tasty Castells Quote

From Stadler’s book.

Contrary to postmodern visions, time and spaceof finality are fundamnetla categories of social life and cannot disppear.  Computer netwokrs are nto black holes.  At one point, the negative quantitaive dynammic of compression (less space/time) turns ino a qualitatively new condition (a new type of space/time).  This is exactly what castells proposes with hsi concept of the spaceof flows: a new material basis for time sharing on which the dominant social processes are reorganized and managed through flows.  That is through ‘purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors.'”  The quote within a quote is from Castells Rise of teh Network Society.

NSF funding stream may be relevant

The NSF has a new funding stream that may be a good resource for us.
Virtual organizations as sociotechnical systems.

I am surprised to see the reference to sociotechnical systems which I always thought of as a useful praxis perspective (if an off-putting name).

From the call for proposals:

A virtual organization is a group of individuals whose members and resources may be dispersed geographically, but who function as a coherent unit through the use of cyberinfrastructure. Virtual organizations are increasingly central to the science and engineering projects funded by the National Science Foundation. Focused investments in sociotechnical analyses of virtual organizations are necessary to harness their full potential and the promise they offer for discovery and learning.

The Virtual Organizations as Sociotechnical Systems (VOSS) program supports scientific research directed at advancing the understanding of what constitutes effective virtual organizations and under what conditions virtual organizations can enable and enhance scientific, engineering, and education production and innovation. Levels of analysis may include (but are not limited to) individuals, groups, organizations, and institutional arrangements. Disciplinary perspectives may include (but are not limited to) anthropology, complexity sciences, computer and information sciences, decision and management sciences, economics, engineering, organization theory, organizational behavior, social and industrial psychology, public administration, and sociology. Research methods may span a broad variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, including (but not limited to): ethnographies, surveys, simulation studies, experiments, comparative case studies, and network analyses.

Wouldn’t  a longitudinal study of innovation and education efforts in various virtual worlds be a great project?  What are the embedded features of code that elicit best sociotechnical practice?

Embedded journalist- First Monday Article

This is a temporary stub for comments on this First Article.

Abstract:

In 2005, persistent online worlds — sometimes saddled with the unwieldy acronym MMORPGs, for “massively multiplayer online role playing games,” or somewhat less clumsily, MMOs — made the leap from niche entertainment to global mainstream medium. On a popularity metric, Worlds of Warcraft became the first game to surpass a million U.S. subscribers, while gaining a global audience over 4.5 million and counting (with a third of that from mainland China.) On an innovation scale, Second Life suggested the potential for MMOs to also be a development platform for commercial, educational, and research projects. As broadband and high end PCs saturate the international market, it’s time to consider MMOs as the likeliest candidate for the Internet’s next generation, supplanting the two dimensional, semi–interactive portal of the Web for an immersive, three–dimensional, fully interactive Metaverse of data.

But a new medium requires new guidelines for understanding it, and it is here that many questions loom. What happens as users continue to employ MMOs for purposes beyond gaming or light socializing, when they become the first true meeting space for the world, where cultural, commercial, and political intercourse is conducted in real time in an immersive setting that feels real, even hyperreal? When they have a direct, measurable impact on real world news? And who will do the reporting to understand this profound shift?

Unlike the Web revolution of the ’90s, documenting the emergence of online worlds is something that will be conducted from the inside, immersed within the media itself.

Some tentative guidelines are therefore proposed, a new kind of journalistic ethics for a world where reality and identity are mutable and anonymity is both hazard and godsend. Based on nearly three years as Second Life’s official embedded journalist, the author suggests several principles, with the object to preserve a separation between real life identity and virtual being, while sustaining the fantastic, otherworldly nature of online worlds. Paradoxically, it’s argued, maintaining the illusion increases the value of online worlds as a journalistic tool, enabling a direct, intimate form of communication with diverse people throughout the world. At the same time, it enables us to see these worlds as model and microcosm for the socioeconomic realm of the world at large.

In either case, these worlds can help us understand the conflicts and values of our own material world — and for good and ill, begin to shape them. To emphasize how crucial the need to understand this next dramatic shift for the Internet, the author offers five likely futures in which online worlds directly impact national and international politics and the global economy — a time when MMOs help decide the outcomes of real–world elections and influence long–established jurisprudence, while authoritarian government attempt to repress them, and they become the next theater for terrorist and counterterrorist infiltration.

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