Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerleone, February 9, 2004 at 12:50:32 PM CET

Virtual Relations

Telepolis with some thoughts about "virtual relations" ("Wer bist du?", german) and their differences to offline relations of our society (be careful, all you scientists, this is a slightly poetic text).

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, zephyrin, February 3, 2004 at 2:32:37 PM CET

Some cyber fun

It may well be that right now I am planting some strange thoughts in the minds of certain people. So have a healthy look at ethical decision-making and internet research first. When I reported about the map of the internet I mentioned the IP Adress Locator, which correlates IP-numbers with geographical space. Today I discovered the ACME Mapper. Type the IP of an online-friend into the IP Locator, copy the locator's latitude- and longitude-output, paste it into the ACME Mapper, and presto you've got a satellite picture of your friend's neighbourhood (as long as the friend lives in the US, as only the US is included so far). To push it a li'l further, use an e-mail forging tool (no, I won't supply a link), pose as your favourite US-executive authority, and send your dear friend a mail which reads "Gotcha!" and has the satellite-pic attached. Then run.

Of course you also could use the ACME Mapper to get some decent from-above-pictures of the Amerindian tribe's habitat you're giving an anthropological lecture on -- but who on earth would want to do that?

Btw, guess what is shown on the pic above. No clue? It is ... the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The dark square at the left is the black-glass pyramid of the hotel-building itself. The white patch in the center is the life-size Sphinx-replica, and the little white patch (near the street on the right) is the obelisk-replica, which casts its shadow to the left.

via Searching for the Moon

... Link (2 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, fabulous, December 29, 2003 at 3:19:06 PM CET

netzspannung.org

netzspannung.org is a dynamic knowledge portal for digital culture. The platform serves as a multi-disciplinary link between media art and media design, science and technology and communicates the many different activities in the media culture scene in an up-to-the-minute information pool.

netzspannung.org offers an online archive for digital art, design and media technology that can be explored via innovative interfaces.

they also offer a media archive with full length streams of the lectures "iconic turn" at lmu munich

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerleone, December 20, 2003 at 8:54:23 PM CET

The State of Play

The State of Play Conference on "Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds" recently concluded at the New York Law School. A lot of papers dealing with questions like:

• Who owns the virtual products of online game economies -- the companies that create the games, or the players who produce the economies?
• Where's the line between game and life? Via Mindjack

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerleone, December 10, 2003 at 9:37:01 AM CET

What defines online communities?

12 Variables to understand online communities. "This article is an attempt to discuss some of the qualities that define virtual communities."

... Link (1 comment) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, zephyrin, December 1, 2003 at 1:32:51 PM CET

Psychology of cyberspace

John R. Suler, Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology of Rider University conducted several years of participant observation in an online-community called The Palace. Suler wrote several articles stemming from his research and glued them together as a book, which is completely published online as The Psychology of Cyberspace. Of special interest to the social/cultural anthropologist is his chapter on participant observation (One of us: Participant observation research), which is written from the vantage point of a clinical psychologist. The whole book and the accompanying websites are very worthwhile to read, and for those who mainly are interested in ICT as a tool for the scientist, Suler gives advice on copyright and citation issues and thinks about academic publishing online.

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, zephyrin, December 1, 2003 at 12:08:02 PM CET

Map of the Internet

The Opte project "was created to make a visual representation of a space that is very much one-dimensional, a metaphysical universe. The data represented and collected here serves a multitude of purposes: Modeling the Internet, analyzing wasted IP space, IP space distribution, detecting the result of natural disasters, weather, war, and esthetics/art. This project is free and represents a lot of donated time, please enjoy." While reading a discussion at slashdot about this, I stumbled over the IP Address Locator Tool -- finally a means for online-researchers to correlate the members of 'their cyberian tribes' to geographic space. I wonder how this goes with ethics and online research. via infocult

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, zephyrin, November 16, 2003 at 2:56:03 PM CET

Print-journal on blogs

At first glance it seems like a somersault backwards: In Japan a print-journal on weblogs is published. The journal is called "Bloggers!" and over at waxy.org you can have a look at the scanned-in cover and the first six pages. But on second glance, while keeping in mind that the print media are information and communication technologies, too, it appears like the all-too-natural attempt of networking between online- and offline-media. via waxy.org

... Link (1 comment) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerleone, November 11, 2003 at 11:42:15 AM CET

Technology Adaption in Weblogs

Jim Milne, Student at the Department of Anthropology from University of South Florida, last month wrote an paper about the The Technology Adoption Cycle in Weblogs [Word Doc]. He also made some kind of self-experience for his work by having his own weblog. Well, we may call that fieldwork.

What he want's to proove is the following: "The outcome of this study is a redefinition of technological innovation. The study shows that the tools and techniques that come to be known as a technology follow the creation and adoption of the practices they contain. If technology is not just artifacts and production processes, but also the contexts of the use of that object, and the practices engaged in by people using it, then the complex of emergent meanings that describe and explain it precede the technology itself. Paradoxically, the practices come to exist, and then the tools are developed to accomplish them. This redefinition of technological innovation is meant to refute the notion that technology ?causes? social change. More correctly, social practices change, and technology shifts accordingly."

For more information and a list of literature you may take a look at his First Draft Dissertation.

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerleone, October 28, 2003 at 2:36:19 PM CET

Digital Mantra

"Tibetan Buddhists believe that saying the mantra (prayer) Om Mani Padme Hum, invites the blessings of Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion. They also believe you can produce the same effect by spinning the written form of the mantra around in a prayer wheel (called 'Mani wheels' by the Tibetans). The effect is said to be multiplied when more copies of the mantra are included, and spinning the Mani wheels faster increases the benefit as well."

But because your hard drive spins, it becomes a Digital Prayer Wheel: "Right now, your hard drive is serving as a Mani wheel, because there are several copies of the mantra 'Om Mani Padme Hum' on this page, and they are all stored on your hard drive in the cache for your browser." Via Interconnected

... Link (6 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, zephyrin, October 28, 2003 at 12:51:30 PM CET

Alternate-Reality-Game communities

Long before the movie Blair Witch Project was to be seen in the cinemas, strange hints to the incidents later to be seen in this documentary-style-horror-thriller-flick appeared scattered around the internet. A bit later german private TV-station Sat1 tried to redo the hype to promote their mini series Aeon. But, as it happens so often to copycats, they hadn't understood the tiniest bit of the original concept and greatly offended the taste and intellect of the cyberians out there ... so the officially set up forums were spammed and flamed as they deserved it and finally went straight to hell, where to they righteously belonged from the beginning. Later the guys in the vicinity of Steven Spielberg staged"an elaborate game-cum-marketing conspiracy for the very lame movie A.I. This game positioned a rich, interlinked, and often sneaky series of texts, clues within other documents, Web sites, and even voicemail messages, which were pieced together and developed into a narrative by thousands of curious netizens around the world. I've been describing this as collaborative, distributive, interactive, mystery storytelling, and consider it a new form of writing; others use the pithier and delightfully-abbreviated term Alternate Reality Game." ... says Bryan Alexander. Now an equivalent game pointing to the upcoming "Matrix Revolutions" has appeared. Read the social-software perspective and everything about the Matrix Game at infocult. via many-to-many and infocult

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerleone, October 21, 2003 at 11:15:12 PM CEST

Magazine: Game Studies

"Game Studies is a crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org. Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games. Our mission - To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming." Via supatyp

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment