white house communication enhancements. Could there be a better, more public, more embarrassing example of poor interface design? The real question is whether it was born of ignorance or malice… Doc Searls’ step-by-step attempt to email President Bush John Markoff’s New York Times article on the new system… [mamamusings]

I emailed them to complain, I got the email back basically stating that more or less that the whitehouse only wants to hear what they want to hear and unless i wear my brown shirt and march to their drum, my comments will be unheard:( i find it utterly appalling.

flash toys. adrian's cool flash toys featuring adrian's battlebots. [MetaFilter]

toys, yummm

media technologies for open communication. While I agree in principle with Fiske in rejecting the technological determinism point of view, I also believe that due to the social construction of communication technologies there ought to be some characteristics of particular technologies that are better fit to serve the designer. My argument is that if a particular technology was designed to serve the corporate interest, most of its features will be driven to maximize the profits. [see the entry on adaptive structuration for this argument] In contrast, if a group of people is about to design technology for open communication and democratic access to information, the… [infosophy: socio-technological rendering of information

SCOT, the social construction of technology, Edinburgh school, admits that there are more than 1 significant group in the construction of a technology, ideally, there are many. one though is the designers, one is the market, and depending on the institution one might be the business oriented marketeers, etc. I'm personally not fond of SCOT as a great model of analysis, because it usually focuses on the development of a paradigmatic technology, instead of showing the plurality of technologies surrounding the paradigm, but that's a whole different discussion I suppose.

I think that technology is never designed to fulfill one interest, but that the contexts, and social milieu might allow that many groups have certain interests in common, but they pursue them in a myriad of ways, and that what comes out of at the end, if interpreted in certain ways, can appear to be singularly oriented toward one interest or collection of interests that is associated with a certain group. The question then becomes how you get at what really occured? and why that might be important.

Best Happiest place on earth. Reading Metafilter today, I am struck with how lucky I am. In some countries, journalists who question the party line… [Blog de Halavais]

Saturdays are the best days for irony and sarcasm. Alex was more up to the challenge than I was.

Shake'n'Bake Social Theory.

Real innovation in social theory is hard but brute-force approaches can yield results. Henry’s comments on Public Choice Theory reminded me of a simple way to innovate theory that you’re welcome to apply in various contexts as you please.

[Kieran Healy's Weblog]

a problem is that the metonymic replacement or substitution of one cultural institution as another is always political. Even if you really believe that markets are politics, or culture, the way that you came to that belief is probably full of influences outside of your direct control, the discursive realm.

another problem is that; the social is inseparable from any social milieu, such as the market, such as politics, etc. and this is inversely similar. It is one of the great fallacies of analysis to construct categories that can encompass one another, and while this is really all we have to work with, it is also the case, that when presented with someone claiming that one is the other, or one operates like the other, we should respond “sure, except in the cases where it does not” because exceptions always exist and they don't form logical sets for simple analysis, though some people think they do….., but then some people think that the some total of a human life can be represented by their purchases too, so you know, not everything is not as people think:)

the base assumption that i like to work on is that if someone is trying to make something simple, then they are probably putting forth an ideologically bent position that serves them in some manner, even if that service is something like 'it is easier to analyze'. then we can start playing the game “Whose Hegemony, Which Ideology”, which is always fun.

In short, i think we have to be perspectivists and realize that if you are looking from a direction, you are informed by that direction and it narrows your perspective generally so it only sees some details. Perspectives only allow the 'salience' of certain details, and in that they only give us part of the picture, and certainly not everything that is important about the picture, and as such should be supplemented with a general skepticism along the lines of the 8 modes.

but hey, that's just me, I tend to look at meta levels of analysis instead of analyzing anything at all, its an STS* addiction, apparently incurable.

*Science and Technology Studies

Chat Rooms Fastest Cause of Relationship Breakdowns.

The University of Florida just released a study on this subject, “Online Dating Virtually Irresistible To Some Married Folks.”\ [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]

you mean, it is replacin the telephone? or the secret letter? oh my… it is interesting thouh to note that it isn't anything new that people use communication to have relationships, and sometimes that faculty of communication allows multiple relationships of the same type. oh, i should stop this rant now. i'm not surprised by the findings. i would have been surprised by their opposite.