Social_Software: May 2007 Archive Page

In his blog, Flea had ridiculed the plaintiff's case and the plaintiff's lawyer. He had revealed the defense strategy. He had accused members of the jury of dozing.

With the jury looking on in puzzlement, Lindeman admitted that he was, in fact, Flea.

The next morning, on May 15, he agreed to pay what members of Boston's tight-knit legal community describe as a substantial settlement -- case closed. --Jonathan Saltzman --Blogger unmasked, court case upended (Boston.com)

Lindeman, on trial for medical malpractice, paid a hefty sum for his right to his opinion. He blogged about the trial anonymously while it was going on, and the prosecuting attorney found out about it.

Update: A Wal-Mart cashier who joked about bombing the store on his MySpace page has also been sacked. "If you have a MySpace site, you better act like you're a politician," he says, "Be politically correct and don't try to be funny." That's a bit exaggerated... there was nothing "political" about his comment, and there are other kinds of humor.

Don Woods is acknowledged to have the Right Stuff. With long, stringy black hair and a bearish grin, he looks somewhat older than his twenty-nine years. He works at Xerox and wears a dark GAMES T-shirt that contrasts with his almost chalk-colored skin. Pinned next to the Xerox employee badge on his shirt is a button that reads question authority. Wood is known as a classic, or canonical, hacker. "Here's a quick hack I've been working on," he says. He types a few characters on his keyboard, and from the computer come the calliopelike sounds of a rousing, Sousa-style marching song. "I put it together in a couple of days," he says.

One of the results of Woods' epic hacks is Adventure, a collaboration with Will Crowther. Ostensibly a game, Adventure is a metaphor for hacking. When you begin Adventure, the computer tells you your location: at a stream, near a forest, within sight of a small brick building. From there you embark on a Tolkeinesque journey through the caverns and glens of a medieval land, encountering murderous midgets, poisonous snakes, treacherous rapids, thieving pirates and magazines written in dwarf language. By telling the computer the direction you wish to move (typing n for north or u for up, for example), the computer calculates where, on the unseen map created in Woods' imagination, you will wind up next, and displays a written description of your next location. You go deeper and deeper into this netherworld, hoping to emerge by the same path with treasure in hand. There are almost 200 rooms you pass through on your way to the treasure, many dotted with hazards, and the path crosses and intertwines in ways impossible to divine without hours of exploration. Adventure is the most popular game at LOTS, and indeed it is a national craze among those with access to computers. "I would show it to people on a Friday afternoon," Woods says, "and they wouldn't leave their terminals until they finished it, maybe on Monday."

Adventure is a kind of litmus test for hackers: if you can lose yourself in the gullies and misty caverns, you might be susceptible to computer addiction. Just as the plot of Adventure is a world unto itself, the vast memory and operating system of a mainframe computer is a gigantic landscape, seeming impenetrable but eventually accessible to the most devoted seekers. Just as everything in the physical world is constructed of atoms, everything a computer processes or reads is ultimately reduced to bits of either one or zero. Like treasure seekers in the subterranean Adventure world, hackers are electronic spelunkers who have developed the skill to burrow down from the more superficial programming languages to the bedrock machine language of digits. Woods call this "going down and doing the grudgies." To get involved this deeply, you must be able to think in dizzyingly abstract terms. Your mental concentration is so intense that your consciousness is subsumed by the computer. --Steven Levy --Hackers in ParadiseRolling Stone 1982)

Levy expanded the theme of this article into the excellent book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.

God forbid we manage to think about the phone as a learning device. I guarantee you that none of the sponsors of the bill have ever typed "define insipid" (or any other word, for that matter) into a text message on their phone and sent it to 46645? (Try it sometime.) I know I mention this a lot in my presentations, but I'm wondering why cell phones aren't a part of my kids' curriculum between now and the time they graduate from high school. I'm wondering why teachers aren't picking up their cell phones and finding answers to the questions they're asking, modeling the technology for their students. Why they aren't talking about ethical and effective use instead of making sure kids check them at the door. --Will Richardson --It Takes a Vision  (weblogg-ed)

A well-phrased response to Pennsylvania House Bill 1245 P.N. 1570 bill that would prohibit electronic devices from schools:

The possession by students of telephone paging devices, commonly referred to as beepers, cellular telephones and portable electronic devices that record or play audio or video material shall be prohibited on school grounds, at school sponsored activities and on buses or other vehicles provided by the school district.

