Theseguysblog Challenge – Hit up Connaught place with a 100 rupee note in hand and come home with the following four DVD’s:

• Surrogates – B-Weasy acts the shit out of this movie, one of his finest films. The premise revolves around the idea that Bruce buys a bunch of robotic replicas of Bruce … meaning quadruple the Bruces.

• Land of the Lost – Most people hate Will Ferrell based on the fact that they think too many people like Will Ferrell. Those people are idiots; his shitty movies are guaranteed for 12 giggles at a minimum.
  • Life is all about giggles, if I don’t get my fix of at least 50 giggles a day I become a dangerous man.

• Year One – This movie is sure to further feed my sick sick addition with Michael Cera.
• The Hurt Locker – Arguably the only legitimate movie I was in the market for.

After filtering through hundreds of pirated American DVD’s I could only find two out of the four. My half ass attempts at lowballing these dirtbags, at a fraction of the market price, were failures forcing me to move on. Before I knew it, close to two hours had gone by and my goal was far from achieved.

My patience was running thin but after thinking of how I would feel post-Michael Cera film, I gathered the motivation to dig down deep into my energy reserves. The pickings were slim seeing as we had visited nearly all of stores, but out of nowhere this one fellow caught my attention. We made eye contact and he spewed out broken English offering me games, DVD’s and CD’s.

The merchant motioned for me to follow him to his co-workers store (all these dudes work in cahoots each managing a couple different shops). I followed the merchant to his other store but as soon as the other owner saw my face I could tell something had gone wrong. I was told to leave.

My luck had run out, with my recently shaved head and unchanged white skin, I was easily remembered as the skinheaded, sleaze-bagging low baller. I somehow managed to get blacklisted from the underground pirated movie hub. I mean that’s talent people, to out slime the skeezies shows some serious tenacity and balls, half you jokers out there couldn’t do what I did.

Through association Arvil was blacklisted but that also might have been attributed to the fact that he low bagged this one dude so badly that even me, the king of the low ballin’ scumbags was surprised by his offer.

Twelve DVD’s for 300 rupees, Arvil pulled an offensive, spinless yet ballsy move and I have to respect him for it.

Although no DVD’s were purchased Arvil did buy:

Rolex – 100 rps – originally: 250 rps.

Shantanaram (novel) – 200 rps – originally:  700 rps.

A strawberry milkshake with whipcream toppings – 80 rps.

Right before he chuggled the shake, Arvil said in a high pitched voice while limping his wrists:

“I am such a bad boy, I shouldn’t”

India’s Zagat street side vendor winners have been announced. Once again theseguysblog.wordpress.com are the first with the results.

Best Barber: Harkirishna Gupta

When your payout is the tightest Guido fade imaginable then sometimes it’s worth being cut up by rusty unsterilized razors. Harkrishna Gupta is his name and all day long the Gupster (Goop-ster) hooks brothers up with the fade that’s ganna get you laid. I can’t even count how many times he gave me a tight ceaser dew which resulted in a morning trip to planet parenthood.

Harkrishna Gupta on the job

Guppy (Goop-ey) has been cutting hair ever since he saw Barbershop 2, staring Ice Cube … classic. The Gupster refined his skills at Blaine Beauty School in Waltham, Ma. He graduated second out of his class of 15, edged out by none other than Papa Lote (Grande Ligas – Framingham, MA).

Best Shoe-shiner: Suneet Mehta

Shining shoes aint no walk in the park, the amount of forearm strength required to buff out a pair of alligator oxfords is insurmountable.

Suneets mother was a dirty Mongol and his father was a shiesty shoe salesman who often worked long hours. Their house was constructed solely out of shoeboxes; in fact Suneets crib, as a child, was composed out of an air force one shoe box (white on whites of course).

Suneet the shiner

After watching the Karate Kid on loop for four straight years, little Suneet had perfected the wax on wax off motions. When he hit puberty Suneets forearm strength tripled … for obvious reasons.

He has beaten Mariusz Pudzianowski, Ving Rhames and Sanjays moustche in best of five arm wrestling matches.

To this date, Suneet has yet to have an unsatisfied customer.

Additional info: Suneet moonlights as the owner of a roadside Z-Job factory.

Best Sauce: Dees Ahswhol

Dees Ahswhol sucked at pretty much everything when growing up … completely inadequate at life. He was terrible at basic math, hopeless at making friends and had the tiniest penis. Fortunately he was lucky enough to land a gig clipping Julia Child’s toenails.

The best sauce

While working with Julia he stole one of her famous sauce recipes and moved back to India. Now every day Dees sells roughly 70 gallons of his sauce. He has the tastiest sauce in Delhi, his sauce is so good, the best sauce a man could wish for, you must taste his sauce. His sauce is kept extra warm in his stainless steel canister.

This post is in continuation with my previous post. As I mentioned previously, our school’s science association, MSSA, is organizing a quiz on November 5. This comes as a pleasant surprise, since we had been told previously that the event had been canceled due to the Swine Flu scare. I remember myself lobbying for the event, sometimes spending hours at the school’s office and at the teachers’ cabin to convince them to let us organize the event. However I never really saw any positive response.

Given how fond I am of not going to school this year, I took an entire week off – just like that. So when I returned to school after a week – on the 12^th, I was told by an old friend of mine (though we are more like acquaintances now, but we were good friends) Nandita that we (MSSA) were allowed to conduct a one-day thing (as opposed to the usual one week event) and that the event is scheduled on November 2. Okay, she got the date wrong, but really do I care? I mean she was the first one to tell me!

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Niveditaa is the president of the MSSA. She had been coming to school everyday. But she never really took the initiative to call or at least leave a message. I guess she is still pissed over my last post which mentioned her name, even though I barely wrote all that I had been feeling. Ha, I don’t have time for vanity. But then neither did Sanyam – a ‘friend’ of mine, in whom my trust is decreasing exponentially – there was a time I would back him no matter what and I believed that he would also do the same (The ‘believed’ is added because what you believe in not what actually is). Ha. How should I brand this? Rivalry? Jealousy? Or politics?

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Getting back, that day I had to participate in a quiz, so I left early in the morning and when I returned, school was already over and people were heading to their buses/other means of transport. This meant I was supposed to head to my bus right way without going back to my classroom. On the way, I came across Sanyam, Sanchit and Ayush Jhanwar – people I believe are my friends. I went up to them to confirm the update I got in the morning and ask for their ideas.

The first thing I noticed was that they did not greet me. Back in grade 11, whenever we would meet, it would be followed by every permutation and combination of handshakes/wrist bangs. Fine. No problem. I then asked Sanchit if he knew that the event was being organized. He replied yes, on November 2, but he was cut short by Ayush Jhanwar who says (translated), “You know, you are the most incapable vice-president we have had”. I asked him politely enough, “Really? What makes you think so? You don’t even know how many places I’ve been to get the MSSA event approved.”

Arrogance blinds. And I could see it here. He stubbornly refused to accept anything I say whatsoever, and before we had exchanged a total of four sentences, he reduced the conversation to a one-sided hurling of obscenities.

I could have done the same. I could have insulted him. Better yet, I could have jabbed him in the face (Myself = Two martial arts + boxing) and surely I could have broken his bone or his jaw with one or at most two blows, rendering him disabled for a very long time and also shattering his self esteem + ego at the same time. But I did not do any of the above things. I had already taken a beating. Sanyam and Sanchit just stood and watched.

This could mean one of two things :

1. They agreed with him.
2. They did not agree with him, but they did not want to support me.

So did this mean that I really was doing a bad job? I wanted to ask him what he thought I did wrong, but I already had that big lump in my throat and if I would have tried to speak, I might have given it away. I decided best to walk away from the scene – to my bus. I pulled out my Pocket PC, opened Pocket Word and started creating a draft, which will perhaps fit it snugly now.

“Barely 12 hours into the planetary day, a human, who could barely be called an adolescent, was experiencing an excessive release of organic molecules that altered his response to outside stimuli; effectively distancing him from others of his kind, solely through behavioral changes, and making him less responsive. This human was unable to realize, since his behavioral change blurred his decision-making ability, that this human response to such stimuli was the worst response he could make. It could, and would have repercussions.”

That afternoon, I went home even more upset over the happenings, and slept as soon as I reached home – without bothering to change my school uniform or having lunch. That evening I woke up, at about 7 PM with 101 degrees temperature + (head + body) pain, feeling miserable. I wasted the entire night thinking about the happening, and concluding that I would call for a meeting the next day and ask for an anonymous vote if people thought I should resign. If a majority said yes, I would. By midnight, I had sworn that I would resign when voted or not voted by people. I was anyhow holding together what had happened till now and I would love to see them embarrass themselves. Better still, I would take part in the school quiz, win it (which I am confident I will) while making the job harder for the anchors. I would win it by a margin of a hundred points, more. This way I would gain the audience’s support which we know from previous posts loves to see such incidents on stage and humiliate the organization at the same time.

By two in the morning, my consciousness was blurred with a combination of thoughts of extreme despair, self-pity and revenge. I could code a backdoor and wipe all their hard disks one day before the event. That wouldn’t require too much work or brain-twisting, and besides all evidence would be formatted itself. The only one in the school with any knowledge of forensics is I.  And obviously they won’t call in the feds. Better yet, I could replace the text in their presentation with something that would be very embarrassing for them. (Psst.. Brainwave 2004 – Britney Spears. Anyone remember?). Or I could replace some lines in the middle of the anchors script. That would be awesome.

But my sanity subdued the great evil that lies in me. Once again. Sometimes being evil is the best way out. But lately it seems I am losing that ability of doing evil.

My head was filled more with despair and pity than revenge. I felt helpless, miserable and ill at the same time. I knew things were going wrong. And I needed a clear head to do the thinking for me. And that meant I had to turn for advice to the only one who knew everything I knew about me – my alter ego.

He goes by many names and identities. But I like to call him The Count of Monte Cristo (yes, inspired from the novel). He knows everything. And that is why he is so good at making decisions. So far everything he has told me has done awesome things!

Anyhow, by the end of the conversation (if you ever see me during the process of debating with my alter ego, you’ll definitely doubt my sanity, and greatly embarrass me), I had decided upon the following things:

1. Being destructive is not the right way to go. It is the ‘wrongest’ way to go. “True strength does not lie in physical capacity, but in an indomitable will” – Mahatma Gandhi
2. I will participate in the quiz nevertheless.
3. Resigning would just mean that I did not try.
4. I need to talk to them asking them about what they want.
5. I can’t give up. That is against my principles. I will try. And I will succeed.
6. I will cut myself 100 times for thinking of giving up.
7. I lied above.
8. I will avoid violence wherever possible.
9. I will use every political trick in the book. And I will *try* to remain on the ethical side of the line.
10. Not every question has an answer. For example : “Who’s hotter – Barack Obama or George Bush?”. That is just gay.

And on that note the day ended. I went to sleep, thinking of the events of the day – tapping into a previously undiscovered region of my psyche, breaking down at the overflow of emotions, recomposing myself, thinking clearly and in the end coming up with a solution my ethics (assuming I have any – and they are not imaginary) and my ideals approve of, all in under 12 hours.

Cnn.com’s current lead story – the most important story in the world to CNN:

Sound familiar? It should. It’s similar to the (relatively) well known backstory of Batman villain Mr. Freeze: His wife is deathly ill, he places her in a suspended animation, but when one day he falls into the liquid, he turns into the villain. Here’s a picture from the movie Batman and Robin:

Of course, that head you see there is the current California governor.

On the other hand, if Chris Nolan or any of his assistants is reading this, please do not take this as an opportunity to re-imagine Freeze. The whole thing  is too ridiculous for me.

We get sick and we die. It happens. Sometimes too early. We don’t need to cheat death. In fact, I’m as upset about Gupta’s cheating death as the ridiculous top story.

A few months ago, we heard from a frustrated reader.  Noting the abundant info about emerald ash borer (EAB) in urban environments, he could find almost nothing on managing ash in woodland stands.  Philip Potyondy created this video to begin to answer that question.

The video has four sections:

• First Extension’s Jeff Hahn reviews basic EAB biology, dispersal, and impacts on host trees.
• Second, Keith Jacobson of the MN DNR’s Utilization & Marketing unit briefly reviews markets for ash wood in Minnesota.
• Third, we head to the woods for brief comments from Paul Dickson, president of the Minnesota Association of Consulting Foresters.
• We close with a summary of research and management recommendations for woodland ash stands from Extension’s Angela Gupta.

Special thanks to Jeff Hahn, Keith Jacobson, Paul Dickson, and Angela Gupta for their contributions to this video.  You can learn much more about EAB in Minnesota at the UMN Extension EAB page.

What are you doing to prepare your woods for EAB?  Leave a comment to let us know.

En guise de préambule

En France, 2009 aura été une très bonne année pour l’art contemporain. Selon le magasine Forbes paru en juillet dernier, François Pinault est devenu le plus grand collectionneur d’art contemporain du monde. Après avoir dépassé l’anglais Saatchi en 2006, le milliardaire en rêvait. C’est désormais une réalité. Autre évènement : l’exposition du Français Xavier Veilhan dans les jardins et le château de Versailles. Après l’Américain Jeff Koons en 2008 et en attendant le Japonais Murakami pour 2010, Jean-Jacques Agaillon poursuit sa politique de promotion de l’art contemporain avec un succès indéniable. Quant à la FIAC, sa 36e édition a connu une fréquentation en hausse de 20% par rapport à 2008, malgré la crise économique et un prix d’entrée relativement élevé (28 euros). L’art contemporain serait-il en passe de devenir une passion française ? En fait, pas vraiment.

Un sondage réalisé par l’institut BVA en 2007 sur la côte d’amour des artistes les plus célèbres confirme le très faible intérêt des Français pour l‘histoire de la peinture et des arts plastiques du XXe siècle. Depuis les impressionnistes et Van Gogh, c’est même le grand vide. Une exception : Andy Warhol, plébiscité par 8% des personnes sondées. Un score de star si on le compare avec les 2% d’avis positifs recueillis par de grandes figures comme Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock  ou Mark Rothko, sans parler d’artistes vivants comme  Soulages ou Boltanski. 

La côte d’amour des artistes d’hier et d’aujourd’hui serait-elle liée à leur notoriété ? Surement. Mais en partie seulement. Car l’institut ne s’est pas contenté de tester des noms. Il a également demandé à un échantillon représentatif de noter des oeuvres contemporaines. Et, la encore, le résultat n’est pas très encourageant. Sur 21 oeuvres, seules six ont séduit les personnes interrogées. Premier enseignement : l’abstraction (et le non figuratif) ne passe décidément pas. Mais des oeuvres figuratives comme celles de Maurizio Cattalan ou de Zhang Xiaogang, non plus. Deuxième enseignement : il n’existe pas une technique d’expression qui serait plus ou moins appréciée que les autres. Les toiles de Hyber et de Murakami sont bien notées. Les oeuvres en trois dimensions de Buren et Koons, également. Inversement, la photograhie, pourtant jugée plus facile d’accès, est loin de faire l’unanimité. Si une oeuvre de Sophie Calle fait un tabac avec 69% d’opinion positive, celle de Gilbert et George ainsi que celle de Gursky sont rejetées par 56% et 71% des personnes interrogées.

Bref, à l’exception des oeuvres abstraites qui ne passent pas parce que, justement, elles sont abstraites, la question reste entière : pourquoi certaines créations contemporaines ne plaisent-elles pas ? Dans un livre réédité cette année, “L’art contemporain exposé au rejet” (2), la sociologue Nathalie Heinich avance une réponse : les oeuvres d’aujourd’hui sont vivement critiquées parce qu’elles paraissent dépourvues de sens – et donc de raison d’être. En somme, le rejet de l’art contemporain serait moins une affaire de goût et de ressenti qu’une question d’intellect et de compréhension. Et comme les gens n’aiment pas ce qu’ils ne comprennent pas… on voit difficilement comment ils pourraient apprécier l’art contemporain. La thèse est séduisante. Mais elle est loin d’être évidente, surtout s’y on se réfère aux études de cas sur lesquelles se fonde pourtant Nathalie Heinich.

En fait, la réaction provoquées par des oeuvres récentes mises sur la place publique - et par conséquent accesibles au regard de tous - prouve que l’art contemporain n’a pas totalement passé à la trappe la question du beau et du laid. Les fameuses colonnes de Buren sont, de loin, l’exemple plus connu. Voulu par Jack Lang, alors ministre de la culture de François Mitterrand, ce projet suscite d’emblée une levée de bouclier et de multiples recours juridiques. L’essentiel des critiques ne laisse aucun doute sur ce qui choque les adversaires des colonnes : l’énorme décalage de style entre l’oeuvre de Buren et le Palais royal. Edifiée place du Théâtre à la Roche-sur-Yon, la fontaine de Bernard Pagès est beaucoup moins connue que ”les colonnes”. Mais cette oeuvre provoque une opposition aussi virulente et une critique du même ordre sur l’enlaidissement de l’environnement immédiat. Même réaction face à la stèle de Jean-Pierre Raynaud érigée devant le siège du CNRS pour son cinquantième anniversaire. Tandis qu’un chercheur se demande “si cette construction glorifie vraiment la recherche scientifique ou si elle ne risque pas plutôt d’attirer quelques plaisanteries comme j’en ai entendu”, un autre s’insurge contre “la glorification du ‘résidu de salle de bain’ qui symbolise désormais le CNRS”.

Nathalie Heinich  constate que, globalement, le critère de la laideur – ou plus exactement de l’enlaidissement – n’est pas l’argument le plus utilisé par les détracteurs des oeuvres contemporaines. C’est en se basant sur ce constat qu’elle postule un nouveau rapport à l’art, non plus fondé sur la question de la beauté mais sur celle du sens. Or elle oublie ou néglige un élément essentiel : le poids des conventions sociales. En d’autres termes, nous ne disons pas toujours ce que nous pensons. Et nos silences s’avèrent parfois parfois plus éloquents que nos paroles. C’est par exemple ce poids des conventions qui conduit les instituts de sondage à relativisier l’intérêt affiché des Français pour la culture ou à redresser les intentions de vote en faveur de l’extrême droite. Dans le cas de l’art,  chacun sait que  la formule “c’est pas beau” relève plus d’un jugement d’enfant que d’un jugement d’adulte.  A fortiori lorsque l’adulte est un scientifique dont on attend un minimun de rationnalité. Que les opposants des colonnes de Buren ou les détracteurs de la stèle de Jean-Pierre Raynaud évitent de critiquer trop ouvertement la beauté de ces oeuvres n’a donc en soi rien rien d’étonnant. Ce serait même l’inverse qui serait plutôt surprenant.

Nathalie Heinich se trompe aussi en défendant l’idée que le rejet de l’art contemporain peut se fonder, selon les cas, sur des critères différents : le coût (considéré comme prohibitif), le sens (jugé obscur ou fantaisiste), le statut d’oeuvre d’art et d’artiste (contestable et contesté), l’harmonie avec l’environnement immédiat (sujette à caution)… et, bien entendu, la beauté (absente) qui serait devenue un problème secondaire.  La sociologue ne voit pas que ces critères, loin d’être distincts, se combinent suivant un ordre logique. On peut même décomposer le rejet d’une oeuvre comme «Les colonnes» en quatre phases. Phase 1 : l’apparence de l’oeuvre imposée sur la place publique est perçue comme une provocation et soulève la question de sa signification. Phase 2 : la portée de l’oeuvre est jugée absurde. Pire : même un effort de pédagogie destiné à créer un minimum d’adhésion ne fait qu’alimenter l’accusation de supercherie, les opposants considérant qu’il est possible de tout justifier,  tout expliquer et tout transformer en symbole. Phase 3 :  l’accusation de supercherie décridibilise l’oeuvre, quand ce n’est pas aussi l’artiste. Phase 4 : l’objet dépouillé de sa dimension artistique, son coût parait inévitablement disproportionné et se trouve, son tour, assimilé à une véritable provocation. La boucle est alors bouclée.

Ces réactions sont-elles si surprenantes ? Après tout, depuis Dada, la pointe avant-gardiste de l’art contemporain n’aspire pas à séduire et à plaire mais à provoquer et déranger. C’est Eluar dénonçant “la vanité qui pousse l’homme à déclarer ceci beau ou laid”. C’est Duchamp proclamant que “le grand ennemi de l’art, c’est le bon goût”. Ce n’est d’ailleurs pas un hasard si la beauté perd son aura artistique au XXe siècle. Dotée d’une finalité commerciale, elle devient la marque de fabrique de la publicité et du design. Accessible au plus grand nombre, aussi bien par la consommation que par une large diffusion des oeuvres classiques, elle ne permet plus à l’élite de se distinguer. Face à cette démocratisation et à cette instrumentalisation de la beauté, l’art contemporain estime n’avoir d’autre choix que de prendre le contrepied de la séduction. Il lui appartient de bousculer la beauté  dans ce qu’elle a de plus classique, de trop consensuel voire, diront certains, de trop putassier.  Une démarche dont on voit mal comment elle pourrait ne pas provoquer une réaction. Ce qui n’est pas un problème puisque l’artiste contemporain cherche la provocation. Et il lui arrive de la trouver avec à la clé un rejet violent. Soit une forme de consécration, la preuve que l’art crée de l’effet et peut nous sortir de notre torpeur. 

