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Jessica Ice

HELEN NISSENBAUM The Meaning of Anonymity in an Information Age - 0 views

www.nyu.edu/...paper_anonimity.html

anonymity free speech individual protection

shared by Jessica Ice on 26 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Jessica Ice on 26 Jan 09
     
    Should anonymity be protected in electronic interactions and communications? Would this be a good thing for community, responsibility, free expression, political participation, and personal fulfillment? If so, when and why? These key normative questions probe the value of anonymity in our computerized society and political order. In this brief discussion, I will not directly address these important questions but will address questions that undergird them about the meaning of anonymity in a contemporary, computerized society, including: What is anonymity? And, what are we seeking to protect when we propose to protect it? Although answers to these foundational questions will not immediately yield answers to the key normative questions mentioned above, they are essential to understanding what is at stake in the answers to these questions. For, after all is said and done, we would not want to discover that the thing we have fought so hard to protect was not worth protecting after all.
Adam Bohannon

Heidegger 2 Twitter: Technology, Self & Social Networks. - 11 views

blog.semanticfoundry.com/...hts-on-self-interaction-design

heidegger media theory technology design

shared by Adam Bohannon on 06 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Both object and subject are converted to a “standing-reserve”, to be disaggregated, redistributed, recontextualized, and reaggregated.
  • And human individuals, who were once reduced to resources (Frederick Taylor, and the authoritarianism of Human Resource departments), or “eyeballs” in the terminology of internet marketing executives; are now the creative engines of growth, innovation, and creativity.
  • This becomes even more interesting when we wonder about the context and meaning of start-ups intentionally exposing their office space’s ductwork - as if the open office with exposed pipes re-instantiates a manifestation of the hearth, or at least ‘un-hides’ the circulatory system of commerce.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Postmodern technology uses the hyper-reality of simulations to get rid of the limitations imposed by reality. The limit of postmodern reality is not the total objectification of nature, but the replacement of reality by virtual reality totally under our control.
  • Borgmann’s antidote for losing our personality to the shallowness and superficiality of hyper-reality is to return to focal activities.
  • It takes commitment on our part to engage in focal activities, but the effort affords us a chance to maintain some sense of self in the technological world.
  • Thus technological rationality can claim that technologies are value neutral, and only uses are good or evil, despite the fact that the uses are shaped by the technologies.
  • And technology leads to new forms of domination. For the critical theorists history has always had domination, but in our time domination has changed from master over slave or lord over serf to the domination of humanity by economics and the market. We are given the illusion of liberty, but that is simply the freedom to choose between brands of mass-produced products.
  • Computer technology further de-contextualizes human experience by emphasizing information over understanding. And computers further domination by providing new means of tracking the productivity of workers to the corporation and depersonalizing supervision; very much a modern panopticon envisioned by Jeremy Bentham.
  • Foucault’s view allows for the possibility that information technology could be used to put people in more direct communication with each other and spread the concentration of power over society.
  • MS Word and freely available blogging software encourages us to constantly revise, so a work becomes a series of drafts, none of which is final (just like this post).
  • Gould’s attitude towards design finds philosophical support in pragmatism. Pragmatism recognizes that everyone is socially situated. Dewey taught that scientific theories or methods of logic are tools used in a certain social practice. Attention to the practices surrounding an object are important to understanding it. Since he viewed knowledge as participatory he argued that learning must come about by doing.
  • Metaphors provide us a way of understanding the world, by associating one thing with another. Powerful metaphors are like magic, and inform how we think of the objects described, revealing hidden aspects of the thing described. New metaphors for the forces in our lives will suggest new ways of living.
  • Metaphors interact with technology in several ways: technology serves as a source of metaphors, new technologies are understood metaphorically, and our metaphors in life pose problems to be solved technologically
  • By developing new metaphors, interface designers can suggest new ways of working with computers. If these metaphors are carefully chosen then they will provide a natural model which makes operation of the machine easy.
  • Just as metaphors can help us understand computers, computers can provide new metaphors for life. Postmodern theories of psychology suggest that there is no single unified “ego”, but that each of us is made up of a multiplicity of parts, while Minsky discusses the “agencies of mind” in his book “The Society of Mind.” Philip Bromberg claims that a healthy personality is one in which different aspects of the self can come to know one another and reflect upon each other.
  • This fluid multiplicity of personality is what gives us our flexibility and resilience.
  • Social networks allow participants to explore different aspects of their personality, to manufacture and evolve aspects of their personality depending on context and mood.
  • While some observers might see this activity as evidence of Heidegger’s disaggregation of the subject by technology, it can also be seen as a model for Bromberg’s self as being one while being many. This is just one way in which computer technology, the internet, and connected social networks can show us a new way of understanding ourselves.
xchen123

