After I sent a request for speakers: Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro, Noah, the VP of communication has been avoiding me like the devil avoids the holy water. I finally met him at Jack Layton’s speech. No wonder we cannot have any balance here if the members of Univ. communication are also members or sympathisers of NDP. Which bring me to another point. Should Universities be a place for political activity? I say no. Want political activity? Go to NDP meeting.
Now, privatisation of education.
Unfortunately, I’m not the first one to come with this fantastic idea. There have been others. The article I quote from is so good that I basically have nothing to say and it is useless to paraphrase. Here’s the excerpt. I will probably use it in my final paper. I don’t know yet.
"But subjecting speech to majority rule, the left correctly argues, obliterates freedom of speech. Thus, it concludes, we must leave college professors alone.
This is a false conclusion. The truth is that public education as such is antithetical to free speech. Whether leftists are forced to pay taxes to fund universities from which their academic spokesmen are barred, or non-leftists are forced to pay taxes to fund professors who condemn America as a terrorist nation, someone loses the right to choose which ideas his money supports.
To protect free speech, therefore, universities would have to be privatized. The owners of a university could then hire the faculty they endorsed, while others could refuse to fund the university if they disagreed with its teachings. But since privatization would threaten the left's grip on the universities, it vehemently opposes this solution. In the name of free speech, the left denounces as "tyranny of the almighty dollar" the sole means of actually preserving free speech.
So we must not be fooled by the professors' cries about threats to their freedom of speech. Freedom is precisely what they don't want. Their grumblings are simply smokescreens to prevent us from seeing that we are right in objecting to being forced to finance their loathsome ideas."
This is it guys. Separation. Deadly words, taking into consideration that liberals are not a majority in this country so if Concordia (providing it stays liberal) had a conservative competitor with no unions, it would lose lots of money. Not only from the government, but also from tuition as many students finally having a choice, as it should be in democratic society, would switch to other university.
Brilliant. Now let’s do it. I can’t wait for the end of a semester. It’s going to be a busy summer.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Paccagnella, Luciano. (1997). “Getting the Seat of Your Pants Dirty: Strategies for Ethnographic Research on Virtual Communities”. Journal of Computer
While I was reading an article by Luciano Paccagnella I thought I was reading cyber archeology. It’s amazing how we progressed. Reading his article is almost like reading Morgan. OK, I exaggerate, I actually like Morgan, but, but, but many so-called networks that he talks about do not exist anymore. For instance, Usnet groups are really Bronze Age. This article actually reminded me that Usnet groups existed. I forgot all about them. Poor Usnet groups, they can’t even be called dinosaurs because dinosaurs are kind of glamorous while Usnet groups are, well, sooo… backward!
In his chapter “Naturalistic analysis” he talks about ethical problems while studying virtual groups. He cites two problems “specifically related to participant observation in CMC: going native and role conflict, the first referring to involving oneself in the group to the extent that objectivity is lost, while the second means a dilemma between the goals of the group and those of the evaluation” (p. 5).
It’s a problem I’ve noticed in our class project. A few students are doing research on groups they are already ”native members” of. Objectivity is obviously already lost before any research has been done.
Paccagnella cites ethical guidelines on doing research on the Internet established by in the ProjectH Research Group in 1993-94:
1. Viewing and analysis of public on CMC are public. “Such study is more akin to the study of tombstone epitaphs, graffiti, or letters to the editor. Personal? - yes. Private- no.” (p. 6).
2. Messages posted on messages boards are not equivalent to private letters. “They are instead public acts deliberately intended for public consumption” (p.6).
In closing Paccagnella notes the beginning of multimedia systems on the Internet. He states,
Research on virtual communities cannot ignore these new environments, which can potentially take the task of the researcher extraordinarily close to that of traditional field anthropologists.
Screenshots taken from graphical worlds like Alphaworld [4] show a land inhabited by different people and modeled by different artifacts: buildings, streets, gardens, means of transportation and other tools may be analyzed in their shapes and aesthetics. They can be captured and compared by specific software, perhaps like that discussed above for textual CMC.
Research on virtual communities will then be even more similar to research on traditional communities in "real life."
