Part of the MSc in E-learning at the University of Edinburgh
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Lifestream
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Shared PURPOSE OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES.
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My virtual ethnography (on 9/11 Conspiracy Theories) on brainwaving.com: http://bit.ly/54Iqxv #ededc [damiendebarra]
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Shared Lost in the Filth Simulacrum.
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Tags
#ededc #mscdystopia #mscdytopia 9/11 Boundaries Carpenter ConspiracyTheories copyright Cyberia Cybernetics cyberspace Cyborg cyborgs Cyburbia Douglas Rushkoff Evaluation Facebook FAIL file-sharing Final Summary Geertz Genre Hand Haraway Hayles Hine Kress Lifestream Summary Netnography Norbert Wiener Rose Thick Descriptions Thomas Transliteracy Virtual Virtual Ethnography VirtualEthnography Visual Artefact visual literacy Week 3 Week 5 Week 6 Weekly Summaries Weekly Summary-
Recent Comments
- University of Edinburgh Students Provide Thoughts on Lifestreaming for their Course | Lifestream Blog on Lifestream Summary: What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen
- Damien DeBarra on Lifestream Summary: What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen
- tracy on Lifestream Summary: What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen
- Damien DeBarra on Fembots, Latex, Haraway and Hayles
- Sarah Payne on Fembots, Latex, Haraway and Hayles
Archives
- January 2010 (1)
- December 2009 (4)
- November 2009 (7)
- October 2009 (10)
- September 2009 (4)
Categories
- Cyberia (2)
- Cyborgs and Posthumans (2)
- Cyburbia (2)
- Uncategorized (6)
- Virtual Ethnography (5)
- Visual Artefact (2)
- Week 1 (4)
- Week 10 (1)
- Week 11 (1)
- Week 2 (1)
- Week 3 (2)
- Week 4 (2)
- Week 5 (2)
- Week 6 (1)
- Week 7 (1)
- Week 8 (2)
- Week 9 (1)
- Weekly Summaries (11)
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Damien, you do look a little like, er, an escaped criminal : )
Good to see you here.
Thanks Sian. Good to be here. Really looking forward to this course.
At least you look like a cool criminal. A jewel thief rather than a drug-pusher.
Hi Damien.
test comment to see if they work
‘What he didn’t mention is the other new digital battlefront: the boundaries between friends and family online.’
I think that this ‘battlefront’ is even broader Damien- the boundaries between the ’social’ and the educational, or between the present and the future (digital records being kept of content) etc. I think that in the last few years people have lept into Web 2 headfirst, with a focus on the social use, and we are still only coming to terms with both the possible applications and further implications of the technology.
I’ve been curious about our ‘digital footprint’ – half finished social netorking pages, abandoned blog pages and forgotten group memberships. Thing is, we may forget about these remnants of ourselves that we leave lying about the place, but Google doesn’t.
[...] Regarding the ‘themes’ of what ended up in my lifestream this past week, I think, loking back now, the streams’ content could fit nicely into two divisions equating to Hand’s two narratives of ‘utopia’ and ‘dystopia’. Or, if you like, Rushkoff’s ‘Cyberia’ and Harkin’s ‘Cyburbia’, to continue with the tenuous ‘mapping’ notion which I was playing with in an earlier blog post. [...]
Hmm… Firstly a response to Damien’s comment above. Google doesn’t forget about that out of date ephemera but it does downgrade it’s importance over time. I’ve tried to find things I know exist in multiple copies on the net from 2002 ish and they are pretty much unfindable now. Real time search is increasingly important as real time networking comes to the fore and that will further mean that it will only be the regularly viewed/commented/updated stuff gets prioritized over forgotten spaces. Now other people may not forget an old post that they like but the odds of every part of your digital footprint remain forever seems unlikely. Even if they are there they will be like dusty old family pictures in the attic – you know they are there but if you had to find them it would take a while and they might not be in the condition you left them in.
Now, what I was actually going to post… I love the “Do you want to be my friend – confirm or ignore” video. Interestingly it’s not the jarring of online vs offline behaviour that stands out for me though, it’s the weird similarity to prepubescent ideas of forming connections in the world – there is something very playground like about publicly declaring your connections, ranking them, etc. Somehow exchanging business cards (online I guess LinkedIn and Academia.edu are the parallel) seems so much more mature even though it is, effectively, the same darn thing.
