:: Wish list item #3 ::

Okay it's really geeky and everything...

...but how do I get one of these t-shirts?

And if I find one and wear it out shopping, anyone who heckles me the way they did Doc, I'll take them out!

... or at least bitch to the store manager.

:: Participatory media ::

Rebecca Blood has recently published another great article about blogging in The Guardian.

She calls blogging a new form of media, something she calls "participatory media".

I think I'm going to borrow this term for my SOCI498 paper - should fit in well with what I'm looking to do.

:: Google = "The Brain" ?? ::

I hadn't really worried much about my own googling habits until I read this article in Business Week.

Dress me up and call me Pinky, I guess. I hadn't ever thought of Google in this light.

[ ... and for those of you who might otherwise have missed my TV pop culture references herein, check out this site in order to get it... yeah I'm a fan...]

:: Introducing... ::

There's a new blog out there called The Loom that might be interesting to keep an eye on for people like me interested in all things scientific.

The Loom's creator/blogger is a guy by the name of Carl Zimmer, who, according to the New York Times Book Review is "as fine a science essayist as we have"

[ Found via Corante ]

:: Excellent RSS Resource ::

Found this RSS tutorial while searching the net for information on RSS and XML content syndication behind a corporate firewall.

It's well-written and clear. Doesn't quite answer the question I posed to Google but it is still useful nonetheless.

:: Overkill? ::

I know spam is annoying, but wouldn't it be faster and easier to use the delete key?

:: Interesting read ::

I'm including a link to this Wired article about autism and genius because...well...it's an interesting read.

[If this keeps up, I'm going to need to create a CSS trick just to reference things I find through Rebecca's Pocket.

:: Oh...my... ::

Tell me they're kidding.

[Rebecca is posting interesting stuff today]

:: Memories of childhood Decembers ::

Interesting how strongly I remember the date December 1 from my childhood. I guess because that was always the day when, after a shopping trip to Zellers, my mom would bring home a big, Christmas-scened multi-doored Advent Calendar and put it up on the fridge.

The calendar had little chocolates behind each date's brightly-illustrated door and I looked forward to going home from school each afternoon so that I could carefully tear open up the day's door to see what the shape was for that day's chocolate piece. My favourite was always the angel, which usually came around the 15th. (Odd thinking of that now, considering how devoutly religious I was...then.)

Leslie Harpold obviously remembers this excited feeling of discovery -- her online advent calendar, while not containing any chocolate pieces, still gives you the same feeling.

[Found via Rebecca Blood]

:: Of Chickens and video games ::

You can only find stories like this one in The Fray. Probably is part of the reason why I've always liked the site.

That -- and I have a certain longing to be a cyberbard myself.

:: Part of the 47% ::

I was talking to my sociology advisor/professor recently about the nature of sociality for various sexes as it relates to the activities they do together the most.

I theorized that men who don't play sports play computer games. Also, based on my own experiences (how ethnocentric of me!) I posited that women shop.

According to the CBC, I'm part of the 47% of women who cite "shopping" as a hobby, activity or pastime.

:: Christmas dream item #2 ::

A 19" LCD monitor that is height adjustable, folds flat for transport and can be hung on the wall like a plasma TV? For under $800CDN?

I want one!

:: Big brother may soon be watching ::

Developers of Instant Messaging (IM) software have developed IM prototypes with predictive "rhythm awareness". The software tracks your available versus away times and days.

The goal? Provide a service to your contacts that can predict the best times of the day to find you online.

I understand why this might be useful and I know that perhaps this is being developed for altruistic reasons, but nonetheless it makes me uncomfortable. The possiblities for mis-use are too high.

:: Online trust ::

I am an avid long-time eBay member. I love eBay probably partly because I love to shop, partly because it gets me stuff from the U.S.A. without the 2-hour drive. Mostly, though, I eBay because I save money and can trust the people I am buying from. Or so I thought.

A recent auction in which I was the "winner" got me questioning the whole thing a bit.

I live in Canada. Most of the sellers in the categories I frequent are from the U.S.A. I know that shipping costs from Canada to the U.S.A. are not the same as shipping from, say, Canada to Europe. I know the same is true in reverse because I have won my fair share of auctions and paid my share of shipping costs to ship from the U.S.A to Canada.

