[digital technologies and identity]

Digital Technologies of the Self - Yasmine Abbas and Fred Dervin (eds.).
Cambridge Scholars (2009).




- Information available at:
http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Digital-Technologies-of-the-Self1-4438-1419-9.htm
- Introduction and table of contents:
http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/978-1-4438-1419-5-sample.pdf

Inspired by the “technologies of the self” theorized by Michel Foucault in the early 1980s, this volume investigates how contemporary individuals fashion their identity/identities using digital technologies such as ambient intelligent devices, social networking platforms and online communities (Facebook, CouchSurfing and craigslist), online gaming (SilkRoad Online, Oblivion and World of Warcraft), podcasts, etc. With high-speed internet access, ubiquitous computing and generous storage capacity, the opportunities for staging and transforming the self/selves have become nearly limitless.
This book explores how technologies contribute to the expression, (co-)construction and enactment of identities. It examines these issues from various perspectives as it brings together insights from different disciplines — design, discourse analysis, philosophy and sociology.

UNESCO World Report, "Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural
Dialogue" available online.

Cultural diversity has emerged as a key concern at the turn of a new century. Yet the meanings attached to this catch-all term are as varied as they are shifting. Some see cultural diversity as inherently positive, insofar as it points to a sharing of the wealth embodied in each of the world’s cultures and, accordingly, to the links uniting us all in processes of exchange and dialogue. For others, cultural differences are what cause us to lose sight of our common humanity and are therefore at the root of numerous conflicts. This second diagnosis is today all the more plausible since globalization has increased the points of interaction and friction between cultures, giving rise to identity-linked tensions, withdrawals and claims, particularly of a religious nature, which can become potential sources of dispute. The essential challenge, therefore, would be to propose a coherent vision of cultural diversity and thereby to clarify how, far from being a threat, it can become beneficial to the action of the international community.

[critical digital literacy]

I believe that access to technology (digital or otherwise) is not synonomous with literacy. Via Doug Belshaw I find a resonance in a passage from Allan Martin’s Digital Literacy and the “Digital Society” in Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices. The notion of identity (biography) as a constructing and reconstructive practise plays alongside notions of digital literacy.

"Society is being transformed by the passage from the “solid” to the “liquid” phases of modernity, in which all social forms melt faster than new ones can be cast. They are not given enough time to solidify and cannot serve as the frame of reference for human actions and long-term life-strategies because their allegedly short life expectation undermines efforts to develop a strategy that would require the consistent fulfillment of a “life-project.” (Bauman, 205, p.303)

For those who do not belong to the global elite, life has become an individual struggle for meaning and livelihood in a world that has lost its predictability… Consumption has become the only reality, the main topic of TV and of conversation, and the focus of leisure activity. The modes of consumption become badges of order, so that to wear a football strip of a certain team (themselves now multinational concerns) or a logo of a multinational company become temporary guarantors of safety and normality.

In this society, the construction of individual identity has become the fundamental social act. The taken-for-granted structures of modern (i.e., industrial) society - the nation state, institutionalized religion, social class - have become weaker and fuzzier as providers of meaning and, to that extent, of predictability. Even the family has become more atomized and short term. Under such conditions individual identity becomes the major life-project. You have to choose the pieces (from those available to you) rather than having them (largely) chosen for you. In this context, awareness of the self assumes new importance, reflexivity is a condition of life; a life that needs to be constantly active and constantly re-created. And care is needed, because each individual is responsible for their own biography. Risk and uncertainty have become endemic features of the personal biography, and individual risk-management action is thus an essential element of social action (Beck, 1992, 2001). The community can be no longer regarded as a given that confers aspects of identity, and the building of involvement in communities has become a conscious action-forming part of the construction of individual identity. Individualization has positive as well as negative aspects: the freedom to make one’s own biography has never been greater, a theme frequently repeated in the media. But the structures of society continue to distribute the choices available very unequally, and the price of failure is greater since social support is now offered only equivocally."

