Module 2: Topic 2.4

Topic 2.4: The Shaping of Time and Space

Driscoll-Adam - Time-Space Compression

Para 1

• 'time-space compression' (TSC) = term used to describe the acceleration of our experience of time and space
• TSC aka 'time-space convergence'
• TSC "...is concerned with the impact of new information and communication technologies such as the Internet, email and mobile phones on the individual both in the private and public spheres. These technologies have essentially reduced the distances between people and places thus resulting in 'time-space compression'"
• "It has ... become easier to move information across space; speeding up the pace of life while abolishing traditional spatial barriers"

Para 2

• Amber Case: "...discusses the ways in which intensification of the human-technology interface will quickly reduce the distance between individual and community and believes that the convergence of technologies will bring about unprecedented rapid learning and communication"

Para 3

• "Time and space appear to be completely compressed. People all over the globe gained awareness of these occurrences via the Internet even prior to print or TV media. These global experiences are witnessed by so many internauts simultaneously and yet such distances apart"

Para 4

• "Individuals are becoming increasingly adept to wireless communication; the idea of being connected anytime, anywhere. It appears that people no longer identify the difference between time and space as boundaries begin to blur"

Para 5

• "...in Western society individuals are constantly multitasking, jumping from work to personal activities; there is no more divide between the two therefore public and private space is no longer distinctive"

Panayiota - Reconceptualising 'Time' and 'Space' in the Era of Electronic Media and Communications

p. 12

• Time is defined as "...natural time...abstract time...or experiential time...with the latter being conceived as 'my time: time as experienced by me-or-anyone, my own here-and-now etc.'"
• Space is "amorphous and intangible and not an entity that can be directly described and analysed"
• Place is "nearly always some associated sense or concept of place in a way that it seems that space provides the context for places but derives its meaning from particular places
• place is a concretion of value...it is an object in which one can dwell, whilst space is given by the ability to move

p. 20

• "The Internet and the construction of the concept of 'internet time'...exemplify...views on the role of new media technologies. New information and communication technologies and the Internet in particular have influenced the dynamics of everyday life, as they affect and change time, people's perceptions of time, and the way time is organised"

p. 21

• "...information technologies and the internet in particular help diminish the importance of time-frames generally accepted as appropriate for performing a given activity"

Module 2: Topic 2.2

Topic 2.2 - Community and Identity

Said - Can a Virtual Community be any different from the experience of a Real Community?

What is a community?

• "...a group of people having common interests"
• "...a group viewed as forming a distinct segment of the society"

What is a real community?

• Real/Offline community - "...one which shares a common cultural or social heritage and can easily establish a social interaction and regular contact...shared the same values, they can be parts of many different communities simultaneously. There is also a strong sense of unity and fellowship in a community"

What is a virtual community?

• "Different people from different parts of the world establish a virtual community in cyber space. Here they share their ideas, opinions, beliefs, political perspectives, interests etc."
• "Virtual communities are ... formed through computer-mediated communities (CMC)"
• "...different groups of people can subscribe to virtual communities that tend to their needs and search for those particular people who espouse the same beliefs as theirs"

Utopian vision:

• "...emphasises the exciting possibilities of a computing technology such as global connectivity, democratisation, and the opening of the frontier of human experience and relationship which were impossible before"

Dystopian vision:

• "...deals with people's enslavement to the digital technology and their growing dependency on it"
• "...also concerns itself with the unstoppable growth of technology which may bring with it information overload and a breakdown of social structures and values"

Identity in a Virtual Community:

• "...most appealing thing about the Internet is the anonymity it provides - it makes it easy to present oneself as another person"

Slater - Social Relationships and Identity Online and Offline

p. 533

• "On the other hand, to study the Internet as culture means regarding it as a social space in its own right, rather than as a complex object used within other, contextualising spaces. It means looking at the forms of communication, sociality and identity that are produced within this social space, and how they are sustained using the resources available within the online setting."

