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Judy Wajcman - (Life in the Fast Lane - British Journal of Sociology) - straying from submitted abstract
Impact of mobile phones and new forms of social relations - two sides: perpetual contact (boo) or perpetual contact (yay!). The question is the permeability of work and play that these devices encourage - but Wajcman suggests that this is mostly a discursive trope. She's mostly interested in the idea of mobile phones as tools of coordination between family members and their practices.
"Family practices as mutually configured by mobile devices." The question is the transformative nature of these technologies.
Few researchers focus on the role of gender and mobile phones - unlike traditional landline-based studies (me: Claude Fischer's America's Calling.
Sample: 1000 households - time diary, survey, phone log. Calls on mobile are mainly for social/family reasons. Women's calls on mobile phones are predominantly social - even if you take into account employment status. People said that the mobiles were often used for coordination. Men were twice as likely as women to take their phones on vacation.
Interestingly, Wajcman found that people were able to control the boundaries between work and play - contrary to popular discourse around the blurring of these boundaries.
(me: Yikes, 1 hour for four papers is totally crazy....)
MOGI players - Christian Licoppe
GPS-enabled phones - players view a map on phone that shows collectable objects and other players. The idea is for Web-based players to guide mobile phone players in the field.
Location in this community becomes a public resource. "Unusual locations" become mentionable and often form the basis of interactions. There are also MOGI-specific form of greetings - not simply formulaic or void of meaning.
Of course, this has implications for studies of surveillance and privacy.
Making Work Public - Laura Foriano (Columbia U.)
(Thriving Office - CD for home businesses with sounds of business being conducted)
Wifi hotspots as mobile workspaces.
Some theories:
Ritual view of communication - Carey
ANT - Latour
Innovation Space -Moultrie
Foriano surveyed people with NYCwireless and Ile Sans Fils (Montreal) - also some responses from Budapest.
In NYC, top spaces: Starbucks, Bryant Park, NYC Public Library, and independent cafes.
Budapest, top spaces: Other/independent locations, McDonald's (McCafe), Burger King, etc.
Montreal: Other/independent locations are at the top.
Wifi is a reason for folks to visit these locations. People stay 1-4 hours and are typically there between 12-9pm. Many people want to get out of their home and office.
Interviewed with various people - one was an SEO.
Feeling of being in a public space (surveillance) makes them feel more productive.
Paper forthcoming in Mobile Work and Technology.
Cultivating memory - enhancing the human with mobile recording devices - Lina Dib (Rice U.)
CARPE (digital computer systems that can supplement the human memory)
"What counts as remembering?" - archiving, rather than deleting
(me: again, my battery is dying. great session, though.)
Once again, I'm breaking all of the blogging rules, and blogging my notes from 4s. I'm currently in a session moderated by danah boyd about youth and participatory culture.
Notes from Sarita Yardi's/Amy Bruckman's - trying to understand the problem with teens not being interested in science, technology and engineering fields. They're researching how SNS might be used to encourage interest in these fields.
Questions
(1) current practices of teenagers' online - interviews with 25 students in ATL area
(2) how these practices might be shaped to encourage teens to gain computational skills
Definitions of computing - expert based
What do you do on the computer?
- On all day, on Facebook, chatting with friends
- Internet not seen as influencing future careers
Fewer people wanted to be artists than computer programmers...
Computing (seen as hardware/software) is not the Internet (seen as fun).
Computing is antisocial - not people-centered.
Computing is hard.
Main takeaways:
(1) Teens should be taught computational literacy based on whatever they're already doing (like classes using Facebook's API).
(2) Teens represent the future of technology.
There's a range of computational literacy...
Narratives of Self-Teaching - What do children learn by participating from online/media cultures? (Patricia G. Lange, USC film)
Method: Ethnographic study of video podcasts, interviews, and participation in the YouTube
"Self-taught" - often used by community members as a way of distancing themselves from traditional, social learning resources
Narrative - Portelli 1991 - the structure of these narratives and inherent contradictions are important.
"Massaging public identity"
"Self-taught" is used to "portray a technical identity and competence" and distance oneself from certain social forms of learning.
Questions - one audience member suggested the "self-taught" stuff is very much tied to DIY/punk aesthetic. But of course, there are adjustments made to these cultures by those with "elite" status within the community.
Sonja Baumer - YouTube
(me: "Broadcast yourself" - an interesting tagline)
(1) Understanding tools for creating/sharing
(2) UX and motivation, and modes of production
(3) How do these different modes of participation support the culture of YouTube
Gaming aspects of YouTube - social points/scoreboards for attracting viewers, comments, etc.
Four types of motivations for using YouTube:
(1) Self-expression
(2) Self-promotion
(3) "Random" entertainment
(4) Interest driven
Modes of participation:
(1) "Expressives"
(2) "Fame seekers"
(3) "Casual Users"
(4) "Enthusiasts"
More than a Web app - "a community of users"
"Composed conversations - teenage practices of flirting with new media," Christo Sims - UC Berkeley
Mediated practices used:
(1) attempt to figure out whether romantic attraction is shared
(2) mitigate the possibility that they lose face in a more "private" sphere
Ellison, Heino, and Gibbs (2006) - use Goffman to understand the impression management practices of adults on personal sites
Social information processing theory - Walther (1992) - supported by Sims' work
Flirting is conducted through asynchronous/synchronous writing - comments on public sites or over IM - participants felt they had "more control" over their presentation of self. This would precede F2F meetings. Rejection is relatively non-confrontational and allows individuals to save face more easily.
Individual messages should be interpretable in multiple ways - and short. This means that individuals scrutinize small cues. This also means that those producing comments spend a lot of time projecting a "casual" attitude.
There's also tensions between the perceived privacy allowed by online flirting, but there's also a significant amount of surveillance that can occur, as individuals share these flirtations with their friends, even composing messages with others.
Mediating the Generation Gap - Heather A. Horst
Collaboration - commitment to values of equality, democracy, solidarity, cooperation, shift from hierarchical to lateral relations.
Are kids able to leverage their experience with technology to equalize the power relations within the family?
...more later - my battery just died...