Mobile phones as fashion statements: evidence from student surveys in the US and Japan - 1 views

nms.sagepub.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/...321.full.pdf+html

ANTH522 Japan project mediated cultures

shared by xchen123 on 07 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • xchen123 on 07 Mar 11
     
    a comparison of phone usage in the US and Japan, two societies that are believed to have contrast ideology of society, come up with a similar trend of new technology using...
arunaraayala

Sonam Kapoor: Sexism in the Society is Disgusting - Locality News - 0 views

www.localitynews.com/m-in-the-society-is-disgusting

Sonam Kapoor: Sexism in the Society is Disgusting

shared by arunaraayala on 05 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • arunaraayala on 05 Oct 16
     
    Sonam Kapoor said ”I am not here to make money, although it would be nice” Mumbai: Sonam Kapoor is not the person to shred her words. The heroine has time and yet again voiced her feelings bravely. She is brave and never afraid to stance for what she trusts in. Newly, at a chat show, where ...
Kevin Champion

Kevin Kelly -- The Technium - 0 views

www.kk.org/...on_the_option_o.php

anonymity digeth

shared by Kevin Champion on 27 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Anonymity is like a rare earth metal. These rare elements are an absolutely necessary ingredient in keeping a cell alive, but the amount needed is a mere hard-to-measure trace. In larger does these heavy metals are some of the most toxic substances known to a life. They kill. Take cadmium. Essential for life in very minute amounts; toxic in any significant amount. Anonymity is the same. As a trace element in vanishing small doses, it's good for the system by enabling the occasional whistleblower, confessional, or persecuted dissent in a tyrannical regime. But if anonymity is present in any significant quantity, it will poison the system, even a half-rotten system. I believe anonymity is essential. It is vital to a healthy society and market. Without the option of anonymity I believe a society would be less than optimal. Indeed I would fight vigorously to keep the option of being anonymous as an essential part of any society. It is both humane and wise. At the same time I think there can be too much anonymity at work. When it becomes a default option it poisons the community -- like a rare-earth metal. My argument is not against anonymity but against too much of it.
  • What do I mean by anonymity? An untraceable, unaccountable, undistinguishable agent. Someone who engages in an activity cloaked in the identity of the tag "anonymous." I do not mean a vegetable vendor in a market whose name you do not know, because that person is both distinguishable and potentially traceable.  I mean people who post using anonymous as a habit.
  • Kevin Champion on 27 Jan 09
     
