Social Informatics

Carrie-Ann Skinner (2011 Feb 19) discusses the social network.

Shara Ashraf (2011 Feb 19) discusses online dating etiquette.

One of the reasons why I will likely never be good at joining virtual communities such as Second Life is that I get really, really nauseous when moving through images on a screen when I'm sitting in a chair. Apparently, people call this "cybersickness."

The benefit of food focused community building: contributing to a shareable world.

An article from "Teaching Tolerance" magazine that deals with how social media can be, perhaps, used in the classroom to engender community based learning and social justice.

And the follow up. Most astonishing of course is the sizes of Facebook and MySpace in the two data results.

It's still used for Music information and community... and it still has a large membership though usage is down. Many people may not log in anymore, but did not delete their accounts.

true. The music set up there is very good. Many of my musician friends have their professional sites in myspace and link to them via fb.

Ultra funny online comic xkcd used data for membership of online communities in 2007 to draw a map of them based on size.

Kickstarter and other sites allow people to donate money to artists, etc. It may be an example of how virtual communities function with real-world matters.

Details are emerging about the recent blackout.

I just heard an npr episode where Terry Gross interviewed twitter co-founder Biz Stone about this. Very interesting. I think I'll put it into one of our future units: http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/

Provides online tools and recommendations for protecting oneself in an online community.

Expert on communities and place.

This is a NY Times article on how co-operative programs (like bike-sharing) are getting a boost from the spirit of collaboration on the web. The piece tries to trend spot "collaborative consumption", a "new" business model. We will have to see what happens.

This is the site for an author who has written several books about finding the time to disconnect. His most recent book is: A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough "We have forgotten what enough feels like." I recalled this during our discussion of "distraction" and finding ways to disconnect so that when we reconnect we are better able to make technology work for us.

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.

This is Lee Sheldon's (the points professor) blog. He gives a little more insight into how he uses the points system and also provides notes and afterthoughts.

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."

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.

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.

My sister in law works for Blue Cross in NC and sent me this to invite me to join. I did not join, but I'm completely fasicnated to see how this type of social networking grouped around medicine and health will work out. Yes, WebMD and other SN's related to health exist, but this one is directly sponsored and supported by a health care company.

I wonder how much of this is about collecting information about attitudes and values (notice it starts with a potentially inflammatory question). Why would this group be better than any other forum out there? What is the real motivation, I wonder.

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."