Category — Cultural Informatics

Cyborg citizens and digital natives:
Patrik Hernwall discussed the notion of Educology, and how, within this framework, the learning subject can be defined. Building on theories of constructivist learning, he suggested that the learning subject should be viewed as an active, intentional, meaningmaking subject in context. An important part of the context is the tools available and what actions they afford, and this reasoning brought Hernwall to the conclusion that it is fruitful to view the (young) learner as a cyborg citizen.
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Here I take issue with the understanding of citizen. What it means to be a citizen is heavily contested, but qualitatively i think a citizen needs to: participate, be free to dissent(and really actually to dissent)… and that is about it. however, schools and technology have never been very good about encouraging participation and dissent. They are more in line with producing informed, agreeing subjects– subjects that are submissive to their informatic and mediated environments. Digital natives, in my mind, show no significant difference in the capacity to participate and dissent.

Idealware: Candid Reviews of Nonprofit Software:
Idealware provides candid Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits, centralized into a website. Through product comparisons, recommendations, case studies, and software news, Idealware allows nonprofits to make the software decisions that will help them be more effective.

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This is a great idea…. Lets just hope they keep their biases transparent which has been the bane of many review site.

Futurelab – Research – Publications – opening education:
This series of publications aims to open up areas for debate – to provoke and stimulate new visions for education – as well as literally ‘opening up’ education, not only bringing together ideas from educational practice and research but also drawing on the fields of creative arts, media and technical innovation. In the ideas we present we also hope to ‘open up’ the walls of the educational institution – to present models of learning that show how we can create connections between learners in different settings, how we can enable collaboration between different organisations and institutions, how we can make links between different approaches to and forms of learning.

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Future lab has two papers that are worth reading. one on open source and education and one on social software and learning. Of course… the production of these papers seems more ‘brochure’ than ‘research’ at first, but there are some ideas in there that are worth considering.

Introducing MediaCommons:

(cross-posted from if:book)

I’ve got the somewhat daunting pleasure of introducing the readers of if:book to one of the Institute’s projects-in-progress, MediaCommons.

(What follows is long, so I’ve tucked it beneath the fold.)

Continued below the fold…

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This is great stuff, it is sort of like what h-net, the matrix and my projects at the center for digital discourse and culture have been doing in other fields.

IST Results – Probing past memories in a digital future:
“It is sometimes hard to get a good idea of what it is you see when all you see is ruins,” says Tijl Vereenooghe, from the University of Leuven, one of the partners in the IST-funded EPOCH project.
The project consists of a large network of 85 cultural institutions, university and museums joined in a united effort to resurrect cultural heritage sites. The ambitious project work entails illustrating what modern technology can do to attract a greater audience to cultural heritage sites as well as coordinating actions among cultural institutions so they don’t have to invent things again, explains Vereenooghe.
“EPOCH has outlined a number of issues worth investigating, as they are pointed out by heritage professionals as necessary and useful, or they correspond to missing tools in the production pipeline of cultural communication,” explains EPOCH coordinator, Prof David Arnold at Brighton University.

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I’m going to have to look into this….

far too many groups in the fields that i work with accept the singular account of economics…. so i’m distributing this.
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“Economic Pluralism for the 21st Century”
June 1-3, 2007
University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)

In the second half of the 20th century, neoclassical economics and its derivatives came to dominate economic thinking, teaching and policymaking. Humanity is increasingly feeling the consequences of this blinkered vision: the ever-widening gap between the very rich and all the rest; growing divergences in economic performance across nations and regions; globalization without global coordination for the common good; and economically induced climate change, with the mid-century prospect of an Earth unable to support even current levels of human population. Meta-externalities from economic systems are draining the resources on which they depend, from families and other institutions that educate and socialize human beings, to water, air, soil, and the diversity of species.

In a positive vein, economics in the 21st century has already taken a decidedly pluralist turn, spurred in part by the struggles of economists – mainstream and heterodox – to increase the relevance of economic theory, policy, and education in a changing and challenged world where no single theoretical tradition or institutional structure can reasonably claim to hold “the key” to human betterment.