p. 535

• "...feature of computer-mediated communications is that it allows communications between people who are spatially dispersed ... important factor ... is not where in the world you are, but how you are using the communicative facilities at your disposal. The irrelevance of geographical position to Internet communication is often referred to as 'disembedding'."

p. 536

• "'Disembodiment' signifies that a person's online identity is apparently separate from their physical presence, a condition associated with two features: textuality and anonymity"
• "...the phrase 'you are what you type' summed up the sense that a person's online performance of identity had to be taken at face value, if only because there is no other information to go on. This conspicuously includes such visible markers of sex, race and age which, in offline interactions, fix identities in bodies"
• "...online presence is apparently disembodied in the broader sense that it can be detached from other ways in which offline presences are held stable and accountable: names, addresses, one's past relationships and biography as they are fixed"

Module 1: Topic 1.5 and Topic 1.6

Topic 1.5 - Faith and Spirituality Online

Dawson & Cowan - Religion Online: Finding faith on the Internet

p. 2

The shift from the offline world to the online indicates two important social consequences on the Internet - a crisis of authority and a crisis of authenticity

• there is no mechanism by which information posted to or claims made on the Internet may be vetted beforehand --> the phenomenon of "instant experts"
• in the online world a religious group can be created by anyone regardless of experience, can include any amount of people and can exist as discussion lists instead of serious religious working groups

p. 3

With enough exposure to the Internet, religious people may come to doubt the absolute claims of sacredness and permanence that a religious site can make in the "real world" in light of the ephemerality and heightened access to religion online

The coexistence of so many different and openly heterodox views online exposes the Net user to a more fluid doctrinal environment --> encouraging individual religious and spiritual experimentation

p. 4

Adam - distant healing

• miraculous healings are common to religious traditions
• the use of the Internet allows it to happen more easily, free from the scrutiny of churches, the state, the medical professions and other people; it allows him to protect his identity

p. 5

There is a growing asymmetry in Internet users

• In 2001, less than 1% of Africa's population had access to the Internet
• --> digital divide where the lack of access means there is no meaningful participation by global users
• Internet content reflects deeply embedded social and cultural divisions and further contributes to them

p.7

Religion online - describes the provision of information about and/or services related to various religious groups and traditions

Online religion - invites Internet visitors to participate in religious practices e.g. online prayer, spiritual counselling, online Tarot readings

p. 9

"The habitat in which we live is always changed by our inventions ... Communications technologies mold the messages we deliver in unanticipated ways as well, crucially influencing our self-conceptions, notions of human relations and community, and the nature of reality itself"

p. 10

• the Internet is an interactive and not simply a broadcast medium
• the Internet is truly multimedial
• the Internet employs hypertextuality
• anyone can launch himself onto the WWW with relative ease and little expense
• the Internet is global in its reach

Fukui - Worship 2.0

Elizabeth Drescher

• Web 3.0 - about new technologies that allow our devices to understand what we're interested in
• Applications that look at your daily activity and use that information to direct you to communities you may be interested in
• "So there's a whole different movement now that's starting to connect people in their daily lives more thoroughly with one another, using technology"

Heidi Campbell

• "...their apps, their resources through their mobile phone, help them kind of augment their spirituality in a 24/7 way"
• "It allows the extension of our spiritual lives as well as the accentuation of certain practices ... it's almost privatising a public space" - conducting a religious practice on your phone can be private, while open prayer in a public place is not

Elizabeth Drescher

• "religion is being shaped by new media" - it would have been very difficult for a lay person to decide that they were going to organise a community around a certain way of communicating about scripture and to then have 10 million people be drawn to it

