Internet...facilitating a democratic polity...

Democratic Polity

(from merriamwebster.com)

polity

One entry found for polity.

Main Entry: pol·i·ty
Pronunciation: 'pä-l&-tE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Etymology: Late Latin politia -- more at POLICE
1 : political organization
2 : a specific form of political organization
3 : a politically organized unit
4 a : the form or constitution of a politically organized unit b : the form of government of a religious denomination

Nostalgic sigh. It’s week 11. Out of twelve. This week’s theme makes me particularly and perhaps a bit prematurely nostalgic as it seems to be inviting us to retrospectively examine our seminar’s main theme. I remember from our first day of seminar that we defined the essence of the class: technology + society + values = policy. Politics seems to be a set of policies and how those policies interact with each other as well as with the entity it governs.

One hears...rather I have heard the word politics frequently and used it frequently in my own rants. But then...the actual meaning of it was rather elusive to me, I just used it in a context to mean something like how some source of authority organized the infrastructure of the organism/entity over which it had authority. It’s vaguely something like that, but then I saw the word polity in our syllabus...and I had to look it up,

It seems natural that when there is some force that exerts a significant impact on a community, there will be a reaction of how to manage that impact...policy. In our burgeoning techno-society (I think I overuse this phrase) this force is technology. Also, from a rather sociological point of view [as opposed to technological], there seems to be a trend for people to choose the alternate path. That’s a rather broad statement, what I mean is there seems to be an “open source” attitude not just in the technological community but in the world as a whole. When I was taking a year off I met lots of people who told me that there’s an increasing trend to take time off. There are people trying to make their own way in the world, so to speak. I guess I’m also alluding to Steve Job’s commencement speech to Stanford transcription here class of ’05. Why I’m dwelling on this is because I wonder if this attitude is burgeoning because of technology or in spite of it (earlier I did say “from a sociological point of view” only because the people I happened to talk with were not involved in the technology field). This question I ask in tandem with this week’s topic of what makes a democratic polity and how technology can help it.

Technology seems to inspire this sort of natural tendency for independence from authority, while simultaneously fostering a strong sense of community...whether it be in fiction (a la “Hackers”) or in reality (like lots of articles, esp. about virtual communities, we read). As such, I should like to begin with this statement: technology can help a democratic polity, so in a way, I’ll be bouncing my ideas off both the Bimber article and Milstein paper. The Milstein article was basically analyzing the purely political processes e.g. elections etc...and how technology impacts them. Technology can help to expedite processes and disseminate more information, however, it can also be a detriment because internet will cause society to operate with “commercial ethic of selling information.” The main point seemed to be that technology can’t help very much because information gaps will always exist and also facilitated services don’t necessary mean more voter participation. I think coming from a “gnurd” perspective, and more importantly, being exposed to all the ideas presented by the articles on virtual communities this past term, there is something inherently democratic about technology.

Bimber states: “My main thesis is that information technology has many potentially important consequences for politics and governance, but interdependence and multi-dimensionality confound efforts to categorize and label these in straightforward ways, and they undermine attempts to assert that technology enhances or undermine political equality or advances or frustrates democratization.” Interdependence and multi-dimensionality can be overcome by education so policy wise, we can join the bandwagon of trying to education re digital divide. Besides that main one, I’m not sure what other kinds of policies could engender this social ethos, but I firmly believe that the sort of patterns we see in virtual communities and the hacker attitude (I’m talking about the Robin Hood type hacker, not crackers...), to dip into the vernacular (as if I don’t do this constantly...). The internet seems to create this ethos of helping each other, learning, freedom, and a very deep sense of community. It seemed that most of the articles we examined regarding virtual communities and peer-to-peer type programs suggest that we are still in a rapidly evolving stage so we have a bit more to wait and see what happens. So, that’s where I’m at right now too. Let’s see how the world of virtual community type experiences evolve and through some sort of collective conscience-type model of knowledge infiltration can affect how our society functions as whole, including its political architectures.

this just in

okay, i'm in the midst of reading the article on eric schmidt...and announcement time: anyone who "roams the desert at the Burning Man Festival" is automatically on my very very cool people list.
check it out:
www.burningman.com
I can't wait to go (maybe not this coming summer, but very soon?) If anyone wants to join me, let me know!!

