http://folksonomy.org.uk/?rss=305 Folksonomy.org.uk is a structured repository of digital culture and creative practice. en-au Creative Commons License: (cc), Simon Perkins Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:27:02 +1000 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:27:02 +1000 Constellations 2.0 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?member=2 60 http://folksonomy.org.uk/Folksonomy.gif http://folksonomy.org.uk/ http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1956 In everyday interactions the body serves as a critical site of identity performance In conveying who we are to other people we use our bodies to project information about ourselves 32 This is done through movement clothes speech and facial expressions What we put forward is our best effort at what we want to say about who we are Yet while we intend to convey one impression our performance is not always interpreted as we might expect Through learning to make sense of otherso responses to our behavior we can assess how well we have conveyed what we intended We can then alter our performance accordingly This process of performance interpretation and adjustment is what Erving Goffman calls impression management 33 and is briefly discussed in the introduction to this volume Impression management is a part of a larger process where people seek to define a situation 34 through their behavior People seek to define social situations by using contextual cues from the environment around them Social norms emerge out of situational definitions as people learn to read cues from the environment and the people present to understand what is appropriate behavior Learning how to manage impressions is a critical social skill that is honed through experience Over time we learn how to make meaning out of a situation otherso reactions and what we are projecting of ourselves As children we learn that actions on our part prompt reactions by adults as we grow older we learn to interpret these reactions and adjust our behavior Diverse social environments help people develop these skills because they force individuals to reevaluate the signals they take for granted The process of learning to read social cues and react accordingly is core to being socialized into a society While the process itself begins at home for young children it is critical for young people to engage in broader social settings to develop these skills Of course how children are taught about situations and impression management varies greatly by culture 35 but these processes are regularly seen as part of coming of age While no one is ever a true master of impression management the teenage years are ripe with opportunities to develop these skills In mediated environments bodies are not immediately visible and the skills people need to interpret situations and manage impressions are different As Jenny Sund acute en argues people must learn to write themselves into being 36 Doing so makes visible how much we take the body for granted While text images audio and video all provide valuable means for developing a virtual presence the act of articulation differs from how we convey meaningful information through our bodies This process also makes explicit the self-reflexivity that Giddens argues is necessary for identity formation but the choices individuals make in crafting a digital body highlight the self-monitoring that Foucault describes 37 In some sense people have more control online-they are able to carefully choose what information to put forward thereby eliminating visceral reactions that might have seeped out in everyday communication At the same time these digital bodies are fundamentally coarser making it far easier to misinterpret what someone is expressing Furthermore as Amy Bruckman shows key information about a personos body is often present online even when that person is trying to act deceptively for example people are relatively good at detecting when someone is a man even when they profess to be a woman online 38 Yet because mediated environments reveal different signals the mechanisms of deception differ 39 Danah Boyd 2008 p 128-129 32 Fred Davis Fashion Culture and Identity Chicago University of Chicago Press 1992 33 Erving Goffman The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Edinburgh University of Edinburgh 1956 34 Erving Goffman Behavior in Public Places New York The Free Press 1963 35 Jean Briggs Inuit Morality Play The Emotional Education of a Three-Year-Old New Haven CT Yale University Press 1999 36 Jenny Sund acute en Material Virtualities New York Peter Lang Publishing 2003 37 See David Buckinghamos introduction to this volume for a greater discussion of this 38 Joshua Berman and Amy Bruckman The Turing Game Exploring Identity in an Online Environment Convergence 7 no 3 2001 83e102 39 Judith Donath Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community Communities in Cyberspace eds Marc Smith and Peter Kollock London Routledge 1999 1 Boyd D 2008 Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life Youth Identity and Digital Media D Buckingham Cambridge MA MIT Press 119e142 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1956 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:27:02 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1951 Tucked away near the last stop of Line 9 the satellite settlement of Thames Town opened in 2006 as part of Shanghai s One City Nine Towns program with low-rise apartments and gated complexes designed to house 10 000 residents Despite an intensive marketing effort including a beauty pageant the community failed to take off and what s left is a ghost town and an ideal place for a quiet afternoon stroll As its name suggests the design of Thames Town is inspired by England with a main square red telephone booths streets named High Oxford and Queen and of course its very own man-made Thames river If you start to lose yourself in your surroundings worry not images of Haibao have made it out here to reassure you that you are in fact still in Shanghai Frances Woo 22 January 2010 CNNGo com Fig 1 Anthony Skriba 27 April 2010 three separate wedding parties stillgoingnative Fig 2 Sarah Low 2009 Boxing Day China Trip Day 10 and 11 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1951 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:07:20 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1950 The SoundMap is a partnership project of the British Library and the Noise Futures Network It uses widely available mobile technology in a novel way to capture and aggregate research-quality audio samples Your recordings will be studied by experts from the Noise Futures Network and we shall post an overview of the research