Category: speaking
Seven Years in Online Dating
Panel Description
Since 2003, online dating has evolved in how web sites, profiles and photos are constructed to attract potential mates. Expectations and resultant relationships have changed as well. In this talk we illustrate how web site design and user savvy have created an alternate universe of intimate social protocols.
Coverage
- Jonathan Beilin And Erhardt Graeff On Information Flows Between Culture And Communities Online – psfk.com
- SXSW 2010: Online dating panel – A dimly lit cloud of a shadow of doubt
- Tim Hwang & Erhardt Graeff of The Awesome Foundation sits down with WebProNews @SXSW. 2010 (Mar 12). WebProNews.
Will networked public spheres solve or exacerbate the next digital divide?
Abstract
Since 1993, when Howard Rheingold proposed that his ‘virtual communities’ shared the same metaphor as the ‘public sphere’ for facilitating the connection between informal conversations and self-governance, academic and non-academic enthusiasts have been discussing the Internet’s potential as an electronic incarnation of Habermas’s democratic ideal. The call for this reality has only strengthened as Internet technologies enable more elaborate online media, tools to self-produce media are increasingly available to the average user, and forums for distributing and broadcasting the end products are free and readily available at the speed of electronic social networks. So-called Web 2.0, marked by a ‘revolution’ of user-generated content (UGC), promises truly democratized media production and, thereby, empowerment of the everyday user: the networked citizen.
Yochai Benkler uses successful networks of UGC producers, Wikipedia and Slashdot, as well as case studies of activism facilitated by blogs and e-mail, to argue that the ‘networked public sphere’ is a reality. In The Wealth of Networks, he argues that in a ‘networked information economy’ power lies in distributed networks of contributors empowered by online social software. Benkler even outlines the emergent norms of this public sphere, which parallel Habermas’s bourgeois norms for rational-critical debate. The key element is participation in UGC. But Henry Jenkins says that there is a growing ‘participation gap’ in terms of new users abilities to critically engage with Internet technologies. The key to Benkler’s public sphere is the fusion of producers and consumers of online media, and Jenkins argues that there is a widening gap between the two statuses.
Jenkins’ ‘participation gap’ is the latest in a series of digital divides, which represent the most fundamental criticism and barrier to the Internet’s potential as a public sphere. Pippa Norris has defined three digital divides: the global divide, the social divide, and the democratic divide. The first two divides focus on well-established discrepancies in the ability to access and use technology and information, at both the inter-state and intra-state levels. But the democratic divide represents a new extension of the ramifications of a digital divide: discrepancies in effective engagement in public life. At this level, a networked public sphere that possesses the media literacy recommended by Jenkins could actually augment civil society’s ability to act in areas of high Internet access. Conversely, those with no access could be left behind developmentally by way of democratic ‘capabilities’, in Amartya Sen’s terms. Thus, we may be left asking: Will Networked Public Spheres be Solutions for or Causes of the Next Digital Divide?
Wikis, Authority and the Public Sphere
Panel Abstract
As social computing practices continue to modify and transform how cultural texts can be generated and circulated, written communities fostered and sustained by wikis offer some insight into the possibilities and pitfalls of dynamic, group authored content production. The fame (and infamy) of Wikipedia as an example of on-line wiki-activity begins to address some of the theoretical issues about authorship raised in late structuralist and poststructuralist thought. For many in the humanities and social sciences, the de-centering of authorship in favor of discursive and systemic modes more attuned to power and historicity across the field of representation has led to novel methods for critical interpretation and evaluation. As such, this panel will consider the avenues by which wiki activity and related social computing phenomena further complicate traditional notions of authorship and, thus, associated issues of authority, originality and value.
Wikis are software programs that allow users to create and edit web pages with a web browser. The implications of open access on the creation and editing of content is profound. In an unprecedented way, wikis allow for discourse to emerge that is continually negotiated and articulated through a community of users; sometimes, literally, thousands of interlocutors. The properties of texts that have emerged from active collaboration test the boundaries of established avenues of knowledge production and modern institutions of knowledge and authority. The recent controversies surrounding Wikipedia speak to the sense of encroachment felt by many established media and information outlets.
