Peter: We had an ongoing thread a while ago about this issue. Lessig (2002, 2004) vividly discusses the history of how each new technological is always greeted with fear and loathing by the established mediums and their surrogates. One of the best examples of this can be found in the late (yet great MPAA leader for other reasons - like fighting censorship) Jack Valenti referred to the vcr as the tool of the devil to paraphrase him in the Sony Betamax (1984) case. Social networking may not be accepted by many old line types; however, I have discovered that it will be accepted as serious research provided it provides citations to real links, uses standard language whenever possible (sometimes one cannot explain things in standard language because of the impact of convergence and publishing times) and the fact that printing times have been used reflection time on an issue. I am sorry to say that I believe that those days are coming to an end rapidly. I have found that social networking has brought together disciplines in a way that has not been done since the days of ancient Egypt, classic Greece, Alexandria, the early days of the trivium and the quadrivium, and the early to mid-twentieth century. What no one wants to discuss is the looming presence of money and how it has systematically caused academia to divide along disciplinary lines which was counter to the Egyptian and Babylonian model, the Academy model in Greece, the Hellenistic model in Alexandria or the medieval/renaissance model(2006). The reason is because industry has cleverly tied financing to graduates for industry, and yet it does not receive mainstream attention. Why? Advertising! I wrote a traditional dissertation, but I also utilized digital video, iPod audio, still photography, Internet interviews, phone interviews, live video/audio interviews, follow-up phone interviews for clarifications and Internet verification of all interviews. This can be done with web tools and posted with blogs. I believe in the open sourced and collaborative approaches advocated by Anderson (2006), Gee (2004,2005); Jenkins (2006), Prensky (2001,2006); Tapscott & Williams (2006) and Willinsky (2006) and others including McLuhan (1967,1968) who advocated the use of electronic media. I believe that if our goal is to spread scholarly knowledge then we must be prepared to take our message to the masses in both scholarly language and non-standard language. If we want people to love knowledge as we purport that we do, we must be prepared to meet people where they are, so that we can assist them in taking that curious academic journey to formal learning. At the end of the day, knowledge is free, yet expensive; and each of us must understand that all education begins with communication (Heidelberg, 2007). This has been true from the beginning of civilization and continues to be the case today (Pollard & Reid, 2006), so we as scholars have to stay true to our roots and still communicate with the tools of convergence. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Peter Timusk Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 10:49 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] snide, cute, ignorant, surprising I just read the article and note that youth use the internet for different things. Sure kids in school can and will gladly play a simple game like most friends. A mature student like myself may get out R and make some histograms of fiends of friends sizes. How can you engage students using facebook? Ok I have my lesson planned for the next time I teach statistics and R. I also note and this is true of a weekend piece ( in the Ottawa Citizen) by a journalist writing about her retirement. She of course slams Internet writing. She is a professional journalist she reasons the Internet is hacks. Now Professor Wellman you focus on social networks but I for one would say still focus on computer crime or labour issues in computing and the fact that newspapers do not like the Internet has to be exposed. While you see what you see in this article I see the common Internet is bad message in the newspapers. I note newsprint companies are down on the stock market at least one big Quebec company is way down for a few years now. Paper is on the way out apparently. Unless a newspaper is selling me the latest gadget they are negative on the Internet because they feel they compete (IMHO). This is also why some newspapers are so off with their web sites and have not got it right. I have not seen a lot of articles in my daily paper about open source for instance. just some thoughts sorry for the poor email etiquette but I will now read other replies. Peter Timusk On 16-Dec-07, at 4:47 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:
The tone of Monica Hesse's Washington Post story is somewhat snide.
Although I did enjoy some of her word-play: "celebrademic" danah "uncapping" herself (altho note that the Post copyeditor re-capped her
at the start of a para.) Frankly, "danah" uncapped has made proofreading PITAs for me for years.
What is ignorant is Ms Hesse being surprised that small circles cite each other. This is true in many fields. There is a whole area of bibliometrics devoted to this. Check out the work of Howard White or Loet Leyesdorff, for example. Or, as usual, I have co-authored a paper
on the subject -- its on my website. "Does Citation Reflect Social Structure? Longitudinal Evidence from the 'Globenet' Interdisciplinary Reserach Group" JASIST, 1/04.
What is surprising is that I was interviewed and quoted by Ms Hesse and it was a much straighter piece of reporting:
"An Unmanageable Circle of Friends: Social-Network Sites Inundate Us with Connections, and that can be Alienating." Washington Post, August
26, 2007, p. M10. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/ AR2007082400481.html
Barry Wellman
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S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Room 418 Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-7162 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days
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Peter Timusk B.Math(2002) BA (2006) Tel: 001-613-729-8328 Community Informatics Practitioner Email: ptimusk@sympatico.ca Yahoo ID: crystal_computing Skype ID: peter.timusk ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Nothing I write is intended to be representative of my employer, or our clients. Nor do I alone speak for my unions. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Feel free to learn more about me at www.crystalcomputing.net Computer ethics studies at www.webpagex.org blogs http://logbook.crystalcomputing.net <- computers http://notebook.webpagex.org <- school work _______________________________________________ The Air-L@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/