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A4-RyanJenny
Re-Imagining Community in an Age of Networked Materiality: Designing Online Spaces for Group Coordination and Public Interaction
Gist:In an era of increasing corporate monopolization of the web, it’s time to return to the source. The vision ofThe Virtual Campfire is trifold: 1) to build ‘Campsites’ from the ground up, out of pre-established networks of trust and group/community needs; 2) to explore and experiment with new tools for community coordination and collaborative creativity, and 3) to create a beautiful archive of the stories we live and breath and the future world we collectively weave.
The solution, however, does not lie in the total eradication of limits, for limits set points of possibility, anchoring the felt, affective experience in the collective domain of language. They are defined by the scale at which they are perceived, thus relative to the limits of associated relations. How do we navigate the liminal spaces in between these the points?
How do we avoid echo chambers in designing decentralized interwebs? The key is: Design for synchronicity while encouraging the flow of serendipity. Synchronicity – key words “sync” and “kronos” – implies coordination in time. Serendipity, however, is more closely related to “kairos” than “chronos” – a moment rich in possibility, unquantifiable, a subjectively felt sense thatthe time is now
Taken together, synchronicity and serendipity demand a reconceptualization of interaction in online spaces: to share a rhythm, albeit briefly, then move on, beyond, above, all about, weaving in and out of temporality, territories and domains, beyond dominion.
Week 8 (2/20-2/26):
Week 7 (2/13-2/19):
Week 6 (2/6-2/12):
Week 5 (1/30-2/5):
Web Sources
------------
Bibliography
Jessica Mullen.Lifestreaming as a Life Design Methodology. MFA Thesis in Design at UT Austin. Skim and/or scope http://jessicamullen.com
danah boyd, Jenny Ryan, and Alex Leavitt.Pro-Self-Harm and the Visibility of Youth-Generated Problematic Content. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society 7(1). Forthcoming issue.
Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. Digging Into Wordpress.
Gist:In an era of increasing corporate monopolization of the web, it’s time to return to the source. The vision ofThe Virtual Campfire is trifold: 1) to build ‘Campsites’ from the ground up, out of pre-established networks of trust and group/community needs; 2) to explore and experiment with new tools for community coordination and collaborative creativity, and 3) to create a beautiful archive of the stories we live and breath and the future world we collectively weave.
To this end, I seek to explore visualization tools that exemplify the fluctuating and interactive nature of human relationships on three planes - the intramental, or psychological; the intermental/relational, or social; and the interstices in-between, the associated cross-cultural realms. To parallel these aims with my (admittedly novice) website/webworking agenda, in accordance to these three concordant communicative spaces, I am exploring new modes of digital identity inscription; namely, LifeStreaming, Online Social Networking sites, and a mashup structure that enables both alongside web-2.0-based interpersonal/individual and inter-community/collaborative communication tools.
Research Objectives: My current plan entails the following: 1) development of a technomadic methodology that hybridizes ethnographic participant-observation with new media tools for dynamic, collaborative storytelling; 2) local community-based participatory action research that bridges academic research with community projects and grassroots organizations; and 3) the creation of a web-based platform for intra-community organizing and communication as well as inter-community networking and collaboration.
Methodology: As an anthropologist, I seek to evoke and inspire through the ancient art of good storytelling. As a cyberanthropologist, my fieldsites include virtual spaces marked by permeable boundaries, necessitating new forms of writing and conducting ethnography through the creative use of new communications technologies. As a poet and experimental writer at heart, I aim to immerse myself in the mythology of the future-now through co-constructing ethnographic parables utilizing modern technologies of communication.
Media Production: TheVirtualCampfire.Org will be the web-based creative portion of the project. The site will enable different levels of access so as to negotiate between intra-community informatics (restricted to community members and focused around the community blog, project and task management and assignment, finance and budgeting, and group scheduling) and inter-community networking (public and engaged at the level of maintaining a public "face,"information sharing, storytelling, and alternative economic systems).
Data Collection: The end result will be a kind of posthuman ethnography that incorporates multimedia historical archives, community documents, the social organization of space, environmental consciousness, web-based communication tools and networks alongside the stories and shared experiences of members. In this sense, the end "product" is as collaborative, dynamic and diverse as its subject.