Know Thyself...I mean, others...

It seems almost natural to immediately go to google.com to “google” people. So that’s what I did.

My generation person

So I googled my neighbor and good friend whom, for privacy (and anti-retaliation purposes, not that she would see this blog anyway, plus I’m probably going to tell her about this, she’s probably reading this over my shoulder etc...) reasons we will call Hobbes.

So initially the search results were 30 and in .19 seconds, then the second page said there were only 27 results and it .14 seconds to decide on that final number.

Of these 27 results, 3.5 were actual Hobbes. 3.5 because the four line of results was part of another site.

Through this search one could know the following things:

Age, location, high school name, university (Princeton), scholarships won, what kind of team(s) participation at Princeton, and consequently people associated with Hobbes, picture of her, her age.

My parents’ generation person

She has a very distinctive name, so I wasn’t expecting very many hits, but I was expecting them to be relevant. About 7 hits in .99 seconds. They all pertain to her. Perhaps this is a bad example, so I decide to try another friend. Um...right, 36,800 in .2 seconds. However, this is because his name is apparently more common. This was just to do a comparison thing. Actually, it’s easier to examine *how much information* one can find out by examining the search results of my first friend.

Through this search, one could know the following things:

Her e-mail address, that she either has a brother or is married (male name + same last name listed along side her name), publications, where she works, what her position there is, people associated with her through work, what she looks like, thus guess her age.

Okay, that person is on the younger side, like a generation between my parents and me (my parents are two generations older than I), so I tried another person:

Wow, this person’s has about 3.5 results that took about .64 seconds and that all pertain to him.

Through this search, one could know the following things:

His education from undergrad to grad, brief bio, where he lives, his job and description of his job, description of his workplace (a school). Basically, this search result yields everything on a lovely platter for a stalker...except what he looks like.

My grandparents’ generation person

I wasn’t sure about the popularity of this person’s name...about 16 results in about .29 seconds.

Through this search, one could know the following things:

Where he lives, where he work(ed), the organizations he is a member of or has donated too (thus revealing kind of personality/persona he has), his religious faith and related organizations thereof, what kinds of community service work he does. From the types of information one can assume he's an older person, thought I don't think I could find any pictures or age-identifying pieces of information.

Reflections

Hmm, I have a feeling that this assignment was perhaps supposed to show us a trend, that older people have less out there about them? Or perhaps, that it’s rather haphazard. Or perhaps that...everyone has tons and tons (disturbingly large tons, if it’s possible to be large as opposed to small tons) of information about them out there.

I noticed if you google phone numbers, you can find out their name and address. I know that people who do publish their contact information can be searched but I used to think that one had to go to a special yellow pages site to do that, but apparently not. It’s kind of creepy, but ultimately supremely handy.

And also...I just found out perhaps more than I wanted to know about some people....

It seems that for my contemporary, there was lots of information because we are of the Internet generation. For the other three people, there was lots of information because of the nature of their jobs and their lifestyles. For instance, the two people in my parents’ generation are both academics so both through google and through their respective school’s webpages, one can get plenty of information. The last person, I had an inkling which was confirmed through my research, is somewhat of a socialite in his (my old) neighborhood, hence he was involved with lots of events so his name popped up on lots of rosters and also people of the year type lists as well as lots of organization webpages.

Know Thyself...I mean, others...

cavalcade of rockstars. NERD = GOOD!!!

This post I started on November 16 according to the time stamp, but there was a slight delay on publishing it because I wanted to clear what I said first. That took a bit of time, and that delay made me nervous (yegads, could it be someone doesn't like moi? type of anxiety, so not very big deal). I want to emphasize to Scott Heiferman: sun deprived gnurdism is great! wonderful! marvelous! Yippie! Said she as she quickly prepared for her morning constitutional (hey it's cloudy today...). So now I guess the last Friday in the paragraphs below would mean...Friday the 11th of November. And our FRS127 class was visited by Scott Heiferman on 15 November. Enjoy.

