Social Informatics

This is similar to the Natalie Munroe story

Jane McGonigal's new book - Reality is Broken - is out. This is an interview with her and some of the users of her games.

A department of the World Bank with expertise in policy and regulatory matters, in eGovernment, information technology, innovation and the enabling environment. Promotes access to information and communication technologies in developing countries.

Author finds that young people do care about privacy, but are more concerned with social privacy, rather than institutional privacy. "Contrary to much of the rhetoric in the debate around online privacy, the use of Facebook is not necessarily a choice free of coercion, nor are the reasons for sharing information on the site simply about self-obsession or exhibitionism." Rather it is a dominate expression of online identity and a way to communicate with peers. This is following one of the important points of Wesch - that there is no opting out of new media once the community starts to participate.

Discussion of our over-use of generalizations when talking about social media's effects.

I read this article last week, but thought I'd post it to the group after watching the Kevin Kelley talk.

This is a site for people performing personal experiments with Technology. I found my way here via, Kevin Kelly's site.

NY Times article by Meece (5 Feb 2011) discusses balancing work and home with mobile technology.

Very good article on the invasion of technology in one's family life, via smartphones.

A study out of Israel revealed that the greater amount of time teenage girls spend using social networking the more likely their chances are of developing negative body images and eating disorders.

I find this interesting because it begins the notion of transforming an online content source to a book, and moreover it is built around a social application with the potential for multiple authors. Essentially, Anthologize allows the authors of the blog to take specific posts and generate them into a book. By the way, the developers of this are from the Center for History and New Media, see the next post!

LOL Cats are a huge phenomena, and even offer a comedic insight into our language. The SpeakLolSpeak Wiki is a project to provide a dictionary for those people a little out of the loop or who need a quick reference. How is the Internet affecting us? ez shokkin.

the problems with crowdsourcing content

I discovered this center from reading this blogger ( http://www.michaeltyworth.com/blog/social-informatics/ ) Sounds pretty neat though I can't pretend to understand most of this I did like the approach - "We have all this incredible amount of information, but we don't have knowledge. What we're trying to do is focus on the problem of transforming energy-sensor and other information-into knowledge."

This is an article about a British court ruling about privacy, identity and journalism and their lack of privacy on the internet. Strangly this week a US Court ruled on a similar case but said FB statements cannot be used to fire an employee. Interesting the differences in the UK and US rulings.

I have to say with the winter we've had in this country, it is quite wise to plan for emergency closings which keep the kids motivated and learning.

without a question. the key issue, I think, is one of coordination and management.

I found this through Kevin Kelly's website. "Quantified Self 2011 is a conference for users and tool makers interested in self-tracking systems. It will be a "working meeting" for the QS community (14 groups worldwide), where we will gather, inspire, and learn from each other as we share and collaborate on self-tracking projects. We will also explore the potential effects of self-tracking on ourselves and society."

Adam Gopnik wrote on overview on many of the issues we are discussing this week in last Monday's New Yorker. I haven't read the article as closely as I would like yet, but I noticed many familiar names.

This article is intriguing. It pertains more to bio-technology, but I found it pretty fascinating that parts of our bodies could be engineered to be better than they previously were...including out brains.....? "[Kurzweil] claims that the human brain will be entirely reverse-engineered by the 2020's, and that it will then be able to be modified to be exponentially more powerful than the natural human brain."

On Jan. 25 a bill was introduced in the Senate to allow the President to shut down the Internet in an emergency. This article discusses shutdowns in Egypt, China, Nepal, Tunisia, Iran, Thailand, and North Korea.

AAAAAAAAAGH.