    If true, this would be a bit damning to anonymous.
Mike Wesch

Zoho Creator - Anonymity Project - 0 views

creator.zoho.com/...anonymity-project

bibliography anonymity

shared by Mike Wesch on 26 Jan 09 - Cached
  • What's to stop an online mass of anonymous but connected people from suddenly turning into a mean mob, just like masses of people have time and time again in the history of every human culture? It's amazing that details in the design of online software can bring out such varied potentials in human behavior. It's time to think about that power on a moral basis.
  • In this research, Durkheim's theory of the universalization of religious beliefs is extended to analyze the occurrence of religious rituals. Drawing upon Schutz's phenomenology of social relations, we amplify theoretically the Durkheimian perspective and suggest that the universalization process is stimulated by an increase in anonymity (as opposed to intimacy) in society. Structural factors consistent with anonymity--i.e., increasing population density, political and economic differentiation, and monetary exchange--are hypothesized to influence the universalization of ritual occurrence
  • In a rather wet community, members easily specify other members. This is effective for managing memberships and changing knowledge from tacit to formal. In a rather dry community, members barely identify with other members at all. This method is suitable for the formal-to-tacit phase of knowledge creation. Finally, it is discussed how social intelligence should be designed and what features are needed to support knowledge-creating communities.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Three studies examined the notion that computer-mediated communication (CMC) can be characterised by high levels of self-disclosure. In Study One, significantly higher levels of spontaneous self-disclosure were found in computer-mediated compared to face-to-face discussions. Study Two examined the role of visual anonymity in encouraging self-disclosure during CMC. Visually anonymous participants disclosed significantly more information about themselves than non-visually anonymous participants. In Study Three, private and public self-awareness were independently manipulated, using video-conferencing cameras and accountability cues, to create a 2 × 2 design public self-awareness (high and low)×private self-awareness (high and low). It was found that heightened private self-awareness, when combined with reduced public self-awareness, was associated with significantly higher levels of spontaneous self-disclosure during computer-mediated communication.
  • "The principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities."
    • Mike Wesch
      Mike Wesch on 26 Jan 09
       
      citation: Alcoholics Anonymous 568
  • A laboratory experiment was used to evaluate the effects of anonymity and evaluative tone on computer-mediated groups using a group decision support system to perform an idea-generation task. Evaluative tone was manipulated through a confederate group member who entered supportive or critical comments into the automated brainstorming system. Groups working anonymously and with a critical confederate produced the greatest number of original solutions and overall comments, yet average solution quality per item and average solution rarity were not different across conditions. Identified groups working with a supportive confederate were the most satisfied and had the highest levels of perceived effectiveness, but produced the fewest original solutions and overall comments.
  • The results suggest that increased visual anonymity is not associatedwith greater self-disclosure, and the findings about the role of discursive anonymity aremixed.
  • Three levels of anonymity, visual anonymity, dissociation of real and online identities, and lack of identifiability, are thought to have different effects on various components of interpersonal motivation
  • suggesting that individuals in Western societies will gravitate toward online communities that allow lower levels of anonymity, while individuals in Eastern societies will be more likely to seek out online communities that promote higher levels of anonymity.
Adam Bohannon

Harold Adams Innis: The Bias of Communications & Monopolies of Power - 0 views

www.media-studies.ca/...innis.htm

anthropology communication innis media theory wec2008 wecfuture

shared by Adam Bohannon on 08 Aug 08 - Cached
  • The Bias of Communication
  • he relative stability of cultures depends on the balance and proportion of their media.
  • a key to social change is found in the development of communication media.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • each medium embodies a bias in terms of the organization and control of information.
  • Time-biased media, such as stone and clay, are durable and heavy. Since they are difficult to move, they do not encourage territorial expansion; however, since they have a long life, they do encourage the extension of empire over time.
  • Space-biased media are light and portable; they can be transported over large distances. They are associated with secular and territorial societies; they facilitate the expansion of empire over space. Paper is such a medium; it is readily transported, but has a relatively short lifespan.
  • It was Innis’ conviction that stable societies were able to achieve a balance between time- and space-biased communications media.
  • He also believed that change came from the margins of society, since people on the margins invariably developed their own media. The new media allow those on the periphery to develop and consolidate power, and ultimately to challenge the authority of the centre.
  • Oral communication, speech, was considered by Innis to be time-biased because it requires the relative stability of community for face-to-face contact. Knowledge passed down orally depends on a lineage of transmission, often associated with ancestors, and ratified by human contact. In his writings, Innis is forthright in his own bias that the oral tradition is inherently more flexible and humanistic than the written tradition, which he found rigid and impersonal in contrast.
Girja Tiwari

