America's Next Top Information Professional

Rob recently blogged about a commentary about the way that social media could have a negative impact on lonely college students. Something about this reminds me of a This American Life radio segment about the early days of voicemail at Columbia University. Within this system, messages could be forwarded to other people on campus and this show focuses on the story of how one message went viral. It’s a great example of how new technology can be used to reinforce community within a physical community. Also, it’s really, really funny. You can listen to it here. Beware, there is some rather spicy language.

There was an interesting post to the Arcan-L list today about a somewhat surprising side-effect of digital publishing. The zoological science community has certain set protocol for recognizing the preferred terms for animal names. This has traditionally meant looking to published print materials. As more and more journals move to electronic-only versions, this policy needs to be adapted. The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature is now in the process of drafting changes, and is seeking input not only from scientists but from archivists. As noted on their website, “Electronic-only publications should be allowed, if mechanisms can be found that give reasonable assurance of the long-term accessibility of the information they contain.”

The question is: what constitutes reasonable assurance? It’s relative, of course. In our class on digital preservation, Luciana Duranti always pointed us to patents: national patent offices have very, very good recordkeeping systems, because a lot of money and legal battles depend on those records. I got into a bit of an argument with a software fella at Infocamp about why I like my government to take new technology slowly. It’s odd to find myself advocating such caution in innovation, but sometimes stability really is more important.

Anyway, I’m glad that the ICZN is asking for input from archivists on this issue, and I hope they get some valuable commentary. You can see the full information here.

I took the bus down to Seattle on Friday for InfoCamp (and because my brother just moved here from back East and my folks drove up from Portland for the  weekend). 

InfoCamp is “an unconference about user experience, information architecture, user-centered design, librarianship, information management & related fields.” This is the third year, and it completely sold out, with 350 people registered. An “unconference” is a gathering where the participants decide together what topics to cover. At InfoCamp, this happens in the form of individuals volunteering to lead a session on some topic. Some folks came with prepared talks, but others have suddenly evolved as the day went on. (You can see the schedule-in-progress here.) The Zine Librarians (un)conference I went to in spring was structured somewhat differently, where we brainstormed together at the start of the day, then assigned locations to discussions, without necessarily having a set leader.

Day 1 was eye-opening. I have to admit, I had no idea what UX was, but it is very, very interesting to think about. The keynote speaker was UW design prof Axel Roesler, who discussed both broad conceptualizations of design and some practical case studies. I found his use of the scientific method as a metaphor rather interesting: he said that, like science, design requires experimentation, but it’s an experimentation through change, experimentation as exploration. You’re not proving* or disproving your hypothesis, you’re just trying new options to see if they improve your (or the user’s) experience. He also set us up for the day’s interdisciplinary nature by discussing a model of design that involves innovators (designers, big thinkers), practitioners (who could be, in some cases, librarians), and technologists (folks writing the code). Better understanding between these groups can improve the ultimate product and its use. 

The most new-to-me session I went to was about User Interface Responsiveness by two fellas from Microsoft. Basically, they talked about the period of time users are willing to put up with between making an action (clicking, touching a screen, etc) and seeing some sort of reaction. It’s unsurprisingly short, but there is a range, depending on what the action was. One of the presenters, Steve Seow, has written a book about this, which I’m curious to read. It’s an interesting intersection of technology and social meaning. Throughout the day, I realized I have a lot to learn about (and from) the software industry. 

I met a few librarians, some of whom work in very nontraditional jobs or settings. But I think the most intriguing conversations I had or heard were between folks in different fields. The word “cross-pollination” definitely came up a few times, and it may be corny, but it certainly permits for rich exchanges. I ran into a few folks from BC, but didn’t have time to make serious connections yet. But the call has been made for InfoCamps to pop up around the world…anyone up for InfoCamp Vancouver?

* Remember, the scientific method doesn’t prooooove anything: it provides evidence that either supports or disproves hypotheses.

