In Their Words

nathanjurgenson on October 21, 2012

“if you haven’t visited the Deep Web, you ain’t seen nothing yet”

“nothing in society makes sense except in the light of power. And that goes for speech, too”

“it used to be hard to connect when friends formed clicks, but it is even more difficult to connect now that clicks form friends”

“how did the Awkward Party Comment shift from “I know, I read your Livejournal” to “You read what I posted on Facebook, right?”

“Red Bull will most likely never fund a trip to Mars or a high speed rail line”

“It became very difficult to look at the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building without thinking that they looked CG”

“self-broadcasting always feels like agency, even if it only builds the walls of our own personal terrordome”

“A 3-year-old shouldn’t know which of her actions are worthy of being documented”

“gamification seems to invite false consciousness arguments because it’s scary that “play” can be so completely non-transgressive”

“Are we using technology to stylize our unease with the present, our feeling of disconnection from the past?”

“Why I felt OK outing Violentacrez: Anonymity should be valued mainly to the extent it helps protect powerless from powerful. VA wasn’t that”

“Trecartin’s characters, like the modern-day technophiles they satirise, are umbilically linked to their Blackberries”

“Surface is going to make some kind of history for Microsoft, one way or another”

“I always react negatively against the idea that technology is a foreign body inside the human” (1997)

“You do not hear about a YouTube video in the press w/o hearing about how many views it has, and that’s not accidental”

“over the past two years social media has also become an increasingly hostile place for women writers and journalists”

“to design with an eye to how clothes look online, perhaps sacrificing how they feel on the body”

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

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Social Media and the Devolution of Friendship: Part I

whitneyerinboesel on October 20, 2012

“Well, you saw what I posted on Facebook, right?”

I don’t know about you, but when I get this question from a friend, my answer is usually “no.” No, I don’t see everything my friends post on Facebook—not even the 25 or so people I make a regular effort to keep up with on Facebook, and not even the subset of friends I count as family. I don’t see everything most of my friends tweet, either; in fact, “update Twitter lists” has been hovering in the middle of my to-do list for the better part of a year. And even after I update those lists, I probably still won’t be able to keep up with everything every friend says on Twitter, either.

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Do Republicans Use Social Media More Passively?

nathanjurgenson on October 19, 2012

Many have linked political conservatism with “the authoritarian personality,” which, in part, involves the willingness to view power structures as legitimate, less reluctance to submit to those in authority over you, and an increased tendency to exercise authority over the less powerful. Social media is often seen as counter-authoritarian, however, we also have good evidence that the Web in general, and social media in particular, also replicates existing power structures.

With these different concerns in mind, we might wonder if those with different political orientations use social media for politics in different ways. More specifically, are those on the right, even in a social media environment that permits more expression, voice, and creativity, more likely to submit and follow? Theodore Adorno, pictured above and pioneered work in this line of thought, I think, would predict that Republicans would be more passive, more likely to listen and restate, whereas those on the left would be a bit more likely to create new content.

I post these very brief thoughts (certainly much more would be needed to substantiate the sweeping claims I just made above; this is only a short blog post!) because The Pew Internet in American Life Project just today released some new findings on Social Media and Political Engagement [pdf]. Here are most of the findings:  more...

Dark Definition

jeremyantley on October 19, 2012
Photo by Whitney Erin Boesel

(This post originally appeared at Peasant Muse on 17 October 2012)

Alexis Madrigal has a very interesting article over at The Atlantic on a topic he calls dark social, or web traffic driven by non-referred sources outside of those generated on traditional social platforms. Even though the dominant narrative places the innovative crown of web-connection on sites like Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, and so on, the article provides undeniable proof that so-called ‘dark social’ forces- links shared over gchat, email or personal connection- actually drive the majority of web traffic.

Madrigal interlaces his data-backed revelations with anecdotal tales on his use of 90’s era communicative platforms like ICQ and USENET to share links with his friends, the contrasting effect meant to convey a sense of experiential validation on the larger thesis of the piece. If almost 70% of traffic occurs through means outside of those facilitated by, say, ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ something on Facebook or retweeting an interesting link shared on Twitter, then what does that say about the narratives telling us how we use the web? On a larger level, what does inclusion of this ‘dark social’ data say about our levels of perception and the limits circumscribed therein?

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On Immovable Technologies

Doug Hill on October 18, 2012

There are some Big Ideas in the philosophy of technology that I find very helpful in understanding what’s going on in the world of machines today. One of those ideas is a concept known as “technological momentum.”

Technological momentum is a phrase coined by the historian Thomas Parke Hughes to describe the tendency of successful technological systems to become entrenched over time, growing increasingly resistant to change. This resistance is a product of both physical and psychological commitments. We invest materially in factories and emotionally in careers. Equipment and infrastructure accumulate and intertwine; dependence and force of habit build. more...

