NetDynam 2.0

one of the lectures i’ve been watching recently on the video lectures site (see blogroll for link to their homepage) features a young eastern european guy who’s been working in conceptualising the dynamics of the web, the evolution of networks/ links, and how ideas or topics spread through networks.
it’s one of several on the topic of social media and theorising or graphically representing social networks, sentiment analysis, and so on. they are not as professional as those on TED, featuring presentations from conferences all over the world, and so to some extent you need to check out the ratings given by other viewers to determine whether the lecture is going to be rivetting or not…
a good resource anyway.

so, in the absence of any intervening comments, as usual, i am powering ahead

i’m posting this as a new post, instead of a comment, as it features old material relevant to the present project.

actually i went on a search for mike’s posting of the role and function matrix.

because one of the perspectives for entering the realm of affordances for users, is to look at what type of user (aka wordpress ‘role’) allows and constrains what blog activities, or, in other words, what acts are afforded these users.

it seems mike was a little ahead of us. no matter. i’m still catching up.

anyway, i think that the following post and its comments are certainly grist for this particular mill, and quite eminently quotable in parts. note mike’s disappointment with some of the affordances of the blue…thing…
see
the collaborative environment

i’m reading through the online phd i’d earlier recommended in here, and i was drawn to check up on some of its references – mainly because they cited URLS i could easily jump to. one of the referenced sites looks like a promising resource for general figures on internet use and attitudes in the USA – as well as a whole lot of other guff on topics i am not drawn to.

anyway, see the links page to pew-mediated studies on web 2.0 for example.

Dreamlines, a web art generator by Leonardo Solaas.

Leonardo Solaas is a programmer. His focus point is on using Java as a platform, the web browser as an interface, and, data processing routines as, in effect, painter’s brushes. However my weak attempt at description defers to the artist’s own words,

“The thing is, now I spend most of my day in front of my loyal laptop, working as freelance developer & interface designer for the most interesting clients I manage to find, and going about my own experiments and ideas when I can get to that.

This site intends to be a hub for several kinds of traces left behind by my so-called ‘artistic’ practice, plus related pursuits. I’m not sure what all this ‘new media art’ thing is all about, but for me is a convenient playground where I can mash up all sorts of interests with relative freedom.”

This excerpt, from his short first person bio is tagged accordingly:

autnomous agents-blog-castellano-data visualization-design-digital image-drupal-experiment-flash-generative-hand -made-internet-me on myself-multiplicity-particle system-physical-processing-social-teaching-text-theory-workshop>

(Inspires me to think about what tags I’d apply to me.) Anyway…these tags cover a lot of ground.

Being fascinated with how computing power and user interaction can be used to create stuff, I fell right into Leonardo’s Dreamlines.

Like it is with other generators, the role I play is that of an Initiator. And, as it also is with the best of those generators, the Initiator also has to be a ‘chef of time;’ (inasmuch as I’ve learned to be patient and wait for resonant results.) What initiator/time chef waits for are rewarding moments in the stream of serendipitous visual mixing. The process is for me akin to music-making, yet the process isn’t anywhere as demanding.

I’ve noted over at Explorations blog,

Mechanical Kitsch, or New Frontier? further brief reflections about several of the issues raised by the ‘generator medium.’

Here’s several captures from mixes I initiated.

Title: Semiotics

Title: Found It

Then, it occurred to me I could try an experiment. My hypothesis was simple: if I captured the visual mix as it unfolded, how well might it coincide with some of my music? The main thing though was that I wasn’t going do anything but slap the two pieces together, so the experiment was seeking to hit rather than miss. This is different than editing music to expressly fit the visual.

I’ve posted the result over at noguts noglory studios. 21 minutes of abstract flow. (You can always turn down the audio!)

Quark

When I transferred the result using iMovie to a DVD and played it on the big HD screen, I was amazed at how good it looked.

There’s a sort of “future creativity” lurking in the seams of generativity, person-code, shallow manipulation, and, the immensity of the raw data archive.