[getting fired over facebook use]

From The Age:

"About three weeks ago, Roseanna Brisbane, after a long day doing casual work for a Queensland Government agency, updated her Facebook status saying that in future she would be "saying no to working for shitty Government departments".

She did not name the department or any individuals in her message but a colleague and Facebook friend saw the update and passed it on to her boss. She was promptly "escorted out of the building" on her next day back at work.

She said she was a casual so had few options in terms of unfair dismissal claims.

Brisbane, 20, believed she was targeted because of a back injury she obtained at work that restricted her productivity.

Her mother, Jillian, said she could understand critics who say people should be careful about what they publish online. But young people saw Facebook as their main tool for communicating privately with friends and did not expect their bosses to be spying on them.

"It is becoming the Soviet state type thing where you're scared of talking to someone in case they go and tell someone else," she said.

[...]

Another reader, Bummer, was fired from his job on his first day over Facebook comments he made regarding the company's long recruitment process. He did not mention the company name and expected the comments were private but later found out he was not using the correct Facebook privacy settings.

"I don't agree that employers should use social networking tools to learn more about their employees as most people's 'social' personality and 'work' personality are vastly different. I definitely learned the hard way," the reader said.

[...]

Last week this website reported several other examples of Australians being sacked or disciplined over seemingly innocuous online posts, including the case of a man who says he was fired from his job at a "large corporate bank" for using the word "recession" in his Facebook profile.

Furthermore, the NSW Department of Corrective Services is threatening to sack prison officers over posts they made to a Facebook group criticising the cash-strapped State Government's plans to privatise Parklea and Cessnock prisons."

[lecture MEDS2009: new media, new identities]

Following on from today's lecture, please feel free to answer the following questions here or within blackboard.


How similar is the “you” of the blog to the “you” in various real-life contexts?

What happens when people who know the “you” from one context suddenly encounter the “you” from another?


Two videos to watch.

One from a DMU student:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQoCtIv-zk

Another famous one from Professor Michael Wesch:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g&mode=related&search=

[new media, romance and evidence]

"Mobile phones, BlackBerrys, emails, social networking... Never before has it been so easy to cheat on a partner. But has technology made it simply too difficult for philanderers to cover their tracks?

*****

In today's world, to function as an effective member of 21st-century society, we have to engage with a bewildering array of electronic gadgets, few of which we fully understand. We stomp digital footprints all over the place, and the unforeseen result of engaging in the information age is that it is becoming harder to have secrets – and, as a result, it is harder to cheat on each other.

Day-to-day actions, such as taking the bus to work and buying a magazine on the way, used to be ephemeral. But today, every journey, every communication, every penny spent, is logged and stored. As we move through life, we leave millions of specks of electronic evidence. Stored on hard drives and mainframes, this data acts like specks of DNA sprayed across the bedsheet of cyberspace. It's all there waiting to incriminate us."

Read the whole article at the Independent.

[identity and punctuation]

What punctuation mark are you?

You Are An Exclamation Point

You are a bundle of... well, something. You're often a bundle of joy, passion, or drama. You're loud, brash, and outgoing. If you think it, you say it. Definitely not the quiet type, you really don't keep a lot to yourself. You're lively and inspiring. People love to be around your energy. (But they do secretly worry that you'll spill their secrets without even realizing it.) You excel in: Public speaking You get along best with: the Dash

Try the quiz for yourself here.

[canada day in london]

[social networks & identity]

This article by Scott Monty on his social networks and what it means for his identity fits well with the upcoming NLab Social Networks conference.

"I've been getting a lot of requests for friends on various social networks lately. You probably have been too - there seems to be an explosion of interest lately, particularly on Twitter.

I'm generally encouraged by this, as it means that the space is continuing to grow, rather than to wane like some short-lived fad. But at the same time, it can make life a little more complex or cluttered if you're not ready to deal with it.