Facebook does occupy a strange place – somewhere between serious networking and playful nonsense. And I think that’s possibly what’s jarred with me recently. Updates telling me about serious issues (a friend’s health, what’s happening in Iran) next to quite frivolous ones (horoscopes and Top 5 lists). It doesn’t seem to know what it is and thus tries to be everything to everyone.
You’re on the money about pubescent behaviour. I’m sure any one of us can point to about five stories (personal or public) where the parameters of what FB does and is have been misunderstood, with either hilarious or woeful consequences.
I think that, as FB and social media in general filters up and down through the population, those of us used to spending time online away from family, workfriends and other folks from ‘real life’ find ourselves with requests from those same people for access to what are, for some anyway, highly personal spaces.
Boundaries and buffers many of us carefully cultivate during our early twenties, from family members or old school acquiaintances we hope to never see again, are suddenly not only back in your orbit, but able to see exactly what you are doing and when you are doing it.
Of course this is all about choice – leting this person see that and so on, but I can’t help but notice that technology seems to be breaking down, or at least challenging spaces and boundaries that most of might rather hang on to.
That, to me, is dystopian. The inability to get away from people.
Really enjoying your blogging… But re your concerns. You’re right, assessing the lifestream is potentially tricky, but we’ve been as explicit as we can in the course guide in spelling out the assessment criteria. Whether the links are hip or old-hat won’t affect the mark – all they have to demonstrate is broad engagement across a range of services and media – they are signs of engagement rather than necessarily evidence of learning. As you say, this latter happens in the blog, and will even more so in the final assignment. In this sense, perhaps the assessment of the lifestream functions much as the assessment of the db does in other courses.
I think we’re a bit over-dependent on dbs in online education, so I guess the design of this course was about consciously experimenting with moving away from that. Hopefully not to the extent that discussion is sacrificed – just that it happens differently. We’ll see how successful that is over the coming weeks. I would certainly share some of your reservations about twitter!
Glad you enjoyed the film festival : )
I enjoy your contributions Damien – because in a sense – you are my “alien”. I acknowledge sci-fi has much to offer, but as a genre, it’s never really sucked me in. However,this unit, and sharing thoughts and ideas with the likes of yourself, is changing me. As society embraces technology more and more each year, why are we torn between ‘Cyberia’ and ‘Cyburbia’. Machines should enhance our lives, yet, as our study of dystopia shows, machines and mankind do not necessarily form an immediate alliance. Having watched your War of the Worlds clip, I suddenly come to the conclusion – is the alien of humans not machines themselves, but the fear of machines and what they might do?
Thanks Andy. My mother always maintained there was something slightly ‘alien’ about me…
I honestly don’t know about why so many of our sci-fi movies (and the discourses they form part of) are so pre-occupied with ‘feeling machines’. The obvious answer, perhaps, is that they are nothing more than simple projections of our own fears. Take for example the uber-villianous ‘Borg’ from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The shows’ makers were in the second season and had failed, so far, to introduce a credible villian (season 1’s Q was a mere intergalactic prankster – and an irritating muppet).
So they sat down and set themselves the task of creating a villian that would hit on primal nerves in the American psyche. The result was ‘The Borg’: a hive-mind collective of drones who speak with one voice, work with one will and obliterate anyone that stands in their way – all in the name of progress. The result was a soaring jump in ratings. And some great sci-fi moments: check out Star Trek: First Contact for evidence of Trek actually being good pre- J.J. Abrams 2009 reboot, where we have Data (the android) being seduced by a cybernetic hottie (The Borg Queen) in the midst of a debate about free-will, pleasures of the flesh and human nature. It’s simoultaneously dystopian and utopian: with the Borg’s relentless unthinking quest for technological harmony pitted against the Star Fleet folks’ very human belief that their feelings, tactile relationships and good old-fashioned vengeful rage will see them through.
Shakespeare it ain’t, but it is, in places, rather clever stuff.
[...] Posted Comments on: Week 2 Summary. [...]
Hi Damien,
I don’t think you are a grumpy old man. I agree that it is ironic that academics writing about new genres adopt a conventional (i.e. turgid) academic genre. However, there are academics writing in new genres. See my blog for an example http://tinyurl.com/yks9pja
Damien,
have enjoyed reading your blog and agree with your comments – mostly. I’m still finding my feet, as it were, with the whole twitter and feeds thing and I think this is because my subconscious tells me that academic learning has to be more…..but what? I couldn’t really put my finger on it so decided to keep with the chaos and go with the flow.
