I’ve started preparing for my trip to Patagonia. This isn’t my first big trip, so I know a lot of the rules: take a few sleeping pills for the plane; pack what you think you’ll need, then remove half; and learn how to say in the local language “do you speak english?” and “stop! come back with my wallet!”.

The Transportation Security Administration has thrown a curveball tho, with the new restrictions on carry-on liquids. I thought I should check their list of Permitted and Prohibited Items for other curve balls. For instance, is it ok to stow a 2-inch pocket knife in my carry on? Nope. No knife blades allowed, no matter how small… unless your only intent is to spread butter.

Other interesting items you may NOT take in your carry-on include:

• sabers
• swords
• hatchets
• cattle prods
• crowbars
• dynamite
• grenades
• and cheez whiz

Items that ARE ok, according the official TSA list?

• 7-inch long screwdrivers
• scissors with 4-inch metal blades
• corkscrews
• any amount or personal lubricant (as long as you declare it to the security officer, at which point it will be subject to additional screening)
• and of course, toy transformer robots.

The TC EGGPLANT Gaming lab is hosting its own Katamari / Tron mashup party night. A free plug below for the event. I’m sure they’d freak if I showed up with my whole gang from last halloween.

The other day I was arguing with a friend about the proper pronunciation of the name Carnegie, as in Carnegie Melon, or Carnegie Hall. The results are still inconclusive– in an interview about a book titled Carnegie, the author pronounces it car-NAY-gee, while the online pronunciator at Merriam-Webster pronounces it like I always have: CAR-neh-gee.

More importantly, in my ongoing search for truth, I stumbled upon the phrase “son of a bitch” using the same M-W online pronunciator (yes, stumbled). Oddly, there are two little speaker icons taking you to two completely different pronunciations.

The first one sounds like some guy with a monacle just spilled Pinot on his ascot. The second one is vaguely reminiscent of the 80s ebonics craze, as chronicled in the movie Airplane.

So when did M-W decide to start including ebonics pronunciations?

After last semester was wrapping-up, I vowed not to take another class in the Spring. I enjoy taking random classes. I think it keeps the brain-rot at bay. But I wanted to take a semester to relax, without any pressures of assigned readings and weekly papers.

When I saw we were hosting a class on the “Possibilities of Virtual Worlds”, I started to rethink that decision. The class will take place almost entirely within the virtual world of Second Life, exploring the potential for education and the theoretical issues surrounding identity and socialization within such worlds. From the course description:

This course will explore possibilities of virtual worlds for games and education. Through readings and theoretical discussions of identity construction, positioning and social aspects of virtual and traditional communities, participants will explore how virtual environments may function to support teaching and learning as well as how virtual communities are affecting people’s lives inside and outside the virtual. Hands-on work in the Second Life community as well as guest lecturers in and out of Second Life will be used to explore virtual space and provide expertise in basic scripting and building with the Second Life World.

In a group email that Matthew kicked-off, the professor for this course mentions that in February of this year Second Life will support in-game web/video viewers, viewable by all participants in the immediate virtual space. A group of people separated by physical distance can come together in this virtual world, discuss already existing educational material, and work on group-based learning assignments.

It looks like Second Life already supports this type of interaction. Lawrence Lessig has been speaking to a live crowd at Second Life in a multi-part, multi-day interview. His avatar stands in front of three enormous (well, virtually enormous) screens, and on those screens are the real-him at his desk, presumably via webcam. The avatars of the live audience are welcome to ask questions.

When asked about the changes to the internet and media worlds since Free Culture was published, Lessig answers with what I think is the best definition of “Web 2.0″ yet:

The explosion of what I call (but would love a better word for) the “read write Internet”. The key thing we’re seeing now is the Internet used to create and remix culture. The focus two years ago was peer to peer filesharing. But the focus today is the stuff that happens here [in Second Life]. Or in mashups. Or with remixed music. Or anime music videos. This capacity and this creativity is extraordinary. And yet the “war” that that the copyright industry is waging against “piracy” will kill it. At least as a legitimate part of culture.

Unfortunately, add/drop period for the “Possibilities of Virtual Worlds” course has already ended, so I had the decision made for me (by my own procrastination). But I might just get a sleuthy avatar and watch from afar, when I’m not sitting-in on Lessig’s interview.

