January 2002 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Re: New Theoretical Approaches to the Self in Cyber-Culture
by Andrew Wenn 24 Jan '02

24 Jan '02

Some very interesting points about the construction of self. Can I just complicate it even more by positing that the technology and/organisation policy also plays a role in constructing self. Consider those organisations that have equipment that only allows users an 8 character email address (those that still use some form of DOS based filenaming - and there are still many of those around). Now suppose your name is gregory burnstein then your email address may be something like g.burnst@, greg.bur@. gregory@ . Or even suppose you hail from a culture where your gender is indicated by the suffix on your surname, for example some parts Scandinavia where there is Christiansdottir, Christiansson and the name is truncated to Christian say. you are then rendered genderless(?) Another way that technology influences the construction of self is when you sign up with an internet based emailer (Hotmail, Yahoo etc) and you find that the ID you planned to have has already been taken and the registration program suggests a number of alternatives. For example suppose I wanted to register as dizzy(a)free_email.com but that name had already been taken it might suggest dizzy01, diz etc. Fairly simple examples I know but then what or who does an address such as dizzy(a)excite.com point to a person or a space where mail is stored? Maybe it is even redirected elsewhere. Andrew Wenn. (Who has at last stopped lurking!) -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Wenn Victoria University of Technology, Footscray Campus PO Box 14428 MMC, Melbourne, Victoria 8001 Australia email Andrew.Wenn(a)vu.edu.au www http://busfa.vu.edu.au/awenn/ phone +61 3 9688 4342 fax +61 3 9688 5024 --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mobile services adoption
by Vishwanath, Arun 24 Jan '02

24 Jan '02

I am looking for prior research on adoption of mobile phones in the US. Is there any research that looks at adopters, demographics etc within the American marketplace? Arun Vishwanath, PhD avishwan(a)indiana.edu

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Lurking vs. Monitoring
by Dorine Andrews 23 Jan '02

23 Jan '02

We have coined the term non-public participation for our work. Monitoring implies some type of authority to me. But, to each his/her own. Dorine --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dorine Andrews, DCD Research Professor Communication, Culture & Technology Program Georgetown University www.georgetown.edu/faculty/dca4 email: dca4(a)georgetown.edu or (202) 784-4338 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Lurking
by Dorine Andrews 23 Jan '02

23 Jan '02

As David Silver mentioned, Jenny Preece, Blair Nonnecke and I are in the middle of a big lurking study. Some of you may remember helping us test the online questionnaire last year. Thanks to everyone who helped out - some 50 of you. I reported out our progress in the design and testing at the Minneapolis AOIR conference. A draft of the paper is on my website if you are interested. We hope to have some results to share by mid-year. Dorine --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dorine Andrews, DCD Research Professor Communication, Culture & Technology Program Georgetown University www.georgetown.edu/faculty/dca4 email: dca4(a)georgetown.edu or (202) 784-4338 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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New Media & Society CFP: Special issues and themed sections
by Steve Jones 23 Jan '02