In this recent auction, I paid $6 shipping for something that cost the seller 89 cents to ship to me, based on the U.S. Post Office postage marker on the bubble envelope... Even if you do include the envelope in the seller’s cost, the total thing probably did not cost this seller more than $1.30 to ship to me. That means that this seller made a nice and easy automatic $4.70 pure profit from me. In U.S. greenbacks too.

What does all of this have to do with online trust?

The entire eBay business model is based on trust. The site and company could not function if the buyers and sellers did not trust one another. Without the trust, the two sides of an auction would not come together.

In eBay, you gauge trustworthiness based on an individual’s “Feedback profile”. If you come across an item you are interested in possibly purchasing, you can check the seller’s feedback profile to see how others have viewed that seller, based on the feedback they have left for him. From browsing the items available for auction to the actual receipt of the item, the entire process of eBay is based on an exchange centered around virtuality; the proof of trustworthiness therefore is essential to the equation.

I had never questioned this concept much or thought much about it in any depth before this transaction. Based on this one transaction, though, I am now thinking about it.

(To preserve the principle of anonymity on eBay and out of respect to the seller, I am not linking here to the auction in question.)

I will spare this space the long list of “he said, she said” details about this auction transaction. Instead, I will just cut to the chase: when I notified the seller that I was unhappy with the transaction’s conclusion and that I felt I had overpaid, the seller was deaf to my words until I notified them that I would leave them negative feedback to alert other Canadians to this seller’s profit-generating shipping costs.

The seller panicked and a flurry of emails ensued in which they tried to convince me to practice that old chestnut “if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all”. Keeping their supposedly “perfect” eBay feedback record of positive feedbacks intact was ultimately more important to them than actually keeping me happy. This means that they are working for their trust record without working with trust itself.

I say this because if I had gone ahead and posted my negative or neutral feedback, as I was/am sorely wanting to do, I would have “spoiled” this seller’s trust record and this, in turn, could have affected this seller’s ability to convince other Canadians to trust them enough to buy from them in the future. The circle of trust would have been affected, publicly, visibly, openly.

By encouraging me to not post negative or neutral feedback, they are misleading the eBay community into believing that they are trustworthy and have had nothing but positive and happy eBay customers to date. Because I have caved into the seller’s pleas and I have decided not to leave any feedback at all on this somewhat fraudulent transaction, I walk away from this completed auction knowing that this seller is ultimately dishonest and yet I have colluded with them to ensure that the rest of the eBay community remains ignorant of this.

If sites such as eBay depend on the feedback generation of buyers to reassure other buyers that the sellers are trustworthy and that their money is safe with this selling group, what kind of negative subversion have I engaged in by not following suit? What kind of deceitful collusion have I agreed to by not accurately, honestly and openly acknowledging the unsatisfactory practices of this one seller with whom I have done business?

What happens to the virtual circle of trust when it is not fully reflected in its entire truth, bad with good? When the bad and negative are consciously excluded from the feedback circles and records?

How accurate, then, is the online trust mechanisms within eBay and its sister sites?

How does this whole experience translate to the trust aspects of other areas of virtuality?

All questions to ponder further.

:: Topic found? ::

Reviewing my blog posts of late, wading through eh everyday and ordinary, I see a distinct theme emerging...

I seem to be showing a definite interest in the emergence of individuals and groups who use technology to get around the current corporate strangehold of the virtual and its technology.

Ok so maybe that isn't news, given that this space was created to explore that type of theme as it relates to bloggers.

But I'm now faced with doing an exploration paper as the culmination of my SOCI489L class and I need a theme that revolves around virtuality or digital culture.

With all the writing I've done in the last few months about googling and the like, I guess I might have enough to do that paper on this type of stuff.

As long as I don't change my mind...

Again...

:: Now I get it ::

Ever since a programmer I know mentioned to me the "Eclipse Project" and showed me his coding window, I'd been under the impression that the Eclipse buzz was about an open-source competitor to Dreamweaver. I'm not a programmer myself - what do I know?

Then I read thisin the ACM Queue.

Now I know better. Guess I've been looking pretty silly in meetings of late then.

:: I want one::

Too bad that it's too late to put this on my Christmas list.

I've been despairing of ever producing Brulerie St-Denis-style coffee at home, even with my beloved Cafe Britt Dark Roast beans.

Or at least I did until I read this in the Washington Post.

