Re: [Air-l] conceptual lexicon
Jeremy wrote:
It is actually unclear that we can extrapolate a collective identity from a multitude of identities, though that is what many believe....
That is, at least in part (arguably a large part), because it is also actually unclear whether any "collective identity" exists, for any collective. Any atomized unit or interaction might enunciate such an identity, but each unit might enunciate something different, and/or differently encunciate something somewhat comparable. What is "American culture"? Or pick a smaller collective: What is the "collective identity" of this list? Or even smaller: How often or likely do all members of any nuclear family similarly define their collective identity? Here's an hypothesis: For all collectives (known or knowable, demonstrated or demonstrable, accountable or conceivable), less than a majority (probably far less) have (or even could have) a collective identity. Even if collective identities exist (anywhere, much less everywhere), such a description then begs an explanation: Under what conditions (if any) are collective identities more likely to occur?
It is just one theoretical tradition that accepts that aggregation or the whole is equal to the some of the parts, others believe that the whole is less than and/or greater than the some of the parts.
Screw belief; show me evidence - and evidence that has descriptive (if not also explanatory, and perhaps even practical) application. I'm not simply asking for an account of a collective identity for any particular collective, though that would be a good starting point. I'm challenging whether "the whole is" is even meaningful. The whole isn't. It isn't simply that a collective's "identity" is dubious; in much of modern life, boundary conditions for "collective" are, too. -eg
It is just one theoretical tradition that accepts that aggregation or the whole is equal to the some of the parts, others believe that the whole is less than and/or greater than the some of the parts.
Screw belief; show me evidence - and evidence that has descriptive (if not also explanatory, and perhaps even practical) application.
I'm not simply asking for an account of a collective identity for any particular collective, though that would be a good starting point. I'm challenging whether "the whole is" is even meaningful. The whole isn't. It isn't simply that a collective's "identity" is dubious; in much of modern life, boundary conditions for "collective" are, too.
You can't get there from where you are. you have to toss the atomism and start considering that there are molecules and moles which act fundamentally different as a whole than as a collection of atoms. jeremy hunsinger Assistant Professor Pratt Institute www.cddc.vt.edu wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series
It is just one theoretical tradition that accepts that aggregation or the whole is equal to the some of the parts, others believe that the whole is less than and/or greater than the some of the parts.
You can't get there from where you are. you have to toss the atomism and start considering that there are molecules and moles which act fundamentally different as a whole than as a collection of atoms.
Some explicitly useful readings in this direction: * Plotinus * Anne Conway * Leibniz * Koestler * David Bohm And - Jeremy is right. The atomism is a different level of consideration entirely. geekin' out, ---elijah
Jeremy wrote:
You can't get there from where you are. you have to toss the atomism and start considering that there are molecules and moles which act fundamentally different as a whole than as a collection of atoms.
I'm of course not questioning that collective behavior is distinct from atomistic or unitary behavior. I'm questioning whether "collective identity" meaningfully exists, anywhere - a question you and Elijah both dodged, even though I invited a half dozen kinds of possible responses. For example (again) what is the "collective identity" of this list? -eg
Umm, I don't think we dodged it, it is just that it can't be described to you given the framework that you require. It exists, you can see it all over. The clearest physical expression of collective identity is usually expressed relation to in architecture, local customs, and related activities. Do three friends always hug when they meet, what always happens in groups that takes no individual decision... tons of things. Some families have collective identities, some schools do, and almost all military units do too, which was one of the major military critiques of the 'army of one' campaign. On Aug 4, 2006, at 5:19 PM, Ellis Godard wrote:
Jeremy wrote:
You can't get there from where you are. you have to toss the atomism and start considering that there are molecules and moles which act fundamentally different as a whole than as a collection of atoms.
I'm of course not questioning that collective behavior is distinct from atomistic or unitary behavior. I'm questioning whether "collective identity" meaningfully exists, anywhere - a question you and Elijah both dodged, even though I invited a half dozen kinds of possible responses. For example (again) what is the "collective identity" of this list?