Bref si certaines oeuvres contemporaines ne plaisent pas, cela ne doit rien au hasard ou à un échec : c’est tout simplement qu’elles ne veulent surtout pas plaire et qu’elles entendent s’en donner les moyens. Certaines vont jusqu’à briser des tabous mais les remous que ce genre de transgression suscite dépassent rarement quelques cercles restreints, constitués d’experts, de journalistes et de militants associatifs. D’autres jouent l’opposition frontale à la beauté classique sur la place publique et mettent l’opinion en émoi. Rien, en fait, qui ne soit critiquable sur le fond. Sinon qu’on ne peut à la fois revendiquer la dimension provocatrice de l’art et s’étonner dans la foulée que la provocation atteigne  son objectif…

A lire

- Un passage du livre sur le thème du “pure et l’impure” histoire de s’amuser à lire ici

- Outre le livre de Nathalie Heinich qui, malgré tout, présente l’immense mérite de se pencher sur le(s) public(s) de l’art contemporain, les adversaires résolus de l’art contemporain se retrouveront, quant à eux, dans la thèse développée par le livre  de Jean Louis Harouel : ”Art contemporain : la grande falsification”

- Un article de “L’humanité” sur “Le flop de la collection Pinault à Venise” à lire Ici

We can’t decide if this is serious or funny.

L’IESR annonce son programme de cours du soir pour le 1° semestre 2009 (de 18 h 30 à 20 h): la Chine des Han (21 et 28 septembre, 5 octobre); l’Inde des Guptas (6, 13 et 20 octobre 2009 ); l’islam: doctrines, lieux et pratique (2 et 9 décembre 2009).

I’ve been evangelising for so long to clients about the benefits of using LinkedIn and Twitter for business that one of them asked me to present a tutorial on the subject at his quarterly team meeting last week. Judging by the audience reaction it was very well received so I’m sharing my notes on it here and may win a few more converts to the Social Media cause.

LinkedIn 

Uses – recruitment, credentials check, source of useful advice, get access/intro, find target customers, build awareness, promote events. Results are measurable and trackable. 

Complete your profile – aim for 100%, include a picture 

Summary and experience – include prior jobs – this gives searchability, displays your roles and talent 

Recommendations – ask people to recommend you, but not too many or it’s not believable 

Public profile – change it from a number to your name – e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/in/christinegupta

 Websites listed – in EDIT choose ‘other’ and enter description or title of your blog or website

Status – update it regularly and it will elicit direct responses to what you say you’re working on

Groups – join a few to give more of an idea of who you are, your business focus. This can add credibility – terrific mining source for new customers, partners, employees, beta testers.

Questions and Answers – Qs can yield good results e.g. finding Amiando online ticketing saved a client £1100, also good for general marketing advice. Answers can help build your profile and don’t forget to rate other people’s.

Paid account – gives you 15 introductions a month, 3 in-mails (these are like getting a courier delivery – you’re more likely to open them), OpenLink service, get featured in searches

Apps can be added to profiles to promote events, offers, news, services, products – events, buzz, Slideshare

Company profile – use it as a shop window, area of influence

Twitter – useful links

100 Twitter tools

5 top Twitter presentations

How to Twitter like a pro

Uses – promote events/news e.g. new web site or feature, attract web traffic, find useful contacts, complain

Twitter clients let you better exploit/organise Twitter your way – TweetDeck, Twhirl, Tweetie for iPhone

Profile – make sure you include good info, link to blog, customise it with background photo

Retweet -  use RT to spread messages wider and always thank anyone who retweets one of your messages 

Links – shorten them via www.tiny.cc and provide a description so that people know what they’re linking to 

Tweet Burner – use it to see how many people follow your links

Use # tags – reach new followers in certain areas by inserting # in front of terms e.g. #cloud computing. That way your message shows up in their Twitter alerts.

Search – use it to find new people to follow or if there’s a interest in a particular topic that you should be watching out for

Visakhadatta is the author of the play (drama) MudraRakshasa. His father was Bhaskaradatta and his grandfather was Vateswara Datta. They were administrators.

• The hero of the play is without question Chandragupta Maurya and Chanakya is his advisor.
• The ruler in the benedictory verse, under whom Visakhadatta became famous,  saved India from the barbaric tyranny of the Mlecchas (foreigners). This king was called Chandragupta, Avantivarma, Dantivarma and Rantivarma. (The ruler, may have been the patron of the play.) Some scholars like to think that Avantivarma refers to the king of Kasmira or the king of Kanauj but with the name of Avantivarma.
• Some scholars identify this Chandragupta, king of Avanti with Chandragupta Gupta,  the king of Avanti (Ujjain). Which Mlecchas was Visakhadatta talking about? The greeks of 4th century BC or the Huns of a later period (6th century AD?). If Sandrokottus is identified with Chandragupta Gupta as many modern scholars suggest, then we have no problem in identifying the mlecchas in the benedictory verse as greeks.

Authorship and Copyright Notice: All Rights Reserved : Satya Sarada Kandula

Hi people , this post is all about a project which I started roughly a month ago by the name of “QFlicks”. It was named so because the graphics library I chose to use is the popular Ot and the  application is a movie collection cataloger which scans the disk for media files and gets film informations (duration, plot, cover ,rating ,poster cover , casts  etc) from the popular Amazon’s http://imdb.com or the Internet Movie Database . It also allows the user to filter his possessions based on movie titles,genre,ratings  , seen or unseen etc.

The later versions of the software will witness subtitle downloader extention and many more.

Here are the basic features which I plan to inmplement in version 1.0

• Scanning user-chosen directories to find media files (films in a first time)

Status : Done

How : Used a recursive OS walk algorithm to extract movies from all folders , sub-folders , sub-sub folders etc.

• Extracting film titles from file names (tough one if files are not properly named)

Status: Done

How: Using Neural Network algorithms and and basic Regular Expression.

• Create a list of these names in a database get films information (duration, plot, poster cover , rating , casts etc) from imdb

Status : Done

How: Used a library named IMDBPy as imdb.com does not provide and API (Another example of Amazon’s miserness). The database used is MySQL which experienced developers feel is a wrong choice for desktop.

• display films list and information of the selected one

Status: Done

• basic settings handling

Status: More or less done until someone comes out with bugs

• Filtering based on genre , title ,rating seen or unseen etc.

Status: Not Done

To Do: Learn multiple substring search in SQL ( SQL sucks , I hate it)

• Clean and simple gui

Status : The Gui is simple but not clean and hangs as I have not implemented the Multi-threading

To Do : Learn Multi-threading and make the network call fuctions run in separate threads in the background and also need to implement customized Progress Bars for UI

Plugins (towards upper versions):

• subtitle downloader
• playlist manager
• automatic new files inclusion (directory survey)
• music album and video series handling

Tools Used:

• Python as the Programming Language
• Qt as Graphics Library
• QtDesigner for the Gui
• SVN as versioning program
• MySQL as database software
• IMDBPy as the library
• GPLv3 licence

Una grande banca dati online dove basta collegarsi per consultare le informazioni relative a tutti gli impianti di produzione di energia del mondo, le emissioni, le reti di trasmissione, le risorse e, infine, il modo in cui tale energia viene utilizzata. Tutto questo è GEO, l’Osservatorio Globale dell’Energia, un progetto ideato da Rajan Gupta, ricercatore dei Laboratori di Los Alamos (Usa).
Ispirandosi a Wikipedia, lo studioso americano, sostenuto da una squadra di studenti, ha creato con GEO una piattaforma per condividere e analizzare le informazioni che verranno inserite dagli utenti stessi. “È fondamentale che un database concepito in questo modo abbia dati assolutamente esatti – ha spiegato Gupta – per questo ci siamo ispirati ai meccanismi utilizzati dalle enciclopedie libere, come Wikipedia e il peer-rewiew delle riviste scientifiche. Si tratta di un progetto molto ambizioso che punta a creare un enorme contenitore di informazioni circa lo stato effettivo, qualitativo e quantitativo della produzione energetica mondiale”.
Il dibattito sull’apporto delle attività umane nei cambiamenti climatici in atto sul nostro pianeta ha mostrato l’esigenza di avere dati corretti e imparziali sulle emissioni inquinanti che produciamo. La necessità della creazione di un database libero nasce anche dalla difficoltà di reperimento di queste informazioni, spesso frammentate, confusionarie, se non inaccessibili.
I ricercatori di Los Alamos stimano di poter avere entro agosto i dati relativi al 50 per cento dei maggiori impianti di produzione energetica. “Gran parte dei dati raccolti in GEO – ha continuato Gupta – arriva dalle organizzazioni responsabili del monitoraggio del sistema energetico nazionali oppure dalle compagnie elettriche. Il prossimo passo sarà quello di verificare se il nostro modello Wiki saprà dimostrare l’inconsistenza dei dati e correggere gli errori”.
L’obiettivo finale del progetto è quello di contribuire a rendere trasparente il sistema energetico mondiale, proponendosi come strumento per guidare la transizione verso un razionale ed efficiente uso dell’energia. La continua richiesta di maggiori risorse energetiche, che si accordi allo stesso tempo al problema della sostenibilità ambientale e dei cambiamenti climatici, rende necessario e urgente lo sviluppo di un nuovo sistema energetico. Con un incremento così elevato della popolazione mondiale gli scenari geopolitici stanno rapidamente cambiando ed entro la metà del secolo – ha osservato Gupta – raggiungeremo la cifra di 10 miliardi: “L’aumento della popolazione corrisponderà anche ad un aumento degli standard di vita cosicché sempre più persone chiederanno un maggiore accesso alle risorse e, quindi, all’energia”.
Per poter rispondere alle sfide poste da questi scenari, è necessario comprendere la situazione attuale nella sua interezza. Secondo il ricercatore americano, solo attraverso l’analisi di dati imparziali e verificati sarà possibile determinare con precisione l’effettiva impronta ecologica delle attività umane e le emissioni inquinanti, e poter rispondere così alle sfide imposte dai cambiamenti climatici.
“Confido nel fatto che GEO diventi un punto di riferimento per scienziati e giornalisti che vogliano fare corretta informazione – ha concluso Gupta – non abbiamo intenzione di porci come antagonisti delle compagnie energetiche,aspiriamo bensì a fornire un ulteriore strumento alla discussione scientifica per approdare a un’energia economica e pulita per tutti”.
Il progetto GEO, Global Energy Observatory, è consultabile all’indirizzo http://openmodel.newmexicoconsortium.org

By Angela Gupta, University of Minnesota Extension

Are you a Woodland Advisor Program participant, graduate, or volunteer? If so you might be interested in the Woodland Advisor 2008 Annual report (PDF).

The Woodland Advisor Program is a partnership between the University of Minnesota Extension, Minnesota Forestry Association, Minnesota DNR, and many local partners.  Over 75 local landowner workshops were held through this program in 2008.

In this report you’ll see how folks heard about Woodland Advisor classes; how many attended; the impact Woodland Advisor volunteers make; and see who graduated and who attended the Woodland Leadership Institute.

A special thanks to everyone that filled-out a session-end evaluation and returned their Working & Volunteering Logs. This report couldn’t be done without your help and participation!

Download: Woodland Advisor 2008 Annual report (PDF).

Airport travel. There is nothing like it, in terms of people watching, and awkward situations, and having endless time to sit and think and watch CNN in your own sweat. (I have a notebook filled with musing and “serial killer poetry” from all the time I spent on planes when I studied abroad my junior year.)  Most of the time I’m worried about becoming my mother, but when I catch myself wandering around an airport muttering “I hate people” under my breath after the 67^th person has cut me off with their roll-ey suitcase, I am faintly certain I am becoming my father too.

I started this most recent AWESOME AND THRILLING airport trip at the Denver International Airport. My boyfriend dropped me off there, in what was our official good-bye as he finally makes his way to L.A. We probably won’t see each other for eight weeks. Though this sucks, we had already had an “emotional” good-bye when he left Boston. (At that point, I had yet to determine that I was going to swindle my Dad’s Delta miles from him and head out to Kansas for one last hurrah in Middle America.) So this time he kinda just dropped me off, and I was running a tad late, and, I mean, obviously I cried, (duh it’s one of my favorite hobbies), but it was for only like, a minute and I’m still quite upset over MJ so that was part of it too. Then I ran inside and began thinking about what tabloid to buy, otherwise known as “serenity now.”

(Some interesting observations about the Denver International Airport: they have fake bird chirping noises playing throughout the facilities, and their women’s bathrooms double as tornado safety zones. Yay! Oh, and yes of course I spent most of my trip out there saying “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore” to myself, especially whenever we passed the state line going to and fro Kansas City. It was loads of fun. Kansas City on the other hand….not so much.)

On the flight to Atlanta I felt extremely ill. I was sitting next to two teenagers, who were either dating or brother and sister or perhaps both, and this feeling of swiney-ness was compounded by the fact that I was in the window seat, and the duo kept leaning over me to look out the window the entire flight. Pretty sure it was their first time in a plane. At one point, I felt so bloated that I undid my belt and the button of my jeans (whatever you do it sometimes too) and then like an hour later realized my Bruce t-shirt had ridden up and I was slumped over in my seat like an obese meth addict. So, that was fun, and I was sweating violently to boot.

I refused to believe that the feelings of imminent vomiting were brought on by my anxiety at my boyfriend moving 3,000 miles away from me, oh, yeah, and also that small fact that I’m about to start acting school and I majored in Political Science and like AH WHAT IS GOING ON. But still, feeling puke-ish because of “emotional reasons” is so lame and I am not lame. Plus, there are a few reasons to back up my belief that I was actually ill: 1) I felt sick throughout the entire time I was in Boulder, which I think had something to do with the altitude, and much of the time I was there I wanted to pass out and I kept only finishing 35% of my drinks and am convinced I’m turning into my mother 2) My flight came equipped with the TV thing-y in front of me, and no one can be in a bad mood when they can watch CNN’s coverage of MJ’s death and/or listen to Taylor Swift and lastly, 3) My boyfriend’s old apartment in Boulder (where we stayed with his best college buddie) was so filthy that I think I contracted small pox while in the shower.

(Having graduated a year ago, I had forgotten how men live while they are in college. Though I’m no clean freak myself, it’s truly a thing to behold. Debris and pieces of leaves and mold everywhere, rogue hairs in the sink and shower, curled up magazines, dishes that look decades old, resting your bare arms and head on couches that were found in the dump….it’s all so sexy, isn’t it?)

Back to Atlanta. So I land, feeling ill, and decide that maybe eating is a good idea. Could be disastrous, but you never know. I eat a Turkey sub at some place called “Wall Street Deli.” I finish The Steve Martin autobiography my boyfriend let me snag from his apartment. (It’s fabulous. I kept fantasizing that Steve was going to be in the ATL airport at the same time as me, flying coach to Boston, and we would lock eyes as I was laughing at one of his passages about doing stand-up in Florida in his twenties and become best friends. Shockingly, this did not occur.) At one point, a woman my age came over in horribly broken English, and asked me to help her call home to Honduras on one of those International pay phones. I helped her, and five minutes later felt very into touch with Jeanine, who toads would have made the call AND begin chatting up the lady in Spanish.

Then I realized that though my ticket was confirmed, I had no seat assigned. When I went to get my seat, the ticket man asked me if I was over fifteen. Hmmm.

Then we all got on the plane. I got to my seat, 40F, a window, and saw that it was being taken up by a lovely Asian woman. “Excuse me, miss,” I said to her from the aisle, holding out my ticket. “You’re actually in my seat.” (Also, do you know my brother?) The man next to her stood up and, in broken English (a theme!), said, “We are couple, do you mind sit in my seat?” He showed me his ticket, 39F. Of course, I said. 39, 40? Tomato, Tahmato! “Oh, you are the nicest persons,” he said, smiling. That made me feel good. I am the nicest of persons!

The feeling soon disappated. About two minutes later the captain came on the loudspeaker. “I have some bad news folks,” he drawled. “This plane will not be leaving the airport for at least another three-and-a-half hours. It’s gotten really bad up in Boston. You’re going to have to de-plane.” A collective groan went up in the plane. (At the very least, I felt part of a community! I love airplanes for that!)

So with the departure time changed until 10:15, I meandered back into the gate area. I plopped down (aka threw my laptop on the ground), gave a good hearty sigh, and turned my attention to CNN, where Sanjay Gupta was talking to MJ’s nurse about drugs or Peter Pan or something.

I was distracted, and mildly intrigued. A heavy woman walked by me on her cellphone, plugged it into an outlet in the wall to charge and continued squawking, “Yeah, so they DE-PLANED us, and you know we might not even get to Boston tonight and…I KNOW! You should see all the people here with their eyes on the news, rubber-necking this train wreck, it’s so sick…..I KNOW!….enough already! Get a life right?? I KNOW, it’s pathetic!”

Clearly, she stank. I gave her the Mendelson stink-eye, and continued to watch Wolf Blitzer’s take on MJ’s nose job.

The flight was delayed another hour, until 11:15. Though not hungry, I began to worry about being trapped in the airport all night and starving to death and having to eat the fat woman on the phone making fun of me for watching CNN. (A normal fear, correct?) Plus, I still felt queasy. Maybe, just maybe, that sub hadn’t been enough. A store-front called “Krystal Hamburger” beckoned to me with red lights.

I approached. A young, sassy check-out girl with long bright green nails smiled at me. Soon, I was ordering a strawberry slushie and a slider. Why? I’m still not sure. I was bored. And lonely. Gross fast food helps. My slider came in a box with a woman’s face on it, and her “story.” Her name was Anne, she was from Tennessee, and she was in the Krystal Hall of Fame, because, I quote, “I don’t let anything stop my cravings! So when I passed a Krystal on the way to the hospital to give birth, I knew my first-born son would have to wait. I had to get my corn pups!”

Corn pups over birth, Anne? Yikes.

I ate the food, started to watch a movie on my laptop, and felt vaguely like my life was going to end in the Atlanta International airport. It was all quite peaceful. But soon we were back on the plane. I got to 39F. Before, I had not met my seat mate. Now I did. She was about four foot eleven, and looked to be about 102. Lady spoke no English, and was carrying a box of El Poco Loco that was about the size of her upper body. Hmmm. A flight attendent with a Boston accent came on the loudspeaker, which for some reason thrilled me. She informed us that because we’d been so patient and good-spirited with the delay, Delta was going to get all craaaaazy and let us watch Seventeen Again, and give out free headsets. I KNOW, RIGHT??? I was pumped. I got my headseat; it didn’t work. I pouted at Zac’s head on the big screen for a few moments, thought about how I can become Leslie Mann, then shrugged, and got out my laptop. As I watched Wall-E, and inhaled the smell of fried chicken, my little El Salvadorian granny friend leaned over, smiling at me, and the cartoon, whispering “Buenos noches” over and over again.

Is it weird that this movie made me miss my boyfriend? He sort of looks like Wall-E….

(Soon after I got home, I talked to my friend Seth, who was stuck in LAX for 15 hours after his flight was cancelled. Like me, he’d boarded, but then had been told to “deplane as fast as possible” after the pilots smelled gasoline coming out the air-conditioning vents. I think his airport story may win….Oh, well.)

Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action
Eds. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam
Introduction
“Why do Networks Matter? Rationalist and Structuralist Interpretations”
Roger V. Gould.
“Cross-talk in Movements: Re conceiving the Culture-Network Link”
Ann Mische
“Beyond Structural Analysis: Toward a More Dynamic Understanding of Social Movements”
Doug McAdam
“Networks and Social Movements: A Research Programme”
Mario Diani

“A Theory of Structure, Duality, Agency, and Transformation”
William H. Sewell, Jr.

A Thousand Plateaus
“1. Introduction: Rhizome”
Gilles Deleuze
Felix Guatari

Network: Theorizing Knowledge Work in Telecommunications
Clay Spinuzzi

The Exploit: A Theory of Networks
Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker

Linked
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart
Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. O’Day

“A Simple Model of Global Cascades on Random Networks”
Duncan J. Watts

“A Theory of Relational Signals in Online Groups”
Uwe Matzat

“Community and Social Interaction in the Wireless City: Wi-Fi Use in Public and Semi-Public Spaces”
Keith Hampton and Neeti Gupta

“CommunityNetSimulator”
Jun Zhang, Mark S. Ackerman, and Lada Adamic

“Cooperation in Evolving Networks”
Nobuyuki Hanaki, Alexander Peterhansl, Peter S. Dodds, Duncan J. Watts

“Information Exchange and the Robustness of Organizational Networks”
Peter S. Dodds, Duncan J. Watts, and Charles F. Sabel

“Localizing the Internet”
John Postill

“Mail Art: Networking Without Technology”
Seeta Pena Gangadharan

“Mapping the Blogosphere”
Stephen D. Reese, Lou Rutigliano, Kideuk Hyun, and Jaekwan Jeong

“Myth and the Zapatista Movement: Exploring a Network Identity”
Adrienne Russell

“New Media, Networking, and Phatic Culture”
Vincent Miller

“Online Networks of Student Protest: The Case of the Living Wage Program”
J. Patrick Biddix and Han Woo Park

“Structural Holes are Good Ideas”
Ronald S. Burt

“The Contingent Value of Social Capital”
Ronald S. Burt

“The New Science of Networks”
Duncan J. Watts

“The Social Capital of Opinion Leaders”
Ronald S. Burt

“The Very Small World Well-Connected”
Xiolan Shi, Matthew Bonner, Lada Acamic, and Anna C. Gilbert

“The Virtual Geography of Social Networks”
Zizi Papacharissi

No editing done.

Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action
Eds. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam
Introduction
At the end of the first paragraph Diani states “Social movements are in other words, complex and highly heterogeneous network structures” (1), which seems a direct tie-in with the work of Shirkey and Rheingold.

“The very expansion of network studies of social movements renders an assessment of the applicability and usefulness of the concept an urgent and useful enterprise. The first reason for doing so is that empirical evidence is not universally supportive to the thesis of a link between networks and collective action” (2).

The simple acknowledgement of a relationship between the social networks of some kind and the development of collective action (whether in the form of personal ties linking prospective participants to current activists, or of defense counter-culture networks affecting rates of mobilization in specific areas) is no longer sufficient. Instead, it is important to specify ‘how networks matter’, in relation to both individuals participation (e.g. What is their relative contribution vis-a-vis individual attributes such as education or profession, broader political opportunities, or emotional dynamics? What types of networks do affect what type of participation?) as well as in relation to interorganizational dynamics (e.g. what does the shape of interorganiztational links tell us about the main orientations of specific movements?). (2-3)

The above quote is a series of this book’s goals, along with this one: “the book also addresses–albeit more indirectly–the question of ‘to whom (in the social science research community) should (social movement) networks matter’. We claim that they should matter to a much broader community than those identifying themselves as social movement researchers” (2-3).

The concept of network has become popular in the social sciences since it allows for flexibility; it allows for researchers to deal with the phenomena of change which are “difficult to contain within the boundaries of formal bureaucracies or nation states, or at the other pole, the individual actor” (4).

The search for social mechanisms (like networks) that help explain individual actors actions has moved the term “social movement” to the “set of phenomena” (4) in which actions occur that might be of interest to social scientist. The phrase has become denotative and sterilized.

Gradually, a different version of network analysis has also emerged, which does not emphasize empiricism and concreteness, and highlights instead the inextricable link between social networks and culture. Following Harrison White’s seminal contributions, social ties have been treated as consisting of processess of meaning attribution…Here linkage exists only to the extent that a shared discourse enables two or more actors to recognize their interdependence and qualify its terms: ‘a social network is a network of meanings’ [White 67]” (5).

Diani recommends using network analysis/network perspective as a way to “illuminate different dynamics, which are essential to our empirical understanding of [social] movements” (6). There is no unitary theory of how networks and movements work together, and according to Diani, most of the contributors to this specific book feel there isnt a need for one. This allows for the discussion of a wide variety of groups looking for social transformation, and allows scholars to apply a network perspective to any and all groups of individuals banning together for a common cause.

The section entitled “Networks of Individuals” (7) directly references Rheingold (8) and talks about media counts as a social network link. There are other writer-scholars listed who work in this subfield in the same line as Rheingold.

On page eight the concept of “strong” and “weak” ties comes up; the debate is whether the strength of the ties between individuals in an individual’s network should matter. Strong ties are expected to be important for high risk behaviors, while weak ties are hypothesized as important since they may “facilitate the contacts between a movement organization and a constituency with more moderate or at least diversified orientations, and/or the diffusion or the spread of a movement campaign” (8). This would seem to be the optimal tie for smart mobs.

Individual networks often form the ways that recruitment occurs (9).

Movements seem indeed to consist of multiple instances of collaboration on campaigns of different intensity and scope, with both the reoccurring presence of some actors and the more occasional presence of others…It is actually very difficult to think of a movement consisting of one organization, or at least as having one organization in a totally dominant position. When this happens, as in the instance of the …National Socialist party in Germany it is more appropriate to drop the term ‘movement’ altogether and concentrate instead on the concept of political organization. (10, 9)

Networks facilitate the movement of resources and the creation goals along with the sharing of information, but networks do not necessarily create mutual recognition nor do they promote the meaning of an incident and it importance equally to all members of the network. Shared identity is the key difference between a movement network and a coalition network. (10)

Think of networks as the old node network node representations. Networks do not equate to movements. Networks are the tracing of the architecture of connections that can form between individuals; between individuals and groups; between groups and organizations; between organizations and international organizations; or between international organizations and political parties (or any combination of a with b).

Network of Collectivises and Events on page 12 may be a point of interest (and therefore all the writes/scholars mentioned therein). Collectives and events are talked about in the idea of shared identity–the creation of a shared identity and solidarity through time together. How does this work with smart mobs? What if there is no real shared identity except the identity of momentary ally for a specific day and time? Are all smart mobs anonymous, or does an identity develop in the case of the Belarusian smart mobs?

Pg 15–protest cycles (Oliver and Myers); changes in patterns of relationships (Tilly and Wood).
pg 16–Seciton with Gould in brackets would be good to investigate.
Pg 17– Section with McAdam underlined sounds interesting.

Explorations of the networks-mobilization link in social movements have prompted broader reflections on the relationship between structure and agency and relational approaches to social theory.

Embrayer, M. (1997). ‘A manifesto for a relational sociology’, American Journal of Sociology, 103: 281-317.

–and Goodwin, J. (1994). ‘Network analysis, culture, and the problem of agency’, American Journal of Sociology, 99: 1411-54.

–and Mische, A. (1998). ‘What is agency?’, American Journal of Sociology, 103: 962-1023.

– and Sheller M. (1999). ‘Publics in history’, Theory and Society, 28: 145-97.

The intersection of individuals, organizations, and protest events over time has also been explored.

Bearman, P. and Everett, K.D. (1993). ‘The structure of social protest 1961-83′, Social Networks, 15: 171-200.

Mische, A. (1998). Projecting Democracy: Contexts and Dynamics of Youth Activism in the Brazilian Impeachment Movement, Doctoral dissertation, New School for Social Research.

– and Pattison, P. (2000). ‘Composing a civic arena: Publics, projects, and social settings’, Poetics, 27: 163-94.

Franzosi, R. (1999). ‘The return of the actor. Interaction networks among social actors during periods of high mobilization (Italy, 1919-22)’, Mobilization, 4: 131-49.

Osa, M. (2001). ‘Mobilizing structures and cycles of protest: Post Stalinsit contention in Poland, 1954-9′, Mobilization, 6: 211-31.

A strong interest in the network dimension of political action at large.

Prakash, S. and Selle, P. eds. (2003). Investigating Social Capital. New Delhi: Sage.

Action theory

Bordieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Giddens, A. (1984). A Contemporary Critique of Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sewell, W. J. Jr. (1992). ‘A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation’, American Journal of Sociology, 98: 1-29.

White, H. (1992). Identity and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tilly, C. (1994). ‘Social movements as historially specific clusters of political performances’, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 38: 1-30.

Diani, M. (2002). ‘Network analysis’, in B. Klandermans and S. Staggenborg (eds). Methods in Social Movement Research. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Norris, P. (2002). Democratic Phoenix. New York: Cambridge University Press. (ch 10)

The application of a network perspective could generate important insights on the process whereby events become a movement, through meaning attribution and recognition of commonalities, that is, through processes of identity construction.

Melucci, A. (1996). Challenging Codes. New York: Cambridge University Press

McAdam, D, Tarrow, S. and Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of Contention. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tilly, C. (2002). Stories, Identities, and Political Change. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

“Why do Networks Matter? Rationalist and Structuralist Interpretations”
Roger V. Gould.

Gould’s piece within this anthology is a way to meld the rationalist (def on 240) game theory models (lots of equtaions and prisoner dilemna situations) with the structuralist (def on 238) social construction theories to examine recruitment within activist causes. Using the empirically observed and oft documented phenomenon of recruitment through strong friendship ties, Gould demonstrates how rationalist scenarios fail to describe how this occurs; Gould proves his claim that in the prisoner’s dilemna only weakly tied acquaintances should be recruitment fodder since the only thing the recruiter has to offer is a stronger bond, while in the converse, strong tie friends can only suffer the severing of friendship ties. Gould returns to the empirically observed and documented incidents of recruitment in social activist movements to show how this theory fails to describe experiential reality, and then combines the structuralist ideas of friendship, the possibility of new friends within the new organization, and the social narratives of activism as a higher, more intense bond of camaraderie to explain how already anchored, strong, and long term friendships become the best options for recruitment to a social cause. To back all of this, and to ensure an amount of cachet among sociologists, Gould describes these relationships with long, intense equations that can be found throughout the article. Each appears within the body of text to symbolically represent his concepts and to allow for a RAD method which will help other scholars make predictions about social activist networks they (other scholars) are studying. This ability to predict is the exigency for this chapter. Gould is attempting to produce a theory that allows for the creation of RAD scholarship; he wants something more than two competing theories which use different methods but both claim success when applied to events after the fact.

How does the use of technology to form flash/smart mobs complicate the ideas of recruitment? No one has to be a friend, they need only to be loosely associated through a website, listserv, advertised cause, or virtual “word of mouth.”

“Cross-talk in Movements: Re conceiving the Culture-Network Link”
Ann Mische

This seems a bit like socio-linguistics and concepts of power between interlocutors, relationships, and framing of events through the creation of experiential reality via talk (this is based on my one class during my Master’s program–apologies if this is way off base). Her contribution is that talk delimits the network, that is, defines the parameters for what makes network A different from network B with speaker X inhabiting both.

Mische continues on, explaining that once the networks are defined through talk, the individuals that make up the networks use talk and different discourse strategies to position themselves within these networks (covered on pages 269-273). Mische, like Gould, is attempting to meld structural and rational. Misch advocates using the more rational approach to map out the network relationships while using the discourse analysis to understand what rhetorical strategies allow for success as interlocutors navigate the various discursive/political/social movement networks they belong to. Mische differs from Gould in that she does not stop with recruitment, but looks at alliances and solidarity building among individuals from different groups interacting with one another as representatives of another group (and therefore social network). Another difference: no equations.

“Beyond Structural Analysis: Toward a More Dynamic Understanding of Social Movements”
Doug McAdam

McAdam uses the space of this essay to explain the history behind the social turn in social movement studies, and through this, explain why the turn has been beneficial to the field. The impetus behind this, according to McAdam, is to counter the backlash of scholars who feel the structural bias (social construction) has become too common.

Interesting fact: social movements against the status quo were considered the provenance of abnormal psychology; the US was–according to the dominant political science models–a pluralist nation where power was shared equally (281-282).

McAdam claims the social turn has provided much in the way of understanding how social movements actually work, and he feels that if more network researchers employed ethnography as their qualitative method (several use case study), then there would be a better example of what happens at the meso level of networks to create alliances across different networks (organizations) in different and disparate locales. In particular, McAdam wants to find empirical evidence of the mechanisms that exist which make this happen; he feels they exist on the meso level, and researchers are focused either on the micro level (the individual joining a network) or the macro level (event studies which allow for reverse engineering to describe how the movement worked, which is fine for hindsight but horrible for future predicitons). The mechanisms McAdam postulates exist for scale shift (when a movement, or cause, moves from a local setting and one network to another network which may be geographical distant) is listed on page 294; interestingly his stages he calls “attribution of similarity” and “emulation” read and work much like Burke’s identification and consubstantiality. It isn’t a one-for-one fit, but it seems close.

This chapter combines several of the concepts from the previous chapters of the book. What I find interesting is what McAdam terms “mechanisms” I would call “rhetorical moves.” It seems empirical evidence and not formal representation is what McAdam is after.

Structural analysis is not, at least in this chapter, the same as a cultural analysis. McAdam intimates the structural perspective is a view which takes into consideration a network’s use of the available structures and the resources those structures provide. While there is an element of what I’d call social construction, it isn’t on par with the connotations that is often associated with that term in bad humanities scholarship–saying something is socially constructed isn’t the badly cobbled together finale to an argument.

“Networks and Social Movements: A Research Programme”
Mario Diani

Diani closes the book advocating for a “radical way to reorganize the insights and inputs coming from the different chapters of this book” (318), which means using a network perspective of movements to place “the attention more squarely on the connectivity between events, both in terms of meaning attribution and in terms of chains of actors (connected by events) and events (connected by actors)” (305). These are the unspoken, but prevalent, assumptions Diani overtly challenges with this chapter:

1. that the study of social movements is tantamount to the study of the organizations active within them;
2. that network forms of organization are distinctive of (new) social movements focusing on issues of identity rather than political change; and
3. that social movements tend to coincide with the public challenges conducted against authorities and opponents on specific sets of issues. (317)

Diani explains these assumptions are pointless as they conflate many elements of social movements and lead to scholarly dead ends.  Instead, Diani claims a network perspective of social movements creates a research programme that has the basic following points:

1. recognition of the duality of network processes as a recondition to appropriate multilevel investigations;
2. attention to the network processes connecting events, activities, and ideas, and not only to those linking individuals or organizations;
3. recognition of the multiplicity of networks potentially linking different actors or events;
4. attention to the time dimension in network processes;
5. recognition of the value of current approaches to social movements in the investigation of homophily processes.  (318)

The above mentioned lists, along with the network illustrations–and their designations and explanations on pages 307-313–are the most important sections of this chapter.

“Social Networks Matter.  But How?”
Florence Passy

In this essay Passy answer her question by illustrating how social networks work in recruiting new members to organizations, and more importantly, how network factors shape the new recruits definition of the social/political issue at hand; the identification of the individual recruit with the organization; how the individual sees the organizational and individual effectiveness in dealing with the issue; the intensity of an individual recruit’s participation in the cause; and how the recruit sees themselves in relation to governmental agencies. Essentially, she presses for a phenomenological approach to researching networks and their effects on social movements, which also leads to her push for qualitative research methods (also, she recommends certain types of methods, discusses the roadblocks to using such methods, and then through the essay demonstrates how to satisfactorily circumvent said roadblocks). This approach, in turn, allows her to foreground social networks as all important since the demarcations of these networks provide the visible tracings of how social movements occur, and at the same time, these networks bridge the distance between rationalist and structuralist approaches to studying social movements.

Here are three network functions Passy finds central in social movements:

1. the social function–creates an initial disposition to participate; it frames issues in a specific way that allows potential participants to identify with certain political issues (24).
2. the structural-connection function–networks play a mediating role by connecting prospective participants to an opportunity for mobilization and enabling them to convert their political consciousness into action (24).  The function occurs before prospective participants join a social movement organization.
3. the decision-shaping function–the crucial nexus between individual decisions and social relations: the decision to join collective action is influenced by the action of other participants.  (25)

Network connections change potential participants perceptions of experiential reality and ready them for a role in collective action.  How do the above mentioned functions work in a flash mob situation?  Are social networking technologies part of the network, and do the qualities associated with technology prep participants for finite events?  Are flash mobs effective only as part of a larger strategy for a brick and mortar organization, or can they be used in a social movment without a central organization for lasting change (the Belarus example)?  This essay deals with individual networks, but what about the essay in this text that work on the inter organizational level? Are smart mobs more effective when coordinating the efforts of several groups like in the Battle for Seattle in ‘99?

“Networks in Opposition: Linking Organizations Through Activists in the Polish People’s Republic”
Maryjane Osa

Osa’s chapter comes out of the “Interorganizational Networks” section of the anthology. As such, Osa looks at the networks formed by various special interest, radical, and activist organizations that formed in Poland from the years 1965-1982. She divides this time period into three distinct networks and explains the positive and negatives of each interorganizational network formed in this time period. The key concept to take away from this chapter: The more embedded the organizations were within a social network, and the more complex the social network, the more likely a true protest cycle (protests on the same or related topic across all social strata) would form, and the more protected all the organizations (and their members) were from governmental reprisal.

An interesting proposition Osa makes at the end of the chapter: “the presence of marginal, radical groups (e.g. rebels or national separatists) can benefit mainstream opposition groups as long as the government sees the mainstream opposition as a less dangerous alternative than the radicals” (101).

Money quote:

The general finding of my study is that network development is related to the protest arena in the following way: protest peaks arise when the interorganizational structures in the opposition domain reach the highest degree of development, that their is most complex form. ‘Complexity’ is measured by the size of the domain, the number of cliques in the structure, the level of membership overlaps, and the number of brokers. This suggests that as the measures of network structural complexity increase, there will be a greater likelihood of sustained protest mobilization. (101)

“Networks, Diffusion, and Cycles of Collective Action”
Pamela E. Oliver and Daniel J. Myers

In this chapter Oliver and Myers are trying to create formal models of the empircal data they’ve gathered concerning moments of protest (it appears the cycles of protest is interchangeable with cycles of collective action).

“Social Movement Networks Virtual and Real”
Mario Diani

Diani defines social movements as networks since it:

identifies several dimensions of social movements that CMC [computer mediated communications] may be expected to shape. These include (a) the behaviour of specific movement actors, individuals or organizations; (b) the relations linking individual activists and organizations to each other (Diani 1995; della Porta and Diani 1999: chapter 5) (c) the feelings of mutual identification and solidarity which bond movement actors together and secure the persistence of movements even when specific campaigns are not taking place. (387)

and also makes clear how each movment has developed in regards to its immediate locality, culture, and public sphere. For the most part, the article is concerned with how CMC (coming into its own when this article was written–2000) affects these networks, and in what ways CMC is actually useful to a movement. Diani makes a distinction between social movement organizations (SMOs) using the criteria of what resources they mobilize; the first being professional resource mobilization (acquiring funds from passive members), the second being participatory resrouces (getting bodies to participate in demonstrations or volunteer time for business functions), and the third is transnational networks which mobilize for a broadly understood or generally socially acceptable causes and relying on a relatively small core of professionals to keep the movement going.

Diani is trying to decide if virtual communities where the masses can organize into specific, effecitve movements is possible. Diani concludes–using the terms of Virnoche and Marx–that it is possible, but the most effective CMC undergirded organizations are those who have face to face interactions in material reality and only use CMC as an extension of the community they’ve established in experiential reality. There’s three variables possible, and here’s their definitions:

Community networks: situations in which actors share the same geographical space regularly (e.g. members of an urban community) or
Virtual extensions: sitautions where actors intermittently share the same geographical space (e.g. employees of the same firm, students of the same school, or members of voluntary associations) or
Virtual communities: situations where actors never share the same geographical space (e.g. people sharing some broad world-views, interests, or concerns, but lacking opportunities for direct, face-to-face interaction). This is often characterized by potentially anonymous and purely mediated patterns of interaction. (392)

Diani’s final verdict is that virtual communiuties built on CMC are least radical in their platforms and goals; essentially it’s like the “Causes” app on Facebook where people support the broad goal of educating women in Africa, or finding a cure for cancer. It isn’t that these things aren’t important, but they aren’t causes that need the support of a SMO to make it happen, ie, who would argue against finding a cure for cancer? With no need for an advocate, these groups can function as a virtual community where there is no physical contact nor need for trust. At best, CMC strengthen ties within a network of people forming an SMO and who have at least intermittment physical contact.

“A Theory of Structure, Duality, Agency, and Transformation”
William H. Sewell, Jr.

In this article Sewell sets out to redefine the term “structure”, which is used heavily in sociology and yet difficult to define, and when it is defined, is often given the connotation of determinism. In Sewell’s definition, structures are made of both cultural schemas embedded within actors and “sets of resources that empower and constrain social action and tend to be reproduced by that action” (27). The point of this defintion is to demonstrate that the social status quo is promoted by the structures within a society, but at the same time those structures can be manipulated by actors to promote social change. This reconfiguring of cultural schemas (commonplaces, ultimate terms) and resources by an actor is what Sewell claims constitutes agency, and therefore, means that structure(s) in a given society do promote the status quo and can also be utilized to create societal change. Sewell explains:

Agents are empowered by structures, both by the knowledge of cultural schemas that enables them to mobilize resources and by the access to resources that enables them to enact schemas. This differs from ordinary sociological usage of the term because it insists that structure is a profoundly cultural phenomenon and from ordinary anthropological usage because it insists that structure always derives from the character and distribution of resources in the everyday world. Structure is dynamic, not static; it is the continually evolving outcome and matrix of a process of social interaction. Even the more or less perfect reproduction of structures is a profoundly temporal process that requires resourceful and innovative human conduct. But the same resourceful agency that sustains the reproduction of structures also makes possible their transformation-by means of transpositions of schemas and remobilizations of resources that make the new structures recognizable as transformations of the old. Structures, I suggest, are not reified categories we can invoke to explain the inevitable shape of social life. (27)

In this way agency is a direct outcome of structure. Sewell pulls the mental gymnastics needed to return agency to actors in a discipline heavily influenced by French structuralism and Marxist readings of empirical data.

If “network(s)” is substituted for “structure(s)” in Sewell’s article, does it connect with Gunkel’s “Hacking Cyberspace“? Are collective actions and social movements easier to to conceptualize as the blasphemer who “comprises a calculated response that understands, acknowledges, and continually works within an established system. Like a parasite, the blasphemer is not an alien proceeding from and working on the outside. The blasphemer is an insider, who not only understands the intricacies of the system but does so to such an extent that she or he is capable of fixating on its necessary but problematic lacunae, exhibiting and employing them in such a way that disrupts the system to which the blasphemer initially and must continually belong. Although these operations can be reduced to and written off as mere adolescent pranks, they comprise more often than not a form of serious play” (801)?