23 Jan '02

NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY SPECIAL ISSUES AND THEMED SECTIONS CALL FOR PROPOSALS New Media & Society (NM&S) is soliciting proposals for forthcoming special issues or themed sections. A themed section on multimedia was published in 2000, another on cultural attitudes and information technology in 2001 and one on the internet in China will appear in the June 2002 issue. The journal editors invite proposals for forthcoming special issues and themed sections, starting with 2003. NM&S aims to publish one special issue or themed section per year, preferably in the June or September issue. Each themed section should consist of about three to four article-length contributions and an editorial by the guest editor. Any topic suitable for an article in NM&S is appropriate; however, preference will be given to topics not yet extensively addressed in the journal. Proposals should include a brief description of the topic (c. 300 words). When contributions to the special issue or themed section are to be selected from a conference or other scholarly meeting, please provide details of the event. If contributors to the proposed special issue or themed section have already been selected, please provide short biographical notes about the authors and abstracts of their contributions. Similar notes should also be provided for the person proposing the theme issue, indicating his or her expertise on the topic. For the theme selected for 2003, manuscripts should be available for double-blind peer review (following normal journal procedure) by October 2002. Manuscripts should then be revised and ready for production by mid-December 2002 for the June 2003 issue and mid-March 2003 for the September 2003 issue. The guest editor is responsible for soliciting and processing the reviews of articles, and for recommending manuscripts for publication. The final decision regarding publication of manuscripts, however, rests with the editors of NM&S. The guest editor will be expected to prepare an editorial introducing the themed section. Proposals for special issues and themed sections may be submitted by email to any of the four editors of NM&S (addresses below) and should be received no later than 30 March 2002. Proposed guest editors will be notified of the editors' decision by 30 April 2002. NM&S Editors Nicholas W. Jankowski N.Jankowski(a)maw.kun.nl Steve Jones sjones(a)uic.edu Leah Lievrouw llievrou(a)ucla.edu Roger Silverstone r.silverstone(a)lse.ac.uk

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Re: why hate spam?
by Jonathan Sterne 23 Jan '02

23 Jan '02

The answer is simple: advertising subsidizes the magazines I buy and the TV shows I watch, and thereby reduces their cost to me. Therefore I tolerate it in those media. It does not subsidize the cost of my phone line or my email box. Therefore, like telemarketers, spammers are asking me to pay to provide them with a free resource so they can advertise to me. I resent that. We should not assume that it's okay for profit imperatives to infiltrate any and every aspect of our everyday lives, and the fact that someone wants to make a buck does not give them the right to my private time or space. That said, I just delete all commercial mail without reading it -- repeat offenders get filtered. Best, --J

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Re: if you can't lick 'em
by Jonathan Sterne 23 Jan '02

23 Jan '02

At 12:01 PM 1/22/02 -0500, you wrote: >-----Original Message----- >From: air-l-admin(a)aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org]On Behalf Of >Barry Wellman >Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 10:48 AM >To: aoir list >Subject: [Air-l] spam, if you can't lick 'em... > > >When I was a kid, I had a stamp collection. I'll never forget the thrill >of getting a Tanna Tuvu stamp. > >I am starting to notice that my spam is coming from similar exotic >locales. For example, one today came from "chinahot" but by way of ".kr". >I can't even begin to guess where .kr is. > >So I am thinking of starting a spam collection, of exotic .somethings. Who >knows, perhaps it will be worth money someday to a future Brewster Kahle. >Would someone please point me to a list of Internet suffixes? I've actually been doing a little practical research (for webhosting purposes) on two-letter-nation-suffixes for domain names. I'm fascinated by the range of policies. For instance, Tonga, which owns .to, is all too happy to sell their sites to non-tongans for $50 a year (vs. like $10 a year for .com, .net, or .org addresses). So now you've got come.to, listen.to, etc. Russia's another big one for reasons I don't understand. And there are a few others. But while some countries have decided to capitalize as much as possible on their domain names and sell to all comers, others reserve them entirely for their own citizens. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, except in the case of Tonga where ".to" is a cool suffix for a domain name. I also know of some lists that filter some nation-suffixes because they only ever get spam from places with those addresses. So the selling to all comers could really screw things up for citizens of the country who want to set up a legit domain name later. If you want to know where that .kr comes from, you can find out here: http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm . Note that the ".us" suffix is going up for sale sometime in 2002. I guess the whole thing's fascinating because it's all about the politics of naming, since the named addresses are just devices so we don't have to remember numeric servers. Best, --J

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Technology in Hollywood
by Bunz, Ulla K 23 Jan '02