But social networks are inherently different from each other. How you use one may not reflect how you use another, nor will contacts be consistent across every one of them. I thought it might be instructive to share how I think about my social networks - particularly focusing on how I consider friend requests in each. I've linked to my profiles, if you'd care to connect with me on them.

Facebook
Ah, Facebook. One of the most visible and recognized brands in the social networking space, where "friend" is a verb. For me, Facebook is a combination of business and social contacts.

I'll immediately accept a friendship request if I know you or follow you on another network. But that's not to say I'm exclusive in my friending. If we don't know each other, just introduce yourself and - most importantly - give me some context as to how you know me.

LinkedIn
I use LinkedIn as my professional social network. Like the old three-ring binders of business cards that I kept, LinkedIn is my real-time virtual collection of business cards.

As you can imagine, my requirements for LinkedIn are a bit more stringent. If you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn, we should have met or at least have had some meaningful interaction. I'll also accept introductions via people I know.

Twitter
Twitter is probably the loosest of all of my networks. I generally like connecting with more people there because I enjoy the exchange of ideas, links and quick personal interaction that it allows."

From Marketing Profs Daily Fix.

[Open Source Embroidery: Craft and Code at HTTP Gallery]

Ele Carpenter, a digital-textile artist who I interviewed for Furtherfield, is curating a super exhibition. It's a must-see:

Preview: Friday 16th May 6-9pm, 17th May – 15th June 2008

Open Fridays to Sundays 12-5pm

http://www.http.uk.net/

This exhibition explores the connections between the collaborative characteristics of needlework, craft and Open Source software. This project has brought together embroiderers, patch-workers, knitters, artists and computer programmers, to share their practice and make new work.

HTML Patchwork in
progress

The centre-piece of the exhibition at HTTP Gallery is the HTML Patchwork developed in response to the popularity of quilting in Sheffield, the result of a participatory project initiated by Ele Carpenter in partnership with Access Space. The patchwork is built on open principles of collective production and skill-share where each person contributes a part to the whole. The final work is a collectively stitched patchwork quilt of HTML web-safe colours with embroidered codes, and a wiki website, where the makers of each patch identify themselves and write about their sewing process. Each patch is
personalised by the sewer, often including embroidered web addresses.

telinit Ø: time for bed, Lisa Wallbank, 2007
Knitted Blog (detail),
Suzanne Hardy, 2006-

In an interview with Jess Laccetti, Ele Carpenter said about the project: "The same arguments about Open Source vs Free Software can be applied to embroidery. The needlework crafts also have to negotiate the principles of 'freedom' to create, modify and distribute, within the cultural and economic constraints of capitalism. The Open Source Embroidery project simply attempts to provide a social and practical way of discussing the issues and trying out the practice. Free Software, Open Source, amateur and professional embroiderers and programmers are welcome to contribute to the project."

Hexart GDlib Script Error, digital print on canvas, James Wallbank,
2007
Weaving network cable in progress, Paul Grimmer, 2007

The project was developed by Ele Carpenter when working as an artist in residence at Access Space in Sheffield and Isis Arts in Newcastle upon Tyne. Access Space is an open access media lab using recycled computers and open source software. Anyone can drop in and use the lab to develop their creative projects.

The exhibition at HTTP Gallery in Harringay, North London, includes works by 11 artists and makers alongside the collectively made HTML Patchwork quilt and wiki. Other works in the exhibition include Susanne Hardy’s Knit-a-Blog, a collective knitting project made by contributors from across the UK and USA, Iain Clarke’s PHP Embroidery, which explores the open source PHP programming language as a form of self-generating weaving, as well as artworks by Paul Grimmer, Tricia Grindrod, Jake Harries & Keith o’Faoláin, John Keenan, Trevor Pitt, Clare Ruddock, James Wallbank, and Lisa Wallbank.

The HTML Patchwork has been created by people at: Access Space, Art through Textiles, The Patchwork Garden, The Fat Quarters, Stocksbridge Knit n Chat, Totley Quilters, Isis Arts, and the Banff New Media Institute at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada.