Money quote:

I do see agency as profoundly social or collective. The transpositions of schemas and remobilizations of resources that constitute agency are always acts of communication with others. Agency entails an ability to coordinate one’s actions with others and against others, to form collective projects, to persuade, to coerce, and to monitor the simultaneous effects of one’s own and others’ activities. Moreover, the extent of the agency exercised by individual persons depends profoundly on their positions in collective organizations. (21)

A Thousand Plateaus
“1. Introduction: Rhizome”
Gilles Deleuze
Felix Guatari

Here’s the definiton of a rhizome and here’s how D&G introduce it:

A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Plants with roots or radicles may be rhizomorphic in other respects altogether: the question is whether plant life in its specificity is not entirely rhizomatic. Even some animals are, in their pack form. Rats are rhizomes. (6)

From here, D&G run with this concept and speak out against organizational structures (physical or conceptual) that resemble trees–trees mean hierarchy; it means either/or thinking; trees mean dichotomies; trees means a worldview incompatiable with experiential reality. Rhizomes promote the concept of multiplicity which is the exact opposite of trees. Rhizomes match reality in complexity and ephermal quality, and as a mental schema–unlike trees–allow actors to “ceaselessly [establish]
connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles…The tree is filiation, but the
rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance” (7, 25).

What’s interesting is that rhizomes, according to D&G, have no long term memory. They work in the here and now, in the middle of the moment, as part of a plateau within an episode of a milieu. This is the most optimistic version of flash/smart mobs, but does this work when the rest of society is arborescent?

Network: Theorizing Knowledge Work in Telecommunications
Clay Spinuzzi
Chapter 1: Networks, Generes, and Four Little Disruptions

Spinuzzi shares what questions drove him to write this book in the first few pages of this book: “How on earth does this compnay function when its right hand often doesn’t know what its left hand is doing? How do such knowledge work organizations function and thrive, and how can we develop a better theoretical and empirical account of this sort of work?” (2). To demonstrate how this happens, Spinuzzi goes over four disruptions that are pretty common within the network, and as the chapter goes on, explains the two methods he’ll use to trace out these types of disruptions, actor-network theory and activity theory. Both are at times seen as antithetical to the other, as Spinuzzi explains “they…have sharp disagreements, and in airing those disagreements, and in those disagreements we can productively examine many of our assumptions about work organization and structure” (4). Utilizing the shared commonalities of networks and genre, Spinuzzi figures he can answers his questions.

Important definitions:

Network: An assemblage that makes up Telecorp (Spinuzzi’s object of study): Internet Help Desk workers, computers, fibers, sales reps, telephones, software, folders, Credit and Colletions workers, computers, fibers, sales reps, software, vice-presidents, routines, credit reports, wires, hallway conversations, servers, folders, cubicles, and so on…what interests me is not the network so much as the net work: the ways in which the assemblage is enacted, maintained, extneded, and transformed; the ways in which knowledge work is strategically and tactically performed in a heavily networked organization. (16)

Genres: typified rhetorical responses to recurring situations–do much of the enacting that holds a network together. They do this work not by virtue of being simply text types or forms but because the are tools-in-use. That is, in this analysis, I stress genre as a behavioral descriptor rather than a formal one…As relatively stable ways of producing and interpreting texts, genres impart some measure of stability to the networks in which they circulate. But at the same time, genres develop, hybrdizie, interconnet, intermediate, and proliferate to support developments in those networks, providing the flexibility that networks need if thet are to extend further and enroll other allies or activities. Genres are made up of texts. The word text comes from the root word textre, to weave together, and I suggest that’s exactly what texts do: weave together these networks. (17)

Discussion of actor-network theory versus activity theory 5-8.
Bakhtin and social language 26.

The main difference between activity theory and actor-network theory is that activity theory emphasizes and traces out the social-cultural-historical network of an organization, while actor-network theory stresses and traces out the political-rhetorical network of an organization. Also, activity theory is more structured, more rigid in its conceptualiztion of social networks; activity theory is more inclined to describe social networks as rhisomes, fluids, ecosystems with no hierarchical top or bottom. For Spinuzzi’s work with Telecorp (a fictious name by the way) cherry picking from each theory does not destroy his anlaysis since Telecorp “built a single sociotechnical network, for though there is an abstract difference between these two sorts of network, there is no practical difference” (28); and while he does not promise “a ‘just right’ solution” he does use genres “as a way to frame the stability [activity theory]/instability [actor-network theory] dialogue more productively. Genre supplies an account of stablity-with-flexibility that is more fleshed out than fluids, modes of coordination, and regimes and at the same time leverages the notion of inscription that is so important to actor-network theory” (23).

Text of note used by Spinuzzi: The Body Multiple by Annemarie Mol. Mol argues that “the things we take as settled, scientifically quantifiable, and observable phenomena are not really just objects-in-the-world; rather they always multiply. Reality, she says, multiples when we focus on artifacts or practices” (14). Spinuzzi explains this by describing Mol’s example of atherosclerosis (14).

Chapter Two: What is a Network?
Spinuzzi answers this question with the example of a dog who dies during a Telecorp service call and an explanation of who within Telecorp is responsible for this death by examining how Telecorp works from an activity theory and actor-network theory perspective.

Using this approach, Spinuzzi demonstrates how the Telecorp is a woven network, one that has a cultural-historical development cycle (activity theory–all of its pertinent background and foci can be found on pages 42-46) and similtaneously a spliced network–one where an existing network has different nodes jacked in as more interested parties find the existing network beneficial (actor-network theory–all of its historical and theoretical info can be found on pages 39-42). Activity theory emphasizes individual agency and how that agency develops over time; actor-network theory focuses on all pieces (human and non-human) that became actants and join a network for their political and social advantage (this also means rhetoric is important as these actants persuade one another to form or break alliances with other actants).

For Spinuzzi both abstract, theoretical concepts can be seen working at Telecorp; the thick, sticky connections that bind all of the nodes and act as the mediatory ground for all nodes are texts. Texts “weave relationships between individual actors (both human and nonhuman) and collectives. Texts translate the actors in such a way to define them and to facilitate smooth, predictable relations” (Calon qtd. in Spinuzzi 48). These texts transform the bewildering and diverse information put into the network into workable narratives the actors in the network can decipher and use; texts become the information networks transform and make into something useful and material. This transforming of information to something of material value is net work.

Spinuzzi calls out four characteristics of networks.

1. Heterogeneous (46)
2. Multiply Linked (47)
3. Transformative (48)
4. Blackboxed (49)

These are the four things that AT and ANT can agree on about networks, and the four characteristics Spinuzzi puts–in his words–in conversation throughout this chapter.

Chapter Three: How Are Network Theorized?

This chapter is more work justifying the use of both activity theory and actor-network theory to explain the Telecorp network.  To do this, Spinuzzi gives the history of each project and how these respective histories shape the way each set of theoretical adherents see, describe, and value the transformative work of networks.

Activity theory.  This network connects through “the weave” since it’s concerned with the cultural and historical development of networks.  It comes out of ed., ed. psych, and psych with a dash of Frederich Engels Maxist dialectics and Soviet scholarship.  The specifics can be found on pages 74-84.

Actor-network theory.  This network connects through the splice, and is based in the practical sociology forwarded by Machiavelli (yes, the guy who wrote The Prince).  Spinuzzi explains:

[A] spliced understanding of networks invloves understanding them as becoming interconnected in ways that are not necessarily organic, self-contained, or unified.  Like dialectics, a spliced or rhizomatic understanding rejects simple cause-effect relationships; unlike dialectics, t assumes multiplicity rather than immanent unity in everything and understands change not necessarily as development.  (81). 

The specifics can be found on 81-93.

Chatper Four: How Are Networks Historicized

Spinuzzi walks throught the history of Telecorp using both activity theory and actor network theory to demonstrate how both differ but both provide useful insights into how the network that is Telecorp came  into being and how that history effects the net work (work done within a network that deals primarily in information) done by Telecorp.  The largest thing to be taken away from the chapter is how activity theory works through dialectical contradictions to make transformations traceable, while actor-network theory sees translations as the key to making transformations viewable.

Here’s what an activity theory analysis looks like:

[A]ctivity theory understands history as development driven by contradictions that develop within and among activity systems.  In this woven understanding, activities become morem complex overtime and forge increasingly wide networkds with other activites, periodically forming and then dealing with contradicitons.  In dealing with these contradictions, activity systems transform themselves and their networks.  Here, history develops linearly, unrolling like a scroll and bifurcating like a tree.

In an activity-theoretical reading, the different articulations of universal service were responses to contradictions in th edeveloping activity network of US telecommunications, and each articulation set the stage for the next contradiction.  (118)

Here are the differences between both in Spinuzzi’s words:

An actor-network analysis of the same history looks quite different.  In contrast to activity theory’s dialectical account of history as a series of contradictions, actor-network theory’s rhizomatic account is that of translations.  This account is not developmental, as activity theory’s is, although it is still material and transformational.  it provides a spliced understanding, one that highlights contingencies and stabilizd-for-now settlements.  Here, actants are continuously being defined (ie they are continually defining each other) and continuously converging, intersecting, and splicing.  This splicing strengthens the network by locking actants into roles and stabilizing them, so the longer the network becomes the stronger it becomes.  Of course, there is alays the potential for treason: any actant can pull out of the settlement and necessitate a renegotiation.

Unlike an activity network, an actor-network does not assume a common object or motivation.  What keeps an actor-network together is the way in which a situation is problematized and the ways in which actants are defined, enrolled, and mobilized within that problem space.  This negotiation is always tentative and somewhat unstable, and therefore it is always reversible (in theory, at least)…these alliances accumulate like layers of sediment: it becomes harder to undo a settlement when other layers of sediment have accumlated on it. (123-124)

Chapter Four is a space to understand Telecorp’s “strategic stance” (134) within the telecommunications industry based on the history of the industry using activity theory and actor-network theory.  Spinuzzi explains that Chapter Five will be the space where we look at Telecorp’s tactics.

Chapter Five: How Are Network Enacted?

The tactics alluded to in the last chapter are explained more fully here.  “Telecorp’s net work [intentionally seperated by Spinuzzi, not a typo] is enacted through standing sets of transformations, transformations that include textual representations in different genres” (171).  For Spinuzzi net work is information work, and this information oftne comes across as different types of text that are transformed in different ways to make the information meaningful for different actants within the network.  Spinuzzi explains that

texts (from textere, to weave together) both weave and splice networks…Texts weave and splice [networks together] because they are inscriptions, concrete traces that represent phenomena in stable and circuable ways.  They appear in genres, regular responses to recurren situations that can connect activities in continuous, developmental ways while accomodating changes and that function ecologically.  And they are boundary objects, artifacts that serve as mutual reference points across different activities while retaining different meanings whithin these activities…we can trace the trajectory of genres as they circulate through and build networks of human acitivity. (145)

Texts can come in three different forms.

1. Inscriptions.  Inscriptions are “relatively immutable media that resist transportation” (Callon, 1991, p 135).  This resistance leads some actor-network theorists to call them “immutable mobiles”: referential inscriptions that can circulate from one locale to another while resisting deformation (Latour, 1987, p 227).  These circulating representations undergo standing sets of transformations, weaving and splicing together the material assemblage that is the sociotechnical network…In representing phenomena, inscriptions link those phenomena to particular activites…multiplying inscriptions mutilplies the relaities that they decide…Recall Annemarie Mol’s study of atherosclerosis…As Law argues [2004a], ”Multiplicity is the product or effect of different sets of inscription devices and practices…producing different and conflicting standards about reality” (p 32).  And these different realities overlap and interfere with one another. (145,146) 
2. Genres.  Inscriptions provide a way to fix, record, and dominate phenomena by capturing representations.  But for those iscriptions to circulate more widely and regularly, and for them to interact in predictable ways with other inscriptions, they can’t be entirely idiosyncratic.  Types of inscriptions tend to develop over time within particular activities to meet recurrent needs.  These genres provide a developmental, stabilizing influence on human activity…Genres tend to be living, constantly adapting and hybridizing with other genres in order to fit more particular and restricted situations while providing regularity and stability.  Genres are, then, woven or developed over time to respond to recurrent situations but also spliced or hybridized to adapt to local conditions and intersecting activities…Genre, in the sense I am using it here, is a behavorial rather than a structural construct, a tool-in-use. (146,147)
3. Boundary Objects.  Star and Griesmeter define boundary objects as “objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a constat identity across sites” (1989, p 393).  Boundary objects are material links between two or more activites, functioning differently in each activity, providing a productive difference and often a coordinating role…Boundary objects can be texts, but they are often other objects that take on a representational function. (147-148)

Spinuzzi sums up:

So texts are inscriptions that represent phenomena, belong to genres that constrcut relatively stable relationships, and fucntion as boundary objects that bridge among different activities.  Texts create circulating representations: representations that themselves become represented by other representations (Latour, 1999b).  In doing so, texts help define the groups that they weave and splice together.  Circulating texts means circulating relatively similiar texts types (genres) that splice activites by forging a connection where one did not exist and weave activites by serving as a boundary connection in a developing activity. (148)

The rest of the chapter is Spinuzzi demonstrating the net work of Telecorp through tracing genres in four differnt case studies; the genres are being discussed with an eye towards how “they characterize texts and relations and as they function as boundary objects circulating among activities” (149).

135-144 Interesting take on workers in the information age.  There is no more modular style factory work, ergo, no more stability, no lifetime employment, no one lifetime position, no concept of competency and expertise, and no way to organize since all workers are indivduals constantly in competition with one another without any one entity to rally against as everyone is constantly employed by a new company on a regular basis.  Companies which perform net work have their employees amassed on the borders of the company, and in the case of Telecorp, working under different banners but working together since they are working with (or selling and reselling and leasing from other companies different services) the same telecommunicatons network/services to different customers.  Every worker learns the lingo of the other worker’s employer since they often work collaboratively, and because these employers offer services and not products, all the workers must work as if they are one company so the customer is not confused about who provides her services.  The interconnection and interlinking of these companies is “blackboxed”, and this blackboxing means that the workers form assemblages that ensure services reach individual customers.  This set up carries through on all levels of knowledge work, meaning “[t] he new social and economic organization based on the information technologies aims at decentralizing management, indvidualizing work, and customizing markets, thereby segmenting work and fragmenting socities” (Castells qtd in Spinuzzi 139).

Chapter Six: Is Our Network Learning?

Continuing the talk of workers earning a living through knowledge work, Spinuzzi lists all the things these folks must endlessly learn (new social languages, new procedures, new technologies, etc) at an amazing pace to keep their jobs.  In this vien, Spinuzzi quotes scholars who’ve created terms to describe this constant learning on the job. Deleuze calls them “dividuals”; Haraway calls them “deskilled”; Catsells terms them “reskilled”; Zuboff and Maxmin designate these workers as engaging in “lifelong learning” (173).  Spinuzzi reiterates these workers, like the networks they form as actants, are assemblages of the different texts, tools, identities, multiple links, infastructure, beliefs, trainings, and rules that make them net workers (he also comments these knowledge workers are exactly like Haraway’s cyborgs; this is in the previous chapter, I think).  This constant learning is the product of  workplaces which do net work; workplaces such as these have endless turnover and retrainings with no expectation of long term (not to mention lifelong) employment.  The configuration of Telecorp as an interpenetrated network creates this environment.

This also causes problems in training at Telecorp.  Since Telecorp does knowledge work and not modular factory work, it organizational shape is more rhizomatous than arborescent, and when it comes to creating a systematic knowledge base, not stable enough for a comprehensive training program.  This makes for a hodge-podge of training techniques (trial-and-error, stories, apprenticeship) that should, in theory with so many different things to be learned, create trajectories that lo0k like spirals (if they were mapped out).  Spinuzzi claims these paths–due to the hit-and-miss application–are more like eddies since the training is always “disconnected, divided activites and ‘heterogenous patchworks’” (189).

The chapter closes with Spinuzzi explaining how employees of Telecorp do learn what they need to know to perform their job.  In a moment of actants exhibiting the same qualities of the networks they constitute, Spinuzzi claims the employees at Telecorp learn how to do their jobs: through the four elements of networks (heterogenous, mutiply linked, black-boxed, and transformative) (192-195).  Since the employees learned, and since the employees are the actants within the network that makes up Telecorp, the network can does learn.

Even with this learning there are problems.  Spinuzzi explains:

Telecorp’s learning and training measures were better suited to a smaller organization with less turnover and consequently stressed contingencies rather thn principles.  The result was an organization whose learning was tactical rather than strategic and reactive instead of proactive…Yet–and I emphasize this again, because it’s easy to forget–Telecorp still worked. The network still learned…And that brings us back to the question I asked at the beginning of this book: How on earth does Telecorp function when the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing? (196) 

Conclusion: How Does Net Work?

The conclusion gives advice to workers (200-202), managers (202-204), and researchers (204-205).  Below are the hot topics for each.

Workers.  Workers have to live this deskilled, always on the border existence that comes with net work.  Spinuzzi recommends they learn three things: Rhetoric, Time Management, and Project Management.  When discussing rhetoric, Spinuzzi asserts workers need to become strong rhetors, and that the commonplace which says rhetoric is lying needs to be dropped in favor of the defintion which explains rhetoric as argumentation and persuasion.  Spinuzzi says “net workers sorely need to udnerstand how to make arguments, how to persuade, how to build trust and stable alliances, how to negotiate and bargain and horse-trade across boundaries.  In net work, which is intricately and unpredictably conencted with everyone on the border, workers coudl find themselves doing this rhetorical work with nearly anyone. Like Machiavelli, they must persuade locals to show them the hidden passagees that allow them to accomplish their work” (201). 

Managers.  Managers live almost a precarioius existence as workers, and the skills Spinuzzi recommends mangagers learn is black-boxing, strategic thinking, and training.  Black-boxing, as describe when discussing the network that is Telecorp, is the facade of a stand alone mechanism which handles all information internally and magically produces results.  This often isn’t the case, and for managers this is something they can create at their individual level by producing “stabilizing regimes” such as liasons (workers/positions that develop to create stable connections across groups within the network), APIs (application program interfaces on a material level, that is, tools, routines, protocols that may be applied to various situations to create desirable results), and aggregations (applications that allow for the aggregation of organic work practices, eg, tagging parts of data by workers to trace why and how the data is used in specific ways and what transformative practices were applied.  This should allow for the creation of folksonomies that workers can fall back on and managers can use in training).

Strategic thinking.  Essentially, this is empowering workers to take over leadership roles and sharing project information with them.  This creates a sense of ownership for the workers and project buy-in for the managers.

Training.  Most important, training should mimic the horizontal structure that net work takes on as it reaches and knots with other networks and net workers (eg BigCorp), or even crossing departmental boundaries within (for example) the Telecorp network.  Boundary crossing is the norm for all net work, and that should be stressed in the training.

Researchers.  Spinuzzi recommends researchers fight the urge to bind their case studies artificial (I assume this is common due to researchers wishing to make the project managable for them).  Spinuzzi advises resarchers to “follow the actors and texts, the contradictions, the disruptions, and especially the genres” (204).  Spinuzzi also stresses the importance of working with the subjects of the case study, ie, research participants should be allowed to define the events and genres involved in thie own work, to collectively construe the units and boundaries involved in their work” (205).

The book closes with Spinuzzi arguing for activity theory as the best theoretical lens to study networks with.  While he admits it has limitations in it currect form (dialectics, contradiction, development, modular work, implied dialectical synthesize with a consequential evolution, arborescent, structural explanations of activity), Spinuzzi sees promise in work utilizing Bakhtin’s dialogism.  Spinuzzi explains his advocacy saying ” Yrjo Engestrom and his colleagues have started to use dialogism to charactie how activities interact without dialectical synthesis…dialogism provides a way to better acknowledge and deal with rhetoric in net work.  It provides a way to better way to build in, rather than implicitly squeeze out, the multiplicity of perspectives and n-dimension articulations among activites” (206).

This use of activity theory, according to Spinuzzi, makes for a strategic stance that allows researchers to survey “the ground for possibilites” and come up with ways to allow workers, managers, researchers, and theorist to “retain the dynamism and flexibility necessary to cope with net work” (207).

The Exploit: A Theory of Networks
Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker

Prolegomenon
“We’re Tired of Trees”

This opens with a talk about the importance of networks within society, and is especially harsh on any type of version that portrays networks as liberatory (this isn’t to say they think networks are a tool of the state, but they do see them as neutral–they are neither liberatory nor tolitarian).  Here are the questions they see as important:

First query: What is the profile of the current geopolitial struggle? Is it a question of sovereign states fighting nonstate actors?  Is it a question of centralized armies fighting decentralized guerillas? Hierarchies fighitng networks?  Or is a new global dynamic on the horizon? 

