March 2006 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Re: [Air-l] "It can't be legal unless you pay for it"
by Heidelberg, Chris 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Marjorie: I am using sense making theory in concert with McLuhan's theory on powerful media effects and expert theory in my research and it is quite interesting to hear the data that I am getting from the experts. The industry has managed to co-opt government officially globally and citizens simultaneously. It will be up to the academics to teach the truth. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Marj Kibby Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 5:11 PM To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] "It can't be legal unless you pay for it" The corollary of this is, of course, "I paid for it so it must be legal" I'm in the early stages of looking at the use of Russian MP3 sites, using sense making theory to examine how users rationalise their downloading. Marj Dr Marjorie Kibby, Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture Faculty of Education and Arts The University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia Marj.Kibby(a)newcastle.edu.au +61 2 49216604

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Re: [Air-l] "It can't be legal unless you pay for it"
by Heidelberg, Chris 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Dan: Of course, you are correct, I forgot about the Sony case with cd's. I guess what I should have communicated is that I am waiting for the first Supreme Court case that rules against DRM in whole or at least in part because it limits fair use and copying for personal use as provided for under the Sony Betamax decision in 1984. It would appear that the electronics makers have capitulated to the entertainment companies by placing DRM in their new devices. TiVo, Sony and others have all fallen in line with policy. I would think that the companies that buck this trend and partner with the telecoms could defeat the entertainment lobby since the telecoms and even the utility company who will be entering the business soon have the money and the Congressional influence to successfully challenge the content lobby. By the way, is it safe to assume that DRM was held to be legal except for the Sony fiasco. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Dan L Burk Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:15 PM To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] "It can't be legal unless you pay for it" On 28 Feb 2006, Heidelberg, Chris wrote: > > I am > waiting for the first lawsuit that is filed in the U.S. against > digital rights management. Then you missed it -- actually, them. There have been at least two or three that I can think of offhand, in both federal and state court. DLB Dan L. Burk Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor University of Minnesota Law School 229 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA *************************************** Voice: 612-626-8726 Fax: 612-625-2011 bits: burkx006(a)umn.edu _______________________________________________ The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

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levels of jargon
by Barry Wellman 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Someone responded to my "minimize jargon" post to this list yesterday with a query, saying "how do you know it is jargon?" (I paraphrase.) As I am teaching a writing workshop tomorrow, this caught my interest. My initial thoughts are that there are at a minimum 3 different kinds of writing. 1. Within your discipline (or sub-discipline) where commonly-known jargon is not permissible, but useful shorthands. For example, almost all of us should know what IM, CMC or CSCW are. In social network analysis, we all know what blockmodeling or degree are. 2. Across disciplines to intelligent readers, such as the Association of Internet RESEARCHERS: I would never use "blockmodeling" or "degree" without defining. Just as I would never use "performativity" or "performing gender". They are in-group terms. (Test for this: ask your [hetero?] partner tonight if s/he wants to "perform gender" and see what you get). OTOH, I would assume I could talk about regression coefficents or significance tests on this list, because they are common terms in all social sciences. AOIR has a special problem in this respect, because we reach into the humanities, which, for example, normally doesn't teach a basic stats course. (And of course, OTOH is a jargon term I assume is commonly understood.) 3. For intelligent readers in the general public -- basically those who read Harpers, LeMonde, etc. You really have to avoid jargon here. I've doing a fair amount of this writing. See my piece for "revolver" on my website and the recently coauthored Pew Internet report, "The Strength of Ties" (www.pewinternet.org) Trouble is, many of us don't recognize jargon when we "perform scholarly writing" ;-). This really hit home around Christmas, when after I had tried my best, the Pew folks edited my writing for the aforementioned general public. (BTW, Pew goes to a great deal of trouble to make stuff readable -- a 1.5 page press release which is all that many commentators [especially bloggers and news media] appear to have read; a 9 pp. summary, and then the fat report itself.) 4. Of course there is a 4th level, for the remainder of the general public. That is really hard. 5. Also hard is writing in a foreign language, and even harder, using foreign norms for constructing papers/chapters. Which basically means writing/thinking in American English.* I'm intrigued that a Portuguese university has invited me to teach in June a workshop on this stuff. (*Linguisitic imperialism is a whole other topic.) PS: An amusing piece of ageist writing is getting edited out of a paper that Jennifer Kayahara and I are writing, "Searching for Leisure". The editor has asked that we take out the term "MacGyver" on the grounds that young scholars would be unaware of that great 1985+ TV show where Richard Dean Anderson saved himself weekly from dire situations by do-it-yourself tricks. If you're under 40, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088559/ Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network _____________________________________________________________________

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Re: [Air-l] deconstructed and misconstrued
by Gilbert B. Rodman 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

