Social Informatics

Sherry Turkle's new book is cited.

I think I plug this every year in a class, but it is a conference for library developers. Essentially the coders and hackers who represent those most likely to bring theory to production regarding many of the ideas that come out of Social Informatics. I've gone to 2007 to now and its very interesting on many levels.

Mobile phones have many useful apps in poor countries, including verifying safety of medicine, assisting trade, enabling "crowdvoicing" and creating branchless microbanking systems.

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 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."

the problems with crowdsourcing content

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.

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!

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.

The writer of the article I just posted pollled NYT readers for how they use technology to manage the many directions their lives are pulled every day. So far, there are 69 comments...

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

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

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

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

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

I read this article detailing why e-books are better for the environment, cheaper, easier for eyes to read, convenient... My question is if anyone has an e-book reader and how they like it. I'm considering one of my own.

I have a Kindle and I LOVE it. I will admit that I hate that I cannot share my books with my friends as this is something that I used to do all the time. The Nook has that capability and there are rumors that Amazon will push through software that will allow this capability and I really hope they do. The Kindle has done amazing things for my book shelves and I think my husband is thrilled that we no longer have to keep adding. It is a dedicated ereader so it is limited to what I can do compared to an iPad but when I just want to read something the Kindle (or ereader) cannot be beat. While you are reading the iPad you are looking a computer monitor and that really strains my eyes. The Kindle is exactly like reading a book and there is no eye strain. Plus, the Kindle is a lot lighter than a book so it is much more comfortable to hold for long periods of time. It is great when I travel because I have a ton of books loaded onto my Kindle and I am set to go and I do not have to worry about their weight or carrying them around. Dessi mentioned that she liked having the old-fashioned paper in her hands and I thought I was going to be that way as well but I got over it real quick! I will admit that I do not like it for my school text books because I like to be able to visually see my books and I place notes all over the place with post-its and an old-fashioned book is just better for me in that respect.

They all seem to have advantages and disadvantges... I agree one problem with the ipad is the screen - it's better than a typical computer screen, but not as easy on the eyes as a dedicated e-reader. I am still attached to the physical experience of reading and writing, but that's cool that has really worked for Heather. One of the reasons why it might have not worked for scholarly reading is that the tools still seem limited for engaged reading, marking up texts, highlighting, etc. I am hoping there will be good apps for this with the ipad (i just got it and haven't had a chance to look). Beestel, you have to read through the details of each device to find out what is best for you and your reading needs.

People used to use the Internet to try on personalities and express themselves freely. Now it may be a corporate trap. Social robots sometimes supplant people. The author comments on "the banalities of electronic interaction" and how we don't interact in meaningful ways. However, some studies have shown than facebook users, for instance, have greater social capital.

we're actually going to read a bunch of Turkle's stuff - I really like her work

Is this the way that we power it all in the future? This is a start up company and there are still many questions about how this will become a marketable energy source, but the issue of powering a digital future at a reasonable cost is and important area of investigation and/or planning.

I completely agree Judy. Google has started to look at the energy issue, I believe in part, because so much power is needed to run their servers.

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.

An antidote about how Twitter can be used by consumers to give immediate reviews of a business and likewise how a business can use Twitter to rectify a situation with a customer immediately. Handy real world application of Twitter!