Second query: Networks are important.  But does the policy of American unilaterialism provide significant counterexample to the claim that power today is network based?  Has a singular sovereignty won out in global affairs? (4-5)  

Their answer isn’t definitive (and they do admit it).  Here’s the answer in their words:

We cannot begin to answer the question definitively.  Instead we want to suggest that the juncture between socereignty and networks is the place where the apparent contradictions in which we live can best be understood.  It is the friction between the two that is interesting.  Our choice should not simply be “everything is different” or “nothing has changed” [the two poles they see as doggedly presented everytime networks and politics is brought up]; instead, one should use this dilemma as problematic through which to explore many of the shifts in society and control over the last several decades.  (5)

G&T’s argument has three steps:

1) The modern period is characterized by both symmetrical political conflicts waged by centralized power blocs, and also asymmetrical political conflicts in which networked actors struggle against centralized powers.

Many have further suggested that asymmetric conflict is in fact a historical response to the centralization of power.  This type of asymmetric intervnetion, a political form bred into existence as the negative likeness of its agtagonist, is the inspiration for the concept of  “the exploit,” a resonnant flaw designed to resist, threaten, and ultimately desert the dominant political diagram.  Examples include the suicide bomber (versus the police), peer-to-peer protocols (versus the music conglomerates), guerrillas (versus the army), netwar (versus cyberware), subcultures (versus the family), so on.

2) The present day is symmetrical again, but this time in the symmetrical form of networks fighting networks.

A new sovereignty, native to global networks, has recently been established, resulting in a new alliance between “control” and “emergence.”  Networks exist in a new kind of global universalism, but one coextensive with a permanent state of internal inconsistency and exeptionalism.  In this network exception, what is at stake is a newly defined sense of nodes and edges, dots and lines, things and events– networked phenomena that are at once biological and informatic.

3) To be effective, future politcal movements must discover a new exploit.

A wholly new topology of resistance must be invented that is as asymmetrical in relationship to networks as the network was in realtionship to power centers.  Resistance is asymmetry.  The new exploit will be an “antiweb.”  It will be what we call later an “exceptional topology.”  It will have to consider the radically unhuman elements of all networks. It will have to consider the nonhuman within the human, the level of “bits and atoms” that are even today leveraged as value-lade biomedi for proprietary interests.  It has yet to be invented, but the newly ascendant network sovereigns will most likely breed the anitweb into existence, just as the old twentieth-century powers bred their own demise, their own desertion.  (21-22)

This topology must come into existence since the US (according to G&T) are the “contemporary figurehead of sovereignty-in-networks” proving that old superpowers can use networks to maintain their superordinate position on the global scene.  G&T assert this has happened through the transformation of “elusive networks” (Deleuze and Guattari qtd in Galloway and Thacker 21) that in the past threatened power centers.  Borrowing from Deleuze, they note a new network form came  into being, one where “ultrarapid forms of apparently free-floating control” were leveraged by the US.  Through these new networks the US was able to derive its own sovereingty using:

the curious dual rhetoric of the “international presence” in peaekeeping operations combined with an “American-led” force, an equivocaiton held together only by the most flimsy political fantasy.  This flimsy assimilation is precisely the model for sovereignty in networks.  (21)

Nodes

Galloway and Thacker open this section pointing out the concept of connectivity is “highly privleged in today’s society” (26).  The problems is that no one has explained what this means, nor how it this phenomenom might be critiqued; the lack of an explanation means that information technology is often seen as a black box which fosters a general willingness to ignore politics witin a networked world.

To remedy this, G&T take up the work of Hardt and Negri and note that H&N’s concept of “empire” casts empire as “fluid, flexable, dynamic, and far-reaching” (27), implying that the ability to control networks comes not from technology alone, but the control of everything that make up networks.  This everything means everything.  G&T look for a way of “comprehending networks as simultaneously material and immaterial, as simultaneously technical and political, as simultaneously misanthropic and all-too-human” (28).  They articulate this further, saying “So by “networks” we mean any system of interrelationality, whether biological or informatic, organic or inorganic, technical or natural–with the ultimate goal of undoing the polar restrictiveness of pairing” (28).  Using this defintion of network, G&T go one step futher and try to flesh out the how networks are connected to H&N’s concept of empire by introducing the concept of “protocol” as the mechanism as that is leveraged to control networks.  G&T explain “If networks are the structures that connect organisms and machines, then protocols are the rules that make sure the connections actually work…[they] may be defined as a horizontal, distributed control apparatus that guides both the techinical and political formation of computer networks, biological systems, and other media” (29,28).

Bullet points explaining  how protocols emerge and function on page 29.

Networks help create the new (late 20th century) “societies of control” (35) which have emerged in contrast to Foucault’s “societies of discipline.”  Societies of control “are based around protocols, logics of ‘modulation,’ and the ‘ultrapid forms of free-floating control.’  For Deleuze, ‘control’ means something quite different from it colloquial usage” (35).  In this network version of society, control is modulation.  “People are lines…as lines people thread together social, political, and cultural elements” (Deleuze qtd in Galloway and Thacker 35).

While in disciplinary societies individuals move in a discrete fashion from one institutional enclosure to one another (home, school, work, etc), in the societies of control, individuals move in a continuous fashion between sites (work-from-home, distance learning, etc).  In disciplinary societies, one is always starting over (initiation and graduation, hiring and retirement).  In the control societies, one is never finished (continuing education, midcareer changes).  While the disciplinary societies are characterized by physical semoiotic constructs such as the signature and the document, the societies of control are characterized by more immaterial ones such as the password and the computer. (35)

Individuation is the way control as a form of modulation occurs.  Individuals become “dividuals”  while the masses become “samples, data, markets, or banks” (Deleuze qtd in G&T 39) ripe for change when change is needed. 

What follows from this is that control in networks operates less through the exception of individuals, groups, or institutions and more through the exceptional qulaity of networks or of their topoloiges.  What matters, then, is less the character of the individual nodes than the topological space within which and through which they operate as nodes.  To be a node is not solely a casual affair; it is not to “do” this or “do” that.  To be a node is to exist inseparably from a set of possibilities and parameters–to function within a topology of control. (40)

This topology is fused with Foucault’s concept of biopolitics. 

1. To begin with, bioplitics defines a specific object of governance: “the population.”

“Population” does not just mean the masses, or groups of people geographically bound…Rather population is a flexible articulation of individualizing and colelctivizing tendencies: many individual nodes cluster together.  Above all, the population is a political object whose core is biological: the population is not the individual body or organism of the subject-citizen but rather the mass body of the biological species…the existence of the state is consonant with the “health” of the state.  The main issu of concern is therefore how effectively to control the co-existnece of individuals, groups, and relations among them.

2.  Biopolitics defines a means for the production of data surrounding its object (the population)…Taken together, the two elements of biology and informatics serve to make biopolitical control more nuanced, and more effective.

It is not a contradiction to say that in societies of control there is both an increase in openness and an increase in control.  The two go hand in hand…Thus if any single node experiences greater freedom from control, it is most likely due to a greater imposition of control on the macro level.  At the macro level, the species-population can not only be studied and anlayzed but can also be extrapolated, its characteristic behaviors projected into plausible futures (birth/death rates, growth, development, etc.). 

The methodology of biopolitics is therefore informatics, but a use of informatics in a way that reconfigures biology as an information resource.  In contemporary biopolitics, the body is a database, and informatics is the searc engine.

In other words, biology and informatics combine in biopolitics to make it productive, to impel, enhance, and optimize the species-population as it exists within the the contets of work, leisure, consumerism, health care, entertainment, and a host of other ativities.

3. After defining it object (the biological species-population) and its method (informatics/statistics), biopolitics reformulates the role of governance as that of real-time security.

[S]ecurity means being held in place, being integrated and immobile, being supported by redundant networks of checks and backups, and hence is a throughly information-age idea…Biopolitcs also remains consonant with neoliberalism in its notion of humanitarian security in the form of health insurance, home care, outpatient services, and the development of biological “banking” institutions (sperm and ova banks, blood banks, tissue banks, etc.)  (71-75)

 This section of the book closes out with talk of how biological viruses and computer viruses are the same in the way they exploit the networks the come into contact with.  Both are effective since they use the network they infect against itself; neither virus fights the network as so much utilizes the network for what said network is good at (the best example G&T present is the SARS virus on pages 88-94).  The best way to exploit a network is to use it against itself.

The following is a defintion of the exploit as an abstract machine.

• Vector: The exploit requires an organic or inorganic medium in which there exists some form of action or motion.
• Flaw: The exploit requires a set of vulnerabilities in a network that allow the vector to be logically accessible.  These vulnerabilites are also the network’s conditions for realization, in becoming-unhuman
• Transgression: The exploit creates a shift in the ontology of the network, in which the “failure” of the network is in fact a change in its topology (for example, from centralized to distributed).  (97)

Viruses are an example of “life resistance” (77), the productive aspect of living versus the security of the control society.  Life resistance does not have to be human, hence the example of SARS (also, G&T stress this resistance to protological practices–demonstrating, speaking out, striking, and organizing should still be used for effecting change to non-protological practices).  The virus (biological or computer) is the best example of the “strategy of maneuvers” where “the best way to beat an enemy is to become a better enemy” (98).  By pushing the network to work at its full capacity and using that capacity to its (the virus’s) advantage, the virus is practicing hypertrophy and using the technology, security, and control elements of the network against itself.  Through this kind of work the technolgoy that form our current networks can be pressed into an “injured, engorged, and unguarded condition” (98-99), a state where “life-itself” as defined by those most in control of the network can be sidestepped and replaced.  This means soceity “must scale up, not unplug” because in this new and vulnerable state the techonologies of control “will be sculpted anew into something better, something in closer agreement with the real wants and desires of its users” (98-99).

The book closes suggetsting a shift in scale when it comes to thinking about networks.  G&T assert that current thought about networks palces too much emphasis on the actions of individuals within networks or individual nodes within netowrks, and they advise a more coherent and cogent examination of the “very distribution and dispersal of action throughout the network, a dispersal that would ask us to define networks less in terms of the nodes and more in terms of the edges–or even in terms other than the entire, overly spatialized dichotomy of nodes and edges altogether” (157).  G&T claim until this happens our understanding of networks will remain “all-too-human” (157). 

This ending seems to to intimate the current understanding of networks is a projection of traditional, human society onto diagrams which represent networks; that all that has been done so far is  a projection of humanity onto an unyet understood assemblage of things human and unhuman; the current material world has been reproduced onto the concept of “network.”  This would by why G&T describe this monograph as an ontology of networks–through their theorizing and essentializing (where does the protocol that runs a control society come from? how do nodes interact with each other, and how do the activities they participate in define them in realtion to one another?) they try to create a metaphysical treatsie on the nature of being within a network and the state of  networks as actual living beings made of the human and the unhuman.

Linked
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Every chapter in this book in called a “link” since the monograph is about networks.

The First Link: Introduction

This link is a general introduction to the book.  The Internet appears to be the big focus of the book, with Barabasi saying “[y]ou will come to appreciate how the Internet, often viewed as entirely human in its creation, has become more aking to an orgnaism or an ecosystem, demonstrating the power of the basic laws of that govern all networks” (8).  It seems this book will echo Galloway and Thacker with the idea that networks are made of both human and unhuman actors, all contributing to the networks and survival and procreation.

The Second Link: The Random Universe

Paul Erdos and Alfred Renyi created the random network model in an effort to describe systems that exist naturally in the world.  Barabasi explains the Erdos and Renyi model is random because “different systems follow such disparate rules in building their own networks, [and therefore] Erdos and Renyi deliberately disregarded thisdiverstiy and came up with the simplest solution nature could follow: connect the nodes randomly.  They decided that the simplest way to create a network was to create a network was to play dice: Choose two nodes and, if you roll a six, place a link between them” (17).  Barabasi explains this is false; “nature resorted to a few fundamental laws” and promises these laws “will be revealed in the coming chapters” (17).  For Barabasi, the work of Erdos and Renyi is important since it was the first step in trying to describe how networks enable the world to work in all their complexities.  The problem Barabasi has with Erdos and Renyi’s work is the emphasis on randomness.  For Barabasi this element is due to their love of “the mathematical beauty of random networks than by the model’s ability to faithfully capture the webs nature created around them” (23).  For Barabasi, these models are flawed since they don’t explain empirical data.

The Third Link: Six Degrees of Separation

As the link’s title suggets, this chapter is all about how small the distance is between nodes in networks (think “Six Degrees of Serparation to Kevin Bacon”). Barabasi’s claim is that networks obey the small world concept (aka the six degrees model) due to their innate structures.  Links are make nodes closer than imaginable in a Euclidean mindset of distance (explanation on page 35).  The bigger the network the more nodes and smaller the distance between two nodes.  This exists in all networks.

The Fourth Link: Small Worlds

Watts and Stogratz ’s cluster model of networks offered an alternative to Erods and Renyi’s random model of networks.  In the cluster model complexity and observed patterns of natural networks are better explained.  Instead of randomness as the driving force between the connecting of two or more nodes,  a small order of  nodes is connected to more far-flung nodes through a few nodes of said order containing “distant” links to other nodes outside their immediate local order.  Still, this model contains no accounting for the rationale behind the links between nodes, and like the random model, provides a skewed view of networks as egalitarian structures “whose links are ruled by the throw of the dice” (54).   Randomness is equated to egalitarianism in this text.

The Fifth Link: Hubs and Connectors

Connectors are nodes with “anomalously large number of links” that are “present in very diverse complex systems, ranging from the economy to the cell” (56).  Barabasi considers them a fundamental property of most networks, and these “highly connected nodes requires abandoning once and for all the random worldview” (56).  He continues on, saying

Just as in society a few connectors know an unusual large number of people, we found that the architecture of the World Wide Web is dominated by a few very highly connected nodes, or hubs.  These hubs, such as Yahoo! or Amazon.com, are extremely visible–everywhere you go you see another link pointing to them…The hubs are the stronget arguement against the utopian vision of an egalitarian cyberspace…Compared to these hubs, the rest of  the Web is invisible.  For all pracitcal purposes, pages linked by only one or two other documents do no texists…Even the search engines are biased against them, ignoring them as the crawl the Web looking for the hottest new sites.  (58)

These hubs (made up of connectors) are easist seen on the World Wide Web and form Barabasi’s strongest argument against an egalitarian structure to networks.  Hubs are also always a short distance from any nodes in a network, and hubs can reach any node in less moves than going node to node.

The Sixth Link: The 80/20 Rule

From this point on Barabasi uses every word to discredit the random and cluster models of networks in favor of his prefered version, scale-free.  In this sixth link Barabasi describes the 80/20 rule as a way to demonstrate networks are not egalitarian in any way, shape, or form since the 80/20 rule is a short hand way to describe a power law distribution; his proof is his empirical evidence (gathered by a bot combing the Web) that many nodes had only a few links, and “a few hubs with an extraordinarily large number of links” (67) was the actual  lay of the (virtual) land on the Web.

In random and cluster models of networks, there are only a set number of nodes within a network and these nodes (hypothetically) should follow a bell curve when it comes to the degree of distribution.  In a bell curve, most nodes would have the same number of links–it would be an egalitarian arrangement since a majority of the nodes would fall into the center of the bell curve.   Barabasi’s research team, using their bot to graph (map) the Web, found that most nodes (in this case web pages) had only a few links connecting to other pages while a few highly connected hubs (like Yahoo or Google) served as highly connected hubs.  This is a demonstration of the 80/20 rule, ie, a power law distribution.  80 percent of the web is available through only 2o percent of webpages.  This is also exciting (for Barabasi) since this type of movement is also displayed in networks of molecules as they move from one state to another; for example, when water hits the phase transition stage and moves from a liquid form to a solid form (ice) (73-74).  This is described as move from disorder to order. This means the Web and water follow the same network laws; and the Web, althoug a human made object, performs this transition phase with no help from a central, human authority.

The Seventh Link: Rich Get Richer

Barabasi and his team develop two laws which govern all real networks (real networks meeting the criteria of scale-free network discussed last chapter): growth and preferential attachment.

• Growth: For each given period of time we add a new node to the network.  This step underscores the fact that netowrks are assembled one node at a time.
• Preferential attachment: We assume that each new node connects to the existing nodes with two links.  The probability that it will choose a given node is proportional to the number of links the chosen node has.  That is, given the choice between two nodes, one with twice as many links as the other, it is twice as likely that the new node will connect to the more connected node.

Barabasi and his collaborators stress these are the building blocks to any network (organic or inorganic); also, there are benefits to the preferential attachment–it allows for efficiency and defense.

Thge Eigth Link: Einstein’s Legacy

In this chapter Barabasi discusses the fitness model within a scale-free network (scale-free means it can and does constantly add nodes).  In a scale-free model the first node is the winner; the first node(s) grab all the links, become connectors, then hubs, and essentially becomes a winner in the 80/20 distribtuion–said hub is one of the ruling 20 percent.  Conversly, any node that comes later (according to this model) should never have the opportunity.  Google’s debut onto the World Wide Web troubles the scale-free model since it was a late comer who eventually became a hub.  Barabasi adapts the scale-free network of the Web by introducing the fitness model.  Acording to Barabasi, this explains Google’s dominance because:

The fitness model predicts a [this] behavior.  It tells us that nodes still acquire links following a power law, t [exponent] b. But the dynamic exponent, b, whch meaures how fast a node grabs a new link, is different for each node.  It is proportional to the node’s fitness, such that a node that is twice as fit as any other node will acquire links faster because its dynamic exponent is twice as large.  Therefore, the speed at which nodes acquire links is no longer a matter of seniority.  Independent of when a node joins the network, a fit node will soon leave behind all nodes with smaller fitness.  Google is the best proof of this: A latecomer with great search technology, it acquired links much faster than its competitors, eventually outshining all of them.  (97)

The chapter is entitle Einstein’s Legacy since Barabasi eventually ties this network to another network, a Bose gas undergoing a Bose-Einstein condensation.  When a gas reaches absolute zero, all particles rush towards the lowest energy level within the gas; the node (molecule) that is the fittest has the lowest energy level.  For Barabasi, this means that two very different netowrks follow the same, universal laws.

Barabasi sums up what this all means within the context of the book:

The scale-free model reflects our awakening to the reality that networks are dynamic systems that change constantly through the addition of new modes and links.  The fitness model allows us to describe networks as competitive systems in which nodes fight fiercely for links.  Now Bose-Einstein condensation explains how some winners get the chance to take all…In networks that dispaly fit-get-rich behavior, competition leads to a scale-free topology…The winner shares the spotlight with a continuous hierarchy of hubs.  (106)

The Ninth Link: Achilles’ Heel

Topological robustness of networks is created through a highly complex and interconnected network.  In the case of of scale-free networks, small nodes, connectors, and hubs are all interconnectedwith few moves needed to get from one to the other.  When this is the case, taking out small node, one connector, or even one hub does not hurt the network.  The workload of the network is re-routed.  The Achilles’ Heel Barabasi refers to with the title of this chapter is two fold.  First, there is a premediated attack on a network where all highly connected hubs are removed at once.  Second, there is what Barabasi calls a cascading failure.  In a cascading failure:

a local failure shifts loads or responsibilities to other nodes.  If the extra load is negligible, it can be seemlesly absorbed by the rest of the system, and the failure remains unnoticed.  If the extra load is too much for the neighboring nodes to carry, they will either tip or again redistibute the load to their neighbors…Failures can go unnoticed for a long time before starting has inevitable consequences, however, as those cascades that do suceed are then more disruptive. (119,121)

The Tenth Link: Viruses and Fads

Sacle-free networks are vuneralbe to infection by hitting hubs (infect a hub, let the network do the work to spread the infection through its only internal structure).  In the converse, randomly infecting  small nodes within a network does some damage but will not shut down an entire network.

The Eleventh Link: The Awakening Internet

The Internet is growing according to the scale-free model, and this creates a few problems.  First, taking out the hubs which make up the Internet could bring the whole thing crashing down.  Second, there’s no oversight.  It grows one node at a time each time a new node links up.  Due to the programs that control info exchange, and the fact it’s a network connecting to computers, it’s possible to utilize large parts of it for parasitic (mailicious) computing, distribution of malignant programs (viruses/worms), or simple denial of service attacks that could block necessary connections.  All of this is due to the network structure of the Internet; like Galloway and Thacker discuss a network can be forced into hypertrophy and be forced to work against itself.

The Twelfth Link: The Fragmented Web

Code–or software–is the bricks and mortar of cyberspace. The architecture is what we build, using the code as building blocks.  The architecture is what we build, using the code as building blocks…Code can curtai lbehavior, and it does influence the architecture.  It does not uniquely determine it, however…Most of the Web’s truly important features and emerging properties derive from its large-scale self-orgnized topology…But the science of the Web increasingly proves that this architecture represents a higher level of organization than the code.  Your ability to find my Webpage is determined by one factor only: its position on the Web.  If many people find my page interesting and they link to me, my node will slowly turn into a minor hub, and search engines will inevitable notice.  If everybody ignores my Website, so will the search engines. (174, 175)

The Thirteenth Link: The Map of Life

Barabasi is now seeing the scale-free, fit model of networks in everything.  In this chapter he links this model to cells.

The Fourteenth Link: Network Economy

This chapter is another example of how networks are present in even more mundane aspects of modern life in a capitalist society.  The concepts he descibed hitherto are now called the “robust” and “universal laws” that “govern nature’s webs…greet us” in the economy.  “The challenge” Barabasi explains, “is for economic and network research alike to put these laws into practice” (217).

