Archive For The “Uncategorized” Category
Nicholas Negroponte famously insisted that the dotcom boomers, “Move bits, not atoms.” Ignorant of the atom heavy human bodies, neuron dense brains, and physical hardware needed to make and move those little bits, Negroponte’s ideal did become true in industrial sectors dependent upon communication and economic transaction. In the communication sector, atomic newspapers have been [...]
In a recent article in New Statesman (Nov 16 2011) social theorist Will Davies reflects on the “new times” that seem to be emerging through the unfolding crisis which began in 2008. One possibility seems to be the end of the period of “neoliberalism”—or at least the end of some of its intellectual foundations, if [...]
Adam Hyde is the mastermind behind FLOSS Manuals, a set of wiki-editable collaboratively written how-to textbooks for open source software. I talked to Adam about the next steps for his project, the future of publishing (the one where a book is ‘alive’ and each author can take a cut), and the worldwide spread of the [...]
Apparently a major discovery of the structure of a key retrovirus protease was made with the help of online gamers playing “Foldit”. Not only are the players helping scientists with the “drudgery” of research (as in distributed computing or people submitting animal sightings), but these game players are “providing answers beyond the capabilities of experts [...]
Jen Schradie, a grad student at Berkeley Sociology, has just published an article on the digital divide in user-production on the internet. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2011.02.003 It enters the digital democracy debate not along the lines we’ve been accessing it (democratic participation vs. exploitation) but in terms of inclusion (democratic participation vs. unequal access/exclusion). She comes down on [...]
Kperogi, Farooq A. 2011. Cooperation with the corporation? CNN and the hegemonic cooptation of citizen journalism through iReport.com, New Media & Society, 13: 314-329 http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/314 (Accessed April 3, 2011). Can user-generated content, promoted and contained by a corporation, constitute an alternative or resistance to mainstream media? This is Kperogi’s timely question. Its asking portends a new [...]
A relevant book and a bevy of articles on peer production emerged recently: Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production by Mirko Tobias Schäfer …and New Media and Society bringing it in the recent edition: The limits of peer production: Some reminders from Max Weber for the network society by Daniel Kreiss, Megan Finn, [...]
Here is an obvious kindred spirit. The founders, G. Ritzer and N. Jurgenson, have written a rather experimental text “Production, Consumption, Prosumption: The Nature of Capitalism in the Age of the Digital “Prosumer.” In it, they posit that a new form of capitalism is emerging based on free digital handouts and collaborative consumption. Not as [...]
A Washington Post article today by Greg Ferenstein, “In a Cutthroat World, Some Web Giants Thrive by Collaborating,” is a light survey of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple and their internal and external policies of sharing from APIs to intrafirm competition/collaboration. Pretty puffy piece but some nicely observed data. Includes a nice analysis of Google’s [...]
Here’s an analogous organization seeking collaborations. Exploring New Configurations of Network Politics The project will explore the intersection of politics, networks and cultural practices. The network will work on an analysis of how the emergence of a ‘network society’ is reshaping the ground upon which we think about politics and culture. The primary objective is [...]
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