Lots of words, lots of theory – Read last paragraph – sums it up thankfully.
ideas for report and essay Monday, Jan 22 2007
avatars 1:25 am
Offline vs online identities: how are they different/how are they similar/how do they influence each other/how does the ‘personality’ show thru (even when you don’t want it to?)/how does personality express itself. Will use the book on how eBay was ‘born’ and developed as my main reference, in particular will look at the emergence onlne of strong personalities who helped shape eBay’s online communities, and then were so important to eBay that they were physically employed BY eBay.
O’Reilly reading Monday, Jan 22 2007
web 2.0 1:22 am
This was and is amazing – read it out loud to my husband who is an IT guru – discussed key points ( of which there were many). This should have been a key reading which introduced the whole course, in order for us to quickly understand the internet, so that we can go onto explore how it ishaping society and how society is shaping it. Will be referring to it many times I’m sure. I key idea emaerged for me - and that is that Web 2.0 is about opening your ideas and business to the users, so that the development of your business can essentially be done interactively by the users, who constantly update the system and your business. It is obvious, that businesses who don’t understand this principle will be left behind.
Caldas reading Monday, Jan 22 2007
yawn 12:49 am
Just too boring and verbose to persevere with – tried – lost the will to live
Fridays lecture(19th) Monday, Jan 22 2007
yawn 12:48 am
I haven’t been commenting on the lectures as I feel that 30 odd slides cover it well enough! However, even tho I’m the only one who will propbably read this, I need to ‘vent’. The best thing about Fridays lecture was finding out that others are as annoyed by this course as I am, what does it have to do with Sociology? Why are we not introduced properly to concepts – like tagging – before we are required to tag? A simple explaination on friday as to 1) what is tagging 2) brief history 3) why it is important to us ) and 4) what was the objective WOULD HAVE BEEN HELPFUL!! We turned up to the lab, were given a sheet which had as its first entry “look to the right of the page and you will see…”. First – what page, where are we? Are we via webct, wordpress? Then, is the page in our public or private blog. This sums up a lecturing style that is driving us all nuts: I know this info in Mary’s head and she has been living it forever and knows it backwards, but we don’t. I’m a 3rd year double major student with a GPA of 8.5 and I’m feeling stupid! I wish we could discuss the readings, find out what the others in the class know (so that a community of practice could happen naturally, not be a forced idea that is debated uselessly ad nauseum.)
Thursday, Jan 18 2007
knowledge 11:37 pm
Knowledge communities (virtual) are different to virtual colleges (in my opinion). The discussion in class clarified that one is objective based, and the other is process based,
Thursday, Jan 18 2007
knowledge 11:26 pm
I think there is a big difference between colleges and virtual knowlege communites
reading 2 – Seely & Duguid Monday, Jan 15 2007
Uncategorized 2:47 am
This article seems to ask the question: is IP and/or knowlege able to be kept within desired parametres, or will it ‘leak’ out despite efforts to contain it? Didn’t really answer the question to my satisfaction; gave a few examples of knowlege going from organisation to organisation (ex Xerox to Apple), but as the topic was so vast, got bogged down in teminology. Gave a model of a cluster matrix that made little sense to me, and coined terms such as clustering and clustered ecologies. Talked about the frustrations companies have with encouraging innovation but at the same time, needing to think outside the square to use that innovation – and doesn’t happen easily. Questions whther the ‘firm’ is a dead prospect, and is that a good thing anyway. I didn’t get much from this article at all.
week 2: reading 1-Braun Monday, Jan 15 2007
Uncategorized 2:17 am
Having a husband who is a Business/sytems analyst who has been working with small and (very) large business systems, I found the teminologiy and ideas easy to understand and very interesting. Especially the comment that ” Strassman was unable to establish a relationship between company performance and computer expenditure. terminology: communities of practice – ie – one on one knowlege sharing, within informal groups very good concept – internal networking groups another one. Interesting that even as technology has grown, the outcome of a successful company still depends on the individual choosing to share knowlege (or not!). Knowlege flow model very good – makes sense.
4th reading-Jordan Monday, Jan 15 2007
online,offline 1:30 am
really enjoyed this rather long reading – alot of very interesting points were raised – shame none of this was discussed in lectures. Coming from a psych/sociology perspective, I found the discussion of offline vs online identities pertininent. How do the two intertwine, if at all?, is posed by the article. At first it seems not at all, but by the end of the aritcle there was a sense that you cannot completely ignore the offline identity, and that it will eventually show through in your online avatar – whther it be by the quickness of your typing, or the opinions expressed – ie: a style is created.The story of Julie was a good illustration, but a very specific one. Is physicality totally absent online? Another interesting question is cyber-ostracism – the exclusion by some or all of a community if the rules aren’t followed. (pg73) The discussion about hierachies (power) is also interesting but it is only one of many sociological aspects of the internet and not one that I think deserves the amount of discussion afforded it in class. Pg 82, point about openesss and honesty in discussions and that electronic decisions seemed to take much longer than ‘in real life’. Discussion of cost a good one – assumptions that it is a big factor is not correct, and infact, the hackers, who are very clever, are often kids with limited hardware and software who ‘get around their limitations. I really disagreeed with the discussion about censorship – after taling about a courtcase in canada, the author said: “the point is not whther this subversion of hierachy is good or bad but the fact that it occurs”. This reference was to subversion which broke the law and undermined a fair court trial – there has to be discussion of good and bad – this simply cannot be ignored. As a fellow student has said, even a year (in internet time) is a million years -the technology and usage is developing so fast, and the point raised about cyberporn showed up the ‘age’ of the article. I think that nowdays people reading/accessing information online are far more discerning than those quoted here.
I would like to see more discussion in lectures on individuality vs community/offline vs online avatars/ the growing sophistication of people who both publish and access the internet. Also how the sociological aspects of interaction are mirrored or differ online. Also, if we are to have an indepth philosophical discussion, how about having one about ” if you delete everything you have ever written online, do you cease to exist?” “Do you really own your own words?”