Twitter is a strange one! Voyeuristic , is the only word that comes to mind. I think it can be a useful tool to keep up to date with information that is important to you in some way – work perhaps.
I found that I was tweeting my ideas and thoughts as I was reading – using it as a kind of annotation tool. Then got to thinking perhaps I can print out my tweets and will have a nicely formatted set of ideas and thoughts that would be easier to go back to. HOwever, I wud have been happy tweeting alone, so guess this defeats the whole purpose of twitter. lol
We do have preconceived ideas of what academic study should be about and this course doesn’t fit the bill and we are indirectly or again subconsciously or consciously challenging this…. I think?
anyway nice chatting to you- it’s friday evening and I’m clocking off now
LOL I bloody love this. Cheers mate. Highlight of my week.
There – is that sufficiently clear enough language to illustrate the phenomenon that the recipient of this technologically enscribed critique of academic structural prosiac literature may on occasion be rendered disempowered. In this instance, this correspondant is in concurrence with the original author.
[...] In terms of accessibility of text, I would like to comment that sometimes, scholars and academics, in attempting to ensure an equilibrium of intellectual propriatory and respect, abandon any tenure to communicate succinctly and thus render the recipient disempowered. Why do some academics write in such impractical, incomrehensible language. I’d comment further, but thanks to the wonders of Web2.o, Damien has covered this issue beautifully in his blog. I loved this. http://digitalculture-ed.net/damiend/2009/10/09/of-genres-boundaries-and-plain-english/ [...]
Oh yes! I am clapping with happiness at reading this, I thought I had my own private allergy to this kind of language. I am sorry I missed the chats, I could do with help clarifying the terms. Genre for me is used for too many different concepts (I blame being an English lit graduate and then turning TEFL teacher), and what about register?
I am definately with you on this! Do they just do it to make us lesser mortals feel inferior??
OK, in defence of academic writing, in every genre there is bad stuff and good stuff. The passage you quote Damien is an awful example of academic writing I agree (in what is otherwise quite an interesting paper). That doesn’t mean that all ‘academic writing’ is bad, tortured or designed to be inaccessible. That’d be like saying ‘film comedy’ is bad because ‘Love actually…’ got made : )
[...] Posted Comments on: Of Genres, Boundaries and Plain English. [...]
lmao, love it – just watched ‘We Didn’t Start the Flame War’ three times in succession. must. stop. now. Nice take on cyberia ^^
Thanks Tracy. It made me laugh like a loon too. My favourite video in there though is still The Onion’s ‘Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids’. Brilliant stuff.
Lol. Liked the parents as stalkers clip
. Very funny!
I like how this both draws from block one and foreshadows our work on community in block 2, Damien – and I think the map works extremely well as a visual metaphor (though there’s been some good stuff written on how landscape metaphors for cyberspace are problematic because they imply territory, and something fundamental and outside human agency – let me know if you’re interested and I’ll dig up the refs I have on that).
Please do Jen!
Here you go!
De Saille, S (2006) A Cyberian in the Multiverse: Towards A Feminist Subject Position for Cyberspace. Leeds: Thinking Gender Conference 2006
Olson, K (2005) Cyberspace as Place and the Limits of Metaphor, Convergence Vol. 11, 1.
Sardar, Z (2000) Alt.Civilizations.FAQ: Cyberspace as the darker side of the west, in D Bell and B Kennedy The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge.
[...] already had a great big whinge about how I felt after reading Carpenter, so I’ll use this weekly summary to talk about two [...]
I like it, it sounds terribly unscientific which is probably why it appeals – reminds me of William Morris “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. Beautiful and useful – you can’t go wrong with criteria like that really.
I like it too. Richardson is great on validity issues in qualitative research, and approaches which take account of the aesthetic. A couple of references below – Damien I guess your quote is from the second one?
Richardson, L. (2000a). ‘Writing: a method of inquiry’. Handbook of qualitative research. N. K. Denzin and Y. S. LincolnThousand Oaks, CA, Sage: 923-939.
Richardson, L. (2000b). ‘Evaluating ethnography.’ Qualitative Inquiry 6(2): 253-255.
I swiped it from Wikipedia Sian.
I like it and can see my self applying all but no. 2 – aesthetic merit. I’m still very much stuck on ethnographies being textual, rather than visual. I like the idea of representing an ethnography on a timeline, but I haven’t got a clue where to start.
[...] these up from Damien’s blog, but wanted to store them here for easy access [...]