Heidi Campbell

• What is a community when it comes to social media
• loosely bound networks of varying social relationships
• networked society allows us to select those relationships
• Religious community
• no longer is there a singular authority figure (religious, political) at the centre of the community, it's the individual
• Shifting authority
• religious authorities are being challenged by the Internet and these new social structures
• they also have opportunities to be empowered
• Blogging
• blogging may critique or challenge traditional doctrines or religious leaders, undermining religious authorities
• religious leaders could become bloggers to affirm their authority and to use the Internet to monitor their members' practices

Masako Fukui

• "...most religious organisations portray themselves online pretty much as they are offline, so their religious structures, ideologies, or theologies are not continually being challenged"
• "...one of the most empowering aspects of social media is that it allows people to author their own religious narratives. And this challenges the role of religious leaders in new and interesting ways"

Paul Jacaobson

• "...the process is to try to help it expand from being a linear learning process with a fixed beginning and a fixed end and to allow this to expand in any variety of directions ... we never read the same text in the same way twice"

Elizabeth Drescher

• Truth and Authority
• before European reformations of the Christian church, truth meant fidelity, reliability and there was malleability
• when printing took over and words were locked onto a page, there was less flexibility to find in the truth
• now we are understanding truth as something that is socially mediated
• "We're seeing a return to that kind of expansive version of truth and a socially authorised sense of authority"

Lisa Colton

• Reasons for resistance
• Fear over how much time it is going to take to respond to everyone participating
• Fear of hate comments appearing in your online spaces
• The question about religious authority is a challenge
• I.e. accessibility to that authority and how that person can be a leader of a community
• "...in the social media space we're now talking about 'return on engagement' rather than 'return on investment"
• "...it's about relationships and it's about individuals' identity ... their ... identity as an individual and the way that they relate to the broader community"

Alex Pang

• Contemplative about technologies
• "...being able to observe ourselves using them, to be able to observe why it is that we feel the need to check our email every five minutes, or why it is that we like getting the little burst of affirmation that comes when someone 'likes' something that we've said on Facebook"
• Contemplative with technologies
• "...the idea with contemplative computing was to ask whether it's possible to design information technologies, and to design interactions with technologies, that help people focus, help them be more mindful, help them be more creative"

Module 1: Topic 1.3 and Topic 1.4

Week 03 of NET102

Topic 1.3: Dating, Intimacy and Sexuality

Pascoe: Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media

p. 117-8

• Young people are at the forefront of developing, using, reworking, and incorporating new media into their dating practices ... teens have put new media tools to use in their courtship practices such as meeting, flirting, going out and breaking up

p. 120

• In their intimacy practices youth use three primary technologies - mobile phones ... instant messaging ... and social network sites
• Mobile phones provide youth a way to maintain private channels of communication, maintain continual contact, and also serve as a "leash" through which teens in a relationship keep "tabs on" one another
• Teens use instant-messaging technologies to maintain frequent casual contact with their intimates
• Social network site profiles are key venues for representation of intimacy, providing a variety of ways to signal the intensity of a given relationship both through textual and visual representation

p. 122

• It is easier to talk to girls there (MySpace) than in person, because one can manage vulnerability through what Christo Sims has termed "controlled casualness"

p. 123

• Teens' normative practice is not necessarily meeting strangers online but rather using these mediated technologies to get to know the friend of a friend or further get to know someone with whom one has had only a casual or brief meeting

p. 125

• Deliberately casual messages are evidence of what Naomi Baron describes as the "whatever theory of language" supported by online communication, in which people are increasingly using more informal linguistic forms to write and communicate

Topic 1.4: Health: What My Doctor Didn't Tell Me

Gunther Eysenbach: Medicine 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness

• The emergence and broad adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and approaches coincides with the more recent emergence of Personal Health Application (PHA) Platforms (also called Personally Controlled Health Record [PCHR] platforms or “health record banks”) such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and Dossia, where data is—at the request of the consumer—pulled from various sources (includingthe  electronic health records).