Events at HTTP

Preview
Your chance to meet Ele Carpenter, the curator as well of some of the other exhibiting artists, to enjoy a few drinks and conversations about the exhibition.

Open Knitting and Embroidery
evenings
Dates and times TBC

Bring your knits, your embroidery and your friends for tea, biscuits and conversation amongst the artworks.

These events are open to the public and entrance is free, however advanced booking is necessary.

Contact:
Lauren Wright,
HTTP Gallery
lauren@furtherfield.org

HTTP
Gallery
http://www.http.uk.net/
Unit A2,
Arena Design Centre
71 Ashfield Road
London N4 1LD
+44(0)79 8129
2734
Click here for map
and location details

Further info:
www.open-source-embroidery.org.uk
www.eleweekend.blogspot.com
www.access-space.org

[ur brain on compUtrs]

In the Sunday Times Magazine this weekend there was a feature by John Cornwell: "It's a No Brainer." The article gave an overview of Professor Susan Greenfield's latest research findings detailing the effects of extended computer use on young people's brains.

According to Cornwell, Greenfield is predicting a "nobody scenario" in which teens of tomorrow won't have a secure/stable sense of personal identity (which means lack of morality and inability to think about effect of actions).

"By spending inordinate quantities of time in the interactive, virtual, two-dimensional, cyberspace realms of the screen...the brains of the youth of today are headed for a drastic alterations. It's as if all that young grey cortical matter is being scalded and defoliated by a kind of cognitive Agent Organge, depriving them of moral agency, imagination and awareness of consequences."

Greenfield draws parallels between the degeneration of an Alzheimer's brain and "the implications of these newer threats." For Greenfield (via Cornwell) too much IT (from 6-9 hours a day...ah! sounds like me!) means brains develop differently: "The brain has plasticity: it is exquisitely malleable, and a significant alteration in our environment and behaviour has consequences."

Thanks to the "substitution of virtual experience for real encounters, the impact of spoon-fed menu options as opposed to free-ranging inquiry, a decline in linguistic and visual imagination, and atrophy of creativity, ccontracted, brutalised text-messagine, lacking the verbs and conditional structures essential for complext thinking" ..."the more we play games, the less time there is for learning specific facts and working out how those facts relate to each other." the result: "a failure to build highly personalise individual conceptual freamworks..."

I'm not sure about the seemingly sweeping negativity. Sure computers have changed/added to the ways we communicate but young people especially are still in school all day - there *must* be at least some real-life contact during those hours. A decline in linguistic imagination? I think text messaging is all about imagination rather than a "brutalised" form of language, this is a craft - a different kind of language for a specific purpose (only 140 characters to say what you mean). Sounds like the creation of a kind of code. But more research needs to be conducted before anyone can say exactly what changes are occuring and how parents/educators/society should (or should not) accommodate them. (See Charles Leadbeater: "But the reality is that most young people seem to see it as a way to participate and collaborate, socialise and express themselves.")

Interestingly, the print version of the Times' article has various brain photos but the accompanying online version does not. The images included in the print article are from the Science Photo Library which also has these amazing views of the brain speaking, hearing words and reading words:





As an aside to the article content (science, brain research, teens) the writing style of Cornwell suggests his own kind of ludditism...an inappropriate gendered kind. Baroness Susan Greenfield (Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Fullerian Professor of Physiology, Senior Research Fellow Lincoln College, Honorary Fellow, St. Hilda's College) is described as "the motormouth publicist of science" whose "lower lip pouts as if to blow a raspberry." She is also a "glamourpuss" (though at least an "academic" one). We are told about her "bust up with her Oxford-don husband" and then treated to Cornwell's interpretation of her accoutrements: "she, in laboratory mode, is dressed down in a beautifully cut Russian-red jacket; a sleeveless, artificial-fur-lined silvery waistcoat; charcoal Armani trousers; a fetching beret (hint of Rasta-chic); and patent platform lace-up ankle boots." Further in the article, Cornwell describes Greenfield's "tight-fitting grey-blue trouser suit" she wears to a Birmingham lecture. Just one question: had the scientist been male, would Cornwell similarly draw focus to his "pouting" lips, eyes and clothes?