Cosmetic products in the anti-cellulite fight - 0 views

info-worldwide.com/S/skin care/Cosmetic products in the anti-cellulite fight.php

Cosmetic products Cosmetic products for men anti cellulite creams anti cellulite products anti cellulite gel anti cellulite diet anti cellulite treatment anti cellulite massage oil anti cellulite fat burner

shared by Girja Tiwari on 28 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Girja Tiwari on 28 Dec 13
     
    Cosmetic products in the anti-cellulite fight.The glossy magazines and other media such as television and commercials show us every day what has concept of beauty our society or what one or the other of us imagines also beauty. Sure what woman does.
ankityng

Non-profit-making Kindergarten Rent - 0 views

www.entrepreneurindia.com/...g-profit-from-kindergarten-397

business icon small entrepreneurship ideas strategy for entrepreneur india

shared by ankityng on 30 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • ankityng on 30 Sep 13
     
    The play-school or kindergarten business has been growing at a steady pace in every nook and cranny of the country. It is always the last resort for any educated lady, looking forward to having a good standing in the society.
descendants1 descendants1

pantalon ralph lauren homme pas cher En - 0 views

Il a également nuancé la première estimation de coût de l'Hyperloop selon d'Elon Musk -6 à 10 milliards de dollars pour une jonction entre deux villes- en déclarant pouvoir construire une telle str...

survetement ralph lauren soldes pantalon homme pas cher prix

started by descendants1 descendants1 on 15 Jun 15 no follow-up yet
Jessica Ice

Anonymity on the Internet: Why the Price May be Too High by David Davenport, Communicat... - 0 views

delivery.acm.org.er.lib.ksu.edu/...p33-davenport.pdf

Anonymity internet free speech legality privacy

shared by Jessica Ice on 26 Jan 09 - No Cached
  • Jessica Ice on 26 Jan 09
     
    Anonymous communication is seen as the cornerstone of an Internet culture that promotes sharing and free speech and is overtly anti-establishment. Anonymity, so the argument goes, ensures governments cannot spy on citizens and thus guarantees privacy and free speech. The recommendations of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's conference on "Anonymous Communication Policies for the Internet" [1] support this view. Among the findings were that "online anonymous communication is morally neutral" and that "it should be considered a strong human and constitutional right." This view is fundamentally mistaken; by allowing anonymous communication we actually risk an incremental breakdown of the fabric of our society. The price of our freedoms is not, I believe, anonymity, but accountability. Unless individuals and, more importantly, governments can be held accountable, we lose all recourse to the law and hence risk our very freedom. The following sections argue this in more detail and suggest the only real solution is more openness, not less.
Jessica Ice

al-saggaf_begg_2004_jices.pdf (application/pdf Object) - 0 views

www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/...al-saggaf_begg_2004_jices.pdf

anonymity gender arab muslim online communication culture

shared by Jessica Ice on 26 Jan 09 - No Cached
  • Jessica Ice on 26 Jan 09
     
    There is a major transformation taking place in the Arab and Muslim worlds. People in these nations are poised on the edge of a significant new social landscape. Called the Internet, this new frontier not only includes the creation of new forms of private communication, like electronic mail and chat, but also webbased forums, which for the first time enables public discussion between males and females in conservative societies. This paper has been written as a result of an ethnographic study conducted in Saudi Arabia during the period 2001-2002. The purpose of the study was to understand how online communities in Saudi Arabia are affecting people. The results of the study indicate that while participants to a large extent used online communities in accordance with their cultural values, norms and traditions, the communication medium and the features associated with it, such as the anonymity and lack of social cues, have affected them considerably. For example, many participants became more flexible in their thinking, more aware of the diverse nature of people within their society, less inhibited about the opposite gender, and more self-confident. On the other hand, participants neglected their family commitments, became less shy and some became confused about some aspects of their culture and religion. These findings and their implications for the Arab and Muslim worlds will be highlighted in this paper.
Mike Wesch