-eg
jeremy hunsinger Assistant Professor Pratt Institute www.cddc.vt.edu wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series
Yes/no. "Collective identity", in the sense that you seem to be requesting support/affirmation/accolades for, depends on the recognition of 'solitaries', small groups, and ever-larger collectives - as well as the boundaries between them. I would put forth that, first, this is not the only sense in which one can consider collective identity. As Jeremy says - it is hard to get there from here, both cognitively and philosophically. Second, there are ways of knowing or establishing or promoting 'identity' that don't rely on atomic/bounded/holarchic fences (or rupturings) for their own promotion. Some folks from IS would say that things like faceted classification are (an) answer to this kind of boundary-work. Provided that one understands that "an" answer is what you're going for, this works. It isn't the only answer, though - other options, other answers, have always-already been ripe for the uptake. Collective identity? Yes. Thousands of them. Does the aoir listserv have a collective identity? Well, probably several hundred thousand different possibilities... Are any of *those* meaningful? Contextually, yes, probably. How to evaluate strength-of-meaning for individual contexts, rather than getting stuck in philosophical morass, is an individual problem. Even our generic topic on the list, "internet research", means more things to people on the list than we have words to describe. --elijah
Umm, I don't think we dodged it, it is just that it can't be described to you given the framework that you require. It exists, you can see it all over. The clearest physical expression of collective identity is usually expressed relation to in architecture, local customs, and related activities. Do three friends always hug when they meet, what always happens in groups that takes no individual decision... tons of things. Some families have collective identities, some schools do, and almost all military units do too, which was one of the major military critiques of the 'army of one' campaign.
I'm of course not questioning that collective behavior is distinct from atomistic or unitary behavior. I'm questioning whether "collective identity" meaningfully exists, anywhere - a question you and Elijah both dodged, even though I invited a half dozen kinds of possible responses. For example (again) what is the "collective identity" of this list?
This may be useful to some of us. "AOL just released the logs of all searches done by 500,000 of their users over the course of three months earlier this year. That means that if you happened to be randomly chosen as one of these users, everything you searched for from March to May (2006) is now public information on the internet." "Update: Seems like AOL took it down. There are some mirrors of the data in the comments of the digg story, linked below. I estimate about 1000 people have the file, so it's definitely going to be circulated around. The main AOL research page is still up, with some other data collections. The google cache of the download page is still up, but you can't get the data." "500k User Session Collection ---------------------------------------------- This collection is distributed for NON-COMMERCIAL RESEARCH USE ONLY. Any application of this collection for commercial purposes is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. Brief description: This collection consists of ~20M web queries collected from ~650k users over three months. The data is sorted by anonymous user ID and sequentially arranged. " http download http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=DDD1D4D0017BB5BE Torrent http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3510027 http://www.mininova.org/tor/388815 AOL website´s cache: http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:2Qvd2z9VbuIJ:research.aol.com/pmwiki/pmw...
I noticed they warn users that the database has not be censored of sexually explicit search terms. But what about personally- identifiable search terms? Someone concerned about whether their personal information is online might search for "Michael Zimmer xxx- xx-xxxx" with their social security number. Or how about personally embarrassing searches, such as "Michael Zimmer nude karaoke"? The presence of such searches in a public database is problematic. -m ----- Michael T. Zimmer Doctoral Candidate, Culture and Communication, New York University Student Fellow, Information Law Institute, NYU Law School e: michael.zimmer@nyu.edu w: http://michaelzimmer.org On Aug 7, 2006, at 6:27 AM, Maciej Kos wrote:
This may be useful to some of us.
"AOL just released the logs of all searches done by 500,000 of their users over the course of three months earlier this year. That means that if you happened to be randomly chosen as one of these users, everything you searched for from March to May (2006) is now public information on the internet."
"Update: Seems like AOL took it down. There are some mirrors of the data in the comments of the digg story, linked below. I estimate about 1000 people have the file, so it's definitely going to be circulated around. The main AOL research page is still up, with some other data collections. The google cache of the download page is still up, but you can't get the data."
