April 2012
22 posts
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“Does the Internet change how we die and mourn? An overview”
– Walter, T., Hourizi, R., Moncur, W. and Pitsillides, S. (2011). Does the internet change how we die and mourn? An overview. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 64(4): 275-302.
full text (pdf)
Very interesting overview of recent research. Here’s the abstract:
The article outlines the issues...
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“In traditional Chinese culture, people burn paper offerings for gods, ghosts,...”
– Bell, G. (2011, Dec). Life, Death, and the iPad: Cultural Symbols and Steve Jobs. Communications of the ACM, 54(12): 24-25.
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Daniel Leviton, 1931-2011 →
Dan Leviton taught me Death Education at the University of Maryland’s summer school in 1996 when I was topping up my credits for graduation from Oberlin College. It was the best class I’ve ever taken, and the notes that I took then have formed the backbone for the death chapter in Untangling the Web.
Here’s a (draft) excerpt from the introduction to that chapter:
It was the...
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“Web-based memorializing bears a diverse array of characteristics, only some of...”
– Foot, K., Warnick, B. and Schneider, S. M. (2005). Web-Based Memorializing After September 11: Toward a Conceptual Framework. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), article 4.
I’m not sure I agree with this. Online and offline memorialisation sites may have different forms, but I...
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“..all societies see death as a transition for the person who dies. How people...”
– from Parkes, C.M., Laungani, P. and Young, B. (1997). Death and Bereavement Across Cultures. Psychology Press: Hove, UK.
And a nice reality check for Modern (Wo)Man:
Each generation and each society has come up with its own solutions to the problem of death and has enshrined them in a complex...
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Mourning (Encyclopedia of Death and Dying) →
A trove of conceptual information on mourning from The Encyclopedia of Death and Dying. Topics on this page include conceptual development:
Concepts from three theoretically and clinically related domains are being incorporated into the thinking about mourning. Each has generated a number of important implications about mourning
distinctions from grief:
Grief refers to the process of...
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“spiritualism is an excellent focal point from which the various dynamics...”
– One example of the cultural contextuality of death practices and beliefs:
As with Victorian religion and society at large, spiritualism sought to successfully integrate the traditional spiritual beliefs with the new tenets and methods of science (and the new confidence inspired by science). One...
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“The will required servants to serve dinner every night just in case the Bowmans...”
– What people choose to posthumously bequeath to their surviving beneficiaries is, ultimately, their business. But it does say something about what they value and who they think are. This How Stuff Works article describes nine stories of so-called “strange” wills and testaments, from Harry...
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““Gilgamish, why dost thou run, (forasmuch as) the life which thou seekest
Thou...”
– Gilgamesh in Terror of Death Seeks Eternal Life.
From the Epic of Gilgamesh.
(full text from the 1901 translation of the Mesopotamian epic poem by R. Campbell Thompson on King of Heroes)
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“The singularity won’t destroy us, Kurzweil says. Instead, it will...”
– Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity, from Wired 16.04 (24 March 2008), by Gary Wolf.
Technology. The end of theory (o rilly?). The end of death. The end… of humanity.
…while artificial intelligence will render biological humans...
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Videogames are played by people, not machines. →
I remembered this column I wrote for The Guardian’s gamesblog in early 2006 last night as I started to mentally aggregate the content for the Untangling the Web chapter about death.
I put my stake in the ground in the first sentence:
It has been a very difficult week. I have unexpectedly lost two family members on opposite sides of the United States.
And then continue, as best I could,...
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“Even though you can find an instance of any kind of porn you can imagine, people...”
– Q&A: The Researchers Who Analyzed All the Porn on the Internet from 19 May 2011 in TIME.com
I have a problem with a few things in this interview. They stem from the same root that can be summed up in this quote:
I’m a computational neuroscientist. I view the mind as software.
...
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“…there are three primary factors which “turbocharge” online...”
– Cooper, A., Delmonico, D. L. and Burg, R. (2000). Cybersex Users, Abusers, and Compulsives: New Findings and Implications. Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, 7(5): 5-29.
This study is more than a decade old. The authors describe cybersex activity as “pornography exchange, real-time...
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“People use mobile phones more for informal and intimate purposes
than for work...”
– Park, Y., Lim, C. and Nam, T. (2010). CheekTouch: An Affective Interaction Technique while Speaking on the Mobile Phone. CHI 2012: 10-15 April 2010, Atlanta, GA.
I’m in danger of falling down a rabbit hole of haptic technologies…
full text pdf of the poster the researcher team...
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“Intimacy is not about performing sexual activities together; it is about shared...”
– Greenberg, S. and Neustaedter, C. (2011). Shared living, experiences and intimacy over video chat in long distance relationships. Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary.
full text, in pdf.
