Social Informatics

Many of the ideas that we are discussing are not so new and even predate the Internet. Marshall McLuhan made a name for himself dealing with these issues in the 1950's and 60's. Although some of his ideas have perhaps not proved true his basic concepts were on the money. From a CBC broadcast May 18, 1960.

This is fantastic! Worth watching. I want to read up more on McLuhan's work. Which of McLuhan's works do you recommend?

My favorite is "The Mechanical Bride" - a great critique of new (at the time) electronic media, consumerism, marketing and how they could affect the way we perceive ourselves. "The Media is the Massage" is a fun and relatively quick read and covers many of McLuhan's key concepts.

Argues that Terms of service (TOS) agreements have implications for the political and legal structures under which our virtual selves will function. Also, the Wall Street Journal has actually been running fantastic series of investigative reports on this topic, called "what they know": http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know-digital-privacy.html

I have used Marcus P. Zillman as a resource in previous papers for school so I was intrigued when I saw this HUGE list of social informatics and networking websites that he had compiled. He also writes for LLRX a highly regarded Law Librarian e-zine here: http://www.llrx.com/authors/398

Wow, this list is huge. Problem with a list like this is I wonder how often it is managed, to make additions and remove URLs that don't exist anymore.

A group effort sharing information about all literacies (digital literacy, media literacy, information literacy, visual literacy, 21st century literacies, transliteracies ) with special focus on all libraries.

Just realized this is missing "geospatial literacy" which is one of the areas I am interested in, but this looks like a great site. Similar to what we are doing on the topic of social informatics via diigo.

I like that there is so much interest in Transliteracy! We have to include Henry Jenkin's blog as well: http://www.henryjenkins.org/

nothing like ICT related article hot off the press!

I found a similar article from the UN sharing how cell phones and texting was used during a recent election in Kenya to limit riots and other unsafe activities. Though not used for either candidate the initiative did save lives and destruction of public areas by quickening the response times of police.

The internet being cut off in Egypt is just unprecedented. What are people reading and what sources are they following? Here's an interesting article about how it was turned off: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/egypts-internet-blackout-unprecedented.html also, it's interesting how one small company is still providing service and how people with international calling plans can use foreign dial-up providers. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/despite-severed-connections-egyptians-get-back-online/70479/

There's so many examples of info on the internet being considered as "evidence." This was struck me as really surprising. There was another piece about insurance companies doing similar tactics in the LA Times this week: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-evidence-20110125,0,4304729.story

Clay Shirky and how the Internet allows people to vote for logos, etc.

The TRG researches what we are trying to do here (on diigo) and what we've been trying to do all week. Create understanding across mediums.

A pathfinder that provides an overview of using technology with at-risk students (students who are at-risk of dropping out, usually those who come from low-income minority households).

A very simple and rudimentary explanation (via a PP presentation) of how learning is culturally informed. These ideas are probably elementary to Social Informatics. However, these are concepts that are very easy to forget and don't seem to be very firmly implanted in America's collective conscious.

Transliteracy is defined by Sue Thomas, a professor of new media at De Monfort University, as "the capacity to read, write, and interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio, and film, to digital social networks."

This is not scholarly, but it is a humorous look at the world without the internet, and how we might react.... relocation to refugee camps, inability to function in our jobs and the ultimate message, that "we can't take the internet for granted".

This is not scholarly, but it makes a few excellent points about Video Game Addiction, that most people can likely relate to.

I do not know what type of comment I should add. Probably the best thing to write is a question - how seriously do you think one should take the idea of being a citizen of a virtual country?

Honestly with all of the society games available online I'm not surprised that this idea has not gained more popularity. Most social networks are full of people who just want to belong. This is the perfect way to belong to something and aid in the creation as well.

This site documents the public response to internet phenomena (e.g., smiling dogs, phrases, viral videos).

This is fascinating to me. Some years ago I have read Richard Dawkin's The selfish gene (http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary----Introduction/dp/0199291152/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296232952&sr=1-3) and the Idea of Memes, using us, humans, to reproduce and evolve was quite amazing. I would also recommend Susan Blackmore's The meme machine (http://www.amazon.com/Meme-Machine-Popular-Science/dp/019286212X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296232884&sr=8-1), it was interesting for me. Yes, it falls under the "popular science" category, and her pseudo)scientific style could be a bit irritating; but overall there were some interesting ideas. P.S. I did not get the hyper-linking to work for me. I would appreciate some clues :-)

scientismic - a new term?

In many ways, this is just one more pundit (and we know how much attention they can get by being contrary), but he does provide a counterpoint to much of the enthusiasm over the democratizing effects of social media.

Nicholas Negroponte started this organization to create a program where laptops are given to children around the world. He is a member of the MIT faculty since 1966.

MIT has a tremendous economics program as well.

This brief article about social networking in religious communities contains links to Neo-Pagan, Interfaith, Jewish, Christian, Muslim social networks and further resources to read.

fascinating.

Awarding the self in Wikipedia: Identity work and the disclosure of knowledge Ashton, Daniel. "Awarding the self in Wikipedia: Identity work and the disclosure of knowledge" First Monday [Online], Volume 16 Number 1 (18 December 2010)

ooooh. I forgot about this one. Thanks for unearthing it.

Linden Lab was founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale to create a revolutionary new form of shared experience, where individuals jointly inhabit a 3D landscape and build the world around them. Today this experience, known as the Second Life® world, has a rapidly growing population of Residents from around the globe, who are creating and inhabiting a virtual world of their own design.