Yes, it's annoying when students use their cell phones instead of pay attention during class. Now, this bill applies to children, not college students, so I have the luxury of saying that when one of my students wishes to pay attention to a gadget instead of class, I try to think of that as the student's way of sending me a message. That message may be "This part of class has become boring... move on to something else," or it may be "No matter what you do today, I am more interested in my gadget than in learning." Either way, it's information that I can use.

I don't really get that annoyed when a student's phone starts vibrating, though it is kind of ironic when a phone shifts from vibrate to some silly tune because the student has momentarily left the phone at his or her desk in order to give a formal report. I never have to say anything in such cases, because the student is usually embarrassed enough.

Even in the paper-and-pencil classroom, instructional technology has the potential to be abused. Once during a class discussion, a student kept tearing pages out of a notebook and crumpling them up quite dramatically. At first, it seemed as if the student was responding negatively to a new turn in the discussion -- as if to say, "The notes I took in the past few minutes aren't worth anything of that's where you're going with this discussion," and I could see the behavior was distracting the other students. But as this continued, I could tell the student wasn't even listening to the discussion -- I was witnessing a wild brainstorming session, in which the student was trying to nail down a thesis.

Possessing and using the paper wasn't the problem -- there are times when the ideas are flowing and you've just got to work them out. Yet the student was not aware of the effect the noisy crumpling was having on the class discussion. The solution is not to ban paper simply because it can be disruptive if a student noisily crumples it during a classroom. The solution is instead to create a supportive culture where students think of each other as resources, not cogs in the "listen/take notes/memorize/spit back" educational machine. And once again, because I teach students who choose to be in the classroom, I realize that school teachers have to spend a lot more energy on maintaining discipline, since they are expected to teach all students, not just the ones who want to be there.

A couple years ago, my dean asked me in passing if I thought the new media journalism students should be required to have laptops. I said no, and I still feel that way. I don't think all liberal arts students NEED laptops. A few students who rely exclusively on computer labs do complain about the amount of time they have to spend online for my classes, and I have adjusted the way I teach with blogs in order to make it possible for a student to log in once, rather than follow a thread as it develops. SHU is considering a program in which students sign up for PDAs; that would really open up the classroom to some new possibilities.

Yes, I would like to teach students the kind of sustained, penetrating critical thinking skills that are necessary to comprehend and produce traditional vehicles of knowledge and inquiry, such as the lecture and the essay. But gadget-loving teens come into the classroom with a huge set of experiences and strengths that the traditional classroom does not tap.

Take the role of the FDA inspectors in a world of increasingly numerous food imports and increasingly unmanagable risk. Your charge: try to protect the country from contaminants in foreign food imports using extremely limited resources.

The first in Persuasive Games newsgame publication relationship with The New York Times, in which our editorial games are published alongside all the other op-ed content on TimesSelect. --Food Import Folly (Persuasive Games)

I'd wondered when the rhetorical potential of a current-events game would be recognized as a vehicle for critical commentary, rather than the occasional subject of a column or other traditional form.

When I go to the link on the NYT website, I get a header and footer, but no content.

--Shakespeare hates your emo poems (Threadless)

Interesting cultural phenomenon... sell a T-shirt, then create a website that lets customers upload photos of themselves wearing the T-shirt.

The result turns the rebellious and snarky T-shirt designs into the uniforms of conformist consumer zombies.

Though Ferguson couldn't figure out how to make his 1938 scenario work, there was a better expert who could: His 13-year-old son, who was a whiz at strategy games. Rather than rush out to attack Germany, his son carefully set up robust trade agreements with France first to make sure the country felt diplomatically obligated to go along with the fight. Presto: France fought, and Germany fell.