I’m including this research paper with the sex chapter because I’m exploring all...
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“Examining the systemic impact of Internet pornography… is relatively...”
– Manning, J. C. (2006). The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the Research. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 13: 131-165.
This article is behind a paywall, but I have access to the full text as a Visiting Fellow at the LSE. So here are my notes.
to bear in...
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“sex is the area of human experience that embraces the vastest range of...”
– Cindy Gallop, creator and curator of the website Make love, not porn, in her 2009 TED talk.
Another lovely quote from the 4-minute talk:
Porn tends to present one world view. Porn says, ‘this is the way it is.’ And what I want to say is, ‘not necessarily.’
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“Possible Selves represent individuals’ ideas of what they might become,...”
– Markus, H. & Nurius, P. (1986, Sept). Possible Selves. American Psychologist, 41(9): 954-969.
Abstract only.
I tested this theory of identity development in online environments in my Masters research. Markus and Nurius’ work provided a framework for how we choose which new aspects of our...
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Identity (social science) →
(Wikipedia entry)
I’m most interested in psychological identity, of the individual’s conception of his or her “self”. In Untangling the Web and in my academic research, I lean on theories of social identity, particularly those of John Turner and Henri Tajfel (Social Identity Theory), Glynis Breakwell (Identity Process Theory), and Markus & Nurius’s Possible...
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Facebook and me getting booted out (kitten fluff) →
what happens to identity play in an era of Facebook’s “authentic” identity? Here’s a case study from 2008, in which the author was ejected from Facebook because she wasn’t using her “real” name.
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“The use of social media is heading towards the convergence of our virtual and...”
– Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, in the 2011 article, Sharing to the power of 2012 in The Economist
Facebook: “authentic” identity?
March 2012
8 posts
11 tags
“we shouldn’t forget the important role of specialists to contextualise and...”
– Big data and the end of theory?
valuable social science perspective from @geoplace about Big Data on The Guardian.
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“Privacy issues are an ongoing roar and generally do not receive the nuanced...”
– In pursuit of the latest intel on the privacy issues surrounding the Big Data revolution, I contacted Alexander Howard, the Government 2.0 Correspondent for publisher O’Reilly Media. Many thanks to Kaitlin Thaney of Digital Science for making the introduction.
O’Reilly recently...
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The Personal Analytics of My Life (Stephen... →
Technologist and search engineer Stephen Wolfram analysed the substantial data (some might even call it “Big Data”) he’s collected about his online behaviour - email, keystrokes, calendar activity, phone calls etc - over the last decade (and change).
It’s amazing how much it’s possible to figure out by analyzing the various kinds of data I’ve kept.
I propose that this is one...
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Privacy and Big Data →
an O’Reilly joint, published in Sept 2011. A good primer on the issues about privacy as they currently stand with relation to the data-driven digital world we currently occupy.
Currently chewing over Chapter 2: The Right To Privacy in the Digital Age, which covers the cultural and contextual variations on privacy interpretations (case studies: US and Europe) - and how these conflict when...
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Is Privacy a Big Data Prison? →
data professionals need shorthand ways to easily think about the societal impact of their work
Coverage of Strata 2012 from Jim Adler, who sat on the panel, ‘If Data Wants to Be Free, is Privacy a Prison?’
Good list of recent gaffes, interesting frameworks, outlines of privacy perils.
HT @kaythaney
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“He externalised what was important for him, so he would have the cues he needed...”
– Prof Viktor Mayer-Schonberger of the OII, in a review of his book, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age from The Guardian.
as an aside: this explains why I am “cryptic” on Twitter. i explicitly use the service to externalise things that will trigger - for me and for me...
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Truthiness in Digital Media references →
Some gems in here for those interested in misinformation, state control of the content of the web, propaganda and news in the digital space. From the Harvard Berkman Centre conference of the same name (6-7 March 2012), and via their twitter feed.
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Live blogging #truthicon: Truthiness in Digital... →
6-7 March 2012 Liveblog from Nieman Journalism Lab.
Via Ethan Zuckerman.
February 2012
18 posts
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“If the nature of the threat and the coping strategies to be used against it are...”
– I pulled this quote out of my notes from Coping With Threatened Identities by Glynis Breakwell (1986: Routledge; Chapter 3: The structure of threats) that I took during my MSc.
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A Disciplined Business →
An NYT profile of kink.com
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Online Damage: Porn in the 21st Century →
originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 18 January 2009.
Blurb:
Penny Marshall examines the effects of the rapid expansion of online pornography on UK society. She talks to those who use online porn, including couples trying to repair the trust and intimacy dented by the persistent and secretive use of porn sites. She also hears from psychologists who are concerned that young people are in...
