Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Bill Thompson on BBC News criticizes social software. Technology analyst Bill Thompson does not think social software will induce any radical societal changes over the next year and a half, and thinks that people should arm themselves against its overhyped promises. However, he argues that the issue of social software has value, because it is encouraging people to discuss the Internet as a tool for relating to each other rather than focusing on its purely technological aspects. Thompson writes, "it is now possible to have a serious debate about the social impact of the Internet without mentioning protocols, packets or programming, and that in itself is significant progress." Unfortunately, he criticizes the way that people consider the myriad products and services that facilitate network interaction as a single instrument, which he calls a Western trend that favors simplicity over the comprehension of complexity. Thompson makes the even more lamentable observation that the people talking about social software have a complete disregard for the last two decades' worth of research into human-machine interaction, not to mention the research into psychology and human-to-human communications that has gone on over the last century. "This lack of awareness of what has been done before means that, by and large, the ongoing debate about social software is generally uninteresting, intellectually shallow and largely irrelevant," Thompson charges. He blames this on the wide availability of online publishing programs, the push to cross-link all comments and debates, and an absence of a historical or research-based viewpoint.
SLOG
There seems to be a new buzzword in the blogosphere : SLOG. SLOG uses SMS technology to update the log is an SMS-log. This online diary is hence updated by sending in SMS messages. SLOGs are used for the Project Hive I mentionned yesterday. This is an exmaple of microcontent/nanodocument.
A new cell phone function
I've read on textually.org Judah Klausner, an inventor in Manhattan, has won a patent for a cellphone that can project Web pages onto a larger surface. There is also lots of smart ideas here like a car alarm that produces smoke that will deter all car thieves.
Punk Spirit
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Punk spirit is : Do it Yourself, Copyleft, Underground, self-made stuff...
Douglas Coupland's Generation X Neo-logisms
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE I do like Douglas COupland book Generation X.
Here are a summary of his neo-logisms.
Research about SMS
An exploring analysis of students' SMS content could be of interest in order to categorize how students use SMS in order to regulate their collaboration. We could for instance establish a typology (help, motivation, affective...)
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J'ai achete le DVD de Kourtrajmé ce we, c'est un collectif sympa qui fait des courts métrages : Mathieu Kassovitz, Vincent Cassel, tekilatex de TTC... J'adore ce style déaclé de foutage de geule de l'univers des racailles, très urbain tout ca. de même j'ai achté un très bon livre sur la subculture underground new yorkaise (NYC Rules) : très bon et tout à fait dans l'esprit que j'aime : APC, Mike Ladd, Def Jux, Zoo York... |
Michelin Lifestyle
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I find really cool the new "Michelin Lifestyle"/Babolat shoes.
Michelin is so glamour ! |
Spatial Grounding
Entendu hier dans le train : Une fille répond à son natel : "Salut, c'est Chloé, alors t'es LA le week-end prochain ?" La personne qui dit cette phrase ne donne pas sa localisation spatiale et tient pour acquis que son interlocuteur/interlocutrice sait où elle se trouve (et la rejoindra le we prochain). C'était visiblement le cas puisque je n'ai pas entendu de signes de réparation/misunderstanding. Un grounding spatial s'est donc établi
Il pourrait être intéressant de faire une étude linguistique des conversations au cell phone pour voir comment se fait ce grounding spatial.
Project Hive
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Project Hive is a moblog (i.e. mobile blog) about local evants related to the G8 Summit in Evian. In this post, I'm not that interested by the fact that 7 or 8 supermakets or gas station has been destroyed. My interests are more headed towards the way people can publish on this we-blog. It is explained below :
Publish with the e-mail client of your mobile phone or pda: The easiest way to publish is to write an e-mail with your report to g8@phive.tk. You can also include one jpeg-picture if you have a phone with an integrated camera. Publish by SMS: If you mobile phone doesn't have an e-mail client you can also publish by SMS: You either can use the SMS-EMail-Gateway of your operator, or you can use one of these free gateways: +35 840 517 4761 use syntax "g8@phive.tk YOURMESSAGEHERE" +61 419 286 443 use syntax "g8@phive.tk YOURMESSAGEHERE" |
ICNEE Conference in Luzern
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Je rentre juste de la conférence ICNEE (International Conference on New Educational Environments). D'un point de vue scientifique, ce n'était pas génial. Cette conférence est à la fois dédiée à la présentation d'environnements par les institutions de recherche (universités, ...) ET les entreprises. Le problème est donc que les nouvelles technologies utilisées dans l'éducation sont à la fois un objet de recherche ET objet d'application. A ICNEE, l'équilibre penche plutôt vers l'application que vers l'évaluation ou l'analyse plus scientifique. Il y avait beaucoup de présentations de systèmes pas toujours très intéressants/innovants (genre des systèmes de téléconférence par satellite).
