Chapters 5 and 6 of Net Smart

Chapter five of Net Smart, “Social Has a Shape: Why Networks Matter”, begins with this idea of human social networks and how the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts because the group’s properties are different from the individual’s properties. According to Rheingold, we need to understand some things about how network nature affects us are: 1) Networks have structures that influence how we as individuals behave. 2) New forms of sociality are possible because technological networked communication extends the reach of traditional networks. 3) Online networks that support social networks share properties of general network structure and specific properties of human networks.

The theory of six degrees of separation is really interesting, and I found it fascinating that when the original study (Milgram and Travers study which involved letter forwarded by mail) was given digital framework and the number of participants greatly increased, the results remained similar. The study done by Milgram and Travers resulted in an average “path length” of 5.5. When Watts recreated the study using email in 2001, the average path length was again around 6, and a 2010 study also found that 98% of people on Twitter are only separated by 5 steps. Similar results were found in a 2007 study by Leskovec and Horvitz: the average path length of Microsoft Messenger users is 6.6. It made me start to wonder how this applies to me and the people I know…

Rheingold later talks about networked individualism, and how the focus of technology has shifted the center from community to the individual. Rheingold writes that in the early years of cell phones, many conversations began with “Where are you?” It made me think about how today, so many people think that everyone is always available just because of cell phones. Some people actually get offended if you don’t text or call back in a certain time frame, but we shouldn’t have to be available to everyone all of the time. It also made me think about disappearing landlines. How many people still have one at home? (I haven’t had one in over 5 years!)

The section on Facebook use was also really interesting and thought provoking. Rheingold begins the section by saying, “Keeping track of our social relationships is a serious piece of work”. He also mentions that Facebook has caused us to form a redefinition of what the word friend means. There is definitely an etiquette to using Facebook and handling friend requests. Like Rheingold writes, there is social pressure and reluctance to hurt people’s feelings. However, this leads, in many cases, to “friending” people that you may not really want to be friends with. Which is worse: denying a friend request or ultimately realizing that you made a horrible mistake by accepting and then unfriending them? I have a few friends that I wish I had never accepted…

My experiences with Facebook also came to mind when I was reading Rainie and Wellman’s description of people who will thrive in this environment in which networked individualism plays a strong role. One of the characteristics mentioned was, “Those who learn to manage their boundaries”. Rheingold asks, “Does a person want all 300 of her friends to know what she did last night?” The “overshare” is popular on Facebook. There have been many times that I have asked myself why my “friends” (those regrettable ones) would want to post some of the things that they are being seen or read by perhaps hundreds of people. I get that your ex-husband isn’t going to win father of the year, but do I really need to know that. Just today, one of my friends posted a close-up picture of her crying child because she wanted help identifying the rash-like marks around his mouth… Call the doctor.

Chapter six is titled, “How (Using) the Web (Mindfully) Can Make You Smarter”. Again, Rheingold notes the emerging divide between those who know how to use social media for individual advantage and collective action, and those who do not. The section on parents was relatable. Rheingold says that “teenagers need to experiment with who they are and play with different kinds of identities”. The problem is that now, everyone is watching. I don’t even remember how many “phases” I went though as teenager (but some of them are definitely mortifying to look back on). Boyd encourages parents to focus on the underlying issues that worry them as parents instead of focusing on the technology aspect. My son is only three, so I don’t yet know how I will react to his life online. (Actually, I don’t even want to think about this yet.)

Two quotes/ideas that stood out the most in these chapters:

--“Although the Web affords a large audience to only a few, that audience is quickly accessible to other publishers when the conditions are right.”

--Knowledge can spread through online networks as swiftly as any viral videos do.

As far as what I want to learn/take away from this class:

-Think more critically about digital interactions

-Use new tools/ learn how to work with digital tools

-Find new ways/ become more comfortable being creative in a digital context

Mozilla's Image Seeking for Fantastic Visual Metaphors

Although I didn’t have any prior experience with the Mozilla website, I found that it was easy to use. I chose to explore the activity, “Image Seeking for Fantastic Visual Metaphors”, by Alan Levine which tasked the user with finding images to conceptualize complex ideas. Image searches are usually pretty simple, but I soon found that they are also very literal.

I used Mozilla’s example of fear. A preliminary image search for “fear” on Bing proved the point that complex ideas are more difficult to find through an image search than say, “cute dog “or “funny baby”. Out of the first 12 choices for “Fear” images, 5 pictures were of the word itself and one was a poster for the 1996 movie, Fear. Not what I was hoping for...

The next step was to use the Mozilla Thimble to create an Image Seek. You have to edit HTML—my first instinct was to leave immediately and find a new activity. Run, My Brain shouted, Don’t look back! But I persevered.

As it turned out, it was actually simple to use. (There are step-by-step instructions on the left hand side). I began to place keywords in the Image Seek, which is shown as a preview on the right side of the screen. You can see it changing as you edit the code which I thought was neat. Mozilla notes that in order to conceptualize a complex idea, you can search for actions, objects, and locations that visually represent that concept.

Unfortunately, I didn’t read this before I started playing around with the Image Seek Remixer, and I ended up using synonyms instead of actions for the first category—which probably explains why I got such terrible results. (More on that later). For the first category, I chose “dread, alarm, disquiet, and foreboding”. The people/animals/objects section was filled in with, “owls, crows, murder, and stalker”. Finally, the places section got “Night, parking garage, tight spaces, and abandoned places”. I was starting to feel like I was psychoanalyzing myself. There was also a section at the bottom for combination words, so I chose “shivering, alone, panic, and dark”.

