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Allison Frost

A Global Tour of Online Protests | UsefulArts.us - 0 views

  • Where have all the protests gone? Many of the most interesting and successful are making creative use of new online environments
  • Rappresentanza Sindacale Unitaria IBM Vimercate (RSU), the official trade union representing IBM’s 9,000 workers in Italy, undertook a novel form of industrial action – a strike on Second Life. IBM has a large Second Life presence, in which 2,000 characters in protest shirts, carrying signs, picketed. The result was a change in a salary increase policy for employees in Italy and an award from the French Senate.
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    Online protests. Second life protestors with second life picket signs.
Amanda Giles

The Multitasking Generation -- Printout -- TIME - 0 views

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    They're e-mailing, IMing and downloading while writing the history essay. What is all that digital juggling doing to kids' brains and their family life?
jardinejn

The Impact of Community Computer Networks on Social Capital and Community Involvement - 0 views

  • Putnam defined social capital as the "features of social organization, such as trust, norms and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions
  • , civic engagement is a function of communication among members via their social networks, and as civic engagement increases, so does quality of life in the community. Thus, communities with vibrant communication networks are likely to have a preferable quality of life.
  • . Dimmick, Patterson, and Sikand (1996) argued for the role of the traditional telephone in developing and maintaining strong interpersonal communication patterns in the local community.
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  • examination of the role of interactive media in building social capital.
  • Several scholars viewed the computer network of the Internet as especially well suited to communication activities that lead to community building, virtual or otherwise (Jones, 1994; Rheingold, 2000; Wellman, 1997).
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    How networking can influence social causes
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    This study found how group efficacy improves with networking.
Krista S

The demographics, motivations, and derived experiences of users of massively multi-user... - 0 views

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    Male players were significantly more likely to be driven by the Achievement and Manipulation factors, while female players were significantly more likely to be driven by the Relationship factor. Also, the data indicated that users derived meaningful relationships and salient emotional experiences, as well as real-life leadership skills from these virtual environments. MMORPGs are not simply a pastime for teenagers, but a valuable research venue and platform where millions of users interact and collaborate using real-time 3D avatars on a daily basis.
Amanda Giles

I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You - Clive Thompson - NYTimes.com - 2 views

  • Facebook and Twitter may have pushed things into overdrive, but the idea of using communication tools as a form of “co-presence” has been around for a while. The Japanese sociologist Mizuko Ito first noticed it with mobile phones: lovers who were working in different cities would send text messages back and forth all night — tiny updates like “enjoying a glass of wine now” or “watching TV while lying on the couch.” They were doing it partly because talking for hours on mobile phones isn’t very comfortable (or affordable). But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call.
  • capable
  • A lot of this is just social norms catching up with what technology is capable of.”
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  • ambient awareness
  • very much like being physically near someone
  • paradox of ambient awareness
  • insignificant on its own
  • he little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives
  • Facebook and Twitter may have pushed things into overdrive, but the idea of using communication tools as a form of “co-presence” has been around for a while. The Japanese sociologist Mizuko Ito first noticed it with mobile phones: lovers who were working in different cities would send text messages back and forth all night — tiny updates like “enjoying a glass of wine now” or “watching TV while lying on the couch.” They were doing it partly because talking for hours on mobile phones isn’t very comfortable (or affordable). But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call.
  • the growing popularity of online awareness as a reaction to social isolation
  • human groupings naturally tail off at around 150 people: the “Dunbar number,” as it is known. Are people who use Facebook and Twitter increasing their Dunbar number, because they can so easily keep track of so many more people?
  • Constant online contact had made those ties immeasurably richer, but it hadn’t actually increased the number of them; deep relationships are still predicated on face time, and there are only so many hours in the day for that.
  • If you’re reading daily updates from hundreds of people about whom they’re dating and whether they’re happy, it might, some critics worry, spread your emotional energy too thin, leaving less for true intimate relationships.
  • Parasocial relationships can use up some of the emotional space in our Dunbar number, crowding out real-life people.
  • hey can observe you, but it’s not the same as knowing you.”
  • people in their 20s who were in college when Facebook appeared and have never lived as adults without online awareness. For them, participation isn’t optional. If you don’t dive in, other people will define who you are.
  • if only to ensure the virtual version of you is accurate, or at least the one you want to present to the world.
  • he dynamics of small-town life,
  • If anything, it’s identity-constraining now
  • result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves
  • t’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness.
Neal C

http://sfx.lib.byu.edu.erl.lib.byu.edu/sfxlcl3?genre=article;isbn=;issn=10510230;title=... - 0 views

