Recently on this blog, danah boyd set off a firestorm by suggesting that the imposition of real names on social media sites is an abuse of power...or even authoritarian. The obvious retort is “don’t like it, don’t use it”, or learn how to segement one's network (i.e. bend to the system, because its your problem). …
Continue reading Real name sites are necessarily inadequate for free speech
I am deeply interested in human-machine interaction in intimate life and how this results in a new sort of human-machine intimacy. Today I stumbled upon the new Facebook feature which allows users to add "I'm expecting" under the family members section, announcing a pregnancy to others. This shows up under 'family members' on the profile …
Continue reading Expecting? Intimate life and human-machine interaction
In his seminal book "Code", Larry Lessig argued that social systems are regulated by four forces: 1) the market; 2) the law; 3) social norms; and 4) architecture or code. In thinking about social media systems, plenty of folks think about monetization. Likewise, as issues like privacy pop up, we regularly see legal regulation become …
Continue reading Designing for Social Norms (or How Not to Create Angry Mobs)
Everyone's abuzz with the "nymwars," mostly in response to Google Plus' decision to enforce its "real names" policy. At first, Google Plus went on a deleting spree, killing off accounts that violated its policy. When the community reacted with outrage, Google Plus leaders tried to calm the anger by detailing their "new and improved" mechanism …
Continue reading “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power
We had an informative discussion with Margy from MIT Press today who was kind enough to talk with us about scholarly publishing from the perspective of an academic press. She was generous with her time (and with her back - she lugged some heavy books into the meeting for show and tell) and one list …
Continue reading Dissertation to book proposal: Four rules of thumb
We have a mailing list set up for current and former members of the SMC, where some very productive conversations take place. Recently, danah asked for recommendations for academic work about how social norms are created and maintained (preferably involving technology, but not necessarily). "Norms" are the behaviors and standards considered acceptable by a particular …
Gender and blogging Why is food blogging so dominated by women? I don't have exact results on this question back yet so I cannot tell you precisely how female-dominated the food blogs are, but I would confidently bet that 85% or more are written by women. So that got me thinking: are blogs in general …
Continue reading Blog reading and writing by gender, 2000-2010
Developmental psychologists love to remind us that the frontal lobe isn't fully developed until humans are in their mid-20s. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for our ability to assess the consequences of our decisions, our ability to understand how what we do will play out into the future. This is often used to explain why …
What new norms are we evolving via the use of social media? Way back in 1967 sociologist Harold Garfinkel proposed that the social world was filled with hidden rules for behavior that were so taken for granted it could be very difficult to notice them even if you tried to. To make this point he …
Continue reading The Oversharer (and Other Social Media Experiments)
I have a potentially unhealthy obsession with information graphics. It took me a good chunk of the day to make the graphics in this post and while part of the motivation behind making them was to have something visual to post on this blog (which could have been accomplished in *much* less time), there was …
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