[Found also via Rebecca Blood]

:: A bouncing baby blog ::

Okay so I may not have kids but with my pal Tim's newest blog, I certainly show that I can birth bloggers.

With the addition of Tim's four new blogs, I've been responsible for influencing the creation of 18 to date.

Methinks I need to start a count in this space [over there on the right perhaps?] of my influential ways.

Arrogant maybe? But then..isn't every blog somewhat arrogant?

:: Whew! ::

Skinny, single and living in Portland, Oregon? Forget it!

Come to think of it....it's a good thing I'm not single...Montrealers are notorious stick insect lovers.

[Found via Hello Jed]

:: Weak ties ::

Contrary to the common wisdom that says that strong ties between collaborators are necessary for brilliance, Stanford professor Martin Ruef claims that, in fact, weak ties are more important. He has published details of his study in the magazine Stanford Business . The article suggests that strangers and acquaintances are vital to an individual's ability to come up with great ideas.

[Found via Rebecca Blood]

:: Yet more fun with Google ::

I'm thinking of writing a paper on the ways in which individuals and groups use corporate-provided tools like Google to be subversive and do culture jamming.

Another example:

Go to Google and type in "Weapons of mass destruction" and hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

Pay close attention to the result. Do not adjust your monitor.

[Again, found via the AIR list]

:: More fun with Google ::

Quick! Before "they" get wise and make Google change it....

Go to Google. As your search words, type in the words "miserable failure".

Take a look at the first hit to come up in the list.

[ Hint: lives in a big white house in the middle of a swamp ]

Google gets it; I've always said so.

I found this via the Assocation of Internet Researchers (AIR) mailing list, but this whole thing started at the very cool blog, Blah3.org

:: IM research ::

An interesting piece of research has been done by Ellen Isaacs et al.. They examined IM use at AT&T labs and discovered that all our notions about IM use for business purposes are wrong.

An excerpt:

Although people consistent with our "light user" profile have until now been generally regarded as typical of all IM users, our research suggests that the majority of IM traffic actually involves heavy users working collaboratively to address complex, work-specific problems.

[ Found via Stowe Boyd at Corante ]

:: Strongly left ::

According to The Political Compass, I am strongly leftist, ranking down in that southwest left corner with the likes of Mandela and the Dalai Lama, oh, and Stowe Boyd (from whom I found the Compass).

My exact scores:
- Economic Left/Right: -5.62
- Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.00

Can't tell I'm a liberal, urban, academic, sociology-studying, digitally-focused Canadian Gen-Xer, hmmm?

:: Googling memories of Merlin ::

While playing around with Google recently and typing in the names of various people I used to know and/or call friends, I came up with some hits for a fave former mentor of mine, Mark Windrim. In particular, I found his blog!

Of course, unless he's changed considerably since we were last in regular touch, it probably shouldn't surprise me that he blogs.

Anyways, while browsing his blogspace, I found this article about the transition days of Magic Online from a free BBS to a paid service and it got me waxing reminiscient about my own former salad days as a Magic admin under "Magic Merlin"'.

Ah...I remember when...

Thanks for the memories, Mark.

Gotta love Googling!

:: Making amends ::

I mentioned a friend of mine in a post I made recently about the black market economy surrounding gaming.

My friend took me to task for how I made her sound in that post and pointed out I misunderstood her. Based on the persuasive argument she presented, it would seem that I did.

Apparently, I let the power of my own word-making ability seduce my brain and run away with my foolish fingers.

She has apparently prepared part of a written rebuttal that she wants to send to me. Once I get it, I'll post it here.

In the meantime, I am now saying to her here, simply:

"I'm sorry".

:: Foucauldian terminology ::

I'm blogging this link here so that I don't lose track of this page.

I like Highberg's concise explanation of Foucault's conception of power.

:: Online voice, literally ::


Blogger, the nice people who give me the software to maintain I-Space so that I don't have to fiddle with too much code, have come up with a way to allow me and all the other bloggers out there using their service to blog by voice?!?

They say that it is as easy as leaving a voicemail.

Apparently they're using software from a company called AudBlog.

While I like the theoretical idea of this, I'm not sure how I feel about the actual practice of sharing my literal voice with any of the people who happen to stumble across this little piece of Internet space.

Knowing that my wriitten words are possibly getting out there on other people's screens is spooky enough - the idea of people actually hearing me say them?