Gives Life Meaning: Homeless Mind - Modernity's Discontents - 2 - 0 views

taylorandmore.blogspot.com/...-modernitys-discontents-2.html

berger theory anonymity bureaucracy modernity discontents religion theodicy

shared by Mike Wesch on 05 Jan 09 - Cached
  • The discontents derived from the bureaucratization of major institutions are very similar to the ones just mentioned. However, they are even broader in scope for the simple reason that bureaucratization has affected nearly every sector of social life.
  • A congregation of Tibetan Buddhist monks, let us say, transplanted to the United States, can start using electric razors without thereby altering the character of their social relations. If, however, this monastic community started to bureaucratize its procedures, the very fabric of its social life would change almost immediately.
  • The individual is "surrounded" by bureaucracy far more effectively than he is by the technologized economy,
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Political life has become anonymous, incomprehensible and anomic to broad strata of the population
  • All the major public institutions of modern society have become "abstract."
  • Because of the religious crisis in modern society, social "homelessness" has become metaphysical--that is, it has become "homelessness" in the cosmos.
  • Modernity has accomplished many far-reaching transformations, but it has not fundamentally changed the finitude, fragility and mortality of the human condition. What it has accomplished is to seriously weaken those definitions of reality that previously made that human condition easier to bear. This has produced an anguish all its own, and one that we are inclined to think adds additional urgency and weight to the other discontents we have mentioned.
  • In the private sphere, "repressed" irrational impulses are allowed to come to the fore. A specific private identity provides shelter from the threats of anonymity. The transparency of the private world makes the opacity of the public one tolerable.
  • A limited number of highly significant relationships, most of them chosen voluntarily by the individual, provide the emotional resources for coping with the multi-relational reality "outside."
  • The most fundamental function of institutions is probably to protect the individual from having to make too many choices.
  • Human beings are not capable of tolerating the continuous uncertainty (or, if you will, freedom) of existing without institutional supports.
  • In their private lives individuals keep on constructing and reconstructing refuges that they experience as "home." But, over and over again, the cold winds of "homelessness" threaten these fragile constructions. It would be an overstatement to say that the "solution" of the private sphere is a failure; there are too many individual successes. But it is always very precarious.
Jessica Ice

NBIC3_report.pdf (application/pdf Object) - 0 views

www.wtec.org/...NBIC3_report.pdf

NBIC transhumanism nanotechnology biotechnology NSF cognition technology

shared by Jessica Ice on 08 Mar 09 - No Cached
  • Jessica Ice on 08 Mar 09
     
    NSF report on "Managing Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Innovations: Converging Technologies in Society" 2006 Abstract: This introductory chapter briefly defines the "NBIC" unification that is rapidly taking place today among Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology, and Cognitive science. It then describes how the other chapters address the potential impacts of converging technologies, considers how innovation can be stimulated and steered, and provides a basis for an understanding of the societal implications of NBIC.
Trapper Callender

Coming of Age in Second Life: An ... - Google Book Search - 0 views

books.google.com/books

secondlife Boellstorff community identity

shared by Trapper Callender on 24 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Trapper Callender on 24 Feb 09
     
    Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen.Coming of Age in Second Lifeis the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Lifeshows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself.
Mike Wesch