Research Objectives: My current plan entails the following: 1) development of a technomadic methodology that hybridizes ethnographic participant-observation with new media tools for dynamic, collaborative storytelling; 2) local community-based participatory action research that bridges academic research with community projects and grassroots organizations; and 3) the creation of a web-based platform for intra-community organizing and communication as well as inter-community networking and collaboration.
Methodology: As an anthropologist, I seek to evoke and inspire through the ancient art of good storytelling. As a cyberanthropologist, my fieldsites include virtual spaces marked by permeable boundaries, necessitating new forms of writing and conducting ethnography through the creative use of new communications technologies. As a poet and experimental writer at heart, I aim to immerse myself in the mythology of the future-now through co-constructing ethnographic parables utilizing modern technologies of communication.
Media Production: TheVirtualCampfire.Org will be the web-based creative portion of the project. The site will enable different levels of access so as to negotiate between intra-community informatics (restricted to community members and focused around the community blog, project and task management and assignment, finance and budgeting, and group scheduling) and inter-community networking (public and engaged at the level of maintaining a public "face,"information sharing, storytelling, and alternative economic systems).
Data Collection: The end result will be a kind of posthuman ethnography that incorporates multimedia historical archives, community documents, the social organization of space, environmental consciousness, web-based communication tools and networks alongside the stories and shared experiences of members. In this sense, the end "product" is as collaborative, dynamic and diverse as its subject.
Issues and Challenges:How to tailor to an audience- we must move beyond the notion of a homogenized mass, for despite the benefits of fewer choices allowing for broader reach and consensus, this model is too closely linked to hierarchies of knowledge and power, principally the domain of megacorporations whose almighty father is the dollar.
The solution, however, does not lie in the total eradication of limits, for limits set points of possibility, anchoring the felt, affective experience in the collective domain of language. They are defined by the scale at which they are perceived, thus relative to the limits of associated relations. How do we navigate the liminal spaces in between these the points?
How do we avoid echo chambers in designing decentralized interwebs? The key is: Design for synchronicity while encouraging the flow of serendipity. Synchronicity – key words “sync” and “kronos” – implies coordination in time. Serendipity, however, is more closely related to “kairos” than “chronos” – a moment rich in possibility, unquantifiable, a subjectively felt sense thatthe time is now
Taken together, synchronicity and serendipity demand a reconceptualization of interaction in online spaces: to share a rhythm, albeit briefly, then move on, beyond, above, all about, weaving in and out of temporality, territories and domains, beyond dominion.
- Last weekend didn't go as planned. I am out one Wordpress guru. So, I spent some time this week learning as much as I could about Wordpress, and have started installing plugins and designing the Co/Lab site.
- Thursday's class was really inspiring, aligning perfectly with some of the things I've been writing in my journal about designing social spaces. After class, I wrote until I had exhausted the last pages of my moleskine <3
- Thursday evening was another excellent brainstorm with Ivan. He tells me a key problem in my project goals is one that is all-too-familiar to computer scientists - an NP-complete problem.
- Friday I meet with Co/Lab. Determined to getthe bare bones of this siteup and running by the end of the weekend.
- Saturday: Spent all day exploring and implementing my Wordpress Multisite. Excited to move to a home server, meeting with Ivan & Annie-Lorrie about that on Monday.
Week 9 (2/27-3/5):
- Sunday: Finally!The Virtual Campfireis up and running, Multisite subdomains working after upgrading to a Dedicated IP.
- Met with Ayhan on Monday re: starting up a Social Media Lab here at UCSD. Yet another awesome project to incorporate into this collaborative web structure!
- Tuesday: Almost made it to class until sidelined by Mike & Ivan up in LCHC. As I hardly ever get the opportunity to brainstorm with them both, I decided to stay in the flow. Vow to attend the last three classes and gun it to the finish line. Ivan and I independently discussed community vs. institutional loyalty and associated ethical & political issues, played with the Wordpress and the JavaScript / geotagging / media-linking app Ivan has been working on and how to could fit it into the site & facilitate interaction. We also discuss potential funding for Co/Lab for IT-related resources, and Ivan suggests we use an in-house server to host thevirtualcampfire.org and use the funds to purchase backup servers & software.Grander ideas involving arduino/bluetooth controlled learning/play environments ensued.