At 3/2/2006 @ 10:07 AM, you wrote: >I've been deconstructed and miscontrued by a commentator on my "levels of >writing piece in the last digest. > >In it, I said "we reach into the humanities." >The commentator thought I meant "we" meaning me. > >Nope. I meant "We" (being AOIR) includes the humanities. > > >From being on the exec, I recall that the majority (perhaps the great >majority of AoIR members are in the social sciences. But that the >membership reaches into (includes) many humanities scholars. Actually, no, I knew you meant AoIR. That was my point. There are certainly enough humanities folks in the mix here -- and that shouldn't be a secret by now -- that we're not just a special outreach program of an association founded by old school quantitative researchers (especially since I suspect the likes of Steve Jones and Nancy Baym wouldn't recognize themselves in that light anyway) cheers gil

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Re: [Air-l] levels of jargon
by Caroline Haythornthwaite 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

What's also interesting is the assumption by those working with statistics that no one outside the field will know the terms, but not the mirror of that from the other side -- e.g., with 'performativity' which is certainly an in-group term. For instance, when the OED has this kind of definition, (which is noted as a draft entry from Dec. 2005), I think we need help! Performativity, n The fact or quality of being performative (cf. PERFORMATIVE adj.). Also: the fact or quality of performing. 1970 Language 46 161 How are performative verbs represented in underlying structure: Is performativity a presupposition, a predicate PERFORM, a qualifier, or what? 1982 Jrnl. Philos. 79 168 The meaning of sentences with performative prefixes..includes a peculiarly semantic kind of performativity. 1995 Times Lit. Suppl. 24 Nov. 25/4 ‘Performativity’ is the guiding administrative principle, imposed on faculty members. ---- Original message ---- >Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 16:05:20 -0000 >From: "O'Riordan, Kate" <k.oriordan(a)lancaster.ac.uk> >Subject: Re: [Air-l] levels of jargon >To: <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> > >This is really interesting - I agree the jargon/not jargon issue is a real challenge possibly particular to those of trained in academic writing (although I am sure there are other arenas where it is an issue). > >I am intrigued as to how this plays out though – the challenge of interdisciplinary and multiple languages, is I think creative and productive. I would agree with that we might all know what IM, CMC or CSCW are - I would still think it polite in writing a document to put all short hands in full in the first time of use or at least in a foot note – although not on this list serv. > >I have no idea what regression coefficients or significance tests are but I would have made the opposite guess that "performativity" was a common term across the social sciences. At the same time the hypothetical scenario with partners makes no sense to me at all! > >(And of course, OTOH is a jargon term I assume is >commonly understood.) > >- Again not for me although - as with the above - I could make a guess or look it up - something I would expect to have to do at some point in most reading. > >I’d also observe that the McGyver reference is not only to do with age considerations, and certainly TV is infinitely re-runnable, but it does seem also to be a very nationally specific reference which would be obscure in many national contexts. > >The thing that really interests me about all this (and why I have found it interesting to reflect on how my interpretation differs) - is the productive tension – in that I think any attempt to categorise what is jargon/not jargon has some kind of politics of normalisation i.e. what is acceptable and for whom. At the same time it is a useful and necessary exercise. > >I would imagine that this would be seen differently by almost everyone on the list – I would also imagine that we might all have different points of difference and agreement with this categorisation (and any other) and that seems to me to be part of the creative challenge of this kind of network. I wonder if it would be possible to refine guidelines of this kind to meet a general consensus in this context or if we would always have too many exception clauses? > >Many thanks, all the best >Kate O’Riordan >________________ >_______________________________________________ >The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list >is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org >Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > >Join the Association of Internet Researchers: >http://www.aoir.org/ ---------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Associate Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820

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Re: [Air-l] levels of jargon
by Caroline Haythornthwaite 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

What *are* data? More than just words, we also have our grammatical conventions -- this particular one (whether the word 'data' is treated as grammatically plural or singular) tends to divide academia from common usage. /C ---- Original message ---- >Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 11:03:59 -0500 >From: Radhika Gajjala <radhika(a)cyberdiva.org> >Subject: Re: [Air-l] levels of jargon >To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > > >> The >>definition/translation work that (ideally) should happen here needs >>to work both ways -- not just one. > > >exactly! > >what for instance is "data" > >let's start with explaining. > >r > > >>cheers >>gil >> >> >>PS: It's a different level of assumption to quibble with, but ... >>given that my partner also teaches in the humanities, does critical >>theory, and has a degree in performance studies, I feel pretty >>certain that I could suggest that we "perform gender" tonight -- and >>that the results would be neither confusing nor disturbing. :) >> >>_______________________________________________ >>The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list >>is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org >>Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: >>http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org >> >>Join the Association of Internet Researchers: >>http://www.aoir.org/ > > >_______________________________________________ >The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list >is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org >Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > >Join the Association of Internet Researchers: >http://www.aoir.org/ ---------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Associate Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820