I like those criteria. There is something quite unscientific about them but everything I’ve read over the last few weeks seems to come from a perspective of saying “here is the right way to do this… ” or “here is the established way to do this…” as a precursor to saying “… and here’s why that is so subjective and outdated it is irrelevant”.
The history of science has some great stuff about checking validity and how you might decide that something is an accurate finding. Impericism looks great – you test all your theories for validity – but can fall down since you only test your theory, not what you actually encounter, and you come in with a lot of baggage around what you expect to happen.
Given that ethnography shares some of those issues – and a whole lot more around ethics and social/self-concious role of observer – I think Richardson’s criteria seem pretty fair pointers. And really quite helpful for me to have in mind as I work out how to present and share my own experiences of a digital community.
Yes, I also think these are very helpful comments. I liked number 4: Does this impact me? Does it move me? – This is a criteria which is often neglected in scientific research!
[...] so far and get it all down. One of my most recent activities this week in fact was commenting on Damian’s post about evaluating an ethnography – I found the criteria he shared (from Richardson 2000) super useful so will be thinking [...]
Thanks Damien for this. I’ve been pondering exactly this question myself and considering which criteria best suits and is not too scientific as Tracy mentioned below
I enjoyed your Prezi Damien, and look forward to the video. As with so many of the ethnographies, this one felt like the kernel of what could be a much larger and very fascinating project. I’m impressed that you presented it to such an (I should imagine) volatile audience!
I really like the location of the study in the idea of how to construct a field in the absence of a bounded site – something which highlighted again for me the fuzziness of virtual ethnography, since what you are doing here could almost equally be seen as a form of textual or discourse analysis. Bearing this in mind, I’d have been interested to have seen more of your thoughts on community in the context of conspiracy theory, since it seems here you are exploring the intersections of a series of texts perhaps more than the interactions of individuals? Is this an inevitability, in the context of internet research, where the relationship between text and subject can be so problematic?
Damien, I thought that the idea of the voice of the witness being secondary to the myth was really interesting here. It reminded me of a really good This American Life programme about the role of the spokesman – which included an accidental spokesperson for 7/7 in a piece that has major parallels with Barry Jennings experience of conspiracy theorist adoption. You can hear the episode here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1201
It’s a really interesting area – I look forward to seeing the video.
I was going to link to that ‘this american life’ episode for you as well, Damien – Nicola beat me to it.
I just watched your talk and thought it was terrific – showing real curiosity about the mechanics of what is happening in the process of conspiracy theorising. Your ‘blather rinse repeat’ and digital winks seem like really strong analytic frames for future research in this area.
It was really fascinating to hear the questions after your talk as well. Your point about the difference between fact and assertion was well taken, it seemed like?
oh, and your prezi is gorgeous.
Thanks Jen! Much appreciated.
Hard to say how that last point about ‘facts’ and ‘assertions’ went down. Watching the video again, I’m horribly conscious of how many ‘assertions as facts’ I made myself. I briefly spoke to the chap who was asking the questions afterwards and he seemed curious at the least…
Hi Damien
Some interesting answers for the discussion questions. Like yours, many of my answers began, “I am not sure…”
I was especially interested in your answer to Q5 “Do cyborgs really resist the structure of sex/gender, as Haraway claims?” which I blogged on recently:
http://digitalculture-ed.net/sarahp/2009/11/16/do-cyborgs-resist-the-structure-of-sexgender-as-haraway-claims/#comment-76
I reached the same conclusion that you did – cyborgs are more likely to look like sexual fantasies because that is how they are already portrayed in popular culture. Because they appear that way, they WILL appear that way!
Hey Sarah. I’d seen your blog yesterday and meant to comment but was rushing somewhere!
I suppose I could have also focussed on other cyborg representations in sci-fi – notably the depiction of The Borg as they first appeared in Star Trek – as credibly scary space villians. It’s intersting though – as the ratings dived and the idea of the Borg had been quite played out we suddenly get two sexy Borg women – the Borg Queen (who seduces Data by grafting some skin on to his arm…) and Seven of Nine – a Delta Quadrant Barbie doll.
I love this summary, it sums up how I feel too. Glad I didn’t read it before I posted mine else I might have been tempted to paste it into tumblr with the caption “What He Said”
Hehe. Thanks Tracy.
[...] Damien Debarra I enjoyed the sense of ‘the pieces falling together’ when you viewed the lifestream page: conversations, blogs, feeds, pictures and videos all sloshing around in a great big soup of links. In a very simple and powerful way… [...]