Investigative Report Reveals Hackers Terrorize the Internet for LULZ | Threat Level fro... - 0 views

blog.wired.com/...investigative-r.html

anonymous

shared by Mike Wesch on 28 May 08 - Cached
  • Mr. Shuman and the FoxLA News Team, True to your vociferous journalistic fashion, you recently ran a piece on Anonymous and the "Internet Hate Machine". In your zeal, you've distorted the truth. We, Anonymous, have been victims of a gross mischaracterization. Anonymous is a docile beast, and never attacks without provocation, or just cause. Over 9000 strong, Anonymous is legion. Anonymous is NOT a terrorist. Anonymous is not a gang. Anonymous is not a hacker, and Anonymous if not a racist. Anonymous is the sick little bastard inside all of us. Anonymous giggles at accidents and cackles at tragedies. Anonymous is humanity when the spotlight of society is shining elsewhere. Anonymous is your neighbor and your grocer, your doctor and your friend. Anonymous is not to be feared, but respected and ignored.Anonymous wants to be left ALONE. "...and he ashed him, What is thy name? And he saith unto him, My name is Legion; for we re many." ANONYMOUS is legion. Anonymous doesn't forgive. Anonymous doesn't forget. EVER. United as one, divided by zero.
  • Anonymous is a docile beast, and never attacks without provocation, or just cause. Over 9000 strong, Anonymous is legion. Anonymous is NOT a terrorist. Anonymous is not a gang. Anonymous is not a hacker, and Anonymous if not a racist. Anonymous is the sick little bastard inside all of us. Anonymous giggles at accidents and cackles at tragedies. Anonymous is humanity when the spotlight of society is shining elsewhere. Anonymous is your neighbor and your grocer, your doctor and your friend. Anonymous did the mash. He did the monster mash. The monster mash. It was a graveyard smash. He did the mash. It caught on in a flash. He did the mash. He did the monster mash
Adam Bohannon

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody - 0 views

www.shirky.com/...looking-for-the-mouse.html

clayshirky sociology technology

shared by Adam Bohannon on 03 May 08 - Cached
  • Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.
  • And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.
  • So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."
  • It's precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.
  • At least they're doing something. Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.
  • But media is actually a triathlon, it 's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.
  • One per cent of that  is 100 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.
  • I think that's going to be a big deal. Don't you? Well, the TV producer did not think this was going to be a big deal; she was not digging this line of thought. And her final question to me was essentially, "Isn't this all just a fad?" You know, sort of the flagpole-sitting of the early early 21st century? It's fun to go out and produce and share a little bit, but then people are going to eventually realize, "This isn't as good as doing what I was doing before," and settle down. And I made a spirited argument that no, this wasn't the case, that this was in fact a big one-time shift, more analogous to the industrial revolution than to flagpole-sitting.
Mike Wesch

The Postmodern Condition by Jean-Francois Lyotard. 1979 - 0 views

www.marxists.org/...lyotard.htm

categorization information lyotard pomo web2.0

shared by Mike Wesch on 22 Jan 08 - Cached
  • The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation.
  • Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as “knowledge” statements.
  • thorough exteriorisation of knowledge with respect to the “knower,”
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • will one day fight for control of information
  • he form of value
  • Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold
  • New legal issues will be raised, and with them the question: “who will know?”
  • especially if it is to undergo an exteriorisation with respect to the “knower” and an alienation from its user even greater than has previously been the case
  • revealing that knowledge and power are simply two sides of the same question: who decides what knowledge is, and who knows what needs to be decided? In the computer age, the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government.
  • Wittgenstein, taking up the study of language again from scratch, focuses his attention on the effects of different modes of discourse; he calls the various types of utterances he identifies along the way (a few of which I have listed) language games.
  • the observable social bond is composed of language “moves.”
  • One can decide that the principal role of knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is a giant machine.
  • For brevity’s sake, suffice it to say that functions of regulation, and therefore of reproduction, are being and will be further withdrawn from administrators and entrusted to machines. Increasingly, the central question is becoming who will have access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made. Access to data is, and will continue to be, the prerogative of experts of all stripes. The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers. Even now it is no longer composed of the traditional political class, but of a composite layer of corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organisations.
  • This breaking up of the grand Narratives (discussed below, sections 9 and 10) leads to what some authors analyse in terms of the dissolution of the social bond and the disintegration of social aggregates into a mass of individual atoms thrown into the absurdity of Brownian motion.
  • It would be superficial to reduce its significance to the traditional alternative between manipulatory speech and the unilateral transmission of messages on the one hand, and free expression and dialogue on the other.
  • What is needed if we are to understand social relations in this manner, on whatever scale we choose, is not only a theory of communication, but a theory of games which accepts agonistics as a founding principle.
  • Rather, the limits are themselves the stakes and provisional results of language strategies, within the institution and without.
  • This, I think, is the appropriate approach to contemporary institutions of knowledge.
Adam Bohannon