23 Jan '02

Later this semester, I'm planning on doing a "Technology in Hollywood" movie session with my students in "Communication and New Technology." The purpose is to show how popular movies have integrated technology into the everyday lives of the movie characters - technology that maybe we have become accustomed to, but that was brand new (and ultimately cool) only two, five, or ten years ago. I am *not* planning on showing a whole movie. Instead, I will show multiple short scenes, followed by in-class discussion. I have collected a few examples (see below), and am looking for more. Can you help? I do not want to include James Bond like movies, or science fiction/special effects type movies. I don't want to show what someone has dreamt up as technology possibly being able to do in some obscure scenario. I want to show "real" scenes with everyday technology. Also, the movies don't have to be Hollywood movies, but they should be fairly familiar to US undergraduates, because their understanding will be greater that way. Thanks for suggestions directly to ulla(a)ku.edu. I will post a summary to the entire list. ulla Examples: - "Office Space" - any of the fax machine scenes; the dramatic set-up of installing a virus on a computer, which actually only consists of copying a file from a floppy disk - "Pretty Woman" - the very brief scene when Julia Roberts goes shopping in Beverly Hills and a father and son drive by in a car, holding big fat cell phones, and being very proud of them - "Bowfinger" - the scene where Steve Martin is trying to impress someone, and since he doesn't own a cell phone, he just ripped off a regular phone, and while he pretends to talk on it, the cord dangles in the air - "Topsy Turvey" - the scene where the phone is introduced as a new technology, and people scream into the receivers to hear each other, upon which an elderly gentleman remarks one might as well just open the window and scream out of that - "Jumping Jack Flash" - one of the scenes in which Whoopi Goldberg "chats" on her computer (with blue and red underlain lines) with the supposedly lost spy Peter

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Re: [Air-l] Re: New Theoretical Approaches to the Self in Cyber-Culture
by Jeremy Crampton 23 Jan '02

23 Jan '02

Has anybody done work on Foucault's idea of the "technologies of the self" in cyberspace? My own take on this (for a book) is that cyberspace forms subjectivities between the axes of authenticity--confession, ie that cyberspace is another confessional regime where we can attempt to recover our "true selves" outside the reach of power relations (a chimera according to Foucault). Would be interested to hear from anybody on this. Thanks! __ Jeremy Crampton 404 651-1763 http://monarch.gsu.edu/jcrampton/

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Re: [Air-l] Re: New Theoretical Approaches to the Self in Cyber-Culture
by noci 23 Jan '02

23 Jan '02

> Not sure what you mean by semi-independent selves in light of what follows: >> i've talked to constructs who were acting on their own behalf. sure, they were >> once spawned by a physical self, but as soon as they started differentiating >> between online and offline space, they became semi-independent beings --[snip]-- > Sounds like we're talking about two different things. You're talking about > different self-presentations by one physical being (which I don't see as at all > independent of their producer), while I'm talking about self-presentations that > aren't (simply) the product of one being [...] i don't consider the "semi-independent selves" as mere self-presentations. if that was true, both the presented and the actual self would share one core-belief concerning the assessment of reality- which they don't. instead, their behaviour is slightly schizophrenic, and the "two" selves stop existing in the same considered reality. but still, with the connection between "real" and "virtual" temporarily (or finally) severed, the online self doesn't die off like a fallen leaf. it continues acting on its own behalf, its behaviour partially generated and assessed by the social (online) demands. > (again, self-presentations by robots > created as much by programs as by those who utilize these programmed robots for > their own uses) you're right, i wasn't talking about robots. in the quote, you imply that the bots are partially responsible for the quality of the generated self-presentations. in my example, the acting robot is replaced by the shaping force of the online social constructs. if a self's behaviour is "partially generated [...] by the social (online) demands", those constructs become unpredictable manipulators, especially if they are self-dependent and not aligned with "reality" anymore (because the selves differentiate between realities). thus, the resulting selves exist in a remote realm, acting according to its (arbitrary) rules. that's why you might consider them as "semi-independent"... please tell me what you think. max

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