Trust Networks

Quick dirty one. In reply to a recent email about ‘trust networks’:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_software#Debates_or_design_choices
where they discuss trust in a specific way in that section

complicated but a table in there is useful
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/netgov/files/png_workingpaper_series/PNG06-002_WorkingPaper_MergelLangenberg.pdf

http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/465/430
discusses trust

the readings are able to move into network stuff so some of the above material will begin to make more sense *after* we move into the next readings….

ACCC sues US video games giant Valve

ACCC sues US video games giant Valve.

Good example of how local media laws apply. So if I libel someone in Britain, and arrive in Britain, and they want to take me to court, they can, even though what I wrote I wrote in Australia and the server is in California…

In this case US company sells stuff here, and ignores Australian consumer law. As the ACCC says, sell here, local laws apply. (It isn’t really complicated. When I am in America American law applies to me, I can’t claim that in Australia it is legal so all is good.)

Symposium Takeaways

Rachel on technology and art and culture. What was unclear I think was whether ‘culture’ was meant as like art, or more broadly in the way it is used in ‘cultural studies’. As I said today, I think the humanities trips over itself foolishy by putting up a fence (between nature and culture, art and technology, and so on) where fences don’t actually exist. Niamh with notes (quick aside, I’ve met Ted twice and am a serious fan boy, just sayin’), so don’t want to give the impression that I think he’s wrong, he’s not. David on transclusion, and the comment about copyright is interesting as in Nelson’s vision copyright is a bit of a non issue. Louis liked the idea of personal web servers (so do I, it is odd that a structure that is decentralised has relied on such a centralised technical/electrical infrastructure). Rebecca wonders what we mean by technology anyway. Good question. Technology is using a tool to do something. That is it. Anything else is complicating through academicspeak something that doesn’t need to be. What technology does, and lets us do, is the point, not what it is.

Marina on what we didn’t get to. Privacy and narcissism. I think exhibitionism is probably a bigger issue than narcissism, and privacy and online is an oxymoron. Rachel revisits Nelson to get a better sense of what hypertext is and why it might matter.

Clumsy Closure

The symposium ended in a clatter and rather inelegantly. To the person who’s very good question I was answering, I apologise. It deserved more time and craft, particularly around the idea of intent, than it received. Intent as an idea might turn up again, it might not, Intent is the idea that I mean to say something by saying (writing) something, and that this intent matters. It does, that’s why we try and say things, but intent is fragile and in capable of being attached to what we say, write, or do in any way to ensure its (our intent’s) preservation. Which is why things are always misunderstood. 

Privacy

We didn’t get to the privacy question, but take it as a given that the distinctions between public and private are being dramatically changed. Internet combined with mobile telephony is the push there. 

In relation to privacy we have these two gems from Betty:

The Internet’s Original Sin – The Atlantic

The Internet's Original Sin – The Atlantic.

This is an article about advertising and the web. From it you will learn a lot about how advertising works online, but it is much more interesting for seeing how the original vision of people like Nelson and the early Internet is present. When I first started, which was at the beginning of the web, there were no .com sites, and advertising didn’t exist online, and it prospered perfectly well. Indeed, *all* the protocols and tools we used then were made and shared for free, as was our content.

Networked Practices

This brief article is about Vine (an app we used to get media for interactive projects in a second year subject), what’s interesting for me is not the shortness (in an industrial age dominated and paid for by the 30 second commercial I don’t think anyone in media is in a position to point fingers about short duration works) but how this is an example of those ways in which access to audiences and big institutions is changing.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/21/famous-vine-stars-jack-and-jack-shawn-mendes-liane-valenzuela