On the Scope and Definition of Medicine 2.0

• The ideal Medicine 2.0 application would actually try to connect different user groups and foster collaboration between different user groups (for example, engaging the public in the biomedical research process)
• Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual-reality tools, to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration, and openness within and between these user groups. 
• Medicine 2.0 also stands for a new, better health system, which emphasizes collaboration, participation, apomediation, and openness, as opposed to the traditional, hierarchical, closed structures within health care and medicine.

Social Networking

• Social networking is central to many Web 2.0 and Medicine 2.0 applications and involves the explicit modeling of connections between people, forming a complex network of relations, which in turn enables and facilitates collaboration and collaborative filtering processes.
• enables users to see what their peers or others with a predefined relationship (“friends”, “colleagues”, “fellow patients” etc.) are doing
• enables automated selection of “relevant” information (based on what peers are doing and reading on the Web)
• enables reputation and trust management, accountability and quality control, and fosters viral dissemination of information and applications

Participation

• Wikis are the perfect example to illustrate that the “participation” theme is also relevant for other user groups, such as scientists or health professionals, and can be adopted for tasks like scholarly communication.
• These platforms provide—at least theoretically—unique opportunities to address directly the concerns of patients regarding secondary use of their data for research, and to facilitate obtaining informed consent for participation and data use in research studies in an ethical manner.
• PCHR platforms allow consumers to access and control their personal health information and provide the possibility to obtain consent in a different setting than during a clinical consultation: through the Internet, where it is contextualized by educational information. It can even be argued that patient-access to their own data is a prerequisite for engaging the public

Apomediation

• Apomediation is a new socio-technological term that was coined to avoid the term “Web 2.0” in the scholarly debate. It characterises the “third way” for users to identify trustworthy and credible information and services.
• The first possible approach is to use intermediaries (ie, middlemen or “gatekeepers”), for example health professionals giving “relevant” information to a patient
• The second possibility is to bypass “middlemen” completely, which is commonly referred to as disintermediation. Examples are patients searching for information on the web, or travelers booking their flights directly on the booking system of an airline, bypassing travel agents.
• The third way, prevalent in the age of Web 2.0, is a special form of disintermediation: an information seeking strategy where people rely less on traditional experts and authorities as gatekeepers, but instead receive “guidance” from apomediaries, ie, networked collaborative filtering processes
• The difference between an intermediary and an apomediary is that an intermediary stands “in between” the consumer and information, meaning that he is a necessary mediating agent to receive the information in the first place. As a result, the credibility and quality of the intermediary heavily determines the credibility and quality of the information a consumer receives. In contrast, apomediation means that there are agents (people, tools) which “stand by” to guide a consumer to high quality information and services without being a prerequisite to obtain that information or service in the first place, and with limited individual power to alter or select the information that is being brokered.

Collaboration

• Collaboration specifically means to connect groups of people with each other who have not, or have insufficiently, interacted with each other. In the “researcher” corner of the Medicine 2.0 triangle, this may refer to bringing together scientists using tools and approaches
• also involves encouraging collaboration between diverse user groups, including for example fostering public participation and engagement in research issues, and user engagement in health care decisions.
• Collaboration between researchers on one hand, and the public or health professionals on the other hand, also means improved possibilities for knowledge translation and getting research findings into practice.

Openness

• On one level—the technical level—Web 2.0 stands for transparency, interoperability, open source, and open interfaces
• What is perhaps most significant about this development is that the “openness” philosophy of Web 2.0 tools will also raise the expectations of the Facebook generation in terms of dealing with their health data.
• Patients 2.0 will demand full control over their data
• On another—societal—level, Medicine 2.0 also implies openness and transparency which enables access to other kinds of information and data the public has historically had limited access to, for example research and research data (open access journals, open data etc.), and which even allows the public to engage in the research process itself (open peer-review).