It’s been a busy week. Yesterday I went to a SLAIS Colloquium featuring Irwin Oostindie, Executive Director, W2 Community Media Arts Society. The topic was “Breaking the Digital Divide in the Inner City” and he discussed a variety of projects going on in the Downtown Eastside here in Vancouver, including mobile art walks by Fearless City, geotagging projects, and the distribution of mobile devices to folks who need them to connect. He pointed out that the model of having static computer terminals where disenfranchised persons can come in and check their email — that’s an old model. It’s great for libraries to support that need, but we need to find ways for people to contribute — upload their photos to flickr, or download podcasts and walk away with something.

Oostindie also talked about the upcoming Olympics. He said Vancouver 2010 Games will go down in history as the “social media games.” Intriguing, eh? W2 will be hosting the True North Media House, a sort of hub for non-accredited journalists coming to cover the games. Oostindie made the excellent point that, if a blogger comes from MN to write about the Swedish ski team…but he has 50,000 followers to his blog, why shouldn’t he be treated as a journalist? W2 is also involved in trying to get a wireless mesh network set up in Vancouver for the games. Their goal is to provide public space for people to celebrate the games, people who totally oppose the games, all kinds of people to get together and communicate.

Throughout Oostindie’s talk, I kept hearing evidence of the importance of physical space. Although a lot of the projects he works on involve global partners, or forms of media that can connect folks around the world, they’re also very firmly based within the physical space of the DTES (and, okay, Chinatown and Strathcona). This kind of locality is very appealing to me, but has been kinda out of my reach the past few years. I think I’ve lived in 7 cities in the past 7 years, including quite a few ping pong moves back and forth, particularly between Portland and Vancouver. Quite a few of my friends have led similarly transient lives: the economy, range of higher education available to us, and all kinds of other factors lead many young people to uproot and hop around.

I mention this, because I’ve been reading Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities which is delightfully written, particularly for people who are fans of cities but not planning wonks. In the first section of the book, Jacobs describes in great detail the way that certain communities of strangers develop in big cities. The tacit trust and sense of responsibility requires people who stick around. (Her trusted citizens are not unlike what Putnam calls machers and schmoozers: people who know people and can get things done.) She alludes to her organizing experience in her neighborhood in Greenwich Village: it’s kids on the sidewalks who learn about passing out petitions, and perpetuate social change. Unsurprisingly, Oostindie mentioned at the start of his talk some of the ways that his parents modeled civic engagement. When people don’t know their neighbors, at least in some capacity, of course they won’t have any network of trust, and of course it will be harder to get things done together. So how can transitory folks like me fit into communities? Do we by definition disrupt community?

It’s a lot to think about. But I’m very curious to see how W2 settles into the Woodwards space, and to see what further projects they get involved with.

As I’ve mentioned before on ANTIP, I’ve been very slowly reading Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. The first section is dedicated to exploring trends in different arenas of civic and social engagement, and I’ve finally finished the chapter about online communities. Putnam makes several prescient points. When the book was published in 2000, he considered it much too early to generalize about the effects of the Web on social involvement. He is wary of both virtual evangelists and those who consider the Internet a force of social deterioration. The general trend to disengagement tracked in the book was in motion long before the personal computer came on the scene.

Putnam notes that the democratization of online communications permits anonymous, frank discussions and has the potential to get people talking beyond their own physical demographics, whether race, gender, age, or location. However, despite this potential diversity, Putnam noted that online communications tend to be more homogeneous in subject and values: folks who own French poodles can find one another and spend all their time online discussing that subject. (Siva Vaidhyanathan mentioned this in his talk on Googlization on Monday, the way that customization can lead us to sheltered views of the information out there.) Nonetheless, the ability for marginalized individuals to find a community online shouldn’t be underestimated.

Regarding political participation (such as sending an email to president@whitehouse.gov) Putnam questions whether we may find many ways to speak without really being listened to. That is, does the Internet give us the illusion of being more involved? Putnam points to several studies indicating that online communications may be better at reinforcing existing face-to-face relationships, rather than fostering longterm born-digital relationships. I seriously wonder how different this may be today, now that we’re a decade further into digital natives growing up in online communities. However, it certainly points to the success of sites like Facebook and Myspace, where individuals build virtual social networks from existing in-person networks.