Not me.

Not yet.

:: Getting a clue ::

Why have I never read this before now?

Makes me anxious to find time to read my copy of Small Pieces Loosely Joined.

:: It doesn't happen, huh? ::

I was chatting with a close friend of mine recently, someone who is a fellow undergrad sociology student and fellow researcher on the digital games research project I'm part of at Concordia. During our conversation, I mentioned that I'm interested in studying the subversive tensions and power plays between gamers and the MMPOG VWs they play in.

She asked me, "what tensions? what power plays?"

I mentioned that one area in particular that interests me is the active underground pseudo-black market that goes on around the net for things like high level spells, game objects and game points/credits, the kind of thing that can let a 1st level dwarf in EQ become a 150 level something just by buying these virtual items or statuses on the major auction sites or at any of the player-managed auction sites that specialize in this kind of thing.

She laughs and says, "that kind of thing is over-hyped. It doesn't really happen".

Now, coming from anyone else, I might have laughed back at them and argued. But this person is an EQ veteran, participant in many an EQ quest, and one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the true inner dynamics of the game, from the player perspective.

So I didn't laugh back. I just shrugged and changed the subject.

Then today, I found Edward Castronova's blog. Edward is an assistant professor at Fullerton University and is interested in the digital games and virtual worlds (VWs), just as I am. He's been researching this stuff too, but from the economics perspective.

And there, on his blog, was my rebuttal for my friend...

Since July 1, 2003, players have traded and bought over $6 million in virtual game assets.

$6 million!

...in US dollars!

Wow!

But that kind of thing doesn't happen, huh?

Guess I'm learning.

:: Shades of HSX ::

Another entry in the "I remember when" file, as in, "I remember when this trend started on the Internet, through the Hollywood Stock Exchange. It was 1995 and I had just..." oh! um.....oh. never mind.

If you are interested in blogs and bloggers' culture, but like me are still a bit wet behind the ears, you may not have known that this existed.

Now I know. Now what?

:: Everything but democracy ::

Read this today on Terra Nova about designing virtual communities for democracy, then watching them self-organize in every way but that.

Made me go, "whoooaa!"

I smell a juicy research topic.

Anyone know any political scientists jonesing for a virtual research gig with a bunch of sociologists from Canada?

:: Reversing 'progress' ::

So this is why Turkey Days (aka Thanksgiving/Christmas) don't taste as good as they once did .... when I was little, eating holiday turkey raised on my uncle's farm.

And I thought it was just nostalgia!

Found on MetaFilter

:: That which is so in essence ::

From Shields' book, The Virtual:

The space of metaxis (is) the operation of the imagination which connects the perceptual environment with the virtual and abstract world of meanings which over-code our perceptions [p.39].

...Techniques of the virtual create the illusion of presence through props, simulations, partial presences (such as a voice conveyed by a telephone or thoughts written in a book) and rituals which evoke the past and make absent others present. They aid metaxis from the virtual to the actual by giving concrete presence to intangible ideas [p.41].

...The virtual is ideal, but abstract, real but not actual...The roots of the virtual (are) in the everyday mental ability to accept the 'almost so' in place of the actually so. Metaxis (is therefore) the ability to imaginatively close up the gap...[p.43]

Later on in the summary of this chapter of the book, Shields makes an argument for recontextualizing the polarized argument between what is virtual and what is real into an examination of the difference between what is virtual and what is concrete. This is an important argument, I think. More people need to understand it, for while it seems obvious when you read it, too many seem to feel that if it isn't concrete, it can't be real -- a sophistic assertion, in my opinion and seemingly also in Shield's.

Thus does Shield make the argument for a definition of the virtual as "that which is so in essence", a definition I accept and will use from herein.

:: Metaxis? ::

While reading John Shield's book, The Virtual, I came across a concept he calls "metaxis".

I've had to return the book to the library and now I can't claim I fully understand the concept, but it does apply to the virtual.

I'll look into it at a later date, when my own copy of Shield's book arrives in the mail from Amazon.

:: Being of two minds ::

Again, from Dewdney:

Rather than being evidence of the breakdwon of logic, or of low-grade hypocrisy, our ability to hold contrary opinions, to be of "two minds", is really a practical solution to the difficulties of dealing with complex environments. It is a mark of our flexibility and evidence of our multiplicity that we accept new ides without evicting our old "tenants".