results once sufficient data has been collected and analysed Britain s sonic environment is ever changing Urbanisation transport developments climate change and even everyday lifestyles all affect our built and natural soundscapes The sounds around us have an impact on our well being Some sounds have a positive or calming influence Others can be intrusive and disturbing or even affect our health By capturing sounds of today and contributing to the British Library s digital collections you can help build a permanent researchable resource The British Library Board http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1950 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:42:54 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1939 BILL MOYERS But this intrigues me because you ve set out over these years to educate young girls primarily I mean you do have some boys in your schools but primarily your goal is to educate young girls And given the fact that the Afghani and Pakistani societies are so male dominated that men run the families they run the government they run the villages they run the Taliban why focus on girls instead of the men who are going to in that culture grow up and run things GREG MORTENSON Well it s obviously the boys need education also But as a child in Africa I learned a proverb And it says If we educate a boy we educate an individual But if we can educate a girl we educate a community o And what that means is when girls grow up become a mother they are the ones who promote the value of education in the community The education of girls has very powerful impacts in a society Number one the infant mortality s reduced Number two the population is reduced The third thing is the quality of health improves And from my own observation when girls learn how to read and write they often teach their mother how to read and write Boys we don t seem to do that as much They also you ll see people kids coming out for the marketplace have meat or vegetables wrapped in newspaper And then you ll see the mother very carefully unfolding a newspaper and ask her daughter to read the news to her And it s the first time that woman is able to get information of what s going on in the outside world around very powerful to see that And another compelling reason is when women are educated they re not as likely to condone or encourage their son to get into violence or into terrorism In fact culturally when someone goes on jihad they should get permission from their mother first And if they don t it s very shameful or disgraceful So when women are educated as I mentioned they are less likely to encourage their son to get into violence And I ve seen that happen Bill over the last decade in rural areas of Afghanistan Pakistan I mean I could go on all day about this but educating girls is very powerful Bill Moyers Journal 15 January 2010 PBS http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1939 Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:43:37 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1937 This is my final project for motion graphic design which is a Flash animation that depicts an origin myth of the self-created hero Hundred Pacer The name Hundred Pacer derived from a kind of very venomous snake that exists in mountain areas of Taiwan called Hundred Pacer snake and the protagonist Hundred Pacer was an ordinary Paiwanese Indigenous girl until her and her father were killed by the mudslide and the snake God chooses her to revive in passing down the power The story was inspired by the Typhoon Morakot happened in August 2009 which killed nearly 500 people and destroyed half of Taiwan at that time Jonghsiang Kwan 2010 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1937 Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:04:10 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1924 Synesthesia is a central conception in Marshall McLuhan s exploration of the relationship between media culture and the human sensorium Jay David Bolter claims synesthesia as one of the effects achieved by hypermedia However McLuhan s notion of synesthesia as the simultaneous interplay of the senses in a ratio fostered by the particular medium or media involved is missing in the theoretics of hypermedia which relegates all sensory phenomena to visual terms and overlooks the interplay between orality and literacy Research into synesthesia in art culture language and cognition supports McLuhan s conception of it as the normal process by which the brain reaches a new equilibrium when one of its functions is outered in a technology While hypermedia thankfully falls short of mimicking natural synesthesia interactive multimedia and virtual reality systems attempt to provide a false synesthesia that threatens the role of art and culture in achieving sensory balance James C Morrison 2000 Morrison J C 2000 Hypermedia and Synesthesia Media Ecology Association 1 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1924 Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:39:09 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1922 The idea of an open city is not my own credit for it belongs to the great urbanist Jane Jacobs in the course of arguing against the urban vision of Le Corbusier She tried to understand what results when places become both dense and diverse as in packed streets or squares their functions both public and private out of such conditions comes the unexpected encounter the chance discovery the innovation Her view reflected in the bon mot of William Empson was that the arts result from over-crowding Jacobs sought to define particular strategies for urban development once a city is freed of the constraints of either equilibrium or integration These include encouraging quirky jerry-built adaptations or additions to existing buildings encouraging uses of public spaces which don t fit neatly together such as putting an AIDS hospice square in the middle of a shopping street In her view big capitalism and powerful developers tend to favour homogeneity determinate predictable and balanced in form The role of the radical planner therefore is to champion dissonance In her famous declaration if density and diversity give life the life they breed is disorderly The open city feels like Naples the closed city feels like Frankfurt Richard Sennett 2006 Fig 1 Busy street in Naples marlenworld com Fig 2 Paris Les Olympiades 1969-1974 Thierry B 233 zecourt in 2005 3 Sennett R 2006 The Open City The Closed System and The Brittle City Urban Age http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1922 Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:41:11 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1912 Michel Foucault s