I was never tempted to have a “second life” to kill my time or to talk to people who hide behind avatars, but as some of well-known retailers opened their stores there, I think Paccagnella is correct in his prediction.
In his chapter “Naturalistic analysis” he talks about ethical problems while studying virtual groups. He cites two problems “specifically related to participant observation in CMC: going native and role conflict, the first referring to involving oneself in the group to the extent that objectivity is lost, while the second means a dilemma between the goals of the group and those of the evaluation” (p. 5).
It’s a problem I’ve noticed in our class project. A few students are doing research on groups they are already ”native members” of. Objectivity is obviously already lost before any research has been done.
Paccagnella cites ethical guidelines on doing research on the Internet established by in the ProjectH Research Group in 1993-94:
1. Viewing and analysis of public on CMC are public. “Such study is more akin to the study of tombstone epitaphs, graffiti, or letters to the editor. Personal? - yes. Private- no.” (p. 6).
2. Messages posted on messages boards are not equivalent to private letters. “They are instead public acts deliberately intended for public consumption” (p.6).
In closing Paccagnella notes the beginning of multimedia systems on the Internet. He states,
Research on virtual communities cannot ignore these new environments, which can potentially take the task of the researcher extraordinarily close to that of traditional field anthropologists.
Screenshots taken from graphical worlds like Alphaworld [4] show a land inhabited by different people and modeled by different artifacts: buildings, streets, gardens, means of transportation and other tools may be analyzed in their shapes and aesthetics. They can be captured and compared by specific software, perhaps like that discussed above for textual CMC.
Research on virtual communities will then be even more similar to research on traditional communities in "real life."
I was never tempted to have a “second life” to kill my time or to talk to people who hide behind avatars, but as some of well-known retailers opened their stores there, I think Paccagnella is correct in his prediction.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Week 9
Hakken, David. (1999). Cyborgs@Cyberspace? An Ethnographer Looks to the Future. New York: Routledge.
I am so tired of ethnographic writing that I really cannot take it anymore. And Hakke is adding to my goal to desacrilize the giants and wanna be giants of anthropology. Nevertheless, I jumped sky high when I read weeping of Hakken that he was attacked by Paul Gross. I quickly checked Gross name on the Internet. The first one that came was an actor. Never heard of him either, but that was not him. I finally found this devastating attacker and his article on education at: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring2008/gross.htm.
I love this article. Gross should be the president of Concordia. Although I suspect that Gross is on the left, at least he has enough intelligence and talent to see through it. So although I think that Hakken is writing about nothing, I did get something out of it. He directed me to Paul R. Gross whose essay I will be using in my research.
The second part of Hakken’s writing gets a little bit better better. He provides an account of some anthropological writing in the field of cyber ethnography: e.g. Kling, Wynn, and Suchman.
He lists factors that inhibit appreciation of anthropological cyberethnograpy’s contribution:
1. Holistic ethnography approach that strives to explain as well as describe, contextualizing the results of participant observation in relation to broader structural dynamics (p. 45).
2. the extent to which one must/should master and /or identify with the professional field(s) relevant to her research (p. 57).
And finally a paragraph I do agree with:
Many of the difficulties in analyzing cyberspace ethnographically derive from inadequately developed sense of culture. These difficulties parallel those encountered by an earlier generation of ethnographers, like Margaret Mead and Oscar Lewis. They were trying to use the notion of culture, developed in anthropological ethnography to analyze simpler social formations, to study more complex ones. p.62.
Another person that Hakken directed me to was Oscar Lewis. Surprisingly, Lewis’ name is avoided in a university classroom. Unfortunately, index was not provided so I don’t know from which article these quotes were taken, probably from his book. I agree with Lewis’ culture of poverty, but not with the final analysis that “the primary cause of the cultures of poverty is lack of resources” (p. 62). If that is what Lewis really said.
In general, Hakken took on a task to show that the subject of cyberethnography has come of age and has a maturity, which is spite of his enemies (Gross) can’t be longer dismissed. Was he successful in proving it?
Hakken, David. (1999). Cyborgs@Cyberspace? An Ethnographer Looks to the Future. New York: Routledge.
