3tv

I have an article out in the new edition of Convergence with the above title and the abstract reads:

This article focuses on the use of broadband internet in the home, focusing on different material aspects of the internet. Inspired by actor network theory and cyborg theory, a concept of a mundane cyborg practice is developed to outline how the internet is integrated into everyday life and related to other technologies. This concept is used in mapping everyday life through ethno-graphic participant observations and qualitative interviews. Raymond Williams’ concept of flow is used to map how the internet is integrated into everyday life and thereby becomes a mundane technology that bends time and space. The flow-like character of the internet and its frequent use creates new material practices. This article argues that when we look at the internet, we have to take into consideration all the mundane aspects of internet use and sometimes perceive the users as mundane cyborgs.

Key Words: cyberculture • domestic broadband • ethnography

Find it here - if you would like a copy, mail me at: smork AT itu DOT dk

yes that’s right - you are the person of the year 2006 - you as in blogger, moblogger, vlogger, social networker. Read the article here.

UPDATE: The complete program is now online, find it here

On October the 6th Aalborg University has a seminar on web2.0 I will be giving a talk with the above titel, and the abstract is here:

Are blogs the savior of modern democracy or are they the biggest attempt
till date to flatten our culture with superstitious narcissistic
babblings? Are moblogs and videoblogs the liberation of consumers in a
process of making them into content producers or are we witnessing an
overflow of reality TV addicts gone crazy in exposing themselves online?
Are social networking sites the rise of globalized friendships making the
world more coherent or are they just narrowing the scope of people to only
being interested in their closed circle of friends? Are users the new
designers in a strategic employment of user driven innovation or should we
rather talk about loser driven innovation? Are we witnessing the break
down of the public and private?
Are we asking the right questions to address the social software and
web2.0 movement? In this talk I will give an account of social software,
from both a personal and academic perspective. What kind of questions
should we ask? How do these technologies provoke our concepts in academia
and culture more generally?
Expect more questions, personal confessions, theoretical babblings and a
few answers.

Not surprisingly I do not think we are asking the right questions, the above questions only continue the AlphaGeek and AlphaGeist dichotomy. So how and what should we ask? I’ll try to come with suggestions in the weeks to come.

Michael Zimmer from New York University and Mikkel Holm Sørensen from Actics are speaking as well so should be really interesting

The program for this years Reboot is now finally available and it looks really interesting, in fact to interesting, so will have to make some difficult choices. But then again that is better than to little of interest. Must go to either: Matt Webb or Adam Arvidsson, Adam Arvidsson or Bill Liao, Tim Pritlove or TL Taylor (probably gonna choice TL since she is my supervisor and I would like to hear her give a talk to this 2.0 crowd), Nicolas Nova/ Julian Bleecker or Chris Heathcote. Choices all ready made: Steve Coast, Rebecca Blood, JJ Garrett, Bruno Giussani, Tom Armitage, JF Groff, Jeremy Keith, Doc Searls and Euan Semple – damn this is gonna be good…..

Two days ago I saw Larry Page on the BBC News being interviewed from some big tech convention where google launched its new strategy. Larry Page talked about the development of their search engine, the dream is that it will be able to find information almost before you know you need it, this should be based on AI. I find this very surprising, since google success is based on users adding information by clicking and making links on their homepages/blogs. Their new plan is probably inspired on Larry Page’s boyish AI dreams – drop the machines and stick with users (sic)…..

wifi’ing

Originally uploaded by stilleben [’stelle:bƏn].

I’m in London again. I haven’t been here for many years – except for 2 weeks ago, when I was in for one day. I’m surprised that I spent most of my time, going around looking for wifi hotspots. I can’t drink coffee at a place if they don’t have wifi. I haven’t really planed to see anything - I am going to a concert with m. craft to night though.
What is interesting about this, is the fact that wifi changes how some people go about in cities, just as moblogging for some people changes what and how they do things. One reason for this is that I haven’t bothered to buy a guide book (there are googlemaps), also I haven’t checked out what is going on at the moment, so I go into cafes check some London sites find out what to do, do it, and then another round of wifi/coffee and find out something new to do. The good thing about this is that while planning for the next couple of hours, I can upload to flickr as well.
Is this the cycle of a social software junkie? Or are we seeing new emerging practices of media use integrated to everyday life and tourism? Perhaps a bit of both, but no doubt we are still at the beginning of noticing these changes. What is important is that we don’t rush in and try to judge this as an addiction (see article in Danish Newspaper Politiken). The danger of these kinds of judgments is that they resolve into boundary making, based on something that is seldom conscious to the boundary makers (in this case sociologist and psychologists). Where is this leading? I guess my claim is that we should sometimes give new media use time, before starting to judge.