Google, Yahoo, and the Federal Government

When Yahoo purchased Del.icio.us a few weeks ago, I began to think differently about Yahoo. Before, Yahoo was the old granny on the block. She knew what she was doing, and had lots of experience doing it, but was lacking in innovation. Google was a young lad full of innovation, and that innovation had surpassed Yahoo’s experience long ago.

I thought Yahoo would forever be playing “catch-up” to Google. But by snapping-up top web 2.0 technologies like Del.icio.us and Flickr, Yahoo has me thinking the tides may soon turn.

So is Yahoo Google’s biggest threat yet?

Nope, there’s a bigger one—

Today several news sites are reporting that the federal government has subpoenaed Google for details on what its users have been looking for. From the story on Yahoo News:

The government contends it needs the data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches as part of an effort to revive an Internet child protection law that was struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court on free-speech grounds.

This is a pretty big deal because in addition to the relevancy of it’s search results, Google’s popularity grew so rapidly because it was seen as everyman’s company. People felt safe with Google. Google was the David to the traditional corporate world Goliath. Though over the past couple of years that “safe feeling” has waned, as concerns surfaced about Google’s tracking habits and their non-disclosure about the retention period on the information in the cookies they create.

If the feds strong-arm Google into handing over data about users search habits, this could be a final, massive blow to the reputation Google spent so long building.

Ha! I’m sitting at my folks home in Tampa, visiting and preparing for a friend’s wedding this weekend, and I stumble across a Gawker parody that mentions “Tampa strippers”.

Why is it that when someone needs to add a qualifier onto strippers it’s always “Tampa strippers”? Did I miss something growing up here? I mean, I’ve seen the strippers along Dale Mabry and they’re not the kind of thing you’d want to write fiction about.

And if it’s not strippers it’s goths. Anyone remeber SNL’s “Goth Talk”?

Will Tampa always be known only for it’s goths and strippers?

My final thoughts on Social Software Affordances…

• What is ’social’ about social software?
It connects people together.

• How is the notion of community being redefined by social software?
Distances between people, both temporal and spatial, are becoming less of a factor.

• What aspects of our humanity stand to gain or suffer as a result of our use of and reliance on social software?
While the intimacy and richness of face to face interactions may suffer if we come to rely too heavily on online interactions, those same online interactions afford people human connections that were never before possible.

• How is social agency shared between humans and (computer) code in social software?
The code connects computer to computer, but this is meaningless without people in front of those computers who want to use the code to connect, communicate.

• What are the social repercussions of unequal access to social software?
The divide will grow, beyond class and income, expanding into basic social rights.

• What are the pedagogical implications of social software for education?
With multiple modes of communication, we all have a voice and no one is solely a teacher or a student… we are both.

• Can social software be an effective tool for individual and social change?
Yes, but before any real social change can occur, we must understand fully how the technology we use affects us individually and as a society.

I’m glad *completing* the Issue Entrepreneurship project wasn’t the point, because I feel like I didn’t even really get it off the ground! I kept waiting to post an update, waiting for bigger news to relay, hoping a breakthrough in involvement was just around the corner.

But that never happened. From the time of my last update, I sent out an email to a handful of Exchange/International Student Affairs offices at various Universities explaining my idea and asking others if they’d like to be involved in these initial stages. I got no response. Not one.

I realize now that this is the equivalent of the marketing cold-call, and everyone hates cold-calls. In retrospect, I should have done more and better research on existing communities that may have an interest in this topic. Even though I couldn’t find a community specifically of exchange alums from different schools, maybe I could find a different community– one aligned close enough that the goals and aspirations of the members are such that this topic, while different, is still of interest to them.

I guess my point is that it would be easier and likely more effective to tap into an existing community, one that may have similar goals and interests, and then to draw off a group with enough specific interest in this, what would initially only be tangential to the original group.

Of course, this doesn’t all have to be “in retrospect”. Instead, it can be “in this iteration.” As I learn more what works and what doesn’t, about what galvanizes people and how these new technologies can be used to rally support and build communities, I can move this project on to further iterations. This class may be coming to a close, but I feel like the project is only beginning.

In Questioning Technology, Andrew Feenberg argues that since the way we use technology is so strongly tied to our social structure, there can be no serious political change without a corresponding change in technology. To oversimplify, in order to change the world, we must first change the way we view and use technology as an integral part of our everyday lives.

