:: Netwoman ::

:: Monday, January 22, 2007 ::

Unintended Consequences of Technology

Here are a couple of interesting articles reflecting perhaps the unintended consequences of technology:

1. We are cyborg - using technology to track women's fertility

You've Got Mail, and Your Period
By Jenn Shreve
Dec, 20, 2006

Women hoping to become pregnant are transforming themselves into busy data machines, tracking everything from waking temperature to moods and various bodily fluids. A cottage industry of websites feeds the obsession by offering online charts and e-mail services to alert women on their fertile days.

2. Women aren't not good enough to be cyborgs - women worry about their 'flaws' with HD p o r n. As if women don't have enough to worry about, and aren't concerned about their bodies enough...

In Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View Too Real
New York Times
By MATT RICHTEL
January 22, 2007

...They have discovered that the technology is sometimes not so sexy. The high-definition format is accentuating imperfections in the actors — from a little extra cellulite on a leg to wrinkles around the eyes....
Producers are taking steps to hide the imperfections. Some shots are lit differently, while some actors simply are not shot at certain angles, or are getting cosmetic surgery, or seeking expert grooming....

Why is any of this perceived as 'imperfections'? What are women being compared to? Who doesn't have wrinkles and cellulite? I imagine p o r n will increasingly use digital or animated women rather than 'real' women - or perhaps cyborgs. Think of the economic implications; women will be out of jobs and companies won't have to pay women...sigh.

:: Netwoman 10:42 AM [+] ::
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Modding Workshop - The Seminar Room
Originally uploaded by Netwoman.

Putting Theory into Practice - Modding Virtual Learning Environments

I just wanted to thank everyone who came to our two brainstorming workshops at the Virtual Center for Digital Media last Thursday. We had a great turn out in both sessions - even though we had a griefer at the second session (what an interesting little display of what can happen in a virtual classroom).

While both sessions were very different in their discussion of how to mod our existing seminar room, there were some really fabulous ideas. We would like to put these ideas into practice at our next workshop: Wednesday, January 24th 10am PST/SLT. We will meet at the VCDM (139, 34, 25) for a brief chat and recap and then teleport everyone to our modding location.

:: Netwoman 10:40 AM [+] ::
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Griefer
Originally uploaded by Netwoman.

Griefers in Virtual Learning Spaces

While the two modding workshops we had were quite successful - good discussion and good ideas - we did have a griefer for the second session.

This is little avatar prize dropped in and proceeded to shoot everybody (while jumping on their laps) and make a lot of noise.

It was a good example of things we need to talk about with respect to virtual learning environments - and how to deal with not only naughty students - but unwelcome guests.

:: Netwoman 10:34 AM [+] ::
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Brainstorming how we can Mod our virtual learning spaces

We held out modding brainstorming session on January 18th, which was a workshop intended to tease out what we (the people attending might want from a virtual learning workspace (or what our students might like). We help two workshops at the Virtual Centre for Digital Media with a great turn out (even a griefer - more on this later).

We've taken some pictures of the workshop - you can check out Flickr and the MDM blog.

More about we're doing can be found HERE as well.

:: Netwoman 6:16 AM [+] ::
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Social Network Analysis & Community

Here's an interesting podcast from Port25:

All the latest expectations for major revs of a good chunk of the information technology world seem to be heavily based on excitement about the possibilities for new forms of social networking and collaboration.

Nobody has more to say about how this can be done right—or wrong—than Barry Wellman.

Dr. Barry Wellman is the S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and is the director of Netlab, a scholarly network studying computer networks, communication networks, and social networks. To quote from an introduction to a tribute event, Barry "pioneered innovative approaches to three fields:

* Social network/structural analysis,
* Personal community and social support analysis, and
* The study of cybersociety (which he calls "living networked in a wired world")."

He has authored 3 books and more than 200 journal articles. He is, to use images from social network analysis, perhaps the biggest "hub" of folks-students, former students, and industry and academic collaborators-who study online and offline communities (including open source communities) there is.

He's also a really nice guy and was kind enough to take a few minutes to talk with us while he was at the University of Washington's ISchool talking about "What is the Internet Doing to Community and Vice Versa?."

:: Netwoman 10:13 AM [+] ::
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Conferences - Women & Gaming

WIGI-San Francisco
"From Production to Profit: Creating and Marketing Games for Women"
Tuesday, March 6, 2007,
1 pm to 7 pm
Electronic Arts, Redwood City
Info HERE

Women in Games – Wales
"Aesthetics in play: new platforms, new perspectives, new players"
April 19 – 21st, 2007
Info HERE

DiGRA - Japan
September 24-28th, 2007
Abstract Deadline February 14th, 2007
Info HERE

Other Conferences of Interest:

The European Conference on Games Based Learning
October 25-26th 2007
Abstract deadline May 17th 2007
Info HERE

Games Developers Conference - San Francisco
March 5-9, 2007
Info HERE

CITASA - New York
Communication, Information & Technology Subgroup from American Sociology Association
Submissions are invited for two paper sessions and one short (one-hour) roundtable session

Session #1 Public Informatics: including online governmental processes/administration, public safety/security, access, economic development and education.