The Last Link: Web Without a Spider

Like Spinuzzi, Barabasi recommends researchers now focus on the activity that goes on between nodes in networks.  Only through understanding how nodes work together can the complexities of networks be understood.

Afterlink: Hierarchies and Communities

This afterlink proposes one more dimension to scale-free, competitative/fit networks.  To better describe the “multitude 0f functions” or multitasking that networks do–especially networks like cells–Barabasi introduces the concept of hierarchical clustering (a good explanation can be found on 233 with a corresponding graphic).

Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart
Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. O’Day

Chapter One: Rotwang the Inventor
Nardi and O’Day share with the reader the working metaphor for the book, Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis. In particular, the closing scene of the film. In this scene the hero of the story tries to make his father, a master in the fictional society, to clasp the hand of a foreman form the working, underclass of the fictional society. For Nardi and O’Day, this epitomizes what they see as the purpose of establishing informtaion ecologies: to suggest “a new future in which the minds that plan and the hands that work do not live in seperate worlds, but are mediated by the human heart” (11). It seems technology is part of the “minds that plan,” and I figure they’re saying it would be great to create environments where technology is part of work gets done, not spaces where technology is the driving force behind inhumane work practices and draconian methods based on technophile dreams of efficiency. Technology should be designed (or evolved through on-going fine tuning) to fit a particular situation, not vice versa.

Chapter Two: Framing Conversations about Technology
In this chapter Nardi and O’Day describe the technophile and dystopic camps of technology critics, and find fault with both. Since each of the two camps are on the extreme ends of the spectrum on the issue, they leave position for people who have to work with technology in everyday situations. N&O are working for a middle ground where these everyday folks can have some agency in their interactions with technology, and to do this they introduce the concept of information ecoloiges. To think of the everyday situations where technology is used in this way forces people to stop, focus, and notice the routines and habits they’re involved in as they go about their day and in what ways technology helps or hinders. By being critical (stopping, focusing, and noticing) N&O believe people can thwart the rhetoric of inevitability that comes with either view of technology (technophile or dystopic) and allow them to develop holistic, sustainable practices when using technology–practices that create harmony, not frustration.

Chapter Three: A Matter of Metaphor
Every metaphor used for technology have implicit design and use concepts embedded within them (here the three most common are represented).

The tool metaphor:

The tool metaphor also offers pointed suggestions to technology designers. Part of the delight of doing technology design is working with the materials (software, computer displays, networks) and making them do interesting, unexpected, and clever things. Thinking about technology as a tool helps deisgners remember that there is someone on the other end–people who are using the tool…The tool metaphor is useful for questions and discussions about utility, skill and learning. We need to keep this metapor in mind, but we also need to look outside its boundaries…It is not enough to think about the too’s inherent elegance and capabilities; one has to think about the handles it offers users. (29, 30)

The text metaphor:

Prescriptions are written into technologies when they are designed. Prescription in the Latourian sense does not mean that a technology says once and for all how it will be used–or that it will be used at all–but rather that it makes claims on our attention in a particular way. Technological artifacts have a certain authority and presencse…Textual analysis suggests different tactics than the tool metaphor does. now we are encouraged to read the technology to understand its messages and imperatives…it is useful to remember that talk is a form of action and action is a form of talk. But the metaphor doesnt tell us how people’s judgment, creativity, and values can or should come into play when they chose to act. The text metaphor is useful as a way of prompting discussions of intentionality and meaning, but other discussions require further conceptual support. (32, 33).

Technology as system: This is based on their readings of a few different scholars, but in a nutshell technology as system is a “complex systemic perspective” that when viewed with this lens “yields provocative analysis of the pervaisve influence of technology in our lives” (33). While there are different version of this perspective, the one that N&O seem to react to the most is that of Jacques Ellul.

Ellul’s argument turns on his notion of what he calls technique…a cultural mindset in which pure, unadulterated efficiency is the dominant human value…Technology comes into play because machines are so efficient; they are the standard of excellence in the world of technique. Everything else is to be compared to them. Everything–even people–evolves in the direction of mechanical efficiency…most troubling…is that technique is autonomous, that is proceeds under its own momentum without significant control by people. (33,34)

The “process of technical dominance” that continues through technology as it “begets more technology” ( the polluted river example on pages 42 and 43) is too complete as it makes “[t]he technological system” we currently navigate seem like “the water we swim in” which has become “life sustaining and almost invisible” (43). The system metaphor for technology “does not address with enough force the possiblity of local and particular change” and leaves readers without any practical advice in how to balance humanity with technology.

Chapter Four: Information Ecologies
The ecology metaphor names several moving parts within the networks that involve human and unhuman (technological gadgets) nodes. This brings order to the empirically observed, local settings that N&O discuss later in the book, and allows for productive, practical advice on how to make their interactions with technology more humane and sustainale. Essentially, the net value is the ability to make fruitful observations and probvde answers to challenges readers of this back may face, while at the same time making the work that occurs between the nodes in this network (the links) describable to others. The description for the various elements that make up an information ecology can be found on pages 50-55; the most interesting is the “keystone species” (53). When keystone species are removed from an info ecology, the ecology either adapts or falls apart. This sounds alot like Barabasi’s talk about connectors and hubs within networks; hubs are the biggest connector nodes that make it possible to travel the network to any other node within a minimum number of moves that is considered efficient (defintion dependent on the size of the network). While N&O don’t cover this extensively, I figure if these keystone species were removed all at once the ecosystem would implode like a scale-free network does when all major hubs are destroyed simultaneously. With a few modifications, this text seems like a work describing the work of specific networks, ie, talks about networks as they exist and not the theoreical (a la Barabasi or Galloway and Thacker).

Chapter Five: Values and Technology
N&O stress that the local values of the people who form part of their specific eco ecology must be forgrounded as they grapple with how to make technology work for them.

The application of human values in information ecologies brings to bear a different dynamic that that of biological ecologies. We make deliberate, conscious choices about how we want our values to influence practices and technologies in information ecologies. There is a complex dance between two nonnetural forces at work here: technology with its choreography of the dance is up to the human side of the equation, but only if we choose to “overcome necessity” by engaging our values and commitments as we shape our information ecologies. (64)

This is how the people control technology, and do not allow the rhetoric of inevitability to herd them.

Chapter Six: How to Evolve Information Ecologies
Evolving info ecologies comes from these practices: Working from core values (67); paying attention (68); and asking strategic questions (70).

Quesions need to ask not only how technology can be implements, but more importantly why technology needs to be implemented within a specific, localized setting. There’s also the subset of when questions, ie, when is the use of technology (sometimes specific technologies) are appropriate and best for the people working in the ecology. Examples of these questions can be found on pages 72-74.

The part we often focus our attention on is the technology: computers, networking, applications, handheld communications, applications, handheld information gadgets, instruments, monitors, widgets ad infinitum. We look at the shape, color, texture, and functions of the technologies, and we think creatively about how to make them more usable, appealing, and effective. But it is the spaces between these things–where people move from place to place, talk, carry pieces of paper, type, play messages, pick up the telephone, send faxes, have meetings, and go to lunch–that critical and often invisible things happen. As we look at information ecologies, whether they are examples in this book or examples from our everyday lives, we need to be mindful of those spaces. (66)

Chapter Seven: Librarians

There are ueful and complementary relationships between information seekers, librarians, and technology in the library. The diversity of the library information ecology is exemplary in its excellent mix of people and technological resources working together well. The presence of human guides and experts in the library is crucial. As more peole gain access to online information services, even more guides will be needed to help. As in the library, we believe that such guides willbe keystone species wherever they are found. (104)

Librarians are a “keystone species” in information ecologies; this translates over to the “hub” concept from Barabasi. N&O assert if you remove a keystone species, the entire ecology collapses, or at the least, re-adapts but in ways not amenable to people within the information ecology (one thing never discussed, but intimated, is that there are human and unhuman peices in the information ecologies. It seems the focus is on quality of life for the people in information ecologies). This fracturing also means a loss of efficiency; in this case study it’s asserted the loss of librarians means an informtation retrieval service that is either frustrating or useless.

Is this type of work what Barabasi call for at the end of his book? Is this a case study of the work that networks do?

Chapter Eight: Wolf, Batgirl, and Starlight
Pueblo is the ideal version of an info ecology for Nardi and O’Day (explanation of the Pueblo virtual community project on page 112). The values of the physical world that exist at Longview Elementary are forgrounded and installed in the virtual world of Pueblo. This happened through a series of dicscussion (formal and informal) and the asking of questions similiar to the ones N&O prescribe on pages 72-74. All the users, due to this critical examination of the information ecology they’ve created, are able to manipulate the technology they use as needed–as it fits the users needs.

Chapter Nine: Cultivating Gardeners: The Importance of Homegrown Expertise
Gardeners are the people within information ecologies who make things happen; they “take on the responsibility of customizing software tools for local conditions and assisting their co-workers in using the tools” (141). The cultivation of these folks creates “diverse, robust, information ecologies” (151) that are efficient, adapted to their local setting, and can evolve as new types of challenges or technologies enter the information ecology. Gardeners appear to be a keystone species within information ecologies.

ChaptersTen and Eleven are two more case studies. Ten deals with a digital photography class and Chapter Eleven is an example of “a dysfunctional ecology” in a hostipal. The digital photography class suceeds since it matches the model of construction and practices N&O prescribe for a successful info ecology; the info ecology in the hostipal fails since it does everything counter the model.

Chapter Twelve is titled “Diversity on the Internet.” It brings up some ideals that are laudable, but fails to deal with the practicalities of the Internet. For example, they call for amateur sites that promote social justice.

Looking at real human activity at local levels often tells a different–and more empowering–storythan looking at social forces in the large. We find inspiration in the activities of Burmese exiles fighting the junta, Kuna promoting environmentalism, Maya defending their land and culture, and Inuit women taking on issues of health and housing–all aided by the Internet…If we nuture and defend local ecologies, the global network enabled by the Internet will avoid becoming a monocultural hegemony primarily devoted to commerce. The active participation of local nodes, mundful of their potential global connections, will lead to strength and vitality in a global network. We can take the exhortation of th eenvironmental movement, “Think globally, act locally,” a step further now. (202,207)

And while this is all possible, their insistence that the creation of this these types of sites will change the basic composition of the Internet from a heavily commericial enterprise seems a bit naive. The hubs which connect the Internet (search engines specifically and the more popular websites less so) don’t often connect to these activist sites. These sites can be found, but usually only those with the values of those sites in experiential reality will know where to find them on the Web. While I can be completely wrong and just in a mood, there seems to be a vein of putting the information on the Internet will enlighten everyone who uses the Internet. This isn’t the case, since most heavily used sites don’t do activism very much; it’s considered depressing or controversial or inappropriate. The users’ values, much like in info ecologies, must be forgrounded in the site or at least identifiable to the user in question. To wit, commericial sites are the search engines of the Internet that make the Web accesible to users. As Barabasi asserts, the rich get richer in network(s). Economic base, superstructure, etc.

“A Simple Model of Global Cascades on Random Networks”
Duncan J. Watts

Cascades in this article are defined as upheavals to the status quo of a network. This can be several things, eg, the popularity of an indy song not backed by a huge advertising budget, choices by citizens to vote in ways counter to their traditional patterns, individuals deciding to join a social change organization, or the failure of a power grid. Global cascades occur when the system undergoes a widespread change (number of nodes effected). Watts’ concern is creating a mode which describes these occurences, which he asserts is based on the ability of some nodes to influence other nodes within a given network to not only make a simple yes/no choice, but also change the nodes state–the actual chagning/preparing the actant(s) to choice yes or no on a given event. A cascade occurs when several nodes (either human or unhuman) can surpass their threshold for resisting change. Once this occurs, herd-like behavior can kick in the action of a node’s neighbor can tip said node from one state (a return to status quo) to another (change).

This type of change is highly dependent on innovators being connected to a large contingent of early adapters within the network (5767).

Watts uses the model to explain why networks observed empirical which experience large perturbations on a regular basis do not experience global cascades on a regular basis:

The upper boundary, however, is different. Here, the propagation of cascades is limited not by the connectivity of the network, but by the local stability of the vertices. Most vertices in this regime have so many neighbors that they cannot be toppled by a single neighbor perturbation; hence, most initial shocks immediately encounter stable vertices. Most cascades therefore die out before spreading very far, giving the appearance that large cascades are exponentially unlikely. (5770)

“A Theory of Relational Signals in Online Groups”
Uwe Matzat

Abstract
The outcomes of interaction in online communities depend to a large extent on finding solutions to typical problems of interaction, such as free-riding and lack of trust. This article presents a theory which argues that a member’s online behaviour sends signals about how (s)he regards the relationship to other members and to the group. Under specific conditions, members take the signal sending into account when they decide
whether to contribute to group discussions and to participate in trust-demanding online activities. Community administrators can use the insights to influence members’ behaviour by using social control. Three forms of social control are distinguished. Group conditions influence which form is more adequate for
diminishing free-riding and lack of trust. A theory-guided typology of online groups and communities clarifies what type of community is more likely to suffer from problems of interaction and the effects of each kind of social control. (375)

Money quotes:

Theories of computer-mediated communication (CMC; Kiesler et al., 1984; Postmes et al., 1998; Walther, 1996) are difficult to apply in order to derive predictions about the effects of such group conditions outside of the laboratory. What would be useful is a theory which can establish easily the link between the behavioural mechanisms that regulate online interaction and the social characteristics of online groups on the internet. (376)

Two types of interdependency
What often makes interaction in online groups problematic is the fact that an individual’s goal fulfilment is not only dependent on his/her own behaviour, but also on other individuals’ behaviour within the group.
Some form of interdependency characterizes the situation. The more an individual’s goal achievement depends on other actors’ behaviour, the stronger the interdependencies are (and vice versa). These interdependencies can be characterized as situations with coordination difficulties, or with conflicting interests between the actors (Lindenberg, 1997). In the first situation, for example in a self-help group, all actors prefer to choose the same alternative, whereas in the second situation, for example in an online
auction, different actors prefer different alternatives (Lindenberg, 1997). (378)

Three typical problems in online group interaction
• opportunity problems, including free-rider problems (Jones and
Rafaeli, 2000; Kollock, 1999a; Kreijns et al., 2003);
• problems of trust (Ardichvili et al., 2003; McLure Wasko and Faraj,
2000); and
• problems of loyalty (Etzioni, 1999; Komito, 1998; Suler, 1999;
Ward, 1999). (378)

First, people are more likely to join and stay in a group when membership is useful to reach more aims at once. The more goals that the group fulfils for the member, the more difficult it is to substitute it for another. This holds even more if the multifunctionality for the member includes relational interests. The relationships as such, then, have a value that is hard to replace. Accordingly, in multifunctional online
groups there will be fewer loyalty problems than in single common interest groups. Second, in groups that fulfil multiple functions at once there is a higher degree of interdependency than in single common interest groups. As explained previously, a high degree of interdependency in turn raises the degree of relational interest. Again, this argument presupposes that the interdependencies do not comprise too many conflicting interests between members. The first two dimensions, social embeddedness and multifunctionality, lead to the following typology of online groups. (385)

This leads to the following hypotheses. The effects of frame stabilizing and indirect monitoring tools on the stimulation of active member participation are larger in embedded (or multiple common interests) than in pure (or single common interest) online groups. The effects of direct control tools are larger in pure (or single common interest) than in embedded (or multiple common interests) online groups. (386)

The more the online group resembles a transaction group, the more direct social control will be accepted and increase membership participation. The more a fantasy group has conflicting elements in its environment, the less frame stabilizing tools will increase the membership participation. In interest groups and groups of relationships, changes in the degree of embeddedness or multifunctionality have a larger impact on the degree of relational interests than in transaction groups. (389)

“Community and Social Interaction in the Wireless City: Wi-Fi Use in Public and Semi-Public Spaces”
Keith Hampton and Neeti Gupta

Key Definitions
True Mobiles–For ‘true mobiles’, wi-fi coffee shops functioned as a backdrop for activities focused on the completion of ‘work’ (studying, paid work, etc.).True mobiles identified the cafe as a ‘space of productivity’.They typically would suggest that the store offered a change of setting that helped them to focus or provided a source of creativity. (839)

Placemakers–In contrast with true mobiles, the primary activity of ‘placemakers’ was ‘not to engage in paid work’.They came to wi-fi coffee shops to ‘hang out’. The coffee house was not intended as a direct or indirect place of productivity…They were drawn by what one subject described as the ‘inherently casual sociability’ of the physical setting. Placemakers used their laptops as a premise to enter and engage in the ‘social hubbub’ of the space. This could mean direct co-present participation with existing members of their social network, unplanned encounters or the pleasure that Lofland (1998) ascribes to ‘public solitude’ and ‘people watching’. (841,842)

The key conflict presented here is between true mobiles and placemakers, and what the use of technology by both of these groups means for the concept of “community”in publice spaces. True mobiles are often conencted to people not in their immediate space, and the Hampton and Gupta are trying to decipher if this means a move towards public privatism a wi-fi (paid or free) becomes more ubiquitous and available in public and semi-public spaces. The opposite profile of public wi-fi users are the placemakers, who use seem to be working towards a “glocal” scene, ie, a connection with those in their immediate environment and with those they are connected to via their laptops who are nowhere near their (the placemaker’s) physical location. True mobiles use interaction shields in public spaces to ensure they do not engage with individuals in their immediate locale; usually this interacion shield is the true mobile’s laptop. The final conclusion twofold. First, wi-fi is not a determining factor in and of itself. Free or not, individual users decide their tribe. Second, the movement towards public privatism (also known as the networked individual) and the movement towards glocalization are both strong. Further study needs to be done.

Method (836).
“[W]hat attracts people is other people” (846).

“CommunityNetSimulator”
Jun Zhang, Mark S. Ackerman, and Lada Adamic

The CommunityNetSimulator provides the baseline for studying online communities that are based on information sharing (ask and answer like sites like the pseudo “JavaHelpers”). While it isn’t dead on describing the empirical data gathered from these sites, Zhang et al assert it describes these type of online communities much better than Barabasi’s model or the model of Watts and Strogatz; it provides terms, concepts, and statistics much closer to material reality. CommunityNetSimulator is still a work in progress, it’s being refined as its being run against the ethnographies Zhang et al are doing concurrently with CommunityNetSimulator.

“Cooperation in Evolving Networks”
Nobuyuki Hanaki, Alexander Peterhansl, Peter S. Dodds, Duncan J. Watts

In this article Hankai et al are trying to develop a model that describes the evolution of networks and the behavior of the people interacting in such networks that are experiencing the traditional social dilemma (how to continue cooperating enough for the common good when there’s the problem of free-riding). They maintain their findings (based on their model as a way to describe the seemingly random work that occurs in networks) are counterintuitive. They assert cooperation can occur at in sparse, dynamic networks of unlimited size; networks with strutural holes (missing direct links from one node to another) actually support higher levels of cooperation versus networks with local density, ie, clustering; and that cooperation tends to fare better in larger networks instead of smaller ones. For Hanaki et al, this means cooperation is scalable; this explains why networks like eBay are successful. All of this is built on the trade-off of two effects, expansion versus reinforcment. “Roughly speaking, this principle states that the maintainence of a high global level of cooperation requires that two conditions be satisfied: (a) cooperation is reinforced by assortative matching of cooperators; and (b) the cooperative community must expand by ‘recruiting’ defectors” (1049).

The element of triadic closure bias (meeting a friend of a friend) becomes important as it makes the evolution of a network non-random, and info regrading potential partners is available in juxtaposition of meeting a stranger (1038). This type of interaction eventually builds trust. It creates a “full information” scenario, where the player trust another player through introduction by third, trusted player (the model takes place in prisoner dilemma games). This, in turn, leads to te “no information” scenarios where trust is built through these types of triad interactions. In an environment where the player feels safe and cooperation appears the norm for the entire network, said player will trust players with no one vouching for a stranger–a no information situation.

One reason for the scalability of trust in large, poorly connected networks is the inability for several nodes (in this article, players) to quickly learn of the benefits defecting can bring within the lifespan of the prisoner’s dilemma game. Sparse, poorly connected networks means info travels slowly. Players will continue to trust and cooperate since they know no better, and the benefits of continued cooperation in the environment of a high stakes, huge network have the constructed value of safety and continued profit. Also, partner updating happens more often in these situations as an indirect form of ostracizing other player-partners. Interactions may occur fewer times with the older player-partners, but there is still the sense and an amount of cooperation among the updating player and her older partners within the game, therefore, there is still cooperation which tilts the percentage pariticipation in favor of larger networks (think SNS like FB–very rarely are friends removed from a list and means said friends, although not occupying a prime spot, can be leveraged later).

The preferred network, according to this model, is one that branches. This means that groups of two and three can interact with other and learn from each other, perform the actions talked about above, and be coerced into continued cooperation since nodes (players) are poorly connected to other palyers who may teach defecting as a more advantgeous strategy. This type of network is often disliked since it takes only a few breaks to destory the network . It is not a robust network, but “can be desirable if what it is spreading is (colletively) undesirable” (1048).

Section 5.3 seems the most interesting part of the article.