Title: The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis

Series Title: Continuum Discourse Series

Publication Year: 2009

Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

http://www.continuumbooks.com

Book URL: http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=132398&SearchType=Basic

Editor: Greg Myers

Hardback: ISBN:  9781847064134 Pages: 192 Price: U.S. $ 150.00

Hardback: ISBN:  9781847064134 Pages: 192 Price: U.K. £ 75.00

Paperback: ISBN:  9781847064141 Pages: 192 Price: U.K. £ 24.99

Paperback: ISBN:  9781847064141 Pages: 192 Price: U.S. $ 44.99

Abstract:

Blogs and Wikis have not been with us for long, but have made a huge impact
on society.  Wikipedia is the best known exemplar of the wiki, a
collaborative site that leads to a single text claimed by no-one; blogs, or
web-logs, have exploded into the mainstream through novelisations, film
adaptations and have gathered huge followings. Blogs and wikis also serve
to provide a coherent basis for a discourse analysis of specific web
language.

What makes these forms distinctive as genres, and what ramifications does
the technology have on the language?  Myers looks at how blogs and wikis:

*allow for easier than ever publication

*can claim to challenge institutional hierarchies

*provide alternate perspectives on events

*exemplify globalization

*challenge demarcations between the personal and the public

*construct new communities and more

Drawing on a wide range of popular blogs and wikis, the book works
alongside an author blog – http://thelanguageofblogs.typepad.com/ – that
contains regularly updated links, references and a glossary.  An essential
textbook for upper level undergraduates on linguistics and language studies
courses, it elucidates, informs and offers insights into a major new type
of discourse. This coursebook includes a companion website for student and
lecturer use.

it’s the blog on “the language of blogs” which appears to be a very good resource, with a lot of links to recent work on blog research, other blogs related to online research, and posts of relevance to our own interest. i think i might need to comment on some of those posts….

MU Researchers Find Internet Search Process Affects Cognition, Emotion
Readers’ physiological responses to online content provides new insight for advertisers

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Nearly 73 percent of all American adults use the Internet on a daily basis, according to a 2009 Pew Internet and American Life Project survey. Half of these adults use the Web to find information via search engines, while 38 percent use it to pass the time. In a recent study, University of Missouri researchers found that readers were better able to understand, remember and emotionally respond to material found through “searching” compared to content found while “surfing.”

“If, as these data suggest, the cognitive and emotional impact of online content is greatest when acquired by searching, then Web site sponsors might consider increasing their advertising on pages that tend to be accessed via search engines,” said Kevin Wise, assistant professor of strategic communication and co-director of the Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects (PRIME) Lab at the University of Missouri.

In the study, the researchers examined how methods for acquiring news — searching for specific content versus surfing a news Web site — affected readers’ emotional responses while reading news stories. They monitored participants’ heart rate, skin conductance and facial musculature to gauge their emotional responses to unpleasant news. The researchers found that unpleasant content triggered greater emotional responses when readers sought the information by searching rather than surfing. In future studies, Wise will study the effects of acquiring pleasant content on readers’ emotional responses.

“How readers acquire messages online has ramifications for their cognitive and emotional response to those messages,” Wise said. “Messages that meet readers’ existing informational needs elicit stronger emotional reactions.”

The researchers also found that information was better understood and remembered when individuals conducted specific searches for information. In a previous study, Wise tested the effects of searching and surfing on readers’ responses to images and found similar results.

Univ.Mo.Bulletin November 4, 2009 Emily Smith

Pew Internet and American Life Project

Daily Internet Activity Survey – source

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The google search method I employ regularly to wander around sources for (mostly) academic research has two components.

1. [filetype] filetype:pdf finds acrobat files
2. [parentheses]

For example:

filetype:pdf “theory of mind” “folk psychology” controversy

uncovers academic papers that contain the extremely common wedding of folk psychology, with, theory of mind. And, by adding controversy to the search terms, papers about controversies rise to the top.

After decades of reading refereed papers, the heuristic options have been narrowed down to familiar (to me) kinds of markers. So, controversy is a superior search term to, for example, disagreement.

(Interestingly, the filetype:pdf search proves valuable because Acrobat is the file type that lends itself to researcher’s posting papers on their web sites in a format that can’t easily be messed with; is, in many respects, a facsimile. In contrast to this, filetype:doc for Word files, doesn’t bring up as high quality results.)

If a correspondent or colleague presents an assertion in absolutist terms, it is safe to say that my first knee jerk reaction, irrespective of whether or not I can instantly frame this type of assertion, is to venture via search to learn if, in fact, the assertion is controversial.

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I added David Chalmer’s portal of research, Mind Papers, to the Sites of Interest sidebar.

It’s folk psychology, I mean Folk Psychology, section has the following TOC:
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