you achieve shifts in social culture – one generation at a time.

Sure, you don’t want to bring in a population to participate for social networks only to not prepare them such that they fail. But there are other ways to help alleviate the discrepancies, often through programming and making certain that the system is prepared to deal with diversity and help people find ways to connect on common ground. (This was what prompted me to help run a program back at Brown for pre-frosh who were from the city and had non access to computers.)

Now, it’s important to note that this doesn’t just apply to university. In the tech world, people often moan at Liz and i when we make snarky comments about how few women are at conferences. What do you think conferences are? Meritocratic events? Bullshit. They’re social networking events first and foremost. The more women and other minorities you include, the more they get integrated into the network and the more the network diversifies. Folks in the tech world seem to be fascinated by how social networks work, but at the same time, the application of it to the culture at hand is atrocious. Yes, it’s forced and painful at first. And we’re not idiots – i know i get invited to things for the diversity quotient. And guess what? I tend to bring other women along… funny how that happens. Diversification doesn’t happen magically – it has to start as a conscientious effort. And we all need to move beyond our utopian fantasy of a meritocratic society that will transcend all realities about how race, class and gender are operationalized and institutionalized. Or more accurately, we have to actually make that happen, not by trying to be blind to these issues, but to be very conscious of how they exist in our society. And by being honest with ourselves about what we’re doing to actually diversify instead of homogenize. ‘Cuz damnit, the meritocratic attitude of the tech industry has not proven effective at all.

Are Bloggers Journalists? Wrong Question.

With the Apple case in full-swing, everyone keeps asking “Are bloggers journalists?” I think that this is the wrong question. We can all point to bloggers who are not journalists, don’t want to be journalists and never will be journalists. This creates a pendulum swing where all of a sudden people exclaim that bloggers are diarists! And thus you get stupid shit like “should web diarists be allowed into the press corps?”

Stop.

This isn’t working. We need to get off this train.

Let’s switch artifacts for a moment. Paper. What do people use paper for? They take notes, write lists, document their lives, and publish things. Hmm. These practices sound a lot like some of what people do with blogs, only using a different medium. Of course, i’ll be the first to argue that blogs and paper are architecturally very very very different – that have notably different affordances and result in entirely different culture. But they both have an array of practices associated with them. And thus, you would never ask something like “Are paperists journalists?”

We know that not all bloggers are journalists. The question then becomes – are some? Well, this is where it gets interesting. Who gets to determine who is and is not a journalist? Historically, there were limitations simply concerning who had access to the materials to be press – things like the printing press. Thus, institutions got built up that were clearly press.. and then they consolidated infinitely until you had monopoly press and indie press. But there’s nothing like a bar association for the press, nothing that professionally declares one person to be a legitimate member of the press and others to not be.

So what actually demarcates someone as press? Identity. They see the work that they are doing, the values that they are following – they see this as journalism. We live in a country that rightfully included the freedom of press in its Constitution. There’s a realization that press should be separate from the government. Well, in a society were the lines between corporations and governments are difficult to see, should we really assume that only corporations can have the right to lend credentials to journalists? This seems like a dangerous statement.

Should journalists be credentialed by some overseeing organization? Perhaps. But they aren’t now. And legitimacy through corporate affiliation is not something that seems to resonate with the sentiment of freedom of press. Maybe bloggers should join the professional journalism societies – maybe that would help.

Some bloggers declare their practice to be journalism. They are trying to determine the “truth” of a matter. Sure, prior to Walter Cronkite, it was virtually nonexistent to discuss one’s personal opinion associated with news stories. But now? C’mon – have you seen Fox lately? Studies have been done over and over again showing that journalists’ opinions are discernible in their writing and televised coverage. Some bloggers are indeed putting their opinion in their coverage, but at least they’re being explicit about it rather than pretending to hide behind a curtain of pretend universal truth.

I think that the question needs to be shifted. We need to stop asking if bloggers are journalists and start asking if journalism can occur on blogs? People didn’t used to think that journalism could occur on radio or on TV. And there’s no doubt that the medium changed the practice. But we all recognize these venues as legitimate sources of news. In a society of corrupt media, a shift in media is actually quite appreciated and should not be oppressed simply because it does not yet have legitimacy or because its legitimacy is not associated with any corporation’s credentials.

danah boyd | apophenia

making connections where none previously existed