Thu 29 Mar 2007
The Chronicle for Higher Education’s Wired Campus Blog discusses “How Digital Libraries will Change Academe” with Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle.
In the inaugural installation of The Chronicle’s new weekly podcast series, Mr. Kahle offers a progress report on his project and outlines his vision for the future of digital libraries.
Mon 26 Mar 2007
If you are a visual artist creating and sharing your work in Second Life, please consider contributing to our graduate virtual ethnography project at Emerson College by responding to the following questions (below).
Please leave your responses on our project blog at “The Visual Artist in Second Life“. Thank you.
We will be sharing the results of our findings on our blog at the end of our semester, in late April. If you would like to participate but wish to remain anonymous please email us with your responses at the following address: colin_rhinesmith (AT) emerson (DOT) edu.
Sat 24 Mar 2007
Sat 24 Mar 2007
I just added a link above in the nav bar to my portfolio. It includes recent digital media work that I’ve produced over the past year. I’ll be updating it as I go along.
I was looking around online for inspiration and found my friend Danielle’s portfolio on her blog, which looks really great.
Sat 24 Mar 2007
I just learned from one of my colleagues that the new Internet & Society 2007 website is up. IS2K7 will be focusing on the question, “What is the role of University in Cyberspace?”
The Berkman Center’s question tool is integrated on the front page, where you can submit questions that you would like to see addressed at this year’s conference.
Thu 22 Mar 2007
Eric Gordon, Assistant Professor at Emerson College (and my prof) spoke this evening at Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA. The title of his talk (as seen above) was “The Digital Possessive: Private Spaces in Public Space”. A bit from the event blurb:
I explore the practical methods through which users create, manage, and understand the nature of personal data within their private spaces, arguing that the emergent private sphere is both productive and reflective of the economic and social imperatives of the new web.
(Please excuse my crude translation of the summary to follow, but I’ll give it a shot anyways. Eric or others can correct me if I’m totally off the mark, which is always entirely possible.)
Eric talked about a new concept of “public space” within networks. He says that public space is being constructed within a privatization of those spaces. There’s a shift going on from an ownership culture to a possessive culture.
In referencing Mark Weiser’s idea that “good tools enhance invisibility”, Eric explained that tools like del.icio.us are designed to do just that. Instead, they give users access to ordering methods. He says, what becomes invisible is the thing that the tools order, hence the emergence of The Digital Possessive.
Eric found Martin Heidegger’s concept of the “Standing-Reserve” useful in finding meaning in what is going on here, that the technology is being created to order the world around us.
As a result, our sense of privacy is changing. Eric explained that privacy is increasingly defined by the ability to control the public. He concluded by saying, “Privacy once was the freedom from others’ gaze and now freedom means the ability to manage and order that gaze.”
(For more, I refer you to Eric’s “working draft of the introduction to the last chapter” of his book. He does a much better job talking about his ideas than I do.)
Thu 22 Mar 2007
Here’s a photo I took at last night’s Web of Ideas with David Weinberger at the Berkman Center. The discussion focused on Participatory Culture and Participatory Democracy, following up on ideas put forward during this year’s Beyond Broadcast conference.
I’ll be posting audio and video from last night’s discussion later today on MediaBerkman.
Wed 21 Mar 2007
My classmate, Aubree and I are working on a virtual ethnography project for the remainder of this semester. We’ll be looking at the artist community inside and outside Second Life. I’ll mainly be responsible for setting up a blog for the project and other things presentation-and-distribution-like. Aubree’s doing a number of other things, including zeroing in on research topics.
Here are some of the prelim questions (via Aubree) that we’re asking:
We’re interested in speaking with artists who find it useful to participate and share their work in Second Life and with its surrounding community. If you’re one of these people, please let us know. Otherwise we’ll probably be looking for you.
Should be fun.
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(update: 3/28) Our project blog is The Visual Artist in Second Life.
Tue 20 Mar 2007
I took these pictures of “Untitled (four years)” by Anonymous on the Harvard Law School campus on my way in to work today. Something tells me this display was not up very long.
Tue 20 Mar 2007
Amy Gahran of Poynter Online’s E-Media Tidbits is looking for News organizations who have in the past or are currently using a wikis. If so, she asks
please comment below, explain what you’re doing, and give us your wiki link(s). Also, if you’ve seen something like this, please speak up. I’d love to have some current examples to discuss.
Gahran writes, “Personally, I think there are many ways that wikis could enhance journalism, and I’d like to see more experimentation on this front.”
Excellent.