This panel seeks papers that analyze and assess prominent examples of wiki collaboration from various theoretical perspectives. We seek papers that address how wikis function in the context of established media and the public sphere. As wikis present the attendant risks associated with any social forum (misrepresentation, hate-speech, hoaxes, vandalism, and the like), how do wiki communities debate, shape and regulate the mores, practices, even the terminology, of public discourse?
2006 Golisano College of Computing Student Delegate Speech
Full Text
Fellow 2006 graduates of the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, I have a confession to make:
When I was a freshman, I had a torrid romance with a beautiful, Russian bride.
It started out innocent enough. I received this amazing, unsolicited e-mail from a young Russian woman, named Olga. She talked about her family, and her job, and what her hopes and dreams were. While I, instead of being immediately suspicious, convinced myself that she had simply found my e-mail address on one of the many personal profiles I had scattered about the internet. She was impressed with what I had to say… right?
I wrote her back. I played hard to get—nothing terribly personal—but asked a lot of specific questions, just to make sure it wasn’t a hoax. After three or four e-mails, we were madly in love.
Well… she was madly in love with me. I, instead, had quickly realized that she was really a bot—a spambot to be precise—simply trying to engage me in a vague, shotgun romance online, while asking for personal checking account numbers, to help pay for her visa and plane ticket to the U.S.
The final piece of evidence came when I replied to her after neglecting the “relationship” for several weeks, out of boredom. When Olga wrote back, her artificial intelligence script had apparently been reset. I ended up receiving the same e-mail that had started the whole sordid affair.
The story of Olga and I is not uncommon. There is an entire website devoted to revealing these charlatans called stop-scammers.com. I found Olga’s profile there, along with hundreds of other fake Russian brides.
Such circumstances bring up a slew of ethical questions, that we as the emerging experts in computing and information science must face—questions that do not have clear answers. You might say that Spamming should be illegal. But aren’t Spammers just clever entrepreneurs, simply capitalizing on your trust that your information is really private?
Then again some spam, like my example, is actually an attempt to commit fraud—an action that is patently illegal. Yet, some might argue that if you are stupid enough to fall for such a ploy, you deserve to lose your money. Now that’s a bit harsh, but so is the job climate in countries like Russia, where men and women resort to hacking and spamming, in order to feed their kids and pay the rent.
The ethics of the situation soon become relative. Throw in issues of government surveillance, and we find ourselves having an increasingly difficult time trying to distinguish who or what is good, and who or what is evil, in the world of computing and the internet.
Now, I’m not trying to be alarmist here, but what all of us have learned in a classroom, or taught ourselves, is more than enough to be dangerous. And this is where you must act with integrity and form a personal agenda, and goals, based on the question: What does being ethical mean to you?
Does it mean developing open source software, free to users? Does it mean pirating software, because you believe the retail costs are extortive? Does it mean working for a corporation, that tries to be everything for its customers, at the cost of its competitors? Does it mean posing as a Russian bride so that you can feed your family?
Asking myself such questions, reminded me of Google’s informal,
corporate motto: Don’t Be Evil.
Of course, we all hope that they are serious about their motto, considering the database of personal information, on each and every Internet search user that Google controls.
But really, as we leave the protective fold of RIT, and journey on to the proverbial “future,” we must think about our ethical position and how it relates to our careers.
Some of you have already accepted job offers. Some of you will be headed to grad school. And some of you will be going back home, to try to figure out what it is you really want to do with your life. But all of you, at some time or another, will be trying to decide which career path is the right one for you to take.
And as you make these difficult decisions and mature as students and citizens of this world, remember to be true to yourself, act with personal integrity, and do what you believe is best for you and those around you.
In three words: Don’t Be Evil.