"500k User Session Collection ---------------------------------------------- This collection is distributed for NON-COMMERCIAL RESEARCH USE ONLY. Any application of this collection for commercial purposes is STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
Brief description:
This collection consists of ~20M web queries collected from ~650k users over three months. The data is sorted by anonymous user ID and sequentially arranged. "
http download http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php? action=download&ufid=DDD1D4D0017BB5BE
Torrent http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3510027 http://www.mininova.org/tor/388815
AOL website´s cache: http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:2Qvd2z9VbuIJ:research.aol.com/ pmwiki/pmwiki.php%3Fn%3DResearch.500kUserQueriesSampledOver3Months +&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
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What an extraordinarily tempting piece of research data. And so, the ethical question comes quickly to the fore: Clearly, no Institutional Review Board would ever allow such a collection. Users had a reasonable expectation that their searches would not be recorded and openly distributed. (See, for example, the user looking to kill his wife: http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/aol-search-data-shows-users-pla... . ) Moreover, the ability to link searches of a given user makes this a potentially very revealing data set. I don't think that the anonymization of user names is enough to make this usable. And yet, there it is. It's already out there, and as I said, very tempting. Is it ethical to make use of this already-collected data if your use substantially masks the private matters of these users. Any use I would make of the data would make it extremely unlikely that any private information would be revealed--though the mere existence of the public data set in some ways makes this moot. The obvious parallel (Godwin's law notwithstanding) is the controversy over using Nazi experimental data in medical research. But it seems to me that there are some shades of grey here. AOL Search is not a Nazi concentration camp, and it is worth noting that an article based on the data has already appeared in peer-reviewed conference proceedings. While I think that the distribution of their search data without the clear permission of its users, either to the public or to the government, is pretty clearly unethical, I don't know that it makes this data poison fruit. Tainted, yes, poison, I don't think so. Finally, I wonder what AOL's move is now. They've pulled the plug on the page, but lots of people presumably have and will share the data. If AOL now revokes permission to use the data, what does that mean? Do they own the data at this point? Providing and then pulling back data would set a terrible precedent. (Blogged at http://alex.halavais.net/aol-data/ ) -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //
AOL apologizes for release of user search data AOL apologized on Monday for releasing search log data on subscribers that had been intended for use with the company's newly launched research site. http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6102793.html?tag=nefd.top On Mon, 7 Aug 2006 11:02:26 -0400, Alex Halavais wrote
What an extraordinarily tempting piece of research data. And so, the ethical question comes quickly to the fore:
Clearly, no Institutional Review Board would ever allow such a collection. Users had a reasonable expectation that their searches would not be recorded and openly distributed. (See, for example, the user looking to kill his wife: http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/aol-search-data-shows- users-planning-to-commit-murder/ . ) Moreover, the ability to link searches of a given user makes this a potentially very revealing data set. I don't think that the anonymization of user names is enough to make this usable.
And yet, there it is. It's already out there, and as I said, very tempting. Is it ethical to make use of this already-collected data if your use substantially masks the private matters of these users. Any use I would make of the data would make it extremely unlikely that any private information would be revealed--though the mere existence of the public data set in some ways makes this moot.
The obvious parallel (Godwin's law notwithstanding) is the controversy over using Nazi experimental data in medical research. But it seems to me that there are some shades of grey here. AOL Search is not a Nazi concentration camp, and it is worth noting that an article based on the data has already appeared in peer-reviewed conference proceedings. While I think that the distribution of their search data without the clear permission of its users, either to the public or to the government, is pretty clearly unethical, I don't know that it makes this data poison fruit. Tainted, yes, poison, I don't think so.
Finally, I wonder what AOL's move is now. They've pulled the plug on the page, but lots of people presumably have and will share the data. If AOL now revokes permission to use the data, what does that mean? Do they own the data at this point? Providing and then pulling back data would set a terrible precedent.
(Blogged at http://alex.halavais.net/aol-data/ )
-- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ 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
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While we're considering how ethical it is to use this data, Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Kevin Bankston considers the publication of the pseudonymized search logs to be a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, arguing that the search terms are content under federal law and that the law doesn't distinguish between identifiable and non-identifiable communications. That law carries a minimum statutory damages of $1000 per person, which, if Bankston is right, would put AOL on the hook for $658 million minimum, even if it didn't violate its own privacy policy. From: http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/#1535018 Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more information about EFF's or Bankston's views on the matter. Thanks, Wojciech -- Five Minutes to Midnight: Youth on human rights and current affairs http://www.fiveminutestomidnight.or
The New York Times has an article online today about the AOL release of data. You can find the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html. (NyTimes.com requires registration). The article highlights one woman, a 60 year old from Georgia, whose searches were captured in the three month period. Much is revealed about her in her search queries . . . It also discusses the release of the data. AOL spokespeople are saying they did not authorize the release - that an employee acted hastily and without authorization to release it. The article also reports that programmers have set up Web sites to let people search the data in the database, which is leading people to find shocking or amusing search histories. Eeeek. Best, ~Jenny -- Assistant Professor Department of Communication, SS 340 University at Albany, SUNY 1400 Washington Ave. Albany, NY 12222 518-442-4873 jstromer@albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~jstromer