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    The Life and Death of the contemplative ladnscape
Amanda Giles

Executive Summary | Pew Internet & American Life Project - 0 views

  • Only 6% of the adult population has no one with whom they can discuss important matters or who they consider to be “especially significant” in their life.
  • contrary to the considerable concern that people’s use of the internet and cell phones could be tied to the trend towards smaller networks, we find that ownership of a mobile phone and participation in a variety of internet activities are associated with larger and more diverse core discussion networks. (Discussion networks are a key measure of people’s most important social ties.)
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    Social networking decreases social isolation.
Audrey B

Henry Thoreau and 'Civil Disobedience' - 0 views

  • Prior to his arrest, Thoreau had lived a quiet, solitary life at Walden, an isolated pond in the woods about a mile and a half from Concord. He now returned to Walden to mull over two questions: (1) Why do some men obey laws without asking if the laws are just or unjust; and, (2) why do others obey laws they think are wrong?
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      The two questions that led Thoreau to go to Walden Pond.
  • Transcendentalism became Thoreau’s intellectual training ground. His first appearance in print was a poem entitled “Sympathy” published in the first issue of The Dial, a Transcendentalist paper. As Transcendentalists migrated to Concord, one by one, Thoreau was exposed to all facets of the movement and took his place in its inner circle. At Emerson’s suggestion, he kept a daily journal, from which most of Walden was eventually culled. [12]     But Thoreau still longed for a life both concrete and spiritual. He wanted to translate his thoughts into action. While Transcendentalists praised nature, Thoreau walked through it.
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      So while Thoreau was living at Walden Pond in solitude, he was also apart of the Transcendentalist movement. "Thoreau was exposed to all facets of the movement and took his place in its inner circle...he kept a daily journal from which most of Walden was eventually culled." Thoreau lived as an observer and researcher of other people's actions. He wanted to learn more and eventually "translate his thoughts into action." Translating his thoughts to action took years but eventually lead to "Civil Disobedience"--an essay written in result of turning thoughts into action.
Weiye Loh

The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014) - 0 views

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    "我来时很好,去时,也很好"
Weiye Loh

Paris Review - Falling Men: On Don DeLillo and Terror, Chris Cumming - 0 views

  • inexplicable violence committed by a nobody in the context of ubiquitous media coverage. A mountain of evidence, testimony, and theory that hides the event itself. Images of the event endlessly replayed. An imbalance between the significance of the act and the insignificance of the person who committed it. Absurdity, in other words.
  • By introducing conspiracy and chaos into the world, a terrorist hopes to make himself equal to the overwhelming world surrounding him. The idea isn’t to change history but to enact one’s dream life. The person who blows up the Boston marathon instantly becomes the equal of his act. What other mythic ambition can a loser instantly achieve, just by deciding to do it? “In America it is the individual himself, floating on random streams of disaffection, who tends to set the terms of the absurd,” DeLillo wrote. “Set the terms” is right: an individual terrorist creates the absurdity in which the rest of us have to live. Whether or not Oswald or the Tsarnaevs achieved what they hoped they would achieve, their dream lives now overlap with reality. Violence gives weight to the meaningless. “This is what guns are for, to bring balance to the world,” DeLillo wrote, speaking, once again, of Oswald.
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    "Long before it became obvious, DeLillo argued that terrorists and gunmen have rearranged our sense of reality. He has become better appreciated as the world has come to resemble his work, incrementally, with every new telegenic catastrophe, every bombing and mass shooting. Throughout DeLillo's work we encounter young men who plot violence to escape the plotlessness of their own lives. He has done more than any writer since Dostoevsky to explain them."
Krista S