Session organizers: Andrea H. Tapia and Sarah Gatson
Contact information: Andrea H. Tapia
College of Information Sciences and Technology Penn State
Email: atapia AT ist.psu.edu

Session #2 Social Impact of Information and Communication Technologies:
including health/wellbeing, social interaction, social networks and social capital

Session organizers: Sheilia Cotten and Katie Bessiere
Contact information: Sheilia Cotten
Department of Sociology
University of Alabama-Birmingham
Email: cotten AT uab.edu

Session #3 Combined Roundtable and Business Meeting Session
Table topics may include but are not limited to:
Connected Lives: Internet in Everyday Life
Connecting Technologies: Young People's Social Networks Information and Communication Technologies and Work
Online Games and Gaming
Impact and Use of Different Types of Information and Communication Technologies
Research methods and Information and Communication Technologies Social Capital and Information and Communication Technologies

Session Organizer: Anabel Quan-Haase
Faculty of Information & Media Studies/Department of Socio.
The University of Western Ontario
Email: aquan AT uwo.ca

:: Netwoman 10:03 PM [+] ::
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Modding Virtual Classrooms & Environments

Hello fellow SL researchers and educators!

One initiative that we are currently working on is transforming traditional style educational spaces (for example lecture halls and seminar rooms) into student designed collaborative learning environments. We would like to move beyond conventional ‘real life’ pedagogical delivery modes and encourage students to actively engage and participate in their learning milieu by creating virtual learning spaces & places, and have students learn technical design skills (and modding) at the same time.

Having said that, I’d like to invite you to a workshop we are having at the Virtual Center for Digital Media (139, 34, 25) on Thursday January 18th – 1pm PST/SLT & we've added 10am PST/SLT where we will have a ‘brainstorming’ session to take the existing seminar room at the Virtual Center for Digital Media, and transform it into a dynamic, creative workspace that is collaboratively designed and built by a group of individuals – the intention is to show that a group of individuals can come together and create their own learning space.

The following week (Wed Jan 24th 10am SLT) we will put theory into practice and actually do the modifications and changes to the room to see what the end result might look like. However if you only want to come to the brainstorming session on the 18th – that’s fine too - We’re interested in your thoughts, ideas and expertise.

If you have questions, please feel free to email me off-list at tracy@gnwc.ca.
More information about the program here:
http://www.gnwc.ca/mdm/
http://www.mastersofdigitalmedia.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gnwc

:: Netwoman 10:00 AM [+] ::
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AoIR 8.0 - Let's Play

Association of Internet Researchers
Abstract Deadline: February 1, 2007

This conference, which uses Open Conference Systems developed by the Public Knowledge Project, enables participants to submit abstracts online here.

Presentations can include:
• Single papers (abstract max of 750 words)
• Creative or Aesthetic Presentation (abstract max of 750 words)
• Panels (abstract max of 2500 words)
• Roundtable (abstract max of 750 words)
• Pre-conference workshop (abstract max of 1000 words)

Call for Papers Announcement

LET'S PLAY!

We call for papers, panel proposals, and resentations from any discipline, methodology, and community, and from conjunctions of multiple disciplines, methodologies and communities, that address the (playful) blurring of boundaries online. The following TOPICS are suggestions simply intended to spark initial reflection and creativity:

- Mundanity implies normalcy, and thereby, the efforts to understand and regulate online interactions in ways that are analogous to and consistent with offline practices and norms (e.g., privacy protection, norms for community interaction, efforts to regulate information flows involving pornography, hate speech, etc.). As internet/s become interwoven with ordinary life on multiple levels, in what ways do these alter ordinary life, and/or how do prevailing community and cultural practices reshape and "tame"
such internet/s and the interactions they facilitate?

- Global diffusion: how do internet/s, as they exponentially diffuse throughout the globe facilitate flows of information, capital, labor, immigration ­ and play ­ and what are the implications of these new flows
for life offline?

- eLearning: how can such practices as distance learning and serious games utilize the liminal domain (the threshold world of dream and myth, in which important new skills, insights, and abilities are gained in the process of growing up) to go beyond traditional ways of learning? Are they necessarily better, or easier, to use or to learn from?

- Identity, community, and global communications: how will processes of identity play and development continue, and/or change as the role and place of the Internet in peoples lives shift in new ways ­ including the expansion of mobile access to internet/s?

- E-health: what do new developments in sharing medical information online and expanding telemedicine technologies into new domains imply for
traditional physician-centered medicine, patient privacy, etc.?

- Digital art: from downloading commercially-offered ringtones to facilitating cross-cultural / cross-disciplinary collaborations in the creation of art, internet/s expand familiar aesthetic experiences and open up new possibilities for aesthetic creativity: how are traditional understandings of aesthetic experience affected and how do new creative / aesthetic / playful possibilities affect human "users" of art?

