"'Nerd' is a term invented by Dr. Seuss in 'If I ran [into] the zoo' in 1950, where it represented a small comically angry-looking and unpleasant humanoid creature - 'And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo a Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!' Initially popularised in the 1970s as a reference to uninteresting persons, as the information technology revolution turned playful hippies into serious businessmen, later films such as 'Revenge of the Nerds' [1984] granted them intelligence as bespectacled, but unathletic maths student wizards (in opposition to the athletic and sportive jovial 'jock') who turn the world upside down with their wizardry." (Houtman & Zeitlyn 1996: 2, fn 1 -- hyperlinks added by me)

HOUTMAN, GUSTAAF AND DAVID ZEITLYN. 1996. Information technology and anthropology, Anthropology Today 12(3): 1-3.

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I found this work on the internet. I haven't read it yet but I thought the titel sounds very interesting.

The Presentation of Archetype and Cultural Values in MMORPGs: A Comparison between Taiwanese and American Games

Please feel free to comment. I'd like to know wether I should read it. =)

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Timothy J. Hickey, associate professor of computer science and one of the key pioneers of the new program, said the main benefit of Internet studies will be that it will allow students to think more critically about Internet-related issues since they will have developed a solid understanding of the Internet from related disciplines, including computer science, legal studies, economics, anthropology, literature and fine arts. For example, Hickey explains that the Napster phenomenon can be viewed as one of many examples of peer-to-peer computing technology, or as a challenge to and popular reinterpretation of Intellectual Property law. This phenomenon can be seen as a social phenomenon with its own culture, or as harbinger of the emerging online entertainment industry, or as the beginning of a new social contract between artists and their public. "Each of these views is strengthened by a deeper understanding of the other views, and any single viewpoint alone is clearly missing important aspects of the phenomenon," Hickey said. via Brandeis Reporter 18(6) 2001

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The study Psychology and the internet: A basic psychological study on the Internet Relay Chat phenomenon by Gloria Dabiri & Dörte Helten is completely online (as html and pdf, both identical and in german). This goes well with Psychology of cyberspace. Thanks to praying mantis

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TouchGraph offers tools for information visualization, namely for mapping relations between weblogs, websites and more. Check out their news section to get an idea to which uses the tools can be put. See our older story map of the internet, too.

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After having succesfully finished the FLOSS-project, MERIT/Infonomics has started a new research project on open source software, which will run till 2006: "FLOSS-POLS will work on three specific tracks: government policy towards open source; gender issues in open source; and the efficiency of open source as a system for collaborative problem-solving. All areas will have a focus on studying the impact of policy and providing policy recommendations. The first track comprises three survey-based studies: on interoperability; user needs in open source e-government; and open source as a skills development environment especially important for SMEs. The second track will be the world?s first comprehensive study of gender issues in open source ? where women are hugely under-represented; based on ethnographic study, it will result in concrete policy recommendations. The third track will study open source as a productive networked organization through simulation models of collaborative (information-sharing) and selfish (information-selling) agents. Overall, there is a strong emphasis on feedback to and from the user (government) community, through a series of topical workshops as well as supporting the organization of a major conference on open standards and open source in e-government." Among the consortium partners there is the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge (UK).

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tech ronin writes the truth: "All of a sudden there's this revolutionary possibility that we can get a ten-fold increase in communication around all this, and we turn it down for small-minded reasons? OK, maybe everyone isn't meant to be a blogger but academics seem like naturals. [...] I suspect that academia might become borderline irrelevant or even somewhat obsolete if its academicians stay cloistered away with their academic journals. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good topic and worth further exploration of all sides of the issue. I'm just coming down hard on the side of academic blogging. We need you." See additionally "Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research" by Sébastian Paquet in English or French. My usual two cents: Furthermore weblogs are an invaluable opportunity for social/cultural anthropologists who do participant observation among online communities. By means of a weblog the fieldnotes, the field-diary, or parts of it, can immediately made accessible to the members of the observed community. Reactions and comments can be gathered while the participant observation is still under way, and afterwards of course, too. A demand which resulted from the discourse on fieldwork, but more often than not could not be realized. via many2many

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Finally I made it to start to read Lawrence Lessig's new book Free Culture. The only thing I can say is: GO AND GET IT!. Additionally have a look at the comments and insights on it, which Bryan Alexander provides at Infocult (Scroll down and/or search -- updates on the matter come regularly).

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"This is really a very interesting adoption of culture, isn't it?" -- that was Kerleone's comment on the Nigeria Connection (See our older stories.) back in 2002. The advance fee fraud scheme (that has been in existence through regular postal mail for more than 20 years) via e-mail now is internationally known as 419 Scam -- so named after Nr. 419 of Chapter 38 of the Nigerian Criminal Code Act which applies to it. As we reported, the problems with those frauds from Nigeria, which exist since about 1989, grew bigger, the conmen scored big wins and serious incidents have taken place: People who have been lured to Nigeria have been abducted or even murdered. Police forces all over the world go for lengths to fight the scammers: "In one month alone, in the summer of 1995, [U.S. Secret Service] agents extricated seven U.S. victims from Nigeria, though one American was murdered [...]" Apart from this dramatic 'real-life' efforts authorities and others have public education material about 419 online. Nevertheless, maybe due to the nature of the internet or humanity itself, the scamming goes on. P.T. Barnum once complained: "You can't cheat an honest man." -- at other times this saying is attributed to the king of con-men, Joseph R. "The Yellow Kid" Weil. By that logic, if a greedy person is a good target, a professional con-man makes the best "mark", or "mugu", to use the Nigerian scammers' own term, of all. Consequently this 'adoption of culture' has been adopted itself, the scammers have new enemies who entangle them into a complex play of tricksterish reality-satire, deception, and counter-deception, the scambaiters: "Baiting a scammer involves replying to the emails with the knowledge it is all a scam. Often the scammer will think you are a real victim and try their best to extract money." There are different reasons for scambaiting, some want to create amusing stories, others want to educate the public, and some even want to reverse the scam and receive a few token dollars. The hilarious results can be viewed online. Initially via c't 8/2004

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Bryan Alexander writes at infocult: "The Economist has an article on corporations hiring anthropologists to study their digital information ecologies. NO ONE asks to see Steve Barnett's pith helmet anymore, which he views as a sign that the natives are now comfortable with his presence. Indeed, they appear to accept Dr Barnett, a pioneering business anthropologist, as one of their own?something that now holds true for corporate anthropologists in general. It was certainly not the case in 1979, the year Dr Barnett left academia to set up as an anthropological marketing-consultant. It was still not true in the late 1980s, when Xerox asked one of its resident anthropologists, Jeanette Blomberg, to don a pith helmet for a corporate photo. A neat put-down: when he was informed that IBM Research had hired Ms Blomberg as its first anthropologist in December 2002, Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future exclaimed, ?Just now? How embarrassing." See also this article and our older story Intel and the Anthropologists. via infocult

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The two german Anthroplogists Ina Zukrigl and Joana Breidenbach show in their article about identity in "virtual worlds" six thoughts about the differences between online and offline: Vernetzte Welten - Identitäten im Internet Via Ethno Info

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