Ferguson became so delighted with Making History that he has joined forces with Muzzy Lane to design a new game. Due out in 2008, this one will model modern, real-world conflicts such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the nuclear confrontation with Iran.

It'll undoubtedly be controversial. But it will also, he expects, be humbling. The power of counterfactual thinking is that forces us to step outside of our comfort zones. When we think about historical events, we have 20/20 hindsight -- so we forget how confusing and uncertain they were at the time. In 1943, nobody really knew how strong Germany was, or what Stalin was thinking. In modern conflicts, we often have a similarly false sense of surety -- too much confidence in our ability to predict the outcome of major events.

When we play with sims, they knock us off our pedestals -- because crazy things usually happen we don't predict. Yet the chaos is useful, because we can run the same situation again and again, changing one little thing each time, until we've war-gamed it deeply and understand it better than ever. --Clive Thompson --Why a Famous Counterfactual Historian Loves Making History With Games (Wired)

Really, though, Xbox Live is just an online simulacrum of a middle-school cafeteria. The crudeness is coming from the kids, not being inflicted on them. If anything, the over-25s we met were an excellent influence. They tended to be polite and mellow and demonstrated good sportsmanship?like saying "good game" after they'd eviscerated me with various weapons.

[...]

I'm right at the fulcrum point of gaming popularity. Almost everyone five years older than me doesn't really "get" video games and has little interest in playing them. Almost everyone five years younger than me can't imagine life without an Xbox (or PS2 or whatever). -- Seth Stevenson and Chris Suellentrop --The Gaming Graybeards: Can two thirtysomethings survive on Xbox Live? (Slate)

I'm pushing 40 (and this very moment is the first time I have ever thought of myself in precisely that term) -- and the guy who wrote this is 30, so I found this statement very apt.

I would probably enjoy online multiplayer games if I had the time to play them... but quite frankly, if I did have more time, I'd probably spend it modding rather than playing. (I never did finish Half-Life 2.)

We know that pro-am journalism can work only if people are persuaded to give their time, lend their knowledge, pool their intelligence. Those are donations, but not of money. Often they are more critical than money.

To succeed in this, we have to persuade several hundred people to donate good work to one big story -- and to swarm around so it gets really good. We plan to modify this site for use in future stories, more sprawling and more difficult. Maybe about the environment. Or the schools. Or -- who knows? -- the war.

A professional newsroom can't easily do this kind of reporting; it's a closed system. Because only the employees operate in it, there can be reliable controls. That's the system's strength. The weakness is the organization knows only what its own people know. Which wasn't much of a weakness until the Internet made it possible for the people formerly known as the audience to realize their informational strengths. --Jay Rosen --Why We're Doing This (Assignment Zero)

In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). "After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles," he said. --Americans and Japanese Read Faces Differently (Live Science)

Some linguists are worried that the proliferation of text messaging among students may hurt the development of formal English. Johnson does not agree.

"I don't buy it," Johnson said. "I think students can distinguish between different contexts. What they would say with their friends is different from what they would say to an instructor."

Text messaging may be an important tool to help students learn the difference between different English and behaviors that are appropriate for different situations.

"Sure, text messaging can help teach that difference," Johnson said. "I would put the emphasis on explaining the importance of context."

In fact, Johnson says that text messaging may have a positive effect on language, especially with English as a second language students. --Teaching through Text Message; Cell Phones Emerge as Learning Tool (Rebel Yell)

I tend to agree. If instructors teach that text-message lingo and academic English are two points on a sliding scale (not necessarily the most extreme points), that's a good way to help students learn about the importance of audience and rhetorical context. I try to make it very clear that my expectations for blog entries are slightly more formal than in-class timed writing exercises, but I really don't mind shorthand or typos in the comments that students leave on peer blog entries.