So last Friday we got to talk with Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google. It was grand, we even got to be special people for that hour and be at Prospect House, what seems to be the den of esoterica. Not really. Anyhow, the things that I remember most are Eric's eloquence and easy going personality which definitely helped to set the tone for the evening. This guy seems uber knowledgeable and threw a lot of information (pun unintended) at us, for instance, with his 'thought experiments.' Information-wise, the stuff that I understood was google is trying to give everyone the information that they want (I asked a question to E regarding what he thought about information becoming too personalized/specialized thus making society fragmented)...and I got hung up more on this so missed the point about google as an advertising company. Actually it's a very sexy idea: whatever information you want, we'll try our best to get it. I guess I find the whole google-concept very cool. I remember reading about it last year and learning about the rather radical office environment and it's very up my alley. Although, returning briefly to the advertisement point, Professor DiMaggio explained it to someone in class yesterday. His model made sense, but I wonder if most people will think of google that way or as a search engine. I'm reflecting on this in contrast to our visit from Scott Heiferman yesterday. His personality's quite different, and I wonder if it has something to do with the age difference. ES is like..50? and SH said he was 33. He definitely talked more like us (less calmly, more jittery, I mean, this didn't detract from anything, rather it made him kind of more accessible). Also it helped that he looked more like a sun deprived gnurd type than a CEO, to be blunt. I liked how most of our (class and SH) interaction was about social stuff: this week, we were trying to understand the concept of online communities and we wrap our minds around the unfamiliar using the familiar as tools, in this case real life communities (reminder: our class discussion began with an attempt to define "community"). I jotted down some notes (see, when Eric Schmidt was visiting, I was too nervous to jot down anything, but now perhaps we are getting spoiled by the cavalcade of rockstars and getting relaxed...) and SH emphasized this idea that in the future people will organize and they will be a force to reckon with...a consumers union. This reminds me of an importat point that our professors brought up, about quoting these people, but I think SH underlined his idea to where he even said the idiomatic, quote me on this. But whatever, after having interacted with both these people, it made me begin to wonder about how to run an organization/have vision/be aware of the world regardless of how small (meetup.com) or big (google.com) is. It's a special talent I think, a). to be able to take risks and try new things, but also b). I don't think these risks come totally out of the blue but the person generating the new-fangled ideas is aware of various social trends and how his/her idea can become part of the social tapestry. I'm probably focusing more on this because I was more interested in the societal component versus the information technology component of both our talks. I wonder what Professor DiMaggio thinks of the social trends that SH predicted?

ps: to add on to this list, I too am finally able to join the clique of those who spotted John Nash somewhere.

Hope everyone had a good GobblyGobbly (or Tofu products) day !

Community Time: HP isn't only hewlett packard

...it's Harry Potter!

Our Online Community: Harry Potter Fans

Google search results: 50.6 million

Yahoo search results: 124 million

MSN search results: 20 million +

An excerpt from our presentation:

"Most of them are pretty formal. Even if it’s non commercial, there is a distinct sense of formality in these places, sets of elaborates rules that define the parameters of this “universe.” Most of them are commercial in the sense that they have some sort of shop. Many of them had suggested donation or required some kind of payment for membership/messageboard discussion.

Linking patterns: based by specific interest within Harry Potter e.g.: interested in rumors, interested in writing fan fiction, interested in role-playing-games, etc...Hence our categories

Super recent, which proves these people are obsessive, because most of these sites are linked to the homepage of the latest Harry Potter movie.

Interesting fact: how involved these people are in their online worlds, from the detailed universe that they’ve created, it makes you wonder about their “real lives.”"