I am so tired of ethnographic writing that I really cannot take it anymore. And Hakke is adding to my goal to desacrilize the giants and wanna be giants of anthropology. Nevertheless, I jumped sky high when I read weeping of Hakken that he was attacked by Paul Gross. I quickly checked Gross name on the Internet. The first one that came was an actor. Never heard of him either, but that was not him. I finally found this devastating attacker and his article on education at: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring2008/gross.htm.
I love this article. Gross should be the president of Concordia. Although I suspect that Gross is on the left, at least he has enough intelligence and talent to see through it. So although I think that Hakken is writing about nothing, I did get something out of it. He directed me to Paul R. Gross whose essay I will be using in my research.
The second part of Hakken’s writing gets a little bit better better. He provides an account of some anthropological writing in the field of cyber ethnography: e.g. Kling, Wynn, and Suchman.
He lists factors that inhibit appreciation of anthropological cyberethnograpy’s contribution:
1. Holistic ethnography approach that strives to explain as well as describe, contextualizing the results of participant observation in relation to broader structural dynamics (p. 45).
2. the extent to which one must/should master and /or identify with the professional field(s) relevant to her research (p. 57).
And finally a paragraph I do agree with:
Many of the difficulties in analyzing cyberspace ethnographically derive from inadequately developed sense of culture. These difficulties parallel those encountered by an earlier generation of ethnographers, like Margaret Mead and Oscar Lewis. They were trying to use the notion of culture, developed in anthropological ethnography to analyze simpler social formations, to study more complex ones. p.62.
Another person that Hakken directed me to was Oscar Lewis. Surprisingly, Lewis’ name is avoided in a university classroom. Unfortunately, index was not provided so I don’t know from which article these quotes were taken, probably from his book. I agree with Lewis’ culture of poverty, but not with the final analysis that “the primary cause of the cultures of poverty is lack of resources” (p. 62). If that is what Lewis really said.
In general, Hakken took on a task to show that the subject of cyberethnography has come of age and has a maturity, which is spite of his enemies (Gross) can’t be longer dismissed. Was he successful in proving it?
Week 8
TURKLE, SHERRY. LIFE ON THE.SCREEN. NEW YORK: SIMON & SCHUSTER,
1995.
Turkle starts her article by confessing that she used to call a computer her second-self as saw her relationship with a computer as identity-transforming. This kind of statement startles me as I have always thought that this is a kind of stuff that science-fiction stories are made of. Apparently it happens to scholars too. She does not stop there though and claims that one-on-one relationship with a computer is a thing of a past. Today, “A rapidly expanding system of networks, collectively known as the Internet, links millions of people in new spaces that are changing the way we think, the nature of our sexuality, the form of our communities, our very identities” (p. 9). I think that Turkle got engaged in the old debate of nature vs. nurture and states that we are made by our environment, in this case the Internet technology.
She then goes to explaining that our children are leading the way in “a nascent culture of simulation” and the adults are the ones “anxiously trailing behind” (p. 10). I am surprised by such revelations. I thought that young people have always led “a nascent of culture” in every era. My father, for example, like many people of his generation, had real difficulty to switch from a rotary to touch-tone phone. One day, when I am his age, I will be clinging to the technology of my days. This is one the facts of life that should not come as surprise to scholars.
I found her description of different games (available in 1995) interesting, as I myself do not play any games except chess. She states, “As players participate, they become authors not only of text but of themselves, constructing new selves through social interaction. One player says, 'You are the character and you are not the character, both at the same time." Another says, 'You are who you pretend to be’" (p. 12). I think that her statement that one construct new selves through social interaction is a general statement applicable to the world outside of the Internet. I see the player’s statement, “You are who you pretend to be” applicable to the non-virtual world. We can ask a question, “do people really show their real self or pretend? As the spouses of serial killers and murders can attest, they shared their lives with criminals not having the slightest idea of the true character of their spouses.
I do agree with Turkle the Internet has supplied a place and means for some people to expose their real character and personality. I argue against all theories that suggest that the Internet (or virtual reality) creates our personality.
Nowak, Kristine L. and Christian Rauh. (2006). “The Influence of the Avatar on Online Perceptions of Anthropomorphism, Androgyny, Credibility, Homophily, and Attraction.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11: 153-178.