Whatever identities we play out in our fantasies and regrets...are understudied by our multiple personalities. We tend to invent identities and characters in order to act out a particular narrative, and then, if we take our lives elsewhere, these characters become forgotten identities that we allow to wither. [p. 160]

:: What the....? ::

I've been a Sarah McLachlan fan for years, not rabid or anything, but I've seen her live about a dozen times and have all her albums.

It's been six years since she's released anything new. So it isn't surprising that I would have pre-ordered her new album, "Afterglow" [ flash required to view well ]

It came in the mail today from Indigo and I promptly opened it up, popped it into my PC (I've never bothered to buy a stereo for my office, since I have a high-quality sound card and speakers attached to my computer). I waited for the autorun to activate and for that sweet and haunting voice to emerge.

It didn't happen.

Instead, I was greeted with a screen from something called "Bandlink" that looked like a popup ad. Now, at first, I thought it was because I'd been browsing eBay and Canada.com and had both of these still open in browser windows. I thought perhaps that a popup had made it through my Google toolbar popup suppressor.

Nope. The popup was from Sarah's CD.

Hmmm...

I double-clicked on the E: drive and find it called "Bandlink". No other files apparent on the CD other than this Bandlink.exe thing. Even the CD icon showing for the E: drive is a Bandlink icon, not an icon from Sarah or Nettwerk, her production company, or anything else recognizably Sarah-related.

After 10 minutes of fiddling, I gave up. I could not access Sarah's music if I didn't install this software thingie.

With a big sigh of disgust and resignation, I gave in. I have no other choice -- as I said, I have no stereo up here.

I read the privacy statement and usage agreement for this bandlink thingie, as best I could given the highly jargoned legal language used. I watched the CD "install the software, though in reality it looks like it was downloading the music?!?!

2 minutes later, ahhhhhhh there she was.

But I'm still nonplussed.

What did I just buy? I was under the impression I was buying a CD full of music. I've got to assume there is music on the CD, or else how will I be able to play it in my car on my way to class later?

If so though, why are the music files "invisible" to my PC? Is this Nettwerk's way of circumventing digital appropriation?

The Bandlink site says this of their software. But read the small print at the bottom...i.e.:

By uniting the existing CD media distribution model with online media and new software technology, Bandlink offers the full power of the Internet without the loss of revenue and piracy issues common to many Internet Music services.

So...

Bemused and somewhat unsettled, I sit here, listening to Sarah's sublime voice slide out of my PC's speakers, wondering.

Have I just been greeted with the next one-up strategy of corporate control over culture and popular tactics, with the strategy now disguised as a copyright protection gadget and forced on me against my will?

Sarah isn't sounding quite as sweet today.

:: And now? ::

From the Dewdney book:

"The total surface area of all the virtual worlds on the Web is already seven times as large as the Earth's surface"

That is a 1998 statistic. Wow. What would it be now?

:: Life in-between ::

A concept I keep tripping across lately in the books I'm reading is the concept of liminality. Essentially it is a transient time or event boundary, an in-betweenness of a moment or event, in between one state of being or identity and another. Common liminal events are weddings, graduations, new unemployment, going into labour, etc. Common liminal moments are the person who is about to shoplift for the first time, just before they do so and become irrevocably forever a shoplifter, or the closing of a door on an old apartment or house before the person hands in the key and moves on to the new home.

I think liminality is a time in which we truly feel our humanity, our ability to choose. It's a state of being between choice and action, between decision and effect.

The poet Robert Frost understood liminality deeply -- his poems "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Eve" and "The Road Not Taken" suggest or dramatize it.

While I've been reading about liminality in Turkle and Shields, neither really fully apply the concept it to the online space and experience. Both mention it just in passing - it isn't a part of their overall thesis.

Somehow, though, the concept speaks to me at many levels when applied to the virtual experience. There are so many liminal moments and events online, enough that each person might be said to experience many in a given year. They can be as small as switching ISPs and therefore IPs, or as large as letting go of an email address and assuming a new one, deliberately killing off a character in an online game and preparing a new one, or deciding to learn a new game and thereby preparing to embark in the new online world.