Social Capital in Virtual Learning Communities and Distributed Communities of Practice - 0 views

www.cjlt.ca/...cjlt29-3_art7.html

anthropology bourdieu capital socialcapital

shared by Adam Bohannon on 19 May 08 - Cached
  • Researchers in the social sciences and humanities consider social ties to be a social resource. Such a resource is referred to as social capital.
  • Narayan and Pritchett (1997) suggested that communities with high social capital have frequent interaction, which in turn cultivates norms of reciprocity through which learners become more willing to help one another, and which improve coordination and dissemination of information and knowledge sharing. Social capital has been used as a framework for understanding a wide range of social issues in temporal communities. It has been used for the investigation of issues such as trust, participation, and cooperation.
  • In one of the earliest definitions of social capital, Hanifan (1916) stated that social capital included "those intangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people - namely goodwill, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit." Many years later, Coleman (1988) followed a similar line of thinking when he suggested that social capital refers to supportive relationships among adults and children that promote the sharing of norms and values.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Woolcock (1998) argues that social capital `encompasses the norms and networks facilitating collective action for mutual benefit.'
  • Fountain (1998) defines social capital as the institutional effectiveness of inter-organizational relationships and cooperation—horizontally among similar firms in associations, vertically in supply chains, and multidirectional links to sources of technical knowledge, human resources, and public agencies.
  • Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) defined social capital as the sum of actual and potential resources embedded within, available through and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit.
  • And Fukuyama (1999) included informal norms that promote cooperation between two or more individuals. The norms that constitute social capital can range from a norm of reciprocity between two friends, all the way up to complex and elaborately articulated doctrines like Christianity, Islamism or Confucianism. And so by definition, trust, networks, civil society, and the like which have been associated with social capital are all epiphenomenal, arising as a result of social capital but not constituting social capital itself.
  • A meta-societal definition of social capital was offered by the World Bank (1999), which referred to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society's social interactions. In this view, social capital is seen not merely as the sum of the institutions that underpin a society _ it is the glue that holds them together.
  • Cohen and Prusak (2001) extend Putnam's definition to define social capital as a stock of active connections among people, which covers the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviours that bind people as members of human networks and communities.
  • As a working definition, we define social capital in virtual learning communities as . common social resource that facilitates information exchange, knowledge sharing, and knowledge construction through continuous interaction, built on trust and maintained through shared understanding.
  • Adam Bohannon on 19 May 08
     
    Social capital has recently emerged as an important interdisciplinary research area. It is frequently used as a framework for understanding various social issues in temporal communities, neighbourhoods and groups. In particular, researchers in the social sciences and the humanities have used social capital to understand trust, shared understanding, reciprocal relationships, social network structures, common norms and cooperation, and the roles these entities play in various aspects of temporal communities. Despite proliferation of research in this area, little work has been done to extend this effort to technology-driven learning communities (also known as virtual learning communities). This paper surveys key interdisciplinary research areas in social capital. It also explores how the notions of social capital and trust can be extended to virtual communities, including virtual learning communities and distributed communities of practice. Research issues surrounding social capital and trust as they relate to technology-driven learning communities are identified.
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