Next, you get to test out the Image Seek. Honestly, many of my Flickr and Google Image search results were still abysmal. “Dread” gave me tons of images of dreadlocks; “Alarm” produced image after image of alarm clocks. But, as I said, I didn’t read over all of the instructions before jumping head first into the exercise, so Oops.

It got better. “Foreboding” brought up black and white images of stormy landscapes, “Stalker” gave me one image of a shadowy figure in an ally, “Panic” produced hundreds of pictures of the band “Panic! At the Disco”…

Going into the exercise, I had wanted to find “something more than the word itself, eyes in the dark, or a woman cowering”. These results were definitely more interesting, if not more effective. The best result was for a combination of “dark” and “fear” which produced black and white, stormy, foggy forest images. Yet I felt this still missed the mark. It didn’t portray fear as much as it did a dark and stormy night.

Overall, the exercise was still effective and made me think more about searching for images online. A lot of thought needs to go into finding a great image to act as a metaphor.  

Net Smart: Chapter 4

Chapter 4 of Howard Rheigngold’s Net Smart was an interesting read. The chapter focused on collective intelligence and virtual communities, and Rheigngold kicked off the chapter with a prime example of network-enabled collaboration: the World Wide Web. He notes that Tim Berners-Lee—creator of the Web in 1989—refused to patent his idea because he didn’t want to own it, he wanted to use it. Rheigngold writes that Berners-Lee knew that the Web would be most useful to him and to other scientists if many people used the technology.

The Web’s creation has led to collaboration on a scale that was never before possible—mass collaboration. As Rheigngold notes, it has changed the way that we find info, conduct science, aggregate knowledge, create software, entertain, gather and distribute news, keep in touch with others…the list can go on and on. Whether or not you believe that everyday access to the internet has influenced our society for the better, there is no going back. Rheigngold points out, “If you tag, favorite, comment, curate or blog, you are already part of the Web’s collective intelligence”.

Much of the chapter deals with Collaboration Theory and attempting to understand how to effectively use the collaboration skills made possible by the Web. How do we effectively organize and govern online groups? What can Collaboration Theory teach us about our online lives? In terms of effectively deploying collaboration skills, Rheingold mentions four points to keep in mind:

1.      We must pay attention to one another—“Attention is a fundamental building block of social cooperation”. Later in the chapter, he notes that, historically, we learned by imitation.

2.      It is because of our ability to learn how to create new tools and methods to overcome social dilemmas, that “humans are supercooperators”.  Tools shape the way that we think as a collective intelligence.

3.      New media has made new kinds of institutions possible—“Innovative social institutions continually coevolve together with communication media”.

4.       Both individuals and groups benefit from “reciprocating cooperation, punishing non-cooperators,  and signaling a willingness to cooperate”.

So what does Cooperation Theory teach us about our online lives today? Rheingold offers the following advice:

1.      In new interactions, present yourself as ready to cooperate.

2.      Contribute publically without expecting a reward.

3.      Reciprocate when someone does you a favor.

4.      Seek a sense of shared group identity.

5.      Introduce networks and people to one another.

6.      Punish cheating (but not too drastically).

Finally, what marks groups that are able to organize and govern their behavior successfully?

1.      Group boundaries are clearly defined.

2.      Rules for collaborated goods meet the social needs of the group.

3.      Most who are affected by the rules have the opportunity to influence them.

4.      There is access to means of conflict resolution.

5.      Within the community, members monitor each other’s behavior.

In moving forward in New Media Studies, this information is all very useful. I don’t have much experience with online collaboration and I do not usually contribute much (other than “liking” pictures and posts), but I am interesting in becoming more involved.

Week One: Rheingold and Rosenberg

While reading Scott Rosenberg’s, “In the Context of Web Context: How to Check Out Any Web Page”, I realized that while some of his basic principles for evaluating an unknown source come instinctively to me now, there are so many other ways to verify a web page that I have not considered. Previously, if there was even a hint of suspicion that a site may not be credible, I would avoid it and move on—this may be a safe option, but I’m aware that I’m potentially missing out on some interesting and valuable information.

One piece of advice that Rosenberg offers that does not come as a surprise is to look at the top level domain. He gives the example that sites that carry the domain .info are almost guaranteed to be spammy. I remember that when I first learned about internet research as a child, I was taught to look for .edu, .gov, and .org. These were considered to be safer than .com sites. Yet I never thought to look up the domain owner’s info or consider how old or new the registration is.

Rosenberg also mentions that you can Goggle the URL. I have done this many times, and I have also Googled links to find out if they are legit or if they could possibly be viruses. This practice has definitely become instinctive now—if something looks questionable, investigate.

The use of ads is mentioned by Rosenberg and also by Rheigngold in the second chapter of Net Smart. Looking back, I have certainly judged a site based on its use of ads, but Rheigngold suggests that users “take the Web site’s design into account, but don’t count on it”. Professional design is simply one clue as to if the site is credible. Yet, as Rosenberg points out, if the site is inundated with ads, it might be spammy.

In the end, it all come down to the idea of crap-detection—of learning to, as Neil Postman says, “distinguish useful talk from bullshit”. Rheigngold notes that internet fluency, experience, and engagement are important factors in crap-detection. This made me think of my mom and her general distrust of the internet. She avoids information derived from the internet because she doesn’t have the experience necessary in order to sort through the crap. But instead of becoming more fluent and experienced, she simply asks me to look things up for her.

My biggest take away this week came from Rheigngold, who said, “Continue to pursue your investigation after you find an answer”. Don’t just accept the first piece of evidence that you come across.