Comments for is203 - Social and Organizational Issues of Information

Comment on Week 13 by Bernt Wahl

Tue, 15 May 2007 22:33:40 +0000

My Sister the Blogger

A theme in many of these papers is collective activism, as Howard calls them smart mobs. As time goes on more social interaction will take place through online communication.

The social fabric of blogging has become a way of live, it has evolve from apprehension of just a decade ago.
In 1995, I built set of web sites for family members. Two sites were for my sister’s Karin Nunn then (28) and Kristina Wahl then (16). There I posted pictures, what they liked to do and story elements. The idea is they could voice out to the world issues that concerned them and other interesting tidbits. The sites were hardly ever updated because of the complexity levels. Karin did not mind it because at least now she had a web presents.
Kristina’s story was different. One day my youngest sister Kristina, told me that an annoying admire had found the site and if I could please remove the site. She was afraid that he could use it to track her even thought the site was being hosted on the opposite side of the world. I was a little perplexed but I did so. Fast-forward 10 years and Kristina is a professional bogger employed by Brigitte Women’s magazine to write about her experiences living in California [blog.brigitte.de/kalifornien/] my how times have changed.

Comment on Week 15 by Bernt Wahl

Tue, 15 May 2007 22:21:38 +0000

In Introduction to the Special Issue: Communication in Virtual Organizations the paper focuses on how virtual group’s function. In my experience virtual groups are formed out of necessity to bring together enough like-minded souls to accomplish a task or build up an expertise. In the early days of the web (1993) I used Usenet an online discussion group built around a core group of scientist and enthusiasts who were interested in Chaos Theory and Fractal Geometry. The close-knit group had a high value of utility, people were interested in answering rather complicated and generally consisted of academics. As the web grew more people joined, often those that were less sophisticated in mathematics. Over time it lost its appeal to the scientific community.

Comment on Week 15 by Ken-ichi

Sat, 12 May 2007 02:03:17 +0000

Lessig was an interesting read. I particularly enjoyed his Thomas Jefferson quote, both the content of the quote and the fact that Lessig refutes Jefferson’s idealistic claim that ideas are nonexcludable. I think I often fall into the trap of thinking that secrecy is impossible, and that information not only should be free (as in freedom), but that it is impossible for it to be otherwise. Obviously this is not the case, as Lessig points out.

I also liked his assertion that copyright exists not to protect some fundamental right authors have over their creations, but rather to provide incentive for them to create in the first place. HIs prediction that DRM will shift copyright to copyduty was also interesting, and I guess that idea is probably what spawned the Create Commons licenses (the best prophesies are self-fulfilling).

Comment on Week 15 by karenhsu

Sun, 06 May 2007 18:17:54 +0000

Re: Introduction to the Special Issue: Communication in Virtual Organizations

The DeSanctis and Monge paper briefs over a collection studies previously done on virtual organizations that concentrate on such things as how they are defined, various issues with their management, and the arrangement of their communications linkages.

One study found that there is limited impact of telecommuting on the communication structure of work groups. Here, the ubiquitous issues of trust in online settings reappear. Clearly, to communicate freely, employees on both ends must trust both the reliability of the communications technology used as well as its security. It was interesting to realize that the very existence of such a study suggests that the possibility of telecommuters having a predilection for communication with other telecommuters over non-telecommuters had been previously pondered. I would think that the communication experience for telecommuters would be the same regardless of who was at the other end, but the paper considers feelings of alienation. I just assumed you’d ask the person(s) with the highest likelihood of answering correctly. Had this study instead been among people in the office and their communication linkage patterns with telecommuters and non-telecommuters, surely the results would have been very different.

Comment on Week 15 by mcd

Thu, 03 May 2007 19:39:44 +0000

Any reading the drops the F-bomb is blogworthy in my book.

In all seriousness, I enjoyed this reading. I had been noticing all semester (though specific examples escape me at the moment) subtle appearances of parallelism between 205 and 203, and here it is, made explicit (pun intended; see above) in the final reading. The law is, dare I say it, socially constructed. Pam has stressed all semester the organic and reactive development of law (in the US in particular, which Lessig touches on in contrasting the European view of privacy as a fundamental right). Statutes are enacted, policies developed, norms are coaxed and codified—all in reaction to societal needs and problems. True, there are fundamental assumptions and the Constitution standing behind this process, but what makes it all the more interesting is the way courts and legislatures maintain balance in changing circumstances.

Lessig eloquently describes the interaction between the modes of achieving this balance. What technology fails to enable or the market prohibits, the law and social norms need not address, but changes in each system affect the necessary roles of the others. It’s incredibly complex, but Lessig’s argument flows easily to adeptly defend this dance, a process that ultimately speaks to exactly the issues that Coye has covered in 203, put shortly that it’s all connected and worth cross-consideration.

This was an enjoyable read and a perfect summation to the course(s), and I am running out to get my hands on the book . . . just as soon as I write these papers.