[MEDS 2009 lecture: new media new identities]

Questions posed to the class during the lecture to be answered in the comments:

Search YouTube for the tag "Leicester" - How many videos appear?
Find an image on Flickr that reflects an aspect of your identity and post the url of the image in the comments
Tweet your answer to this question: "what do you think of using Twitter in this class?"

Watch: Social Networking for Parents

UPDATE: Thanks to all the MEDS 2009 students for your participation...even in the terribly hot lab!

[taxonomy of social network services]

Recently Christophe Prieur shared with the AoIR list this interesting take on a taxonomy of social network services. According to him, he's tried to "map" the various services along two trajectories. Going left to right is the notion of action, being (etre) to doing (faire). The top to bottom axis seems to reflect the kind of identity construction, is it more "real" (reel) or virtual (projete)?

More precisely:

"L’extériorisation de soi caractérise la tension entre les signes qui se réfèrent à ce que la personne est dans son être (sexe, âge, statut matrimonial, etc.), de façon durable et incorporée, et ceux qui renvoient à ce que fait la personne (ses œuvres, ses projets, ses productions). Ce processus d’extériorisation du soi dans les activités et les oeuvres renvoie à ce que la sociologie qualifie de subjectivation.
La simulation de soi caractérise la tension entre les traits qui se réfèrent à la personne dans sa vie réelle (quotidienne, professionnelle, amicale) et ceux qui renvoient à une projection ou à une simulation de soi, virtuelle au sens premier du terme, qui permet aux personnes d’exprimer une partie ou une potentialité d’elles-mêmes."

And graphically:

The five highlighted areas signify types of visibility. There is the "partition" or "folding screen" (my translation so perhaps not 100% reliable...) which allows users to "hide" behind categories, eventually revealing themselves only to those of their choosing. There is also "clair-obscur" which sounds like the Italian "chiaro-scuro", a technique which allows users to "rendent visibles leur intimité, leur quotidien et leur vie sociale, mais ils s’adressent principalement à un réseau social de proches et sont difficilement accessibles pour les autres." Other categories include the lighthouse (Le phare), the post-it and the magical lantern (think avatar identities in Second Life).

Take a look here for more.

[los de abajo]

Los de Abajo were great live! Lots of enthusiasm and excitement and really got the crowd going. The venue, The Borderline in London was perfect. A well-hidden basement/cantina that seemed to add to the reverberation of the bass-heavy merengue and mamba beats. Their name, loosely translated as "those from below" encapsulates their theory that there are no underdogs: "That's all, that's all, we're all just human. We're all just human."

From the Los de Abajo manifesto:

Identity - is knowing who you are. And that's what this is all about - our Mexican identity. We are indefinable as a people. Our blood is restless, because we are the bastard children of a forced marriage between Jesús and Coyolxauqui. We have a demented uncle named Sam, and our brother is Emiliano. On one side of the Rio Grande we are ilegales and on the other we aliens. Aliens in our own country.Equality - is something the West likes to talk about a lot but there are just four words to describe it - We Are All Equal.

[social networking profiles - which one are you]

This is a list compiled by Malene Charlotte Larsen who is researching a ph.d on young people and social networking at Aalborg University, Denmark. The list of 35 perspectives is published in the Social Computing Magazine. I'll copy here just a few:

"The consumer perspective
Social networking sites are money-making machines creating a need for added value among young people causing them to spend all their pocket money on extra features such as VIP profiles, widgets, gifts for friends and so on.
The youth perspective
Social networking sites are places that help young people be young and let them “practice” youth. Therefore, the sites are mainly a reflection of youth culture.
The friendship perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people can maintain and nurse their existing (offline) friendships and create new (online) friendships.
The identity perspective
Social networking sites are spaces for identity construction. Here, young people are continuously constructing, re-constructing and displaying their self-image and identity. Also, the network sites make them co-constructors of each other’s identities.
The language perspective
Social networking sites aggravate the written language of young people. They develop bad habits of misspelling on purpose, which makes them unable to write correctly. On the other hand, their online language is really creative and they do know how to tell right from wrong.
The public perspective
Social networking sites are “open diaries” of young people, but they do not think about the fact that the whole world can read their text and see their pictures online.
The social perspective
Social networking sites make young people more social and help them communicate with others. Especially, the sites help youngsters cope with shyness or loneliness.
The technological perspective
Social networking sites are part of the Web 2.0 and social software technology generation in which case focus on the technological possibilities is predominant.

[no privacy online - online fingerprints are ba-ack]

New Software Can Identify You From Your Online Habits

IF YOU thought you could protect your privacy on the web by lying about your personal details, think again. In online communities at least, entering fake details such as a bogus name or age may no longer prevent others from working out exactly who you are.

That is the spectre raised by new research conducted by Microsoft. The computing giant is developing software that could accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing telltale patterns in your web browsing history. But experts say the idea is a clear threat to privacy - and may be illegal in some places.

Previous studies show there are strong correlations between the sites that people visit and their personal characteristics, says software engineer Jian Hu from Microsoft's research lab in Beijing, China. For example, 74 per cent of women seek health and medical information online, while only 58 per cent of men do. And 34 per cent of women surf the internet for information about religion, whereas 25 per cent of men do the same.

While each offers only a fairly crude insight, analytical software could use a vast range of such profiles to perform a probabilistic analysis of a person's browsing history. From that it could make a good guess about their identity, Hu and his colleagues last week told the World Wide Web 2007 conference in Banff, Canada.

"It could make a good guess about your identity from your browsing history"

Hu's colleague Hua-Jun Zeng says the software could get its raw information from a number of sources, including a new type of "cookie" program that records the pages visited. Alternatively, it could use your PC's own cache of web pages, or proxy servers could maintain records of sites visited. So far it can only guess gender and age with any accuracy, but the team say they expect to be able to "refine the profiles which contain bogus demographic information", and one day predict your occupation, level of qualifications, and perhaps your location. "Because of its hierarchical structure - language, country, region, city - we may need to design algorithms to better discriminate between user locations," Zeng says.

However, Ross Anderson, a computer security engineer at the University of Cambridge, thinks the idea could land Microsoft in legal trouble. "I'd consider it somewhat pernicious if Microsoft were to deploy such software widely," he told New Scientist. "They are arguably committing offences in a number of countries under a number of different laws if they make available software that defeats the security procedures internet users deploy to protect their privacy - from export control laws to anti-hacking laws."

From issue 2604 of New Scientist magazine, 16 May 2007, page 32

[wikipedia]

An example of why I discourage students from using wikipedia:

"The Essjay controversy occurred after a prominent English Wikipedia editor and administrator — briefly a Wikia employee — known by the name
"Essjay" "forged his credentials and faked having a doctorate."

NEW YORK: In a blink, the wisdom of the crowd became the fury of the crowd.

In the past few days, contributors to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, have turned against one of their own who was found to have created an elaborate false identity.

Under the name Essjay, the contributor edited thousands of Wikipedia entries and once was one of the few people with the authority to deal with vandalism and to arbitrate disputes between authors.

To the Wikipedia world, Essjay was a tenured professor of religion at a private university with expertise in canon law, according to his user profile.

But in fact, Essjay is a 24-year-old named Ryan Jordan, who attended a number of colleges in Kentucky and who lives outside Louisville.

Jordan contended that he resorted to a fictional persona to protect himself from people who might be angered by his administrative role at Wikipedia. He did not respond to an e-mail message, nor to messages conveyed by the Wikipedia office.

Read the rest of the article here.

Further info available at wikipedia too.

Thanks to Angela for the head's up.