If applied to digital gaming, per the example above, what might be learned if the liminal moment of "dying" and being recreated in the game are examined? If the process of creating a new character, liminal definitely, were observed and questioned and thought about? What is that feeling that beats in the chest when you assign yourself a name and begin to craft a new identity? How does that experience change a person?

This whole concept is one I'm going to bookmark in my head and here, to keep an eye on and consider as a research topic. I think there is lots there to study and attempt to understand.

::Real, authentic and saturated ::

I was thinking about identity presentation online and so I went back to flip through a few pages of Turkle's ""Life on the Screen" and found one truly notable section. It is in chapter 10, in a section called "Logins R Us" on page 256-258.

Turkle is applying the concepts of a social psychologist called Kenneth Gergen (1991) and she makes reference to his theory of the "saturated self".

She says of the concept:

"we colonize each other's brains" causing us to become "saturated with the 'many voices of humankind -- both harmonious and alien'…we exist in a state of continous construction and reconstruction; it is a world where anything goes that can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality'…(we) come to embrace new possibilities. Individual notions of self vanish "into a state of relatedness. One ceases to believe in a self independent of the relations in which he or she is embedded'…". (p.257)

I've deliberately picked out what I see as the the best parts of her argument to share here, but I invite you read or re-read the section…For now, I'll use Turkle's own words to sum it up .. It's about the idea of "identity as multiplicity" (p.258)

What fascinates me about this is the juxtaposition with the other things Turkle has gone over in this book i.e. is online real? And can online be authentic? When these questions are fused with the question of a saturated self or a multiplicitous self, a new meta question appears...How does a real person who happens to be virtual also be simultaneously multiple and authentic?

Other questions are also suggested...

Where are the boundaries between front stage and back stage?

Do they still exist?

If they do, are they even relevant in this context?

The questions, then, aren't so much about the "why" of it all, as it is the "how" and the examination of the end result. While Turkle didn't deal specifially with the gaming identity aspects of MOOs and MUDs and MMPOGs etc, the question is clearly there in her work, though not necessarily synthesized in this way.

When you add in aspects of gaming where the demand to juggle an ever-larger multitude of selves that may or note be "other" for your flesh self, when your online identity saturates and splits and refracts your presentation of self over and over, what is the micro and macro social and personal consequence of this act? And is this act truly so different from the multitude of selves we already juggle in our daily lives i.e. co-worker, mother, manager, webbie, etc. etc. etc.? or is the only difference the place or the quantity of selves juggled?

It is my belief, therefore, that this is where sociologists should be focusing attention, in order to observe, examine, ponder, theorize and inform. This is certainly an area I intend to focus on in my own future research.

:: Pondering mediated agency::

Mark Poster (2001. p.76):

"So exigent is the practice of self-constitution in communications in cyberspace, so strongly is agency here mediated by information machines, and utterly dispersed is the space of interaction that oppositional practices of earlier decades no longer seem able to take hold of the situation. To insist upon agency politics in this context is to bury one' face in the sand of the bygone age of Man."

:: All work and no play ... ::

Let's review what is due in the next four weeks, shall we?

1. Mid-term exam for SOCI300 - 5 out of 7 questions about Marxism (what is species-being again?)
   
2. Research proposal for SOCI 315 (that one is at least done)
   
3. Library research paper for SOCI315 to "inform & ground" my research project
   
4. Mid-term exam for SOCI315
   
5. Finish reading the Poster book and the Turkle book and "Metal and Flesh"; start and finish reading "The World-Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory", "Cyberpower", and one De Certeau book -- all for SOCI498L
   
6. Write an essay for my SOCI498L class
   
7. Start working on finding the interview participants for the research for SOCI315

Oh yeah - and did I mention that I work full-time and have a project to do at the office that must be done by the end of this year?

And here I thought that I'd have time to breathe and sleep in the next while. What a dull girl I'm going to be this Christmas!

:: Research proposal ::

That's it -- I'm done! It's written, printed, bound, ready to hand-in. Wow! That was a more difficult assignment than it should have been. I guess the complete and utter lack of an actual written hand-out explaning the prof's expectations for the assignment could be the reason for the difficulty.

I mentioned in yesterday's blogpost that I was doing this research on digital appropriation. Current working title is Robin Hood or Captain Hook? Identity, Agency & Power Relations in Digital Appropriation Tactics". Yeah I know it's a bit cute but the prof insisted on a "catchy" title, so she is going to get one.

