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Is the QR code soon to be a thing of the past?

There is also a provision for user-created content, that is likely to create a wild and wooly augmented world and perhaps a new generation of video graffiti artists, if the service takes off.

via.

This book brings together a selection of key tweets in a compelling, fast-paced narrative, allowing the story of the uprising to be told directly by the people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

The prosumer is one who produces what they consume and visa versa. Tweets from Tahrir places traditional consumers of content, the many faces in the crowd, as also content producers. What utility does having these tweets in book form have?  more...

The Cyborgology editors, again, appear on WYPR (Baltimore’s NPR affiliate). Listen to the audio here. We discuss “cyber-support”, something we have touched on before.

Social media sites like Facebook and Formspring have created new forums for bullying—you may have heard the word “cyberbullying” thrown around.

But social media also provides an opportunity for marginalized groups to gather for support—and occasionally to fight back. Our social media gurus Nathan Jurgenson and P.J. Rey call this “cybersupport.” You can see it at sites like Harassmap, the“3,000 Campaign” against sexual assault, and iHollaback.

Today Nathan and P.J. join Sheilah to talk about this type of networking and the effects it can have—intended and unintended—in physical space.

Nathan Jurgenson and P.J. Rey are Ph.D. candidates in sociology at the University of Maryland, and they blog at Cyborgology.

Also, there will be a panel on so-called cyber-support at the Theorizing the Web conference we are throwing on April 9th.

As many of you already know, the Cyborgology editors decided to throw a conference called Theorizing the Web. The conference will be in College Park, MD (just outside of Washington, D.C.) on April 9th. Today we are excited to announce the program for the conference and attach a flier that we hope you all can distribute to those who you think might be interested.

As you will see, the response was terrific. We built 14 panels out of the 56 papers we accepted (from the over 100 submissions). There will be three invited panels (on feminist activism, race, and methods). There will be two symposia (one on the role of social media in the Arab uprisings and another on social media and street art). There will be two plenaries (one by Saskia Sassen and another by George Ritzer). And we are excited to have danah boyd deliver our keynote.

If that was not enough, we have plenty of art-related surprises in store for those who attend. We have invited artists of all types to display and perform art specifically tailored to the themes of the conference. This will be one busy carnivalesque day for those who love technology and/or theory!

The program is found here: http://www.cyborgology.org/theorizingtheweb/program.html

Last, a flier for the conference [.pdf here]. Please distribute widely!

TtW2011 Flyer

 

One of the few things more interesting than Anonymous, are the internal sub-groups that have begun to develop.  Libcom is currently running a story about the Anonymous Anarchist Action hacktivist group.  This group seeks to specialize in capitalist targets and (in true anarchist fashion) constructing a horizontally organized coalition of people with a wide variety of expertise (not just programming or web science).

The integration of biological and technological systems in the design of an interactive human interface is explored through an installation where plants rigged up with sensors provide a kinesthetic user experience based on movement, touch, sound and light. Human interaction with the system affects an algorithmic projection and soundscape.
More images after the jump. more...

Visualizing the immaterial landscape of Wi-Fi networks reveals a layer of our augmented reality.

Cool tool that uses Google’s Street View to allow users to tag street art from around the globe. Check it out.

Expect more on street art and social media right here on Cyborgology in the near future.

FlowingData posted this great infographic that shows how prostituion in Manhattan is increasingly dispersed. The Internet allows sex work to be less anchored by physicality when much of the process happens online. More analysis here.


Really cool visualization that integrates the data with its physical-world context. Reminiscent of the point that our world is increasingly an augmentation of the physical and the digital.

More images here.