6 Maps of Digital Desires: Exploring the Topography of Gender and Play in Online Games - 1 views

  • Women in many MMOs perceive the game culture rather than the game mechanics to be the primary deterrent to poten-­ tial female gamers
  • On average, respondents spend twenty-­two hours each week in an MMO. The median was twenty hours per week—the equivalent of half a workweek. There were no significant gender or age differences in usage patterns; players over the age of forty play on average just as much as players under the age of twenty
  • While about 27 percent of female players were introduced to the game by a romantic partner, only 1 percent of male players were introduced in this way.
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  • Overall, about 25 percent of players play an MMO with their romantic partner. Female players are more likely to be playing with a romantic partner than male players (see figure 6.1). About two-­ thirds of female gamers are playing with a romantic partner, while less than one-­fifth of male gamers are
  • Men are allowed relatively free access to online games, but a woman’s presence in an online game is seen as legitimate only if it occurs via a relationship with a man.
  • It isn’t the case that women play only for socializing or that men play only to kill monsters. On the other hand, there are gender differences in these self-­identified motivations. Male players score higher in the Advancement, Mechanics, and Competition motivations, while female players score higher in the Relationship and Customization motivations. There were very small or no gender differences in the other five motivations—Socializing, Teamwork, Discovery, Role-­Playing, and Escapism.
  • In a recent survey, I asked female gamers about what they saw as potential deterrents to female gamers in the MMO they played. Almost every respondent cited the proportions and clothing options of the female avatars as problematic.
  • To a certain extent, this encourages players to think about women as token spectacles rather than actual players.
  • More important, many female players have learned that it is danger-­ ous to reveal your real-­life gender in MMOs because they will be branded as incompetent and constantly propositioned; In other words, they must either accept the male-­subject position silently, or risk constant discrimination and harassment if they reveal that they are female
  • Also, there are very few other places (in physical or virtual worlds) where high-­school students are collaborating with professors, retired war veterans, and stay-­at-­home moms
Krista S

Project Massive : The Social and Psychological Impact of Online Gaming - 0 views

  • Further, the re- sults indicate that participation in online gaming can lead to decreased isolation and en- hanced social integration for those players who use online gaming as a medium in which to spend time and interact with real life friends and relatives.
  • It is assumed that 10% of online game players are addicted to the activ- ity, an extrapolation from the ABCNEWS.com survey finding that 10% of all users of the internet are addicted to it
  • The average adult spends 4 hours per day (or 28 hours weekly) watching television (A.C. Neilsen, 2001). Average weekly video game play is estimated at 7.6 hours (ESA, 2004). It is reported that people who play massively multi- player online games do so for an average of 15 hours per week; however, weekly usage of 30 hours or more is not uncommon
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  • Killers are characterized by what Bartle refers to as a desire to impose themselves on the play experience of others. Most often this is done by killing other players for the joy of
  • “knowing that a real person, somewhere, is very upset by what you've just done, yet can themselves do nothing about it.” Killers are commonly referred to as “griefers” and their actions as “grief play” given their orientation toward annoying and aggravating others.
Weiye Loh

A `Bad Writer' Bites Back - 0 views

  • The journal, Philosophy and Literature, has offered itself as the arbiter of good prose and accused some of us of bad writing by awarding us "prizes."
  • The targets, however, have been restricted to scholars on the left whose work focuses on topics like sexuality, race, nationalism and the workings of capitalism -- a point the news media ignored. Still, the whole exercise hints at a serious question about the relation of language and politics: why are some of the most trenchant social criticisms often expressed through difficult and demanding language?
  • scholars in the humanities should be able to clarify how their work informs and illuminates everyday life. Equally, however, such scholars are obliged to question common sense, interrogate its tacit presumptions and provoke new ways of looking at a familiar world.
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    A `Bad Writer' Bites Back By JUDITH BUTLER
Ben Wagner

Ravings of a Feral Genius: "Life's A Joy That Has To End": John Hannah, Rest In Peace - 0 views

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    Roger Ebert tweeted this link earlier and I found it especially poignant. How do we grieve or even find out when people we only know online pass away?
Rachael Schiel

World to end on Saturday, say New York preachers - Yahoo! News - 1 views

  • "You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved. But when the Rapture comes, what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind?" Eternal Earth-Bound Pets says on its website, offering to "take that burden off your mind." The post-doomsday pet rescue service already has 259 clients, who have paid $135 for the first pet and $20 for each additional pet at the same address, to ensure the faithful animal companions are looked after and loved even when their Christian owners have gone to the other side.
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    If you are pretty sure you will be caught up into the rapture on Saturday, your pets can still be taken care of if you pay $135 to Eternal Earth-Bound Pets
Carlie Wallentine

100 Best Opening Lines of Literature - 5 views

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    Thanks for sharing this, this was cool
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