The essential thing we noticed was how people balance their 'real life' with their 'virtual life' because in the forums/discussionboard topics many of them had to do with the virtual world they were creating or with some aspect of Harry Potter, but also there were many that had to do with 'real life' such as "did you buy tickets" (presumably for movie), even one titled "AD 17 abortion" and it was a thread on the ethics of abortion... In another discussion board, we noticed that people would integrate these two lives, like one person who was a "student at Hogwarts" but "studying Japanese" presumably in their real lives, but they brought it into their virtual character's life as well by making Japanese be a course at Hogwarts. Hmm! And, most of these are operated by normal people, there do not seem to be knowledgeable experts involved in these activities...unless you consider some HP obsessed person to be an "expert."

Perhaps this betrays where our group was coming from more than a characteristic of these fans, but one thing we were was: how can these people have the time to maintain these lives? It was pretty amazing considering how detailed sometimes even the rules to apply to join an RPG were!

thar she blows: term paper proposal splish splash

New Media, Internet, Internet Art!

What is the Internet, within a theoretical framework?

What is internet art? Examples.

What are some of the potential restrictions of the growth of internet art culture?

My research interest for my FRS127 term project originates from having spent time around artists who like to play with technology, working on art projects myself, and my general interests in complex systems, cognitive processes, and working with different media. I have both academic and personal interest invested in this research project as, at the moment, I hope to continue working with new media, digital art, and cognitive sciences. From my preliminary research, I learned [more] about 1. internet art, 2. ‘cognitive technologies’ 3. internet as a complex system and 4. definition of ‘hypermedia’ and all that jazz: new media, hypertext, etc.etc..

An important discovery was the connection between how the internet works and how the human mind works. This is interesting as it’s a kind of special idea, but also more for my purposes, it seems that some artists are thinking about Internet in these terms and consequently are creating really neat, I suppose, “meta” art works. This link is known under the topic of “connectionism” (and possibly variations on that terminology). I in the process of gathering books and resources about this as I’ve never heard of it before.

As I’ve discovered (with the help of Professor DiMaggio), many of my initial probing directions would have led to topics Too Big for this term paper. Initially I wanted to take on the idea of who is propelling technology/technology research? Companies and other dullards in suits who just want to enhance their product. Artists should be involved in this propelling. But that was like...I don’t know, Jack’s beanstalk. Got very big beyond control. So I’ve focused my paper to being kind of like a sampler dish, to use a gastronomical metaphor.

Research Questions:

a). history: set up background story, what is internet, what is internet art? Perhaps this is moving too much away from the academic and into the personal, but integrated into this background-story I also want to emphasize the importance of art/culture. Maybe this is self evident? But I somehow feel like otherwise my repeatedly using “art this” and “art that” might sound silly. Not sure... But main point here: I want to explore connectionism, how the internet functions as a kind of organism, and define internet art

b). present: so a natural transition would be to then give examples of current artists. I have a few in mind, I’ll try to cover a broad range of styles and themes, but also, as aforementioned, artists who are thinking about ideas like connectionism, esp. in their work.

c). future: where will this go? What will be the potential restrictions? Atm, mainly have stuff on DMCA, DRM.

Current Research Strategy

1. Address research question one: Just do a lot of reading and find my bearings. Got loads of books on connectionism, hypermedia, and new media. Got loads of support!

2. Address question two: One of the articles I found suggests that artists can be integrated well and easily into the hypermedia world because of the very nature of innovation on both the art world and hypermedia world. This article also mentioned the idea of Internet being a complex system and reminiscent of cognition could also be a potential link.

3. Address question three: take a look at our lecture notes from our intellectual property session. Find out more about other potential restrictions in addition to DMCA, DRM stuff

Schedule, tentative

Week 1 (8 Nov.)

Try to get the following books:

The Internet as a Large-Scale Complex System – Kihong Park and Walter Willinger, ed.

Metacreations: Art and Artificial Life – Mitchel Whitelaw

The Society of text: hypertext, hypermedia, and the social construction of information archive – Edward Barrett, ed.

The two Wiebe Bijkers books Prof. DiMaggio suggested

Ars Electronica book Prof. Levin suggested

Growing list of non electronic resources...interlibrary loan...arg

Buy: Internet Art – Rachel Greene

Getting my bearings!