“Information Exchange and the Robustness of Organizational Networks”
Peter S. Dodds, Duncan J. Watts, and Charles F. Sabel

This article is arguing for multiscale networks since they are “ultrarobust” in that they can weather information congestion and the removal of various nodes without breaking down. They define this as congestion and connectivity robustness, that is, ultrarobust since they can handle both challenges. The position of Dodds et al is that some work about networks has been concerned with efficiency, and therefore, work only with network models that focus on:

efficiency rather than robustness. As a result, the economics literature on organizations has focused almost exclusively on multilevel hierarchies: acyclic, undirected branching networks that originate at a single root node and descend through a series of levels or ranks to their terminal leaf nodes…Under these circumstances, the chief problem facing an organization is not efficiency, understood roughly as being maximized by minimizing the number of costly links needed to support a defined burden. Rather, the challenge is robustness: on the one hand, protecting individual nodes from being overtaxed by the direct and indirect effects of changing and unpredictable patterns of collaboration; and on the other hand, protecting the organization as a whole from disintegration in cases where individual failures occur regardless. (12516)

Multiscale: Finally, we identify a fifth, qualitatively distinct class of networks that arise in the central region of Fig. 2 [i.e., intermediate values of (A, c)]. We call this class multiscale networks because, unlike the four classes of networks defined above, whose connectivity is dominated by a single scale [either
local (team) or global (random) ties], these networks display connectivity at all scales simultaneously. Multiscale networks, however, do not display uniform density of links at all scales: link density decreases monotonically with depth, such that the top rank (the core) exhibits the highest density, thus distinguishing
multiscale networks from earlier “small-world” network models (29) in which random links are distributed homogeneously. This difference is critical for the problem at hand because, in a wide variety of environments, the hierarchical nature of organizational networks tends to place the burden of information exchange disproportionately on higher ranks. Thus multiscale networks and core-periphery networks have much in common. But by exhibiting connectivity across all other ranks as well, multiscale networks also embody the salient features of local team and random networks, a combination that, as we show below yields desirable robustness properties. (12518)

The graph that accompanies this quote shows a multiscale network to take the shape of a pyramid. It would seem these are networks where there is an obvious chain of command but everyone shares in the information work of the network evenly. Nodes from all levels have access and can perform the processing of heavy amounts of information as well as their neighbor. Experiential examples are the Internet and airport terminals. This is not a perfect system. Removing enough links will eventually destroy the network, but it would take the removal of a huge number of links to do so. Since all nodes are on equal footing when it comes to processing, it seems this type of network can bypass cascading failures.

The article closes:

No other class of organizational networks studied exhibits both congestion and connectivity robustness: core-periphery networks handle congestion well but are easily disconnected; random and random-interdivisional networks are difficult to disconnect, but easy to congest; and local team networks are bad in
both senses. Hence, multiscale networks are not only ultrarobust but appear to be uniquely so. (iv) Multiscale networks achieve ultrarobustness efficiently in the sense that most of the attendant benefits are generated by a relatively small number O(N) of additional links. (v) The superior robustness of multiscale networks also conveys better scaling properties than other classes of networks in that, for a given level of environmental volatility ,L, multiscale networks can grow to much larger sizes before suffering failure. (vi) The properties of multiscale networks are themselves robust in the sense that they are insensitive to small
(or even quite large) changes in the network parameters A, ~, and m. Networks resembling multiscale networks may therefore be expected to arise in real-world business firms and bureaucracies, at least some of which do appear to display properties that resemble our notion of ultrarobustness (20, 24, 25). (12521)

The research was funded by by the Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation Grant 0094162, Legg Mason Funds, and the Intel Corporation. (12521)

“Localizing the Internet”
John Postill

This article concentrates on the third challenge. How can we conceptualize the relationship between technological and social change at the local level? More specifically, what conceptual tools do we have at our disposal to study the emergence of new internet-related forms of local sociality? To address these questions, first this article reviews the existing literature on internet localization, suggesting that the progress of this research area has been hampered by an overdependence on two key notions: community and network. Both notions have had uneven careers as social scientific terms, careers that are yet to be critically debated in the internet literature, and which are outlined below. However, more important than their strengths and limitations is the unrivalled paradigmatic status that these paired notions currently enjoy among scholars of internet localization.This article suggests the need to think beyond the community/network paradigm by broadening our analytical lexicon to do some justice to the plethora of forms of sociality that anthropologists and sociologists have identified down the decades…It explores the potential uses of concepts that lie outside the community/network paradigm (e.g. field, arena, forum) by means of a fine-grained analysis of emergent forms of residential sociality, arguing that this kind of ground-up conceptualization reveals the inadequacies of overly general notions such as ‘community sociality’ or ‘network sociality’ (Wittel, 2001). (414)

Postill’s recommendation appears to be the use of the term arena a “‘bounded spatial unit in which precise,
visible antagonists, individual or corporate, contend with one another for prizes and/or honour’ (1974: 132–3).Arenas are ‘explicit frames’ in which ‘nothing is left merely implied’ and major decisions are taken in public view(1974: 134)” (426). and the explicit naming of the activities socialization occur around. This literally means “x sociality”, eg, “committee sociality” or “ritual sociality” (424). Through this renaming of the spaces in which the people of his study interact, Postill thinks a model can be created which provides a more realistic description of how the Internet is used in the most banal sense as a tool to navigate mundane, suburban existence. The concepts of network and community are too polluted with narrow connotations to be of use.

“Mail Art: Networking Without Technology”
Seeta Pena Gangadharan

Gangadharan describes how mail art started and its affect on early cybercommunities like the WELL. The major claim is that culture clears the way for new concepts and new ways of thinking which in turn allow for new ways of being in experiential world; essentially, networking as a way to share information and transform material objects came from mail art and allowed early cyberspace pioneers to conceptualize what the Internet could be used for and the values and ethics that would govern it.

Culture here isnt the sum of the behaviors and beliefs of a particular race, ethnic group. or age group, but what is considered excellent in art. Also, Gangadharan sees the early Internet as a truly egalitarian and wholly democratic space; this perfect place is a direct copy of the mail art movement. This occured through the “productive clashes” experienced at mail art showings. In particular, members of the WELL were supporters of this art movement.

Description of mail art on page 281.
Culture as “meaning making process” on 282.
La Mamelle and the WELL begins on page 291.

“Mapping the Blogosphere”
Stephen D. Reese, Lou Rutigliano, Kideuk Hyun, and Jaekwan Jeong

The present study analyzes these patterns in the emerging weblog zone, especially the highest profile area concerning news and political debate, and examines the relationships among the citizen-based and more traditional professional journalistic components of that zone. Specifically, we content analyze six of the major news and political blogs, those sites that generate the most traffic and links within the online community. We also trace the sites they link to, including not only other blogs but also traditional online news media sites, and the manner in which they refer to them. This gives us a picture of one area of the vast web-based news and political commentary network formed by these interlinking sites. As the news arena expands globally we are also interested in the international and ideological pattern of linking, and whether blogs engage a cross-national dialog across political lines. (236)

In the end they find out that many of these blogs are connected to the major media outlets and these blogs often depend on the work of professional journalists for their own armchair analysis (since several bloggers dont have the research skills nor connections to perform investigative journalism themselves). They also find that it’s difficult to determine whether or not blogs cross-national boundaries since an individual blogger’s ISP and blog platform doesn’t correlate to her physical location. While I find manyof this article’s objectives naive, more troubling is the conclusion, which claims the blogosphere is a place that “has great potential in meeting the normative expectations we have of the public sphere: access that does not depend on economic resources, autonomy from both state and market forces, and ability of participants to communicate across professional, political, and geographic boundaries on the basis of reason” (259). I have to disagree. Users still have to have the funds to buy the equipment, the ability to make monthly payments, and still deal with corporations who sell you the ability to get online. And how are these blogs seperate from state and market forces? Most of the work on blogs, by their own admission, is based on the stories from traditional news outlets. These traditional outlets are most definitiely a part of the state and market forces. The media has been exceptionally soft on the Federal govt for all of its militray actions over the last eight years, and have even run with stories that come directly from the State Department concerning miltary actions with no fact checking invovled; the market shapes the content of blogs since the “Foxification” of news dictates the content made available to the general public and even how that content is delivered. This entire peice appears to be based on the technophile version of the rhetoric of inevitability. The article seems to be written with the undergirding philosophy that the act of blogging alone is shaping how these “citizen journalists” couch their arguments or use the resources available to them. It is not using an ecology metaphor a la Syverson; bloggers create identities and arguments based on their position within the social-political spectrum inherent in American politics. Technology does not suddenly give bloggers a blank slate where they suddenly are able to shed the identities they perform in material reality.

“Warblogs” writing on the Iraq War not using alternative media sources (240).

Ultimately, bloggers compete for ‘authority’, not so much in destroying what was closely held by professionals but by redeploying it across a broader area. Mainstream news reports can now be rapidly challenged, not only by other media but by the wired audience, which can engage such reports through
online communities – an extended communication infrastructure that constitutes the global new arena. It is in the cross-referencing, pooled consensual understandings, in the interactive ‘conversation’ that authority now resides. (240)

So professional news is referenced often and, when it is, typically taken at face value and used to develop larger points. (252)

the blogosphere incorporates professional journalistic voices as a complementary part of the network, and is not the source of relentless criticism of press bias that one may have sensed from some higher profile anti-media moments. These bloggers, for the most part, simply engage the facts and information carried in news accounts, accepting them at face value and using them to form their own arguments, reinforce views, and challenge opponents. They rarely challenge specific reportorial techniques and larger media structures. We may thus regard them ironically as in some ways preserving and reinforcing professional norms of journalism as they disseminate content generated by traditional reporting practices. (257)

It would seem this study confirms power law distribtuion ideas about the Web as a network. It’s 80/20, and the material, social network is reproduced on the network that is the Web.

“Myth and the Zapatista Movement: Exploring a Network Identity”
Adrienne Russell

Mainstream media traffics in archetypical myths in a way that re-affirms the political and social status quo. Protest groups, like the SDS, who don’t fit into the box created by these myths often loose control of their public image and become ineffectual when trying to spread its message to the masses. The hack for this network is uthe use of new media, that is, websites, listservs, email, YouTube, SMS, and social networking sites. Each allow the protest group to present themselves in ways unperturbed by the corporations that own traditional media outlets, and when coupled with the saavy implemetation of heroic myths and hip products as stand-ins for the groups experential identity, then protest groups are able to incur the favor of the masses. One such example would the Zapatistas.

The Zapatista image is built on three key myths:

(1) Subcommander Marcos, the movement’s spokesman, portraying him as a timeless uberhuman figure, referred to here as the ‘universal Marcos’;
(2) indigenous peoples, in this case the Mayan Indians of Chiapas, holding them up as anti-modern postmodern, paradoxically backward and advanced, as victims but also as heroes, as ‘noble warriors’ from the past fighting for the future; and
(3) so-called neoliberal trade policy, the ideology behind transnational legal agreements and corporate and state actions that seem to many to extend beyond the reach of individuals and the national governments that are supposed to represent them – this ideology and its manifestations represent in the world of the network a thus-far unslayable dragon, or what is referred to here as the ‘neoliberal beast’. (562)

Through effecitve use of myth, the Zapatista are able to use “the space beyond the websites run by the news and entertainment industries, the space often described as ‘decentered’, ‘freefloating’ and ‘anarchic’” (561), essentially using the network propped up and made possible by industries and companies that are apathetic, if not opposed to, the message of the Zapatistas. Through this parasitic (and I don’t mean this in a bad way) use of the web, the “Zapatista network is a sort of rival myth factory, where power flows among the member-participants, a force for resistance to rival myths but also for control of the network itself” (575).

A 1998 RAND report to the US military called the Zapatista uprising an information ‘netwar’ where new-communication technologies would be more effective than military arms (Ronfeldt et al., 1998). In such a war, dissemination and narrative power are the weapons that matter. The Zapatistas have integrated the latest techniques, providing savvy examples of idea and image commodification, cross-media campaign strategies that include news reports, art, literature, cartoons, music and product tie-ins such as posters, T-shirts, stickers, condoms stamped with Marcos’s face and ‘authentic’ action figures made in Chiapas by real peasants. Myth provides the flexibility needed to successfully garner support in the expanded media landscape. (562)

Universal Marcos begins on 564.

The myth of the Universal Marcos not only attracts people with a
diversity of interests and agendas to the movement, but also helps to make
sense of how they can come together to form a network. Marcos’s
widespread appeal and his compelling articulation of the commonalities
among local movements under the pressure of global politics and economics,
establish the movement as a hub for international activists, at once drawing
people into the movement and expanding it to include new causes and
issues. He is a powerful political leader, more complex by design than his
government and corporate adversaries. He wins support through his art, his
association with other causes, his resonance with various realities. Listservs
are filled with users who spend hours unraveling his ideas, discussing his
essays and children’s books, his looks and background, his interviews and
photospreads. In an information ‘netwar’ it is this cross-fertilization of
groups, causes, ideas, identities, products and media that make the
movement innovative and difficult to suppress. (566)

The Noble Warriors (566).

Colorful clothing, distinct faces, dramatic contrasts – mules and machine guns – this is the stuff of icon. In the energy that it expends pursuing these representations and in the immeasurable rate
at which it reproduces them, the Zapatista network raises these images and the stories that they tell to the level of myth in order to rally support. (569)

This part fof the myth works through strategic essentializing. It romanticisizes the indigenous people as a way to fight the netwar–it persaudes people to consider their position and to take their side as it automatically paints the other side as the mechanized monolith of corporate capitalism. While this may disempower the Indian population of Chipas is specific ways, it also makes them likeable underdogs who can use the images already in play–often against them–to their advantage.

Neoliberal (laissez-faire capirtalism) Beast (569).

But, as mentioned above in reference to marches, raves and readings in San Francisco, the network is not locked into cyberspace. People following the conflict online traveled to Mexico during the first days of the uprising to help shield the Zapatistas against the advancing Mexican military (Cleaver, 1998a). Worldwide protests against President Zedillo’s order to break a ceasefire with the Zapatistas in February of 1995 were organized online (Castells, 1997; Cleaver, 1998a; Robberson, 1995). In 1996, 50,000 Italians used the internet to facilitate a rally in support of the Zapatistas in the Piazza del Pololo in Rome (Chiapas95 Archives, 1994). And groups such as the Chiapas–Albany Solidarity Alliance, based in New York, hold fundraisers, conduct awareness campaigns and organize ‘safety nets’ or groups of people prepared to
mobilize quickly to assist human rights workers in Chiapas (www.zapnet.rootmedia.org/~albanycasa/). (572)

Seatlle DAN and consultation of Zapatista strategist on page 573.

The Zapatista movement also works to make its methods and methodolgy in netwar useable by other groups (573-574).

The analysis performed by the scholar emphasizes the concept of myth and romanticizaiton, not the Zapatistas themselves.

“New Media, Networking, and Phatic Culture”
Vincent Miller

Phatic communication: “communications which have purely social (networking) and not informational or dialogic intents. I conclude with a discussion of the potential nihilistic consequences of such a culture” (388).

In the drift from blogging, to social networking, to microblogging we see a shift from dialogue and communication between actors in a network, where the point of the network was to facilitate an exchange of substantive content, to a situation where the maintenance of a network itself has become the primary focus. Here communication has been subordinated to the role of the simple maintenance of ever expanding networks and the notion of a connected presence…The movement from blogging, to social networking, to microblogging demonstrates the simultaneous movements away from communities, narratives, substantive communication, and towards networks, databases and phatic communion. (399)

Lev Manovich (2001) among others argues that we are in the process of a shift from narrative forms (as epitomized by the novel or the cinematic film) as the key form of cultural expression in the modern age, to the database as the prominent cultural logic of the digital age…In contrast to narratives, the database form, as the foregoing passage suggests, is presented as a collection of somewhat separate, yet relational elements. Because databases are in essence collections or ‘lists’, they are theoretically endless and always ‘in progress’. In addition, since databases consist of relational elements, their order or combination in terms of consumption or use is determined by the user as a co-author, rather than rigidly designed by one author. Therefore, databases are (potentially) infinitely combinable in their use. (391, 393)

Karin Knorr-Cetina (1997) has used the term ‘postsocial’ to describe not only the
phenomenon of the disembedding of modern selves (and the flattened, thinned out social
forms that have resulted), but also the current expansion of object-centred environments.
In what amounts to a merging of indvidualization theory and actor-network theory, Knorr-
Cetina argues that with individualization we have not experienced a ‘desocialization’, but
a shift in late modern social relations to ones that are increasingly sifted through, or
mediated, by objects. This serves to increase the distance of the concept of ‘the social’
from a focus on human groups to something that takes into account our increasing
engagements with a variety of objects, tools and technologies (such as mobile phones,
computers, blogs and social networking profiles), which not only allow us, but encourage
us, to engage with others through them. Human relationships become increasingly
dependent on, and even displaced by, objects. Thus, the technical means available has
contributed to a postsocial situation where we use objects (whether it be phones, or
MySpace profiles, or blogs) as communicative bodies to be in constant conversation with
other represented bodies or postsocial objects. In the process, such relationships, and the
‘work’ needed to maintain them, become transformed.

Licoppe and Smoreda (2005) note that one way in which these transformations take
place is through a change in the notions of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’, which occur in an
age where many people are continually ‘in touch’ through networking technologies.
These technologies essentially ‘stand in’ for them, making one almost continually
contactable. Licoppe and Smoreda refer to this blurring of presence and absence as
‘connected presence’. Their argument is that a new sociability pattern of the constantly
contactable, one which blurs presence and absence, has resulted in relationships
becoming webs of quasi-continuous exchanges. (395)

To answer this ‘why?’ question, one has to return to the concept of information as
a commodity. In blogging, personal information was used as a commodity to build
relationships. Within social networking and microblogging, the value of information is
based more on the generation of large amounts of small bits of data, which can be
analysed easily in the marketing process. Strategies such as data mining, consumer profiling,
‘buzz’ monitoring, and reading brand relationships are much more compatible with
the small bits of ‘data’ exchanged in brief phatic exchanges than the narratives and
dialogue associated with, for example, blogging. Phatic communication is much easier to
put in a database, and much easier to package and sell to those looking to market
products or gain consumer insights. (399)

Miller uses the concept of “community” as a harkening back to some more pure time of human interaction, but with his straightforward explanation for the design of social networking sites that emphaize short bursts of phatic communication (the bloc quote above), anything could be more pure than the contrived world of Facebook or Twitter.

“Online Networks of Student Protest: The Case of the Living Wage Program”
J. Patrick Biddix and Han Woo Park

This article finds that student protest organizations have a longer life with the use of websites; not only do the websites serve as dessimination points concerning plained off-line activity, they are also important as tools to link and connect to other student and non-student organizaitons with the same goals and objectives. Moreover, they serve as anchoring points and repositories during periods of organizational latency–something common to student run groups due to graduation, therefore, turnover. Email, instant messaging, and text messaging are also helpful during a protest event.

The drawback of using technology listed on page 884.

The results seem obvious. What’s most important in this piece is the methodology; it’s a mix of ethnography and network analysis. This article serves as an excellent example of how studying networked protest groups can be done efficiently and thoroughly. A full description begins on page 874.

“Structural Holes are Good Ideas”
Ronald S. Burt

This article outlines the mechanism by which brokerage provides
social capital. Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within
than between groups, so people connected across groups are more
familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Brokerage
across the structural holes between groups provides a vision of options
otherwise unseen, which is the mechanism by which brokerage
becomes social capital. I review evidence consistent with the hypothesis,
then look at the networks around managers in a large
American electronics company. The organization is rife with structural
holes, and brokerage has its expected correlates. Compensation,
positive performance evaluations, promotions, and good ideas are
disproportionately in the hands of people whose networks span
structural holes. The between-group brokers are more likely to express
ideas, less likely to have ideas dismissed, and more likely to
have ideas evaluated as valuable. I close with implications for creativity
and structural change. (349)

There were numerous opportunities for brokerage
(fig. 2 and fig. 3), and managers were rewarded for brokerage in
the sense that compensation, positive performance evaluations, and promotions
were disproportionately given to managers who brokered connections
across structural holes (fig. 4). (386)

Stories about the creation of a good idea are often heroic, distinguishing
exceptional people from the mundane. The creator is attributed with great
intellectual ability, a fresh perspective, a productive way of thinking, a
creative personality, or some other quality that enabled him or her to
generate the good idea. Every discipline has its heroes and heroines and
stories that serve productive ends other than truth. (387)

An idea mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another. In our age
of ready technology, people often make the mistake of thinking that they
create value when they have an idea born of sophisticated analysis. That
is not true. An idea is as valuable as an audience is willing to credit it
with being. (388)

This is a familiar phenomenon in academic work (e.g.,
see Stigler [(1982) 1986] on the quick acceptance of his economic analysis
of information, or Lamont [1987] on the popularity of Derrida’s work in
culture markets as different as France and the United States). We specialize
by method, theory, and topic. It is impossible to keep up with
developments in other specialities. It would be inefficient even if it were
possible. So there is a market for the information arbitrage of network
entrepreneurs, and the evidence of their work is that valuable new ideas
in any one specialty are often a familiar concept in some distant specialty. (389)

My summary conclusion is that good ideas emerged, as hypothesized,
from the intersection of social worlds, but spread—in the organization
studies here—in a way that would continue segregation between the
worlds. There was a brokerage advantage in producing ideas, and company
systems were working correctly to reward brokers who produced
good ideas. However, the potential value for integrating operations across
the company was dissipated in the distribution of ideas. (394)

“The Contingent Value of Social Capital”
Ronald S. Burt

Burt open by differentiating between human capital and social capital. Social capital is created between people, while human capital is a quality of individuals (339). “With respect to consequences, social capital is the contextual compliment to human captial. Social captial predicts the returns to intelligence, education, and seniority depend in some part to the location of a person’s location in the social structure of a market or hierarchy” (339).