War Games & War Stories: Part III – Falls the shadow

Sunny Moraine on October 17, 2012
Yager’s Spec Ops: The Line

Between the emotion     
And the response  – T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz– he dead.  – Joseph Conrad

I’ve spent the last two posts in this series building up a background set of claims regarding a) how the stories we tell about war have changed over time, and b) how the relationship between technology and war has changed in the last century, particularly as regards different forms of simulation. These are important points to make, but they’ve also been leading up to what I want to talk about this week: specific examples of war-themed video games and the stories they’re telling, and what difference it all makes.

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Gamification, Playbor & Exploitation

PJ Patella-Rey on October 15, 2012

I’m posting to get some feedback on my initial thoughts in preparation for my chapter in a forthcoming gamification reader. I’d appreciated your thoughts and comments here or @pjrey.

My former prof Patricia Hill Collins taught me to begin inquiry into any new phenomenon with a simple question: Who benefits? And this, I am suggesting, is the approach we must take to the Silicon Valley buzzword du jure: “gamification.” Why does this idea now command so much attention that we feel compelled to write a book on it? Does a typical person really find aspects of his or her life becoming more gamelike? And, who is promoting all this talk of gamification, anyway?

It’s telling that conferences like “For the Win: Serious Gamification” or “The Gamification of Everything – convergence conversation” are taking place in business (and not, say, sociology) departments or being run by CEOs and investment consultants. The Gamification Summit invites attendees to “tap into the latest and hottest business trend.” Searching Forbes turns up far more articles (156) discussing gamification than the New York Times (34) or even Wired (45). All this makes TIME contributor Gary Belsky seems a bit behind the time when he predicts “gamification with soon rule the business world.” In short, gamification is promoted and championed—not by game designers, those interested in game studies, sociologists of labor/play, or even computer-human interaction researchers—but by business folks. And, given that the market for videogames is already worth greater than $25 billion, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that business folk are looking for new growth areas in gaming.

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Refusing the Refusenicks Paradigm

nathanjurgenson on October 15, 2012

I’d like to point readers to a terrific three-part essay by Laura Portwood-Stacer on three reasons why people refuse media, addiction, asceticism, and aesthetics. We can apply this directly to what might become an increasingly important topic in social media studies: social media refusers, already (edit: and unfortunately, as Rahel Aima points out) nicknamed “refusenicks”. There will be more to come on this blog on how to measure and conceptualize Facebook (and other social media) refusal, but let’s begin by analyzing these three frameworks used to discuss social media refusal and critique some of the underlying assumptions. more...

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Jager Bomb

David Banks on October 14, 2012

The Jager Bomb:
Ingredients:

  • One 8 oz. can of Red Bull
  • One shot of Jägermeister
  • Willingness to overpay for an overhyped experience

The shot of Jager is dropped into a glass of Red Bull and chugged until all evidence disappears down the throats of the youthful.

Felix Baumgartner jumps higher and faster than anyone ever before. Image c/o AP

As I (and a record 8 million other live Youtube viewers) witnessed Felix Baumgartner jump from a floating platform 128,000 feet in the air, I could not help but think about those little red bulls on his helmet. Red Bull, the ubiquitous energy drink and funder of all things Extreme™, had branded nothing less than a moment in human history. A monumental achievement brought to you by a peddler of a sugary drink that has fueled some of the worst decisions in the world [NSFW]. There was a day when the United States government was in the business of dazzling humanity with its feats of technological superiority and raw tenacity. For three years we were landing on the moon almost every six months. We made it look easy. Baumgartner’s jump is truly incredible, but it also makes me a little angry. I am tempted to bemoan the fall of civic life and the rise of corporate-sponsored spectacle, but ultimately I cannot find a moral handhold. Do I want an arms race or consumer capitalism to fund the greatest technological achievements of my lifetime? more...

In Their Words

nathanjurgenson on October 14, 2012

“There is an essential lack of any heroic narrative in most films about the second Gulf War”

“In twenty years universal television will be an everyday affair” (1927)

“Romney campaign’s presence on Tumblr is more subdued”

“the apocalypse of the coming Reputation Market, in which all humans will be searchable, sortable and assigned a value by a judge, jury and executioner of their peers across the Internet”

“The pay-to-promote feature disrupts the interest-based algorithm”

“social media encourages thinking of authenticity as moment of external confirmation; others decide if you have been true to yourself”

“The symbiotic relationship between us and our apps will be seamless”

“there are two different settings for the privacy of your phone number in two different places. Because that’s the way Facebook rolls”

“ESC became a kind of “interrupt” button on the PC — a way to poke the computer and say, “Cut it out””

“the concept of ‘internet addiction’ relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the internet is”

“Will there ever be a laptop that needs to be broken in, and improves as you use it?”

“With these gardens as crypto-water-computers, they were taking measurements of the universe”

“A troll exploits social dynamics like computer hackers exploit security loopholes”

“The point again is Internet is REAL & deciding that it’s unreal, virtual, trivial etc. is a function of the privilege it accords the denier”

“the fighting of war is now augmented – war by physical and digital means are now inseparable”

“there is no compelling evidence that any online dating matching algorithm actually works”

“Ensconced in the home, the 3-D printer is a step toward the replicator: a machine that can instantly produce any object with no input of human labor”

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

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