Comment on Week 15 by Alana

Thu, 03 May 2007 19:36:40 +0000

In the Lessig reading, the thing that particularly jumped out at me, especially in light of recent events, was a comment about the open source movement. “The point is simple, but its implication profound. To the extent that code is open code, the power of government is constrained. Government can demand, government can threaten, but when the target of its regulation is plastic, it cannot rely on its target remaining as it wants.” Replace the word “government” with “MPAA”, and we can start to have a conversation about what happens when information is released into the wild despite the best efforts of those who would control it. To be continued…

Comment on Week 14 by cvolz

Wed, 02 May 2007 00:20:43 +0000

Bah, meant to write this last Friday but I got distracted with all the other school stuff that needs doing. Also, I was really, really hung over. But that is neither here nor there.

The comparison between various electrnoic communications to both the telephone was interesting. While some people definitely get a bit too immersed in their online lives for most people it is just another tool for staying in touch with friends and family.

I do wonder, however, if it’s getting easier and easier to ignore people you don’t like. Put another way, are we enabling choosiness with regards to our friends? If you can, relatively easily, stay in touch with friends in LA, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Florida, San Jose, Santa Clara, Berkeley, and San Francisco (just looking at where my friends are who are currently logged in to an IM program) then does that make it easier to not have to form new friends immediately around you?

I bring this up because there has been much talk about how the internet (etc) creates an echo chamber where people’s existing beliefts and attitudes tend to get reinforced because there is a community that actively engages in it and dissenting viewpoints go elsewhere.

I wonder if we’re starting to do the same things with relationships?

2a77

Comment on Week 14 by bindiya

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:27:10 +0000

In today’s internet age, where most people are stuck behind their laptop screens, it is not surprising that virtual ties are being considered comparable to real world relationships. People don’t have time to meet up with friends, or even keep in touch via the telephone. It has become a trend of sorts to reach out to other people in parallel with doing work on computers. Not only making new friends, but even communicating with old contacts virtually is something which has become very common. I would say from personal experience that although the dynamics are different and building trust is more difficult, it is possible to have strong in virtual communities.

Comment on Week 14 by jilblu

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 06:30:42 +0000

In “Virtual communities as communities”, Wellman and Gulia ask, “Are strong, intimate ties possible online?”

My friend Cynthia has been unemployed for some time now. She has used her time off to become an avid user of Flickr; she admits to being addicted. Within 6 months, she has uploaded thousands of beautiful photos (she heavily edits and definitely does not upload every photo she takes) and has a total of 153 contacts. Recently, she proudly reported that her photos had more than 2500 views within a single weekend.

When I asked Cynthia whether or not she thought strong, intimate ties were possible online, she answered “Definitely.” Some of Cynthia’s Flickr contacts are people she knows offline, but most of them are people she’s never met who like her photos, and vice versa. Cynthia spends at least an hour a day looking at her contacts’ photos and commenting on them, and responding to comments people have made on her photos.

With the back-and-forth of viewing and commenting, Cynthia has become friends with several of her contacts, including a young woman from England. Through some events organized by Flickr, Cynthia has met some of her contacts in person. Though they were initially online friends only, their relationships have evolved offline as well; they regularly meet to go “photowalking.”

Cynthia is currently dating someone she met through Flickr. She loves his photographs.

Wellman and Gulia don’t really discuss the possibility of strong online ties moving offline and then becoming even stronger.

Comment on Week 14 by elisa

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:09:27 +0000

The ‘historical view’ is always interesting, both to notice how debates we think are brand new have in fact their roots in the past (Smith’s description of the percentages of contributors to parasites in Usenets can be used word-by-word and percentage-by-percentage to describe the Usenets of today, and no doubt those of tomorrow; I wonder if these percentages don’t mirror exactly the percentages of writers-to-readers in the old, pre-everybody is an author times), and to track the evolution of some authors’ philosophy through the years (Smith 1999: “data that maps the activities of thousands of individuals around the world raise serious issues about privacy, property, and the responsibilities of researchers to the members of the online groups they study”. Smith 2006: “Privacy? Yeah, I remember, it was nice when it existed”). And yes, we are relieved to hear that it’s been proved scientifically that communities can exist online, and belonging to such a community doesn’t, in general, mean that one doesn’t relate anymore to one’s flesh-and-bone communities.

Crankiness aside (it’s finals time, after all), the most interesting aspect of the readings for me was realizing once more how hard it is to balance a ‘it’s a completely new phenomenon’ attitude with a ‘it’s the same as it’s always been’ attitude. Do we conclude that the internet is just a new tool to replicate old behaviors, or that the internet is changing these behaviors? Or maybe old behaviors that are expressed through a new tool become new behaviors? Is the individuals’ sense of agency that Judd mentioned last week shaped by the tools used? I haven’t made a lot of progress in sorting these questions out, but at least some of the readings have helped clarifying the questions. It’s a start, and I think I’m maintaining my sense of agency…

One last comment, on the Wellman/Gulia article. I was quite taken aback by the phrase “To address this issue, we can only be like Slouka and Barlow and provide anecdotes, rather than more persuasive evidence from controlled experiments, detailed ethnographies, or systematic surveys.” (p174). I only hope that this is meant as a way to prevent methodology criticisms, rather than an expression of a real belief in the fact that anectodes that are not backed by “scientific” evidence are not really a good tool to understand the social reality around us. I mean, are they dismissing the value of, for example, literature to understand ourselves and our world, because it’s not based on systematic surveys?

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