reflections on power uniquely parallel a position accepted by a significant segment of philosophers of technology that is that technology is not simply an ethically neutral set of artifacts by which we exercise power over nature but also always a set of structured forms of action by which we also inevitably exercise power over ourselves According to this position technology can be associated with diverse human behaviors with distinctions among them often less clear than for either artifacts or cognitions Technological activities inevitably and without easy demarcation also shade from individual or personal into group or institutional forms Mitcham 1994 209 The elaboration of the theoretical origins justification and cultural impact of human institutions is one of the hallmarks of the analysis of power undertaken by Foucault His work therefore could make a valuable contribution to the discussion of the position in the field of the Philosophy of Technology of those who view technology primarily as activity Jim Gerrie Techn eacute 7 2 Winter 2003 2 Gerrie J 2003 Was Foucault a Philosopher of Technology Techn eacute Research in Philosophy and Technology 7 Winter 2003 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1912 Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:01:28 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1905 Most public policy discussion of new media have centred on technologies-tools and their affordances The computer is discussed as a magic black box with the potential to create a learning revolution in the positive version or a black hole that consumes resources that might better be devoted to traditional classroom activities in the more critical version Yet as the quote above suggests media operate in specific cultural and institutional contexts that determine how and why they are used We may never know whether a tree makes a sound when it falls in a forest with no one around But clearly a computer does nothing in the absence of a user The computer does not operate in a vacuum Injecting digital technologies into the classroom necessarily affects our relationship with every other communications technology changing how we feel about what can or should be done with pencils and paper chalk and blackboard books films and recordings Rather than dealing with each technology in isolation we would do better to take an ecological approach thinking about the interrelationship among all of these different communication technologies the cultural communities that grow up around them and the activities they support Media systems consist of communication technologies and the social cultural legal political and economic institutions practices and protocols that shape and surround them Gitelman 1999 The same task can be performed with a range of different technologies and the same technology can be deployed toward a variety of different ends Some tasks may be easier with some technologies than with others and thus the introduction of a new technology may inspire certain uses Yet these activities become widespread only if the culture also supports them if they fill recurring needs at a particular historical juncture It matters what tools are available to a culture but it matters more what that culture chooses to do with those tools Henry Jenkins Katie Clinton Ravi Purushotma Alice J Robison Margaret Weigel MacArthur Foundation 2 Jenkins H K Clinton et al Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture Media Education for the 21st Century MacArthur Foundation http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1905 Mon, 31 May 2010 10:44:37 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1902 The reason that a focus on Web 2 0 is significant and needed is because the popular web applications it represents are driven by users providing endless and virtually unlimited information about their everyday lives To put it in Lash s terms they are clearly on the inside of the everyday they are up close they afford direct and routine connections between people and software We have not yet begun to think through how this personal information might be harvested and used A starting point would be to find out how this information about everyday mundane lives is being mined how this feeds into relational databases and with what consequences the very types of question that are being asked by the writers discussed here Alongside this it is also important that we consider how the information provided by users and other similar users might affect the things they come across If we return to Last fm which learns users tastes and preferences and provides them with their own taste-specific online radio station it is possible to appreciate how the music that people come across and listen to has become a consequence of algorithms This is undoubtedly an expression of power not of someone having power over someone else but of the software making choices and connections in complex and unpredictable ways in order to shape the everyday experiences of the user How we find the books that shape our writing could be a question we might ask ourselves if we wish to consider the power that algorithms exercise over us and over the formation of knowledge within our various disciplines I know of at least two occasions when Amazon has located a book of interest for me that has then gone on to form an important part of a published work This is not just about Amazon it would also include searches on Google Scholar the use of the bookmarking site Del icio us the RSS feeds we might use or the likely coming applications that will predict locate and recommend research articles we might be interested in Readers based in the UK will also by now be considering the power of algorithms to decide the allocation of research funding as the role of metrics in the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework REF are finalized David Beer 996-997 Beer D 2009 Power through the algorithm Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious New Media amp Society 11 6 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1902 Sun, 30 May 2010 20:12:00 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1900 This document has been created to help people understand the radical transformation digital content will have on the creative industries and to provide businesses with outline areas of opportunity where innovation is most likely to occur In the past decade digital content has become a part of everyday life for all Yet the changes that will occur in the next 5-10 years will be profound They have the power to alter the way we live work play learn and help us to live longer more fulfilling lives These changes will substantially alter existing business models