Burt combines this with the structural hole argument; in networks that dispersed and have blatant gaps, social capital is “awarded” to the individuals who can bridge those gaps and bring across ideas or resources socially constructed as valuable on one side of the structural hole. These are the “brokers” mentioned in the previous article. Dispersing these brokers in the right places are beneficial to the manager who can deploy them in ways that help their projects (this appears to be written in the context of a business firm).

The value of social capital in a structural ecology is dependent on two things:

First the value of social capital decreases with an increasing number of people doing the same work. Second, the rate at which peers erode the value of social capital is steepest where social capital is most valuable. (356)

The article closes with what these contingencies mean for future research. Any study that has several managers doing the same work can be seen as “ill-designed” (362) and discounted. Studies which focus on managers with few peers should be studied closely. Studies reporting

different strengths of association between managerial success and social capital can be integrated in terms of the relative extent to which managers in the seperate studies work with different numbers of peers. This is precisely the kind of analytical power needed to establish social capital explanations on a par with the human capital explanations on which we were weaned. (362)

Burt is attempting to explain, within an ecology metaphor and network analysis, how people actually get ahead within corporations (or fail) in ways that are closer to experiential reality and not reliant solely on generic explanations and socitieal commonplaces.

“The New Science of Networks”
Duncan J. Watts

Watts explores the “new” science of networks coming to the fore in fields like biology and the social sciences and demonstrates how several of the new studies occuring in these fields match work done in other fields using similar methodologies (Watts claims this type of work has been going on in mathematics and physics for some time). Watts closes the article explaining

if the science of networks is to live up to its early promise, then the other disiciplines–sociology in particular–must offer guidance in, for example, the interpretation of empirical and theoretical findings, particularly in the context of policy applications, and also in suggesting measures and models that are increasingly relevant to problems at hand. (264)

Throughout the article Watts breaks each of the more popular network models down.

“The Social Capital of Opinion Leaders”
Ronald S. Burt

This article combines the concept of brokerage along structural holes and the model of two step communication. Two step communication is “a process of the moving of information from the media to opinion leaders, and influence moving from opinion leaders to their followers” (38).Two step communication works on the idea of contagion; infecting opinion leaders means they will infect their immediate networks.

Cohesion refers to the strength of the relationship between ego and alter. For example, cohesion would be high between two friends. Contagion by cohesion occurs because of socializing communication. The more frequent and empathic the communication between ego and alter, the more likely that alter’s adoption of a new idea or behavior will trigger ego’s adoption. (39)

The familiar two-step flow of communication is a compound of two distinct network mechanisms; contagion by cohesion through opinion leaders gets information into a group, then contagion by equivalence triggers adoptions within the group. Thus, opinion leaders are not people at the top of things so much as people at the edge of things, not leaders within groups so much as brokers between groups. (51)

“The Very Small World Well-Connected”
Xiolan Shi, Matthew Bonner, Lada Acamic, and Anna C. Gilbert

Shi et al are creating equations which allow for the break down of large networks and the study of small pieces of said network (referred to as a graph) so as to study the entire network in a manageable way. In this way the relationship between nodes in the graph (wehter blogs or webpages) can be described in terms of information exchange, linking, and position as a hub or a connector within the network under examination. The termminology used to described these networks (which, by the way, are networks found on the Web) is the type discussed by Spinuzzi early in his monograph; nodes, edges, and vertices are the terms most often deployed.

In this paper, we propose a new approach to analyzing and studying large online networks, vertex-importance graph synopsis. Given a set of important vertices, we extract a much smaller subgraph from the original network, containing those important vertices. We attempt to place this process on a rigorous footing and show that even simple versions of the graph compression problem are hard (but that
there are reasonable heuristic algorithms). Unlike previous methods which evaluated the fidelity of the“graph abstract,” this approach utilizes the subsets of important vertices and edges and the information they could provide in large networks. We argue that they can make information accesss and management more efficient in real applications. These observations suggest future work in using graph synopses for information retrieval and information flow detection.

From our empirical analysis of three real online networks, we find a number of interesting properties. The important vertices are much more closely and densely connected to each other. They also have significantly shorter pairwise paths, which do not heavily depend on the rest of vertices in the networks, (i.e. their pairwise shortest paths in the subgraphs induced by themselves are close to those in the original graphs). Finally, their relative ranks are almost all highly correlated to their ranks in the original networks. Although our experiments show that the properties of vertices of different importance measures in different networks
do vary in some ways, the observations stated above are consistent no matter the type of networks (either social or technological), and regardless of the importance measure we choose. Thus, we may use vertex-importance graph synopses as small but accurate representatives of the important vertices in the larger graph (and, sometimes, of the larger graph itself). Furthermore, the real online networks are relatively
easy to compress while preserving important graph properties (they do not exhibit the worst-case behavior of our theoretical analysis).

In addition to empirical studies, we use analytical discussions to show how these properties of important vertices in online networks differ from random graph models. What is more, we also use heuristic algorithms to measure the complexities and trade-offs of requiring some properties of the real networks to be guaranteed in the compressed graphs. (69)

“The Virtual Geography of Social Networks”
Zizi Papacharissi

Papacharissi argues that the architecture of social networking sites affects not only the individual user’s presentation of self (ethos), but also determines the user’s behavior while spending time online and on their SNS of choice (the article analyzes Facebook, LinkdIn and ASmallWorld).

While not entirely neutral, fluid architecture highlights technological affordances without definitively determining behavior.The more flexible, although not utterly flexible, architecture of Facebook highlighted the social affordances of the technologies, whereas the more defined LinkedIn and ASmallWorld produced a more definitive effect on human behavior. Neither good nor bad, neither restrictive nor liberating, nor neutral, technology-as-architecture communicates the inherent promise and predisposition of online spaces. (217)

This flexibility allows for choices in self-presentation, the spontaneous creation of personal networks, interpersonal relationships, and the ability “to create symbolic codes that facilitate communication and create what Castells (2000) termed a culture of ‘real virtuality’” (202) that is used to perform the above described acts.

The methodology involves discourse analysis and is built on four points: “private/public balance present in each social networking site, styles of self-presentation in spaces privately public and publicly private, cultivation of taste performances as a mode of sociocultural identification and organization and the formation
of tight or loose social settings” (200).

In spaces where validation of offline identity is a requirement for admission, how is the liberating aspect of online expression compromised as individuals enter networks with their real-life baggage, carrying with them class, gender and ethnic assumptions that characterize them in their offline existence? How is space used to communicate, reiterate or de-emphasize gender, class and ethnic distinctions? What is the historical significance of all this, and how may the growing popularity of online networks influence the course of the internet as a medium? Do some spaces become ‘more equal than others’, as access to technology and literacy are no longer enough to bridge a digital divide that is unfolding in a new direction, supporting an online information caste system? These are the questions that guide this discourse analysis. (206)

Dicusson of the difference between the three sites on 209-210. Facebook is generally open to anyone with Internet access and willing to divlge certain pieces of private offline info; Linkdin is open to everyone but through its design and mission statment draws professionals or future professionals (the article refers to it as a “Rolodex); ASmallWorld is a completely gated community which prides itelf on its exclusive membership. Membership in ASmallWorld can only be gained through invitation by a current member who has been awarded inviting privleges.

Goffman’s concept of presentation (“faces”) is presented as a way to describe how each SNS’s architecture enables ethos (210-213).

Discussion of tast performance on 213.

Looseness, tightness, and organic creation of social norms by users on 214.

Public and private space discussed on 207. The essay claims there is a blurring of these spaces online.

Electronic media are characterized by their ability to remove, or at least rearrange, the boundaries between public and private spaces, affecting our lives not so much through content, but rather ‘by changing the ‘situational geography’ of social life’ (Meyrowitz, 1986: 6). In describing this effect, Meyrowitz (1986) employed an architectural analogy and asked his audience to imagine a world where all walls separating rooms, houses, and offices were removed, thus combining several distinct situations.This merging of private and public (or the confluence of public and private boundaries) carries behavioral consequences for individuals, who must adjust their behavior so as to make it appropriate for a variety of different situations and audiences. As a result, the realm of interaction and self-presentation fostered by electronic media conveys a lack of a situational place to orient the individual or, as Meyrowitz terms it, ‘no sense of place’. The confluence of private and public is especially pronounced on a medium such as the internet, and is particularly relevant to interaction developing in online social networks (e.g. Barnes, 2006; boyd and Heer, 2006; Donath and boyd, 2004). (206-207)

Summer is finally here! Longer days and school vacation mean sports camps, beach trips, baseball games, swimming lessons and all the other outdoor stuff we wait for all year. While it’s a great time for families to be outside together and soak up some sunshine (don’t forget sunscreen!), sports-related injuries are a threat. The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons reports that every year, over 3.5 million kids under 15 suffer some type of sports-related injury. Adults are at risk, too.

So here are some tips to keep you and your family safe this summer:

Everyone is different: Children and teenagers do not all develop at the same pace, which explains why the other 12-year-olds at your son’s lacrosse camp might look older than he does. That might sound obvious but it is important to remember. Why? Because one child’s bones and ligaments may be stronger than another child’s of the same age because of differing rates of development. So it’s important to know your own child’s strengths and limits to prevent any pulled or strained muscles. If possible, try to pick a summer team or activity where everyone has the same skill level.

Keep it fun: Playing sports and being outside are meant to be fun but when children are pushed beyond their limit, injuries can happen. Competition can be a good thing but no one wants to run around when it hurts to. Parents, you can help your children succeed on and off the playing field by focusing on their development, not on how many games are being won or lost. Encourage your child to take breaks when needed.

Rest and stretch: Everyone can benefit from resting overworked muscles and stretching before and after a rigorous workout. The more tired your body, the more likely you are to get hurt. Doctors call it an “overuse injury” and it is one of the most common sports-related injuries out there. Make sure you give your body a break every few days. If you are going to work out or play sports, be sure to warm up your muscles so they’re not as rigid and prone to injury.

Bottom line: Listen to your body to stay healthy and make the most of your summer!

Be sure to tune in to Dr. Sanjay Gupta every weekend on HOUSE CALL. You’ll find the answers to your medical questions Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET on CNN.

Last week, I attend an excellent talk and seminar from Anil Gupta, author of Empiricism and Experience, in which he presented his non-propositional conception of experience and its contribution to rational thought, along with his latest thoughts on the metaphysics of experience.

Gupta’s central thesis can be simply stated as the claim that rational entitlement to knowledge is not generated solely by present experience, but by experience in conjunction with the prior metaphysical and experiential standing of the subject. It is this pre-existing ‘view’ that the subject brings to experience that yields entitlement to knowledge, thereby enabling them to make rational judgements even in cases where their ontology is radically mistaken; e.g. they are a ‘brain in a vat’ (BIV). This contrasts with views, such as Pryor’s dogmatism, that take experience itself to confer prima facie rational entitlement, and Wright’s entitlement of cognitive project, which flows from the logical structure of rational enquiry.

Gupta’s conception of experience has some novel and interesting features. Firstly, its contribution to rationality—what Gupta calls the ‘given’—is non-propositional in nature. In contrast to content or representation based views, experience is seen as analogous to a function or ‘argument schema’, such as modus ponens, which maps subjective views onto judgements. Thus experience dictates which judgements are warranted by a given view, and is in turn conditioned by past experience and beliefs, thereby creating a cycle of mutual interdependence. This logic of interdependence is described by Gupta’s work with Belnap, which is supposed to avoid the obvious problems with circularity, although not having read this work I can’t really comment on the details.

The resulting theory aims to remain entirely neutral on ontological issues whilst enabling experience to make a rational contribution to knowledge despite its non-propositional structure. Thus, a sense datum theorist, who takes experience to consist only of private sense impressions rather than public objects, and a direct realist can be having the same experience, irrespective of which ontology is correct. Indeed, Gupta considers it an advantage of his account that it does not mandate or presuppose the correctness of a common sense ontology of objects, persons, and so on, on the basis that the epistemology of experience shouldn’t constrain one’s choice of metaphysics. The sense datum theorist’s ontology may even turn out to be right, and the issue of what things are to be found in the world is taken to be a purely empirical matter.

Up to this point, I find Gupta’s view to be extremely interesting and appealing. It avoids the need to assign particular propositional content to experience—something that Travis, for example, regards as highly problematic—whilst retaining its essential role in rational enquiry. I also like the way in which it takes account of the mutual interaction between present experience and the pre-existing ‘view’ that a subject’s brings to bear upon the world in a way that respects the temporally extended nature of experience. Gupta’s logic of interdependence seems to offer a powerful way of explaining how experience both informs judgement and our overall world view, which in turn entitles us to make certain judgements, rather than presenting a purely synchronic picture of entitlement, as some other theories (e.g. dogmatism) attempt to do.

What I find less convincing, however, is Gupta’s characterisation of the nature of experience. In the first place, it seems counterintuitive to describe the solipsist or BIV as having the same—i.e. ‘subjectively identical’—experiences as the direct realist who has a radically different ontology. Experience is surely theory laden in the sense that it can be affected by the concepts that one possesses, and not just in terms of the judgements that it entitles one to make.

Gupta also differentiates between subjective identity, which is determined by the things (real and unreal) that experience makes present to the subject, and indistinguishability, which is limited by the subject’s powers of discrimination. This introduces an externalist element to experience that sits uncomfortably with the kind of empiricism that Gupta wants to defend. Gupta’s principle of ‘same phenomenology, same rational contribution’ seems clear enough, but if the phenomenology of experience is not dictated by an experience’s subjective character but by the objects which it makes present to the subject (i.e. subjective identity), then two subjectively indistinguishable experiences can still make different rational contributions to knowledge—the very point that an empiricist might want to deny.

Another worry concerns Gupta’s argument against the propositional given. He argues that the propositional given commits one to a Cartesian view of experience, which consists only of sense data, and not of objects in the world, and so is unable to yield entitlement to knowledge. However, the premises upon which this argument—and indeed, the whole book—is based seem question begging. A epistemological disjunctivist, such as McDowell, would simply reject the premise that phenomenologically identical experiences always yield the same rational contribution to knowledge, Gupta’s so-called equivalence principle. The notion that experience is always reliable and can never mislead also seems poorly motivated, not to mention counterintuitive, although in conversation Gupta attributed it to the empiricist tradition, and so worthy of defending. Furthermore, it seems that Gupta’s own account could itself be formulated in terms of a propositional given consisting of as a (potentially infinite) series of conditionals connecting views and rational entitlements to judgements without being committed to the Cartesian ontology. Although Gupta himself would no doubt eschew such a formulation, it is unclear why the notion of a propositional given is necessarily problematic, thereby undermining the motivation for Gupta’s non-propositional account.

On the whole, I find Gupta’s approach to be a refreshing and novel solution to a variety of problems in epistemology and the philosophy of perception. But his unwillingness to countenance the notion of direct acquaintance with objects (as opposed to sense data) and adherence to questionable methodological principles seem to be motivated more by a desire for logical tidiness and consistency than phenomenological accuracy. Perhaps this is no bad thing, and the resulting approach is certainly more elegant than some of the alternatives, but I find myself unconvinced as to its merits, despite being intrigued by the possibility of this kind of account of perceptual knowledge.

This story has caught a lot of people’s attention: the Food and Drug Administration wants people to stop using three different Zicam products. They are Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Gel, Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs, and Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs, Kids Size. The reason is that these over-the-counter homeopathic remedies might come with a pretty significant side effect called anosmia, or the loss of smell, and in some cases, the loss of taste, for long periods of time, sometimes even permanently. The products are all intra-nasal, meaning they are put directly in to a person’s nose. Lots of people swear by them but when you are dealing with cold or allergy smptoms, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

Here are some tips:

Power of Zinc? Zinc is a popular homeopathic medicine and it is one of the chief components of Zicam. But how it actually affects the common cold is up for debate. While many people believe it weakens the severity of symptoms, solid data does not support that claim. If you are someone who believes zinc helps you deal with having a cold, consider eating a diet rich in foods including oysters, beans, nuts, poultry, crab and lobster, all of which are packed with zinc. If you want to take supplements, stick to proper doses of oral or lozenge forms. Be sure to tell your doctor about all the supplements you are taking in case they interfere with other medications. And if you experience any pain or loss of function, stop immediately.

Prevention is key Prevention is the first step to good health. Since a cold cannot be cured, the best way to manage its symptoms is to avoid having a cold in the first place. Regular sleep, exercise, and a healthy diet will keep your immune system strong. Aim for eating several different-colored foods to make sure your plate is full of a variety of nutrients. Make sure you wash your hands frequently, before you eat and after you leave a public area like a mall or a gym. And finally, quit smoking. Doctors say it all the time because it’s true: Quitting smoking really is the best way to improve your health!

Be sure to tune in to Dr. Sanjay Gupta every weekend on HOUSE CALL. You’ll find the answers to your medical questions Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET on CNN.

I can’t imagine how I would get along in life without the electronic gadgets that I’ve come to rely on everyday, almost without thinking. But for all of their convenience, several gadgets may be doing us some physical harm. We are hearing more and more about ailments like “cell phone elbow”, “Blackberry thumb”, and computer-strained eyes. The good news is that modifying your habits can keep you healthy, but still plugged in, over the long haul.

Here are a few tips:

Go Hands-Free: Doctors call it cubital tunnel syndrome, otherwise known as “cell phone elbow“. It causes an aching or tingling in your forearm or hand after you have kept your elbow bent for long periods of time. A hands-free device is your best bet for avoiding this stress injury. Plus, use some common sense tactics, like switching hands when holding your cell phone, and avoid resting on your elbows while driving or sitting. If you already have “cell phone elbow,” try wearing an elbow pad while sleeping to keep the pain at bay.

Computer Dangers: It is easy to find kid-friendly computer games on the market today but your computer itself may not be so safe. A new study from the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that children ages five and under are more likely to be injured by a computer or computer accessory – like a monitor, a printer, or computer cords – than any other age group. If you can, reduce the risk of injury by mounting your monitor at home to the wall so it won’t tip over on to your little one. Tie up all the computer wires and perch them somewhere your child can’t reach. And remember, most computer furniture is not made for children; consider investing in a child-sized computer chair and use bumpers to cover up pointy corners on computer desks.

Thumbs down: Typing away on your PDA may help you work smarter but our thumbs are not as ambidextrous as the rest of our fingers. Repeated stress can cause aching, tingling, or numbness. Try to type only what is necessary and take breaks when you notice any pain. I like to stretch my thumb joints to release tension. You can also try anti-inflammatory medicines like ibuprofen or naproxen if the pain persists.

Bottom line: No need to put your Blackberry down forever. Following these simple steps will help you work smarter and stay healthier, even as you talk, type, and tap away.

Be sure to tune in to Dr. Sanjay Gupta every weekend on HOUSE CALL. You’ll find the answers to your medical questions Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET on CNN.

Using sunscreen regularly is one of the best ways to protect your skin from sunburns, some types of skin cancer, sun-spots, wrinkles, and premature aging. But with myriad new products touting higher SPF (“sun protection factor”) numbers, how do you know which one to pick? You might be thinking, “Higher SPF, must be better!”, but that’s not necessarily true, so here are some tips:

UVA VS. UVB? GO FOR BOTH. The sun gives off two types of radiation: ultraviolet A (UVA) and ultraviolet B (UVB). Both can damage your skin. The ‘SPF’ part only refers to protection from UVB, which causes sunburns. The UVA rays penetrate deeper into your skin, causing wrinkles and sun-spots, and also making it harder for your body to fight off disease. So make sure your sunscreen shields you from both types of rays; look for the words “broad spectrum” on the label.

MAGIC NUMBER 30: On average, about six percent of the sun’s UV radiation gets past an SPF 15 sunscreen and into your skin, compared to only three percent with SPF 30. That’s why you should pick a minimum SPF of 30 when you’re outside (even if it’s not sunny). But as SPF numbers get higher, they only provide slightly higher protection (e.g., going from SPF 60 to 90 only gives you roughly one percent more coverage). So pick a higher SPF if you tend to burn easily, but there’s probably no need to go overboard with SPF 100 and the likes.

REAPPLY, REAPPLY, REAPPLY: Time to bust a common myth: a higher SPF number doesn’t mean it will last longer, regardless of whether you use a lotion, spray, or cream. Whatever you’re using, you still have to reapply every two hours, especially if you have been swimming or sweating. Your best bet for protecting your skin is to stay vigilant and reapply, reapply, reapply.

Regardless of your skin color, sunscreen is a must, so don’t leave home without it.

Be sure to tune in to Dr. Sanjay Gupta every weekend on HOUSE CALL. You’ll find the answers to your medical questions Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET on CNN.