Ohh and what am I doing here? Visiting INCITE and Adrian Mackenzie and interviewing the people behind Shozu (more on this later).

A work colleague told me today that I am a social software junkie, when I was trying to convince him of how wonderful plazes.com is. Shortly afterwards another colleague of mine persuaded me into making a last.fm account. I sort of tried to avoid making one for a long time, with the excuse that I have enough music channels in my life, streaming radio and buying cds got me covered, but what the heck I will give it a try.
It struck me when I was making my account and had to load a photo of myself, that someone should make a meta tool for handling different accounts on the social software around. I decided on a new picture this time, and had to change my display picture on flickr, gtalk, msn messenger and plazes – thank you del.icio.us for not having a profile page.

shopping list

Originally uploaded by stilleben.

I have just been invited to give a talk at Aarhus publiclibrary on blogging/moblogging/puclicstorrytelling blah blah. They want the loaners to contribute stories and pictures to their webpage. Today I’ve been thinking of what to tell them, should I give them the usual postmarxian tale of how blogging will save the world and democratize media, enabling every ordinary man and woman to speak out – the typical speak on blogging from the internet subculture of blogging. Thinking of blogging as a subculture – which I think one should, this is not a mainstream medium – made me come up with the scenario that for blogging to become mainstream, everyone should make a blogpost as often as one makes a list of groceries to buy. If this really happens – the dream of the blogging community – I’m actually not sure that the hype around blogging would exist. The reason why people from the subculture promote this as much as they do is due to the fact that it is NOT a mainstream medium. If/when it becomes, they will go elsewhere…..

I have written an abstract for the EASST conference in Lausanne in August and have just been told that they accepted my paper, so now I just have to do it – should be fun though. Here is the abstract:

Becoming User, Becoming Designer - Social Software and the Emergence of User-Designer Cultures

When using social software, such as flickr.com, operating with open APIs (making it possible to alter the technologies), being a user is no longer a valid concept and technology cannot be thought of as something being designed and distributed in the world as a black box. Theories developed in ANT and other areas of STS such as SCOT still operate with some sort of distinction between production of technology and contexts of use when it comes to design. In relation to issues like these social software provokes our ideas of design and use of technology. Adrian Mackenzie’s concept of technology as transduction can facilitate our understanding of the development of social software, where users shift between different forms of becoming (in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense). So instead of users we should start talking about becoming-designer and becoming-user.

In social software technology contingency seems to be the primary parameter in the network established by the different actors. Surprisingly contingency does not decrease domestication it actually furthers it, because users are becoming designers and hereby more familiar with the technology in the cultures surrounding design, use and development of social software. This can be seen as a fulfilment of the ideas inherent in participatory design.

These tendencies are evident if we look at the design and use of applications developed to support the use of flickr.com such as ShoZu, FlickrTools and FlickrToys. By analysing the emergent cultures surrounding flickr.com and interviewing the people behind ShoZu I will show why social software pushes our understanding of design and use.

In an article on wearable computers or body(nets) Ana Viseu writes that:

Lifestyle applications are believed to be the ‘killer app’ that will turn wearable computers into everyday apparel…. [and later on cites Barfield and Caudell from their article “Basic Concepts in Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality”] “[the networked] computers [on our body] will monitor our physiological state, perform the duties of a secretary and butler in managing our everyday life, and protect us from physical harm”.

This made me think that in the future we will all become as helpless as rock stars. People around rock stars often describe how they lose the ability to perform the most mundane duties as shopping, buying a ticket and so on. And since a lot of people perform in reality music shows, there seems to be an opportunity of becoming just as helpless and stupid as your favorite rock star.

One bigger problem is though that Barfield and Caudell seems to believe that because we can do something it inevitable means that we will do it. This is not at all obvious, but something that technologist (of the utopian kind) often believes; I think this uncritical belief in the dissemination and uptake of new technology stems from the fact that they view technology as only a means to an end (as a tool that is), and not as something generative or even promiscuous as Latour would say it.