Since I had to do an asbstract as part of the proposal, I thought I'd post it here -- might come in handy at a later date. Here it is:

A review of social scientific literature reveals that little has been written about the cultural implications of the Internet practices of file swapping and downloading of copyrighted cultural materials, a practice I call “digital appropriation”. The focus of this topic in the popular media has been on legal, financial and ethical issues and has tended to vilify or sensationalize this practice. I therefore propose to do an ethnographic research project involving a small sample of young adult Canadian males, to discover how they have integrated their digital appropriation practices into their identity, sense of agency and power relations with society. I do not expect to discover signs of stigma or loss of face because of their practice. I expect other themes may present, related to deviance and the nature of authorship and cultural artifacts in our post-modern society. However, I intend to focus the goal of the project towards generating a more balanced understanding of the identity work of young individuals who engage in the practice, by grounding that understanding in sociological and cultural studies theory, rather than in political science and economic terms.

What do you think? Let me know.

:: Digital appropriation ::

I'm doing an ethnographic research project for my SOCI 315 course on digital appropriation practices among people under 30. Digital appropriation is my umbrella term for all practices relating to the obtaining, using and recontextualizing of copyrighted digital materials. In even plainer terms, its about how people under 35 go about accessing, downloading, using and re-mixing/re-coding music, movies, software and texts without paying for the materials and without paying heed to copyright issues. I'm hoping to explore how these activists justify their acts, perform their power struggles, get personal meaning and pleasure from the acts and integrate them into their individual identity. I am also on the look out for any whiff of a collective consciousness or identity or social movement among those who are active participants in their digital appropriation practices.

One of the issues I'm already coming up against is locating such people and tapping into any potential communities. By activists, I mean people who engage in the practice deliberately and consciously as an act of defiance against the consumeristic corporatized Western world.

I know of plenty of people lwho are part of a larger and more common, unintegrated group of passive actors. These are people like a retiree I know who do it only in certain areas (i.e. downloading Microsoft software so they don't support Gates' "Dark Realm"powers). For this more common group, though, their minor acts of defiance are not part of their perceived identity and are actually usually at odds with their personalities and public roles.

While I'm interested in the reasons, meanings and pleasures of this latter, larger group, I would prefer to study the former group; the more active participants; those who see digital appropriation as a type of tactic of active resistance against the forces of domination. If I can't find enough of these conscious bricoleurs, I will resort to studying the passive group.

That is where I'm hoping the Internet itself can help. If you are reading this and know of anyone who would fall into the activist actor class I've mentioned, drop me a note or send a link to this blogpost to your contact. Confidentiality and anonymity are assured and I can put you in touch with my professor, if you wish to verify that this is honest, real, ethical and approved research.

Have comments, suggestions, remarks about this research or this type of research? Send those too. I'm always open to a good discussion, conversation or debate.

:: And one more... ::

Okay just one more joke about Bush before I get back to work on this proposal...

A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual."

He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"

The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Quada, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends; the press called him on the lie about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger, and now Campbell Brown is threatening to sue him for a sexual innuendo he made at a recent press onference. So we're taking up a collection for him."

The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"

The officer replies, "About four gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning."

[Posted by Hoffmania on Blah3.org as a comment to the "heaven and hell" joke I blogged previously today

:: Funny and true::

Encountered this today while procrastinating on my Field Research project proposal...

It's a very funny variation on the standard "choice between heaven and hell" joke...this one involving George Bush.
[Found on Blah3.org]

:: Thanks Doug! ::

I'm putting in a small plug for Doug Knox, a helpful techie that maintains a Windows XP help/technical assistance site called "Doug's Windows 95/98/Me/XP Tweaks and Tips". His site has stopped me many times from pulling out my hair or throwing my PC out the window into the pool.

Take today for example -- through a small utility on his site, I was able to restore my Windows XP recycling bin to the desktop without having to manually edit the Registry (which I hate doing).

People like him and my fellow bloggers are the main reasons I haven't given up on the Internet.

:: I found one! ::

Those of you who do not live in Quebec, or more specifically the greater Montreal region might not understand or share my enthusiasm for the subject of this particular blogpost, so rather than waste your time, why not sideways surf over to one of the excellent real blogs listed over there in my links?

You still here? Okay then maybe you can get it.

Guess what?