ICAPE and the organizers of “Economic Pluralism for the 21st Century” invite proposals for papers that discuss or demonstrate the value of economic pluralism in any of its domains: economic theory and philosophy, economic institutions and policies, or economic education.

Panels will be organized around thematic topics, with an eye to encouraging dialogue among authors whose papers address similar issues from different points of view. In this fashion, we hope to promote critical engagement and mutual learning among conference participants.

Submission of Proposals

All paper and panel proposals should be submitted to Rob Garnett at r.garnett@tcu.edu, or by post to:

Rob Garnett
Department of Economics
Box 298510
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX 76129

Proposal deadline: January 15, 2007
Notification deadline: February 15, 2007

For individual paper proposals, please include the following:

Paper title
Brief abstract (200-250 words)
Your name and contact addresses (including institutional affiliation)

For panel proposals (3-4 papers), please include:

Panel title
Brief description of the panel’s focus
Brief abstract (200-250 words) for each paper
Each panelist’s name and contact addresses (including institutional affiliations)

When submitting a panel proposal, you are encouraged (but not required) to designate a session chair. Also, you are encouraged to propose a format for your session, including non-traditional formats such as roundtables, workshops, or presenter/audience dialogues.

Conference Fees and Registration

The conference will be held over three days, beginning on Friday morning, June 1, 2007, and ending midday on Sunday, June 3.

The conference fee covers Friday and Saturday lunches, a conference dinner Friday evening, tea/coffee breaks throughout the conference, and all printed conference materials.

Between now and April 1, 2007, the fee structure will be:

Regular rate: $150
Low-income rate (for graduate students, underemployed Ph.D.s, and others): $75

After April 1, 2007, the fee structure will be:

Regular rate: $175
Low-income rate: $75

To register for the conference, please fill out the registration and payment form (available at www.icape.org) and send it to:

Ed McNertney
Department of Economics
Box 298510
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX 76129

OA book series from the U of Helsinki:

PCs to developing world ‘fuel malware’ | The Register :
Programs to send PCs to third world countries might inadvertently fuel the development of malware for hire scams, an anti-virus guru warns.

Eugene Kaspersky, head of anti-virus research at Kaspersky Labs, cautions that developing nations have become leading centres for virus development. Sending cheap PCs to countries with active virus writing cliques might therefore have unintended negative consequences, he suggests.
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the law of unintended consequences…..

BANNED AND CENSORED!:
We’re rapidly coming to a point where far from being a treasure trove of openness and accessibility, the private island system is only perpetuating the “walled garden” or “country club” aspect of life that we were supposed to be getting away from by coming on the Internet in the first place! The Second Life Library 2.0 is a failure exemplifying the failure of the Lindens’ original Mainland vision of open and diverse space. They need to “control their parcel” and keep out people like Prokofy Neva who might not pay their library fines.
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i think profky is right in pointing out many of the problems of the private island system in sl and the issues with public resources or lack thereof.

DAC 2007: Perth:

The call for papers for perthDAC 2007 is out. The theme of the 2007 Digital Arts and Culture Conference will be “The Future of Digital Media Culture” which, I presume, leaves plenty of room for electronic literature and other GTxA type interests. The conference will be held from 15 – 18th September 2007, during the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth. There will be a double blind peer review process for papers. The deadline for 500 word abstracts is 14th August 2006, and the deadline for full papers is 4th December 2006. Although it’s a long, expensive way to go from just about anywhere else, Perth is a great city in a fantastic part of Western Australia, with great culture, food, wine, beaches, parrots, and Aussies. I was there for a couple of weeks last winter/summer and I’m looking forward to going back.

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I’ll probably submit something, they’ll probably reject it. but who knows, it really depends on what i submit. i suspect that i’ll submit something along the lines of my archives and situationism discussion, but … i might go for something more art oriented.