Hi! As researcher who has employed search engine transaction logs in research projects for nearly a decade, the concerns about the AOL data release are out of proportion to reality. Note, from the example in the NYT story, that even with 3 months of query data, including geographical data, the reporter wasn't sure that this was the person. (BTW, the reporter, Saul Hansell, obviously didn't mind publishing the lady's queries for the entire world to see -- with her name. I hope he adequately explained to the lady the ramifications of what she was agreeing to.) It is VERY difficult using just query terms to identify a particular searcher, which is why researchers have been struggling with personalization for nearly two decades. In the DOJ vs Google case, which is mentioned in the story, Google had to provide the queries to the DOJ (a statistically significant sample of about 5,000 instead of the larger number the DOJ was asking for). The privacy concerns were weighted against other factors, which is what we, as researchers, should be doing here. There is no other way to get real world interaction data from a significant sample of Web users unless the search engine companies provide it to academic researchers. Many search engine company provide and have provided this type of data (including Excite, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, Lyco, AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, and Google, among others -- they all do it). Many search engine companies post it on their Web pages, provide it to researchers, the government, or sell it to commercial research companies. Are there potential privacy concerns with such data release? Yes. Are there potentially great benefits with such data release? Yes. A good road ahead for the research community is to work on ways to preserve privacy in such data releases and provide a balanced voice in these debates. Best, Jim ************************************** Jim Jansen Email: jjansen@acm.org URL: http://ist.psu.edu/faculty_pages/jjansen/ <https://mail.ist.psu.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://ist.psu.edu/faculty_pages/jjansen/> Blog: http://jimjansen.blogspot.com/ <https://mail.ist.psu.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://jimjansen.blogspot.com/> Phone: 814-865-6459 Fax: 814-865-6426 College of Information Sciences and Technology The Pennsylvania State University 329F Information Sciences and Technology Building University Park, PA, 16802, USA ************************************** ________________________________ From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org on behalf of Jennifer Stromer-Galley Sent: Wed 8/9/2006 9:48 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] AOL Releases Search Logs from 500,000 Users The New York Times has an article online today about the AOL release of data. You can find the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html. (NyTimes.com requires registration). The article highlights one woman, a 60 year old from Georgia, whose searches were captured in the three month period. Much is revealed about her in her search queries . . . It also discusses the release of the data. AOL spokespeople are saying they did not authorize the release - that an employee acted hastily and without authorization to release it. The article also reports that programmers have set up Web sites to let people search the data in the database, which is leading people to find shocking or amusing search histories. Eeeek. Best, ~Jenny -- Assistant Professor Department of Communication, SS 340 University at Albany, SUNY 1400 Washington Ave. Albany, NY 12222 518-442-4873 jstromer@albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~jstromer _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org <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/
Elijah wrote:
Even our generic topic on the list, "internet research", means more things to people on the list than we have words to describe.
And there's the rub. I was going to respond, to this and/or to Jeremy's other message, that an amorphous tentative sense of "collective identity" doesn't appear to have great utility; that perhaps we ought to be fleshing out ideas that are more clear, simple, and rigorous; and that we're not the Association of Internet Layfolk. So, instead, I'm curious to hear more about this amorphously collective amorphous identity. :) Jeremy wrote:
Umm, I don't think we dodged it, it is just that it can't be described to you given the framework that you require. It exists, you can see it all over....
What's the alternative framework, and on what criteria does one evaluate its ideas (if other than simplicity, generality, validity, testability, and originality, for example)? Regards, Ellis
well, one of the problems with rigor is that it often causes us to create fictions and surrealities where actually phenomena will suffice. rigor is a covering word for methodological ideologies. There is nothing particularly wrong with that, so long as we know that whatever empirical datum we construct is recognized as constructed. similarly with the call for simplicity, simplicity is appropriate when the actual world is simple, but simplicity isn't necessarily the case and again in my experience, people simplify things, they cut out the complexity of variables in a fashion that while complete justified statistically or in other systems... might not be justified when you really work through the reality instead of its representations. On Aug 9, 2006, at 8:50 PM, Ellis Godard wrote: Jeremy Hunsinger School of Library and Information Science Pratt Institute () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers http://www.stswiki.org/ stswiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ LI-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series
Elijah wrote:
Even our generic topic on the list, "internet research", means more things to people on the list than we have words to describe.
And there's the rub. I was going to respond, to this and/or to Jeremy's other message, that an amorphous tentative sense of "collective identity" doesn't appear to have great utility; that perhaps we ought to be fleshing out ideas that are more clear, simple, and rigorous; and that we're not the Association of Internet Layfolk. So, instead, I'm curious to hear more about this amorphously collective amorphous identity. :) Jeremy wrote:
Umm, I don't think we dodged it, it is just that it can't be described to you given the framework that you require. It exists, you can see it all over....
What's the alternative framework, and on what criteria does one evaluate its ideas (if other than simplicity, generality, validity, testability, and originality, for example)? Regards, Ellis
participants (10)
-
Alex Halavais -
Ellis Godard -
Ellis Godard -
elw＠stderr.org -
Jennifer Stromer-Galley -
Jeremy Hunsinger -
Jim Jansen -
Maciej Kos -
Michael Zimmer -
Wojciech Gryc