I found one today. I found a member of that increasingly rare and probably endangered species of professional supposedly indigenous to Quebec.

You know...I found a doctor. A real, honest-to-goodness family doctor. Five minutes drive from my home and my office. A woman.

And the kicker? She's taking new patients. Yippee!!

" and now we do the dance of joy... " as Balki would say.

Oh, and despite being from the east of the province, where the English language is very rarely heard, she speaks my preferred language perfectly!

Yippee!

My three year saga of thumbing through the Yellow Pages, endlessly dialing numbers, relentlessly querying new people I've met for the name of their doctor, mercilessly interrogating any nurse/specialist/pharmaceutical sales rep I came across for their little black books -- all of it, over.

It wasn't even through my own efforts in the end. That's the funny bit. It was my husband's doing.

How so? well, my hubby just happened to mentioned absently one day to a guy he works with that we hadn't found a family doctor yet. And that guy just happened to have been at the CLSC that weekend and just happened to have asked about family doctors taking new patients and the CLSC just happened to have a handy list of new doctors who are taking new patients and the guy just happened to have the list with him at the office! Hubby quickly photocopied it and brought it home and sort of dropped it on my lap, no muss, no fanfare, no "yippee" attitude, just sort of "oh...yeah...here you go...

*head shake*

So I'm now doctored up. Weird how much safer it feels now, this life with a family doctor. I now have a name to put into those little blank boxes on certain kinds of forms.

Now if only I could find a good hairdresser...

:: Poster post ::

As I mentioned in my post from last week, this Poster book is something. Each time I sit down to read it, I get a few pages further and I have to stop.

Why? Because my head aches with the spaghetti of ideas, concepts, questions and possibilities I'm finding in those few pages. Now, I've never read Foucault, despite being urged to do so by my COMZ prof, but I'm quickly realizing that for someone of my academic bent and research interests, he is going to be part of my personal pantheon of theorists/philosophers/influencers, right up there with De Certeau, Hall, Goffman and Fiske.

Some of the questions and things I need to go read more about elsewhere before picking up Poster again are:

* Sociological / cultural studies definitions of subject vs. object
* Nature of subjectivity in post-modern social theory
* Concept of "otherness" from social philosophy and sociological theory a la Mead, Foucault, others?

I'm beginning to build a thread of this stuff in my head though into a possible research topic on the nature of digital appropriation versus authorship. To do this though, I have stacks and scads of reading to do.

And here I thought my December break would be spent decking the halls, baking the cookies and chortling the carols. Ha!

No rest for the wicked or the unenlightened.

:: "Hi Honey! I'm home...!" ::


Wow. It's been a long time. I'm actually rather intimidated by how long it has been since I've posted. Scary how easy it is to drop off the curve and slide into obscurity, to allow your piece of I-Space to shuffle off its coil, in a manner of speaking that mangles the Bard.

Well, I'm resurrecting it. Thanks to a person in my life who has encouraged me a lot lately to read widely on things that interest me and then to write about what I'm reading and how I'm reacting to it, here I am. Again.

So how will this time be different? Yes I'm still sort of blogging for marks, so that's not new. I'm still interested in the same themes of power, agency, individuality, identity and active resistance to the "force of domination". And yes I'm still very influenced by De Certeau and Hall, though I am starting to also get very fascinated by Foucault, thanks to a book called "What's the Matter with the Internet?" by Mark Poster.

I guess what's different then is me. I'm a year older and wiser ( I think/hope) and without an obvious mark at the end to get from doing this blogging thing, I will hopefully be a lot less pretentious and a lot freer to express myself in whatever voice I choose to adopt, even if that voice today is different from the one I will use next week or next month.

So...I'm going to try to shake off the feeling that I'm just indulging myself in the ultimate conceit of navel-gazing by doing this blogging thing and am going to just start doing it again.

I hope.

Stay tuned ::

[ Oh...and if you were curious or cared to know...remember how I started this blog as part of a project for a cultural studies course? Yeah? Well...I got an A+! Wahayy! *grin* ]

:: Death of responsiblity in society ::

http://www.flakmag.com/opinion/classaction.html

:: Long live Wi-Fi! ::

Check out this long interview/article in Internet Week, in which Cory debunks all the urban legends and scare stories that have been circulating about Wi-Fi in the last year.

Cory Doctorow, you're my hero!