- Wednesday: Started installing plugins & planning a trip back up to LA this weekend to work on the site(s) intensively with Natan.
Week 8 (2/20-2/26):
- Database migration is frustrating. I drove up to LA on Sunday night to work with Natan some more, spending a solid 12 hours in the ether of customer service hotlines, MySQL database files, FTP server restructuring, and domain name transfers. TheVirtualCampfire.Org is still 404ing. I dream of a tech-savvy research assistant.
Week 7 (2/13-2/19):
- Fellow co-conspirator and Wordpress guru Natan Mallinger and I spend the weekend migrating old databases, installing Wordpress, and coming up with a template for Wordpress-based systems (including design, widgets, plugins) for group coordination, collaboration, and public interaction, using Co/Lab as our pilot model.
- Upon discovering I am to present that week, spent a few hours creating a Tumblr feed for this class, reading Interactions magazine in an attempt to better understand HCI lingo, and coming up with some points of discussion centered around the pros and cons of online visibility (eg; examining the material infrastructure of the Internet, legal and cultural moves toward increasing censorship, control, and free speech violations, and designing for a decentralized web).
- On Friday, Co/Lab met at the Farmer's Market despite the downpour to discuss individual progress and next steps. I promise at least a mockup by the next meeting, and arrange to meet up with Kernya (a master's student in City Planning at SDSU) to work on the Wordpress site together.
Week 6 (2/6-2/12):
- Co/Lab officially convenes for the first time at the People's Produce Project stand at the new Farmer's Market in Southeast San Diego. We introduce ourselves and discuss the potential links between our projects, I pitch the Wordpress site to enthusiastic reception, and we come up with some first steps - such as bios/individual project descriptions, a mapping tour of local food sites (such as farms & CSAs), and collaboration on a group vision document.
Week 5 (1/30-2/5):
- On Thursday morning, I attended the LCHC meeting and discovered a network of projects and partners/allies working on community-based narratives surrounding local food practices in SE San Diego. Excited, that afternoon I met up with Ivan (Comm grad student with a CompSci background, rooted in LCHC/Town & Country), Annie-Lorrie (postdoc in Anthropology at UCSD exploring community storytelling and food), Kamal (city council representative interested in issues of regulation/zoning and supporting community projects), and a few others to discuss collaborative, participatory community-based research projects. We decide to call ourselves, appropriately methinks, Co/Lab.
- At the chaotic intersection of personal life shifts, immersion in a world that delights my ethnographically-inclined spirit, and the unexpected stressors of teaching, I struggle to represent, translate, and articulate my ideas and experiences in my class on Ethnographic Methods (which I take an Incomplete in).
- Learning about the grant process for social scientists in a new comm course, for which I write aProject Proposal. Issues: too wide in scope, fieldsites not definitively set, frustrating translation issues between myself, the house I'm living in, my online networks and collaborators, and academia. I have to sacrifice one of these spheres; I choose to sacrifice my involvement in the house.
- In celebration of my successful completion of the uber-overhyped first-year exams, I purchase an iPad and immediately begin experimenting with new tools, apps, and organizational forms of information flows for my research, and beginmindmapping my ideal dissertation project.
Web Sources
- 1 in 10 Coalition- movement to get 1 out of every 10 residents growing their own produce. [google group]
- The People's Produce Project - "an ongoing community organizing effort to bring resident owned community gardens and a farmers market to Southeastern San Diego."
- The Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC)- UCSD-based group exploring situated learning in cross-cultural settings
- Town & Country Learning Center- UCSD + SD after-school program
Annie-Lorrie.:http://foodwaysandfoodscapes.weebly.com
Jenny:http://jennyryan.net
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Bibliography
Jessica Mullen.Lifestreaming as a Life Design Methodology. MFA Thesis in Design at UT Austin. Skim and/or scope http://jessicamullen.com
danah boyd, Jenny Ryan, and Alex Leavitt.Pro-Self-Harm and the Visibility of Youth-Generated Problematic Content. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society 7(1). Forthcoming issue.
Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. Digging Into Wordpress.
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, Mar 13 2011, 6:58 PM EDT
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