Module 1: Topic 1.1 and Topic 1.2

Week 02 of NET102

Topic 1.1: Music: I want my mp3

Laughey: Music Media in Young People's Everyday Lives

pp. 173-175

Private and Public

• Intertwining relationship between the public and private : young people's bedrooms seen as productive spaces where publicly available resources (e.g. pop music) are shaped into personal objects of self-identity and creativity
• 'Zones' : multi-layered pathways governed by social, reflexive, active agents that flow between public and private realms of influence. E.g. media technologies can function as zones in the bedroom space by introducing public dimensions (a television program) amid more privatised zones (a dressing table)
• Music = pathway out of the private sphere of the bedroom and into the public sphere of the city for teenagers as they prepare to go out at night
• Personal stereos/iPods
• User accounts of people losing themselves in public and becoming distracted/disorientated
• Personal stereos are intended for use in public environments but reconstitute the private-public divide by altering the sensory experience of public environments
• Personal stereos = 'involvement shield' in public interactions
• Music can enable a feeling of occupancy and control in public and private spaces

pp. 175-177

Intensive and Casual

• Intensive, concentrated listening is associated with emotional events in people's lives and demonstrates music's ability to invoke past feelings and ways of being
• Intensive use of music media in more public, social networks : individuals who collect bootlegs are in general the most committed fans that an artist has
• Hayes argues that young vinyl collectors use their LP records to regain a level of agency in resisting the 'ideal consumer' type favoured by profit-driven global music industry

pp. 177-179

Alternative and Populist

• Mass-mediated music is dismissed by those with alternative music tastes as shallow, commercialised trash
• Niche media are considered to be integral to the creation of subcultural capital
• Message boards - like MySpace - empower fans to exchange news, information and recommendations; word of mouth is an important part of online communication
• Most significant cultural impact of the iPod results from its capacity to store vast music collections
• Often associated with intensive, personal use, although these technologies retain a public use dimension
• That is, although it can be played over stereo systems, 'favourites' lists can be created, and emotions/memories are attached to particular songs/albums

pp. 179-180

Music Media Uses (2): Music Television and Radio

• Radio is often the preferred soundtrack for young people in public places
• Music television channels are often a background presence in communal areas of schools/colleges/public bars/shops/restaurants
• Music media also function in private contexts as forms of domestic entertainment that require little mental or physical exertion

p. 182

Questions

How is music interlaced with our everyday lives in general? What has been the impact of the Internet in the way music is used by young people privately and publicly (and the way this intermingles)?

In general, music has become a way of discovering and expressing our identity. The Internet has enabled a higher degree of access so we are not just told what music is good through mainstream media, making us more individualised in our tastes.

The Internet has also transformed how people connect through music - there are social media websites dedicated to music fans, so you can discuss, recommend and learn about music with other fans. Something which you experience privately can now become a public experience.

Last.FM

I created a profile and added approx. 100 of my favourite bands/artists randomly. I then downloaded Scrobble to integrate into iTunes (as this is what I use to listen to my music). I connected my profile with my personal Facebook account to get my profile picture, name, location, gender and birthday.

My profile: http://www.last.fm/user/Rinikins

My review: This has a similar vibe to Amazon, where new music is recommended to you based on your chosen preferences. You are able to listen to music directly from the website, so you can know immediately if you like the music or not.

Finding friends is not difficult. If your profile is connected to Facebook, you can find friends from who also use Last.FM via Facebook. If you are looking to find people with similar tastes in music, listed on the page of each artist/band are people who are "top listeners" of them. There are also groups which you can join based on these artists or genres of music. 

Last.FM has successfully integrated the private and public personas of music fans.

Topic 1.2: Games: At work, no one knows I am a wizard

IGEA: Interactive Games and Entertainment Association

What can you say about the role of gaming in general, and online gaming more specifically, in Australian life?

According to IGEA, gaming is a huge part of Australian life. Children and parents both participate via different avenues. In my family, mum plays on her laptop (Facebook), my brother plays on the console (PS3) and I play games on either my iPad or Playstation. 