and markets Many historical innovations such as new recording formats more powerful consoles and new advertising media were incremental They changed formats and created new opportunities but they did not alter the industrial landscape The changes taking place now are paradigm shifts that challenge the value chain as a whole These changes represent huge opportunities or threats if not understood For games designers it may mean the migration from console platforms to cloud based applications and casual gaming communities For TV programmes it may mean the end of broadcast where their content must be found and consumed on numerous devices For publishers it may mean the migration to new consumption platforms that radically alter distribution channels For industrial designers it may mean the need to move from object creation to experience creation For all it means the need to radically shift their thinking The following pages outline the key areas highlighted by a project that has engaged with hundreds of key stakeholders across the creative industries and technology industries seeking to map the landscape of the future of digital content Kelechi Amadi March 2010 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1900 Sat, 29 May 2010 20:13:07 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1893 The Tailenders explores the connections between missionary activity and global capitalism The Tailenders examines a missionary organization s use of ultra-low-tech audio devices to evangelize indigenous communities facing crises caused by global economic forces Joy Ridderhoff founded Gospel Recordings in 1939 in Los Angeles She remembered how crowds had gathered around gramophones in the Honduran villages where she had worked as a missionary and decided that rather than compete with this medium she would use it to preach The organization that she founded has now produced audio recordings of Bible stories in over 5 000 languages and aims to record in every language on earth They distribute these recordings along with hand-wind players in regions with limited access to electricity and media The Bible stories played by the missionaries are sometimes the first encounter community members have had with recorded sound and even more frequently the first time they have heard their own language recorded Gospel Recordings calls their target audience the Tailenders because they are the last to be reached by global evangelism The missionaries target communities in crisis because they have found that displaced and desperate people are especially receptive to the evangelical recordings When uprooted from one s home as in the case of Mexican migrant workers the sound of one s own language is a comfort And the audio players are appealing media gadgets Audiences who might not otherwise be interested in the missionaries message will listen to the recordings The Tailenders focuses on how the media objects and messages introduced by the missionaries play a role in larger socioeconomic transformations such as the move away from subsistence economies toward cash economies based on agricultural and industrial labor The film raises questions about how people who receive the recordings understand them Gospel Recording s project is premised on a belief in the transparency of language to transmit a divinely inspired message But because the missionaries don t speak the languages they must enlist bilingual native speakers as translators There is ample opportunity for mistakes selectivity and resistance in the translation The film explores how meaning changes as it crosses language and culture Adele Horne http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1893 Sun, 23 May 2010 13:45:15 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1889 Ecosia is an eco-friendly Internet search engine backed by Yahoo Bing and the World Wide Fund For Nature WWF It basically works like any other search engine but unlike others Ecosia gives at least 80 of its advertising revenue to a rainforest protection programme run by the WWF Because of this Ecosia users can save about two square metres of rainforest with every search they do - without paying anything Furthermore all Ecosia servers run on green electricity so they do not cause any CO2 emissions By using Ecosia you can turn your web searches green Ecosia http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1889 Wed, 19 May 2010 19:06:14 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1884 How do Rwandan envisage their future What kind of society do they want to become How can they construct a united and inclusive Rwandan identity What are the transformations needed to emerge from a deeply unsatisfactory social and economic situation These are the main questions Rwanda Vision 2020 addresses This Vision is a result of a national consultative process that took place in Village Urugwiro in 1998-99 There was broad consensus on the necessity for Rwandans to clearly define the future of the country This process provided the basis upon which this Vision was developed Even if Rwanda s agriculture is transformed into a high value high productivity sector it will not on its own become a satisfactory engine of growth There has to be an exit strategy from reliance on agriculture into secondary and tertiary sectors The issue however is not simply one of a strategy based on agriculture industry or services but rather identifying Rwanda s comparative advantage and concentrating strategies towards it For instance there is a plentiful supply of cheap labour a large multi-lingual population a strategic location as the gateway between East and Central Africa as well as its small size making it easy to build infrastructure resources permitting The industries established would need to address basic needs for which there is a readily available market as these products can satisfy local demand and even move towards export Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning for The Republic of Rwanda Fig 1 vvkatievv 15 July 2009 OLPCorps Kenema Sierra Leone 2009 Flickr http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1884 Sat, 08 May 2010 11:30:54 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1878 The Mutato-Archive is a collection of non-standard fruits roots and vegetables displaying a dazzling variety of forms colours and textures The complete absence of botanical anomalies in our supermarkets has caused us to regard the consistency of produce presented there as natural Produce has become a highly designed monotonous product The Mutato-Project serves to document preserve and promote these last survivors of biological variety Uli Westphal 2006 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1878 Mon, 03 May 2010 09:42:31 +1000