Of course, I do ask students to demonstrate that they are capable of leaving an in-depth comment from time to time, and naturally I hope that when students are doing any sort of course work that they will be practicing the appropriate writing skills.

Digg Takedown, Obama Takeover, Army Blog Squeeze (Jerz's LIteracy Weblog)

This is the last week of classes, and I've got deadlines galore (3 conference proposals, an annual report, a departmental proposal, and an article submission that I've been sitting on for a week).

So I won't have much to say, but I still thought it was worth noting the story of Digg's attempt to silence user-submitted articles about cracking HD-DVD security. Since Digg is made up of user-supported content, Digg users have responsed by submitting a flood of articles that express their unhappiness with the fact that Digg tried to suppress the HD-DVD security information (and most of those articles probably duplicate the protection information that Digg was supposed to be protecting by taking down the article in the first place).

I also note the story of how the Obama campaign was initially happy that supporter Joe Anthony volunteered to keep the Obama MySpace page. But then the Obama campaign pushed Anthony off the site, taking it over from and refusing to pay him what Anthony thought it was worth. (I don't know whether they offered a lower figure and Anthony was holding out for more, or whether they just figured it was their right to take over the site.) At any rate, Anthony says the campaign has lost his vote.

Just think of all the money that has gone into the development of complex software with digital content protection schemes that bloat the size and blunt the usability (Vista) , and that will go into litigation that will attempt to extend the economic lifespan of the 19-th century models of cultural production. Imagine if that money had instead been spent on think-tanks that aim to work with the cultural tide, rather than against it.

And while I appreciate the desire of the US Army to crack down on the possibility of leaking military secrets, wouldn't the blogosphere be a useful place to engage with public opinion and recruit new members? The military crackdown on soldier blogs suggests the public at large will lose a valuable avenue to interact with the men and women who make life-or-death decisions that affect global stability. If you think of what the US Army Corps of Engineers can do in an emergency, think of an online strike team that might be ready to swoop in the event of a Katrina-like crisis, or a Darfur-like morass, engaging the good will of people around the globe, drawing on their first-hand observations.

Am I naive? Probably. Regardless, today was not a very good day for social networking.

--Map of Online Communities (XKCD: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language)

Thanks, Josh, for the suggestion. (This is just an excerpt from the full map.)

I'm going to have to give this site some attention when grades are in... I wish the artist could draw people instead of stick figures, but the jokes are clever, sweet, and geeky.

I Think, I Want, I Know, I Feel, I Google (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Google Hits:

• I think (369,000,000)
  
• I want (275,000,000)
  
• I know (257,000,000)
  
• I feel (128,000,000)
  
  
• I hate (51,200,000)
  
• I love (270,000,000)
  

The picture shows Stacy Snyder of Strasburg wearing a pirate hat while drinking from a plastic "Mr. Goodbar" cup. The photograph taken during a 2005 Halloween party was posted on Snyder's MySpace Web page with the caption "Drunken Pirate."

"The day before graduation, the college confronted me about the picture," Snyder said Thursday. "I was told I wouldn't be receiving my education degree or teaching certificate because the photo was 'unprofessional.' " --Brett Lovelace --Web photo haunts graduate (Lancaster Online)

The kicker? Snyder is 27 years old.

The denial of degree happened last year; the news hook in this story is that the former student has now filed a lawsuit.

Certainly she showed poor judgment by putting that photo on her profile. Since my only alcohol consumption is about one glass of wine per year, my own attitudes about drunken photos are biased.

Snyder surely learned in her education classes why parents hold the teachers of their children to such high ethical standards. It looks like the school system where Snyder was doing her student-teaching may have been involved. According to the lawsuit, "Conestoga Valley officials told the college their students wouldn't be allowed to perform student-teacher requirements there if Snyder was not punished."

For good reason, universities don't publish information about disciplining students; neither Millersville University nor a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education would comment on this story. We don't know whether this were just the latest in a long string of unprofessional incidents, in which case it might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. If this were an isolated incident, then denying the education degree seems very harsh.