Games aimed at young adults are the ones which have Internet connectivity and social networking capabilities. It is becoming the norm to be able to communicate with others while playing the same game on consoles - that which used to be only possible with online role-playing games.

This could be an indicator that Australians see the Internet as a way to connect with friends, and this has caused these technology advancements.

TED Talk - Jesse Schell: When games invade real life

Module 1: Introduction - Studying the Internet

Week 01 of NET102

In this topic we look at:

• The connections between our individual experiences/perspectives of the Internet with universal, broader statements made about the role the Internet plays in society + people's lives;
• Exploring how our own experiences and "everyday Internet" may be different from other people's + the implications of this for studying the Internet; and
• The questions of the relationship/s between the Internet and everyday life.

Study Guide

Introduction: Ubiquity, or, The Internet is Everywhere

• Technology is interwoven into different aspects of life - work, shops, games, phones
• Internet has penetrated our work, schools, homes, commuting, banks, government agencies, shops
• Ubiquitous nature of the Internet is the result of the incorporation of the 'online' world with the 'offline' --> distinctions become superfluous

The Internet and Everyday Life

• Everyday Life: the daily, mundane, commonplace experiences, objects,, habits and routines
• Everyday Life: the daily lives of "ordinary people" - people from working/middle classes
• When something becomes so commonplace that people do not normally think about it very much, that is when it is most powerful, because the power that operates through it is invisible and unexamined

The reasons for studying the Internet and everyday life:

• To understand ourselves and our society better
• We can discern the patterns and undercurrents that structure our lives + rules that people don't question or talk about
• To identify and understand effective progressive/conservational tactics
• In understanding the nuts and bolts of how power and control operates in our society, we can recognise ways of improving it
• Also, the study of the everyday includes examining ways in which people may subvert the limitations of their world
• To recognise and understand change
• It is possible to see the role the Internet may play in people's sense of identity, how groups are formed/sustained + how power is distributed in society

Multiple Perspectives

• One person's everyday is not the other person's everyday
• Draw from your own experiences, but also take into account that one's experience does not necessarily mirror that of everyone in wider society
• The everyday is historically specific and located. The everyday shifts.
• The everyday we each have is specific to a certain time, place and social context
• Perspective matters
• Be aware of the different contexts of the writing and thinking, the different interests and motivations, and what each perspective has to offer

Berger: "Sociological Theory and Cultural Criticism

p. 163

There are three points to be made about how sociologists of everyday life work:

1. "...they study social interactions by 'observing them in natural situations...'"
2. "...they focus on observing people interacting in face-to-face concrete situations..."
3. "...they focus on the meanings that people find in their lives..."

The difference between 'everyday' and 'anyday' experiences: the latter refers to things that can happen to a person on any day, contrasted to things that happen to them every day.

p. 164

Everyday life is shaped by advertising; phenomena such as fads, fashions, styles, and commonly used expressions, as well as our routine viewing of television, listening to radio, and reading of newspapers and magazines.

Bakardjieva

p. 61

Approaches to the Internet in Everyday Life:

• Statistical: Who is online? What do they do online? How much time is spent online?
• Interpretative: Why do people go online? What does it mean to them?
• Critical: Is Internet use empowering or oppressing people? Does it alienate and exploit people?

CONCLUSION

I avoided SGY110 and find that I end up doing another Sociology unit anyway.

I agree with the sentiment that the Internet is ubiquitous and that the online realm has leached into the offline one - they are not separate entities in our society any more. As we become more reliant on technology that uses the Internet, the more that distinction becomes blurred. This is not necessarily a critique, just a statement of the inevitable. The fact that it is part of everyday life just shows how normal it has become - it is synonymous with brushing our teeth and eating dinner at a table at a certain time of day. I know that one of the first things I do in the morning is check my Facebook and e-mails - it has become a daily ritual.