- Games and gaming: the average gamer in North America is now a twenty-something whose lifestyle is more mainstream than adolescent. As games and gamers "grow up" ­ and as games continue their diffusion into new demographic categories while they simultaneously continue to push the envelopes of Internet and computer technologies what can we discern of new possibilities for identity play, community building, and so forth?

Sessions at the conference will be established that specifically address the conference theme, and we welcome innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes on that theme. We also welcome submissions on topics that address social, cultural, political, economic, and/or aesthetic aspects of the Internet beyond the conference theme - e.g., in CSCW and other forms of online collaboration, distance learning, etc. In all cases, we welcome disciplinary and interdisciplinary submissions as well as international collaborations from both AoIR and non-AoIR members.

:: Netwoman 3:57 AM [+] ::
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Assorted Open Source Goodies

Happy New Year!

Second Life & Open Source from Gigagamez
Since I am working on a couple of Open Source Projects, I found this all very interesting:

The announcement occured just before the final Christmas crush, so I wanted to make sure it wasn’t totally missed in the interim: during his last “town hall” appearance in Second Life, Cory Ondrejka, Chief Technology Officer for Linden Lab, the company behind SL, let loose this explosive news during his opening speech (and even reiterated it during the Q&A):

In the long run, this is why we’ve talked about wanting to be able to Open Source eventually. My hope is that in 2007 we’ll be able to get there.

Second Life to go open source - David Kirkpatrick

The creator of the burgeoning 3D virtual world expects it to grow even faster with outside programming help, David Kirkpatrick reports in a Fortune exclusive.
Aiming to take advantage of its already-impressive momentum, San Francisco's Linden Lab, developer of the Second Life virtual online world, will announce Monday that it is taking the first major step toward opening up its software for the contributions of any interested programmer.

The company will immediately release open source versions of its client software for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. In order to enter and move around the Second Life service, users must download and run this software on their computer desktop. But now, says Linden CEO Philip Rosedale, independent programmers will be able to "modify it, fire it up and sign on with it." The company gave Fortune exclusive access to executives in advance of the change.

And Speaking of Open Source....the battle continues....

Windows vs. Open Source in 2007

The open souce arena is forming a rather formidable fan following. In the beginning this was a small community known onl to a niche audience but today we see a different pisture. Commercial software and the the open source software seem to be at the same footing.

On the other hand, many a one is not too happy with the merge between the open source community and the commervcial community. Jeremy Allison has resigned as the lead programmer in Novell. The rumour mills speculate the reason for his resignation to be Novell’s partnership with Microsoft.

Allison was cited as saying, "We can pledge patents all we wish, we can talk to the press and 'community leaders', we can do all the right things…but we will still be known as GPL violators and that’s the end of it."

MS Fights to Own Your Office Docs

Office 2007, due out Jan. 30, is a crucial product release for the software giant. Its Office franchise -- Microsoft's second-biggest cash cow behind Windows -- is facing greater competition than ever before from open-source and web-based rivals.

Windows or Open Source: The Battle for Company Computers Heats Up

I.T. departments can get pretty catty. There's plenty of behind-the-scenes sarcasm about inexperienced users (such as digs about PBCAK errors -- short for "problem between chair and keyboard"), but that pales in comparison to the vitriol they direct at each other in the Windows/open-source debate.

Here's the issue: Computers run on two diametrically opposed types of operating systems, and your company could save a lot of money depending on which one you use.

Aras' 'Open Source' for Microsoft

We did a double take this week when we saw that Aras’ new Innovator 8 product lifecycle management suite was being touted in the media as "Microsoft enterprise open source" or "Microsoft-based open source."

Java And Open Source

In November, Sun Microsystems moved to "open source" status for Java, after a decade of maintaining proprietary status for the portable programming language.

Specifically, Sun has placed Java into the public domain by putting it under GPL - an acronym for General Public License. What this means is that software programmers will have vastly increased freedom to develop programs based on Java and to develop modifications for the language itself.

The year in preview: Google goes evil; Mixed source rules; Microsoft buys Yahoo

...Microsoft's partnership with Novell actually works for customers–everyone else hates it. Say what you will about the nuances and motivation of the Microsoft and Novell Linux pact, but it does touch on a key theme–mixed source environments are here to stay. Proprietary code such as Microsoft's is going to coexist with Linux.

Open Source Developer Dumps Novell Over Microsoft Deal

A key open source developer, Jeremy Allison, who cofounded the Samba project, has resigned from Novell in protest over the company's recent agreement to enter a collaborative arrangement with Microsoft.

Exit Interview: Jeremy Allison

Samba guru explains why he couldn't stomach the Microsoft-Novell deal. “If you want to sell out, you should ask for more," he says.

:: Netwoman 9:32 AM [+] ::
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