Ca n'a pas empêcher le trip d'être sympa, bonne rencontre avec des gens sympa (jacques moeschler notamment, un chercheur en linguistique). C'était ausis très sympa de visiter la ville de Luzern. Le lieu de conférence (architecte Jean Nouvel) était génial. Temps un peu pourri mais bon...
My phd ideas
I've made a kind of XXth century website to describe my ph project. It's definitely roughly/sketchy/odd for the moment... on purpose, if you want to understand (because of the public machines' law), feel free to contact me...
Visualisation sociale
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE En psychologie sociale, des expériences (lyonch, Milgram) demandaient aux gens de dessiner des cartes de leur ville afin de comprendre comment ils percevaient la structure de leur lieu de vie.
... on pourrait demander aux utilisateurs de virtual space (web ou mobile) de dessiner la manière dont ils voient leur espace virtuel et notamment de schématiser par une carte leur espace sociale. Par exemple, chez des jeunes (gros utilisateurs de sms), ils pourrient dessiner des cartes de leur espace social (on pourrait les laisser choisir le type de représentation ou leur imposer un type qui marche bien) avec des conventions particulières (personnes plus ou moins proches, dans quel contexte...)
Psy-Geo-Conflux 2003
Psy-Geo-Conflux 2003 held in New York was a psychogeographic event. It seems that other people share my idea of mixing psychogeography with IT !!
This event is organized by Glowlab, "a multimedia arts lab for the exploration of cognitive/terrestrial/digital space".
Definitions about social space
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE A social technology is "one that makes it possible to find people with common interests, to talk with them and listen to them, and to sustain connections with them over time" Sproull and Faraj, 1993.
Social environment : "anywhere that people interact which each other (exchanging cues and social information, observing the apprarance and behavior of others)" Judith Donath
My talk at ICNEE
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE My ppt for ICNEE is here
Public Machines's LAW
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Une hypothèse : et si les machines localisées dans les lieux publics (distributeurs, machine a café, lave-linge, sèche-linge...) étaient VOLONTAIREMENT complexes à utiliser pour forcer les gens à se parler ? donc à utiliser le capital social, la navigation sociale ???
Hypothesis : machines located in public places (vending machines, ATM, coffee machine...) are complicated to use ON PURPOSE to force people to talk to each other, to use the social capital/navigation...
deja que ces fabriquants incluent dans le marketing des machines le fait quil faut quelles ne durent que trois ans pour etre remplace et pousser a la consommation...
Public Machines' Law : people sometimes design non-usable (or difficult to understand) stuff ON PURPOSE to force users to communicate to understand the very design.
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE I always thought that cybercafé/netcafé sucks. I don't understand for instance why city executives (those people who hired expensive consultants or who read dummy reports about net/cell phone expansion) complain about the lack of cybercafe (in Lyon for instance, some morons complain that there is only 7 cybercafe ).
First the number of cybercafe is definitely not an indicator of the web dynamism (people could have a web access at home)
Additionnaly, netcafe SUCKS ! I found that the guys from Aula share that point. "Netcafes are not social spaces nor places for meeting, as the lonely customers stare at flickering screens, trying to read their emails before their coffee cools down and they are slapped with a second bill for the extra minutes they were online. "
That is why places like Aula or the next epfl learning center is better : they provide people with a 24/7 urban/working/living/social/IT-augmented/autonomous area...
Urban Condition
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Tuomas Toivonen, in the history doc of the Aula project discriminate four places in cities : home, workplace, third place (places of meeting like bars and cafes) and urban space.
The fourth, urban space, is made up of two different spaces : - consumers environment : interiors like IKEA, shopping-mall. - the non-place : and endless compilation of in-betweens (streets, squares, parking lots, roadsides).
He also introduces the concept of social capital : transfer and trust of information, "individuals with most cross-boundary connections allow for new ideas and innovations to be proliferated and adapted into new fertile soil.
-> Cities are the place of social capital
I really appreciate this idea of creating "a space that enhances social behaviour by the juxtaposition of territories with different rules, moods and realities. The space is a social gym - work-out generates social capita and situation sensitivity, not muscle mass"
Wires
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE I really like those wires !!!