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Tech Weekly podcast: Cyber security and online sex →
From February 2011.
the team are joined by Feona Attwood of Sheffield Hallam University, the editor of the book Porn.com, to talk about how the web has transformed our attitudes to sex. Charles wonders if teledildonics – sex toys that are networked via the internet – are for people with intimacy issues, while Kyle Machulis of slashdong.org explains who uses them, and how.
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Obscenity and Indecency on the Usenet: The Legal... →
Bilstad, B. T. (1996). Obscenity and Indecency on the Usenet: The Legal And Political Future of Alt.Sex.Stories. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol 2(2).
full text.
Here’s the abstract:
This paper discusses the emerging prevalence of erotica and pornography on the Internet (in particular on the Usenet) and addresses legal and political questions raised in light of news...
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“…the contextual issues involved in this specific case…”
– British watchdog backs down over Wikipedia image of nude girl (from ZDNet)
In which British watchdogs did not understand context and broke Wikipedia.
A problem of internet content regulation.
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“The internet - in part - is revealing the so called ‘private mind’....”
– from commenter Binra, on the UTTW column about sex, published 6 February 2011.
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“an emerging global village represents only one outcome from a range of...”
– Van Alstyne, M & Brynjolfsson, E. (1996). Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyberbalkans?, MIT.
The first publication of the word “cyberbalkanization,” the phenomenon the researchers proposed could result from the global information infrastructure, leading to “the...
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“Plato observed that even a habitually just man who possessed such a ring would...”
– Online, Anonymity Breeds Contempt. A historical perspective on anonymity from an article on internet trolling on NYT.com in 2010.
BUT! Anonymity isn’t the only issue. Here’s a report from The Guardian in 2007 including this quote from Dr Chris Fullwood, “internet...
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Roots of violent radicalisation (House of Commons... →
a report by the Home Affairs Committee, published 31 January 2012.
Primarily focussed on “terror threats” and radical Islam. Doesn’t talk much about other hate groups.
Bottom line (for Untangling the Web’s Hate chapter purposes): the internet is blamed by many, but there’s not a lot of evidence to support this. convictions have gone down since 2006/7. antagonism...
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“…if you use Facebook, and your friends sign up for social applications,...”
– Luluvise’s date-rating site shows where your Facebook data can end up
from The Guardian on 8 Feb 2012.
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“A person’s contacts are so sensitive that Alec Ross, a senior adviser on...”
– Anger for Path Social Network After Privacy Breach - NYTimes.com
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People using pseudonyms post the highest-quality... →
two interesting things in this article from Poynter:
1) “real identity” is described as “verified by Facebook”
2) “many news sites have been using [Facebook’s plugin] to verify identity… and raise the level of discourse”
I’m ISO any research that correlates “raising the level of discourse” and “real identity”....
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Perceived impact of cyberbullying
• Picture/video... →
Interes granular look. Reminds me of the emotional response that the online rape described by Julian Dibbell in A Rape In Cyberspace invoked in the victims of that incident.
from the 1996 publication, AN INVESTIGATION INTO CYBERBULLYING, ITS FORMS, AWARENESS AND IMPACT, AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AGE AND GENDER IN CYBERBULLYING: A Report to the Anti-Bullying Alliance by Peter Smith, Jess...
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Deviance in the Dark →
Anonymity doesn’t always produce anti-social behaviour, despite the Online Disinhibition Effect (aka GIFT theory). Here’s the pdf of a study by Kenneth Gergen, Mary Gergen and William Barton from October 1973 in Psychology Today that describes an altogether different kind of reaction when people are experimentally anonymised.
This was referenced by Johnson, R. D. & Dowling, L. H....
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Pat (Saturday Night Live) and the A/S/L marker of... →
Saturday Night Live’s version of A/S/L. The Pat character was problematic because people didn’t have what - in its absence - becomes a very important cornerstone for identifying how to interaction with someone.
Perhaps more eloquently, here’s danah boyd in 2001 (pdf) on “the role of identification in online communities” and this “standard formulation of...
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“In this work we examine the complex interplay between the needs and desires of...”
– From:
Diakopolous, N. & Naaman, M. (2011). Towards quality discourse in online news comments. Proceedings of the ACM 2011 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperarative Work. New York, NY.
A few notes/quotes from the article:
Early work in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) has documented...
January 2012
4 posts
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“While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely...”
– Suler, J. (2004). The Online Disinhibition Effect. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, Vol 7(3): 321-326.
Just the abstract. AKA GIFT.
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Topic: Addiction
There may be only 39 working days until I deliver the Untangling the Web book manuscript, but I’m still looking for contributions, stories, links and ideas on a few topics to produce the five exclusive chapters that will join the extended Untangling the Web columns
This week, I’m looking at addiction - one of the many evils levelled against the Web. To what extent can people become...