http://folksonomy.org.uk/?rss=6 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=1955 The nation s foremost academic researchers on child online safety presented their research and answered questions over a luncheon panel on May 3 This was the first time these prominent academics have appeared together to present their research which altogether represents volumes of data on the state of online youth victimization and online youth habits Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee 3 May 2007 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1955 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:09:49 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1952 Daniel Pink provides concrete examples of how intrinsic motivation functions both at home and in the workplace Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts Manufactures and Commerce 8 April 2010 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1952 Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:20:56 +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=1949 Three young women offer berries to visitors to their izba a traditional wooden house in a rural area along the Sheksna River near the town of Kirillov Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington D C 20540 USA The photograph was created by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii in 1909 as part of his survey of the Russian Empire The image was created using an early 3-colour technique and was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1949 Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:58:21 +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=1933 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1933 Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:06:21 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1932 In the archaic theatre there was relatively little divide between spectator and performer seeing and doing people danced and spoke then retired to a stone seat to watch others dance and declaim By the time of Aristotle actors and dancers had become a caste with special skills of costuming speaking and moving Audiences stayed offstage and so developed their own skills of interpretation as spectators As critics the audience sought to speculate then about what the stage-characters did not understand about themselves though the chorus on stage sometimes also took on this clarifying role Richard Sennett 2008 p 125 Sennett R 2008 The Craftsman London Penguin Books Fig 1 Lysistrata Summer 2006 University of Florida http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1932 Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:51:50 +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=1917 Children learn about themselves others and the world they live in through play Outdoor environments for play and learning can provide rich experiences for children who seek fantasy and adventure and are innately curious about nature Children s environments particularly school and neighbourhood playgrounds parks and gardens have the potential to facilitate learning through social emotional cognitive and creative opportunities Unfortunately in America the play and learning potential for many outdoor play spaces is underdeveloped Lauri Macmillan Johnson Fig 1 The Adventure Playground 160 University Avenue Berkeley California is an example of an open-ended play environment Fig 2 commercially available play environments often work to regulate engagement according to social norms 3 Johnson L M 2004 American Playgrounds and Schoolyards - A Time for Change In School of Landscape Architecture Tempe AZ The University of Arizona Press http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1917 Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:33:07 +1000 http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1916 The role of the character in a role-playing game has long been debated Yet no character can exist without the context of a game world The character always has a relationship to its surroundings the easiest way of creating a character is often through providing a context Even if one supposedly plays oneself in a fictional world a character - a variation on the ordinary persona - will soon emerge Markus Montola amp Jaakko Stenros 2 Montola M and J S eds 2008 Playground Worlds - Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing Games Finland Ropecon ry http://folksonomy.org.uk/?permalink=1916 Sun, 13 Jun 2010 10:33:03 +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=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=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