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deconstructed and misconstrued
by Barry Wellman 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

I've been deconstructed and miscontrued by a commentator on my "levels of writing piece in the last digest. In it, I said "we reach into the humanities." The commentator thought I meant "we" meaning me. Nope. I meant "We" (being AOIR) includes the humanities. >From being on the exec, I recall that the majority (perhaps the great majority of AoIR members are in the social sciences. But that the membership reaches into (includes) many humanities scholars. Some such scholars, from another post, apparently "perform gender" with elan at night-;) Although the example given was a within-discipline one (no double entendre really intended), in which jargon can be useful if that's what your "performativity" requires. Indeed, a couple I know, reports making love using F10 and F7 commands from Word Perfect for DOS! (RIP.) However, no Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V occurred. Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network _____________________________________________________________________

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Re: [Air-l] levels of jargon
by Gilbert B. Rodman 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

>2. Across disciplines to intelligent readers, such as the Association of >Internet RESEARCHERS: I would never use "blockmodeling" or "degree" >without defining. Just as I would never use "performativity" or >"performing gender". They are in-group terms. (Test for this: ask your >[hetero?] partner tonight if s/he wants to "perform gender" and see what >you get). OTOH, I would assume I could talk about regression coefficents >or significance tests on this list, because they are common terms in all >social sciences. AOIR has a special problem in this respect, because we >reach into the humanities, which, for example, normally doesn't teach a >basic stats course. (And of course, OTOH is a jargon term I assume is >commonly understood.) Well...yes and no. I'll certainly accept that "performativity" and "performing gender" are more intelligible to most humanities folks than they are to most social scientists (though there are notable exceptions at both ends of that game), but I'm less comfortable with the assumption that the "we" of AoIR is first and foremost social scientists. Especially if that means that those of us who call the humanities our home are simply here because of some generous outreach (or reaching in?) on the part of the group's core constituency. That doesn't deny Barry's basic point about the terminology gap between different disciplinary areas -- not at all -- but the assumption that the collective "we" of the association is more comfortable with "regression coefficients" than with "performativity" strikes me as unfounded. The definition/translation work that (ideally) should happen here needs to work both ways -- not just one. cheers gil PS: It's a different level of assumption to quibble with, but ... given that my partner also teaches in the humanities, does critical theory, and has a degree in performance studies, I feel pretty certain that I could suggest that we "perform gender" tonight -- and that the results would be neither confusing nor disturbing. :)

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Re: [Air-l] levels of jargon
by Caroline Haythornthwaite 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Oh but Barry, where has Richard Dean Anderson been more recently seen -- let's see what community (and its jargon) we belong to now! /C ---- Original message ---- >Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 10:16:56 -0500 >From: Barry Wellman <wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca> >Subject: [Air-l] levels of jargon >To: aoir list <air-l(a)aoir.org> >> >PS: An amusing piece of ageist writing is getting edited out of a paper >that Jennifer Kayahara and I are writing, "Searching for Leisure". The >editor has asked that we take out the term "MacGyver" on the grounds that >young scholars would be unaware of that great 1985+ TV show where Richard >Dean Anderson saved himself weekly from dire situations by do-it-yourself >tricks. If you're under 40, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088559/ > > Barry > _____________________________________________________________________ > > Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director > wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman > > Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto > 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 > To network is to live; to live is to network > _____________________________________________________________________ > > >_______________________________________________ >The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list >is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org >Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > >Join the Association of Internet Researchers: >http://www.aoir.org/ ---------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Associate Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820

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Re: [Air-l] teens and myspace
by Radhika Gajjala 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

So the "geeks" moved there;-) and the "socially cool" people move to myspace and facebook... anyway - I use the MOO still in my teaching (as well as other newer stuff) and similar comparisons come up depending on how long the student has been using internet environments. Of course a lot of the facebook generation hasnt even heard or seen a "MOO" and that allows me to look at the internet consumer/shopper (this lot is generally just happy to use dreamweaver or something to build a website, taking "the Internet" as given - as a social space for consumption and quick service - without really peeking in at the code side of web building activity) vs active internet producer wannabes (not coder - since using MOOs does not involve actual back end coding) some sweeping generalizations no "data" r At 11:42 AM 3/1/2006 -0500, you wrote: >and while they find it normal to have relationships there, >they think that people who made friends in LambdaMoo must be really >weird, socially inept weirdos and that online communities are a thing of >the past (not realizing that they are, indeed, part of one themselves).

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