In a chapter of the book on The Limits of Technical Rationality, he aims to formulate a politically aware version of technological change via constructivism (as opposed to determinism). Along the course, he acknowledges that people usually fear those things that they don’t fully understand:

I call the public’s response to new and imponderable risks it is not equipped to evaluate “rational dread.” Childhood dread of the monster under the bed can usually be stilled by more information– a simple glance may suffice. But the dread of modern technologies such as atomic energy resists informational strategies. On the contrary, often more information leads to still greater concern. To make matters worse, the hope that expert advice could unburden the public has long since been disappointed as general skepticism overtakes the authority of knowledge. [p.92]

This reminded me of a news story that has been popping up all over the place lately, about a man in Alaska who wants to install in his home garage a Cyclotron– a small particle accelerator donated to him by Johns Hopkins University. According to the article, his reasons are upstanding– his lost his father to cancer and such accelerators are used to produce the radioactive material necessary to expose cancerous tissues in PET scans. These devices are rare in Alaska and he wants to provide a medical resource that he hopes will reduce the suffering of those with cancer.

However, the community reacted in fear because they did not understand the technology. The Community Council went so far as liken the device to Three Mile Island. In the article a top nuclear scientist is quoted when asked about the safety of the device:

“Cyclotrons are not nuclear reactors,” explains Roger Dixon of the Fermi National Accelerator laboratory or Fermilab in Illinois, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. “Probably the worst thing that could happen with small cyclotrons is that the operator might electrocute themselves.”

Yet, as Feenberg might say, general skepticism overtakes the authority of knowledge. Despite the testimony of scientists about the safety of the device, local lawmakers “rushed to introduce emergency legislation banning the use of cyclotrons in home businesses.”

I finally finished the Paul Dourish book, Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. I thought it was insightful, and it got me thinking differently about the tools I use every day– from my cell phone to sticky notes to the clusters of icons on my computer screen.

For example, my cell phone is nothing but a bulge in my pocket when I’m not using it at all, and in Heidegger’s terms it is present-at-hand (p.109). This means if I look at or handle the phone, the phone-itself is the object of my attention. However, when I am using it to talk to a friend, my focus is on the conversation that it affords, and not the phone-itself as an object. At this point, in Heidegger’s terms, it becomes ready-to-hand. It becomes an object I act through, or an extension of me.

I can use a ready-to-hand tool to interact with my immediate environment, and ultimately with a distant environment, through a chain of associations. These series of associations are what Dourish calls coupling. It is through coupling that my local actions can have a remote effect.

When I interact with something locally like an instant messenger client on my computer, I expect a remote effect. I expect that the software on my computer translates my typed message into a format that can be sent across the internet, read by software on the receiving end, and made readable once again for my friend in Idaho or wherever.

My instant messenger client also has a component that adheres to one of the design principles proposed by Dourish: visibility of action. I can see if a friend on the other end is actively typing in their chat window by the status indictor at the bottom of the window. The message “Matt is typing a message” tells me much more than face value: it also tells me that Matt is actually sitting at his desk, that he got my leading message, and that he has time to type a reply, even if it is just “sorry, too busy to chat”!

But I also know that Matt is thinking the same way– he uses the same software I do when we chat. So if I’m not actively typing a message, I should get my cursor out of the “compose a message”. If I leave it there but do something else, it will look to Matt like I’m typing a long winded message. I learn by using the system how it modulates my actions. Dourish explains this when talking about designing awareness interfaces used in collaborative systems:

The ability to “see” another’s actions “through” the system can be provided explicitly by “awareness interfaces,” but more often, it will be something that users must learn to do by observing activities that take place in the system or information space. … Users must be able to understand how activities within the system are related to activities without; that is, how the system modulates the effects of a user’s actions. The most obvious way to learn this is through being able to see how our own activities are modulated when we interact with a system; developing an appreciation for how our own actions are reflected in the informational space helps us to understand how a particular state of affairs might be the result of a sequence of activities by someone else. (p.165)

This isn’t really an analysis of the book, but an analysis of some of small points I found interesting, and random examples tying the ideas in the book to my life. I’m sure I’ll continue to see the ideas in this book pop up in tools and ways I use them to interact in my environment.