Week 2 (15 Nov.)

Tackle question 1 and write a few pages

Week 3 (22 Nov.)

Tackle question 2: traditional methods of research, also try to get in touch with current artists?

Produce a draft/response

Week 4 (29 Nov.)

Tackle question 3: the books will help, I imagine

Produce a draft/response

Week 5 ( 6 Dec.)

Keep writing, reading, doing, e-mailing professors :D

Week 6 (13 Dec.)

Produce a rough draft that puts all the mini drafts together and meet up with professors before holiday (?)

Week 7 (20 Dec.)

Keep on trucking...

Week 8 (27 Dec.)

Probably asleep after celebrating my birthday the night before...!!

digital divide thought, Rant, etc..

First before posing my two empirical questions, I want to quickly debrief, jot down what I thought some of the main ideas were:

1. "What Digital Divide?" article basically was saying the real problem was not the digital divide (it doesn't exist, according to Arrison's data), but education and potential Net tax. The disadvantaged need to know how to benefit from technology/Internet and are they able to afford a Net tax? are the real issues.

2. PPI report, definitely more "bipartisan." Emphasized studying history to learn from the past as atm, we don't know what the trends of the Internet divide will be. There's not so much of a problem, currently anyway, as Leigh and Atkinson don't think government needs to intervene with subsidizing computer purchase & internet access. Basically, we just don't know at this point. Agreed with Arrison article that education is an issue.

3. Lessig...parody. Right? Haha. Initially I flipped out (I listened to the podcast, peachy keen tech. experience, "drone" voice --nice touch), so in fact, I ended up reading along with Lessig's voice. Free wireless will cause good to happen...beneficial competition. Free wireless good.

4. Philly wire articles: good stuff!!! okay...,point made. Yay for Phildelphia. (Btw, the sign up thing was funny, I gave them totally fake information and it worked. For nytimes, the online version to which I *am* a subscriber, I was more nervous and gave them real information...this was a little over three years ago...ah, times have changed)

The Philly articles I read were pretty optimistic sounding. Actually there were parts that were kind of chilling...in a government becoming this big scary machine kind of way. I'm interested in education issues and personally I'm very against standardized testing (most of them, I'm kind of on the fence about SAT's because I'm too tired atm to come up with a better idea about how to get an even playing field for evaluation. Mass interpretive dance in front of a mass audience of all college admission people? mm) and there were parts of one article that made me feel as though the government was going to reinforce their presence too strongly in education. ""Parents can have everything the teacher has. They will know how their child did on benchmark tests and what materials they need to help them." is a quote from "Why Go Wi-Fi" article by Elmer Smith. The word benchmark test *freaked me out* so I googled it. Tsk. tsk. I don't know, maybe I'm overreacting but it just gives me a bad feeling that the government's creating this big machine to reinforce this attitude of..well, what I consider a stupidly dry approach to learning by spoonfeeding information bites into kids' heads, making them memorise it and then regurgitate for some stupid "benchmark test." So, since we're due for an empirical question about now: how are these kids doing on these tests?

That said, one major theme was education...of a different sort than my above rant...teaching the masses (specifically disadvantaged masses) about how to utilize/optimize their utilization of technology. To borrow Professor DiMaggio's question: indeed, what are people using the internet for right now?

Related to that, I am wondering how the "lowest income households" (from Arrison's article) were affording the internet? Just curious because I know that for my family (not sure, I guess we're rather middle class) definitely makes choices about certain services because of economic reasons. Maybe my dad's being penurious. Shrugs. Maybe Arrison's being overzealous with her point that everyone can afford Internet, some just don't want to. Perhaps my question should be modified to, is this true?

*blip blip end of transmission for now*

ADSD

attention deficit sleeping disorder. if there was one, then i'd have it. but it's good, catching up on precious...precioussss (a la Gollum) ssssleeepsssss.

Today: Breakthrough day in research for my term paper. YIPPIE SKIPPIE!

happy autumn holiday everybody!