Nowak and Rauch begin their essay by explaining what avatar is. Avatars are “[C]omputer generated visual representations of people or bots, are increasingly being used in ecommerce, social virtual environments” (p. 153).
They also state, “The inclusion of avatars in interfaces designed to facilitate interactions has increased without much information about the influence of such images on message and person perception” (p. 154). Their research is on the human response to avatars.
They explain the purpose of their research by saying, “how people perceive avatars may influence both the self-perception and perception of others using a particular avatar as well as message perception and retention. Thus, understanding the influence of avatars is of theoretical relevance to researchers. It is also of practical importance to users and designers of systems using avatars” (p. 154). As I do not use avatars I was particularly interested with their findings.
Their research showed that people preferred avatars that were more anthropomorphic. These were perceived to be more attractive and credible” (p. 174).
TURKLE, SHERRY. LIFE ON THE.SCREEN. NEW YORK: SIMON & SCHUSTER,
1995.
Turkle starts her article by confessing that she used to call a computer her second-self as saw her relationship with a computer as identity-transforming. This kind of statement startles me as I have always thought that this is a kind of stuff that science-fiction stories are made of. Apparently it happens to scholars too. She does not stop there though and claims that one-on-one relationship with a computer is a thing of a past. Today, “A rapidly expanding system of networks, collectively known as the Internet, links millions of people in new spaces that are changing the way we think, the nature of our sexuality, the form of our communities, our very identities” (p. 9). I think that Turkle got engaged in the old debate of nature vs. nurture and states that we are made by our environment, in this case the Internet technology.
She then goes to explaining that our children are leading the way in “a nascent culture of simulation” and the adults are the ones “anxiously trailing behind” (p. 10). I am surprised by such revelations. I thought that young people have always led “a nascent of culture” in every era. My father, for example, like many people of his generation, had real difficulty to switch from a rotary to touch-tone phone. One day, when I am his age, I will be clinging to the technology of my days. This is one the facts of life that should not come as surprise to scholars.
I found her description of different games (available in 1995) interesting, as I myself do not play any games except chess. She states, “As players participate, they become authors not only of text but of themselves, constructing new selves through social interaction. One player says, 'You are the character and you are not the character, both at the same time." Another says, 'You are who you pretend to be’" (p. 12). I think that her statement that one construct new selves through social interaction is a general statement applicable to the world outside of the Internet. I see the player’s statement, “You are who you pretend to be” applicable to the non-virtual world. We can ask a question, “do people really show their real self or pretend? As the spouses of serial killers and murders can attest, they shared their lives with criminals not having the slightest idea of the true character of their spouses.
I do agree with Turkle the Internet has supplied a place and means for some people to expose their real character and personality. I argue against all theories that suggest that the Internet (or virtual reality) creates our personality.
Nowak, Kristine L. and Christian Rauh. (2006). “The Influence of the Avatar on Online Perceptions of Anthropomorphism, Androgyny, Credibility, Homophily, and Attraction.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11: 153-178.
Nowak and Rauch begin their essay by explaining what avatar is. Avatars are “[C]omputer generated visual representations of people or bots, are increasingly being used in ecommerce, social virtual environments” (p. 153).
They also state, “The inclusion of avatars in interfaces designed to facilitate interactions has increased without much information about the influence of such images on message and person perception” (p. 154). Their research is on the human response to avatars.
They explain the purpose of their research by saying, “how people perceive avatars may influence both the self-perception and perception of others using a particular avatar as well as message perception and retention. Thus, understanding the influence of avatars is of theoretical relevance to researchers. It is also of practical importance to users and designers of systems using avatars” (p. 154). As I do not use avatars I was particularly interested with their findings.
Their research showed that people preferred avatars that were more anthropomorphic. These were perceived to be more attractive and credible” (p. 174).
Monday, April 7, 2008
Censhorship on a campus. Yeah, wha'ts new?
Great article on censorship. It is about 9/11 but the atmosphere described really applies to liberal censorship of conservative and neutral voice on campuses. Except nobody writes about it. Well, OK, Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro write about it. I’ll be the third one. Another John Pilger movie anyone? And how about writing an essay on John Pilger? I had to do it in one of my classes, so had you?
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