The underlying message in this chapter stands strong, 9 years out: information alone is not enough to make community. I’ll post more when I get to the section about how online communities may be a tool for building up social capital. It’s bound to be interesting.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcvRMHz4mb4[/youtube]

I just came from a talk by Siva Vaidhyanathan about his forthcoming book, The Googlization of Everything. It was a full house, a rich lecture, and folks had some great questions. Vaidhyanathan walks an interesting course: he freely acknowledges that Google is very good at what it does, and praises the company’s willingness to adapt to innovations. His concerns pertain to the lack of transparency, the absence of public accountability, the potential for certain people to , and the emphasis on speed over other values. Ultimately, he believes that Google’s form of searching reinforces user satisfaction: you get what you wanted, which pleases you, so you search for more of the same. This is, he pointed out, great for shopping, but less great for learning.

A few take-aways for me:

• In discussing the non-neutrality of search engines, Vaidhyanathan used the example of a Google search for “Jew.” This search, performed in the United States, will pull up quite a few hits for anti-Semitic conspiracy groups. In Germany, where these websites are considered hate speech, Google has modified the search so those results will not be shown. (It isn’t clear to me .) While Vaidhyanathan used this to point out that it’s not just computers crunching numbers, there are indeed people, I had some other questions. In Germany, would Google be held accountable for providing access to those websites? Also, it is a keen point that, you pick your search terms based on what you’re looking for: very different results will come up for “Judaism” or “Jewish history.”
• According to stats from comScore, Google only has about a 65% share of the US search market. Okay, that’s big, but I was surprised by this — I would’ve guessed the numbers to be much higher. Vaidhyanathan said that in Western Europe and the UK, it’s closer to 95%. Where does Google not do well? Apparently, in China, Russia, and former USSR republics. He mentioned Baidu as a leader in China.
• Vaidhyanathan also talked about “public failure,” where private interests step in to do work of public interest, because the public institution didn’t have the resources to do it, or because, for whatever reason, folks believed that the free market would just sort things out better. I see this as related to my fears about the corporate roots of 2.0 — when the conversation is framed within the expectations of the market, it immediately puts not-for-profit institutions at a disadvantage. I’m not sure if I’m expressing that clearly, but I think about it a lot.
• Is speed really what we need in searching? Google aims to please and to do so immediately, but that doesn’t necessarily fulfill all our goals in research. Kraftylibrarian has a timely post about this very same question here.

He only had an hour, plus some time for questions, which was hardly time to get into the meat of all his arguments, so I’ll just have to read the book. But man, there’s plenty to think about.  It’s good to have a complex relationship with Google.

*He defined “googlization” as “the process of being processed, rendered, and represented by Google.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5C6X9vOEkU[/youtube]

Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community has been on my bedstand for about two years now. I’m reading it so slowly in part because it’s my bedtime book, but also because I’m enjoying it so much. His exploration of the decline in social capital is well-researched, clearly explained, and extremely genial.

I’m currently meandering through a chapter called “Against the tide? Small groups, social movements, and the net.” (As a disclaimer, the book was published in 2000, so all the references to AOL must be taken within their temporal context.) I haven’t really gotten deep into his examination of online communities, but the section on telecommunications starts with some telling anecdotes about the telephone and its effect on social life in America. Simply put, the propagators of the telephone failed to recognize some of the medium’s affordances. Putnam notes, for example, that phone companies were so certain that their main customers would be businesses that they discouraged using the telephone to socialize. Alexander Graham Bell himself thought the phone would be used much like the radio eventually was, to bring music into homes. No one imagined that the telephone would be a tool for plain old chatting and socialization. And yet, today it is an integral part of how families, friends, and acquaintances keep in touch. Putnam also points out that folks don’t generally meet new people on the phone, which is in marked contrast to online communications. I’ll post again as I keep reading.

(Incidentally, I don’t have a phone. Not a smart phone or a cell phone or even a landline. It wasn’t intentional, it just sort of happened. Generally I find it freeing, although there are disappointingly few payphones in service these days.)

In honor of Banned Books Week.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLprbWMd8mM[/youtube]