willamette digital humanities seminar 2009, part 1

Emergent cyberculture

Contexts for the digital humanities

Plan of talk

1. Web 2.0 + 3.02. Mobile devices3. Gaming and

virtual worlds

(after Schmelling, http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/7/30schmelling.html)

Pervasive themes

• Huge forces: movements, commercial projects, new forms

• Interplay of closed and open • Storytelling• Current academic crisis

Principles of Forecasting (2001) (http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/methodolog

ytree.html)

Apprehending the futures

Principles of Forecasting (2001)

(http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/methodologytree.html)

Apprehending the futures

Gaming futures: prediction markets

•Web game•Free•Social•Wisdom of crowds

Facebook participation size proposition;http://markets.nitle.org/

PilotExample proposition:

By what year will the majority of institutions provide a repository service for sharing scholarship and research?

• End of 2010 - 2011 academic year • End of 2009 - 2010 academic year • End of 2008 - 2009 academic year

I. Web 2.0

(Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator, http://emptybottle.org/bullshit/)

“As of December 2008, 11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service…” (Pew Internet and American Life)

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)

• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US…

• Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008) o 94.1 million US blog readers

in 2007 (50% of Internet users) o 22.6 million US bloggers in

2007 (12%) (David Sifry,September 2008

http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/)

Universal McCann (March 2008)

• 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US

• 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US

• 77% of active Internet users read blogs

• How influential are blogs in the world?

World Information Access 2008 Reporthttp://www.wiareport.org/index.php/56/blogger-arrests

(first stat, Flickr blog, November 2008http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/11/03/3-billion/;Second stat, Flickr CC search page, March 2009,http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ )

Social images are large• 3 billion+ photos in

Flickr• 4,230,432 -

32,170,657 shareable

• LinkedIn: 30 million users claimed

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/14/as-the-economy-sours-linkedins-popularity-grows/

(eMarketer, March 2009; Scott Sigler, 2008)

(Le Monde, January 14 2008)

“There are currently 2,807,974 articles in the English Wikipedia.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia , March 2009)

• A new economic system?• Yale University Press, 2006

What is Web 2.0?

Past the hype:•A design architecture•An information ideology•A style•Just one imbricated layer

The term’s history: Tim O’Reilly, 2005

• Expands “social software”

• Draws on Web history

Open content and/or services and/or standards…

(Pepysblog, 2003-)

…leading to networked conversations

(Pepysblog, 2003-)

O’Reilly: Web 2.0 is a platform for development

• Open APIs• Access to data• “Mashup”

(AccessCeramics project, Lewis and Clark College)

• Programming staff• Perceived recognition

Web 2.0 components, movements• Collaborative writing platforms: the wiki way

-Viégas, Wattenberg, Dave (Historyflow, IBM, 2004)

Wikis are (often) textually productive

Web 2.0 components, movements• collaborative writing platforms: the

blogosphere

(Radio Open Source blog/podcast)

Podcasting, since 2004 Neologisms:

• godcasting• nanocasting• podfading• podsafe• podspamming• podvertising• porncasting

(Berkeley Groks; Missing Link podcast,

Southwestern University)

Web 2.0 influences rich media: video

(Gootube? Suetube?)

Videoblogging(vlog? vog?)

(Ask a Ninja; Rocketboom; Howard Rheingold)

• Facebook continues to roar• The quiet war with Google• Also LinkedIn, Cyworld, etc.

(Comscore image, via http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/facebook-now-nearly-twice-the-size-of-myspace-worldwide/)

Social object: the person

Social objects of all sorts

(Kenyan crisis-Google Maps mashup, Ushahidi http://www.ushahidi.com/ 2008)

Social organization of information, new forms: folksonomy

• Search• Retrieval• Self-

awareness

http://del.icio.us/

for DoctorNemo

Community surfacing

• Ontology

• Concepts • Collaborative research

Keeping up

NITLE interest and program cloud, 2008

Keeping up

PennTags, http://tags.library.upenn.edu/

Extrapolating principles: Ton Zylstra on the social object:

“In general you could say that both Flickr and del.icio.us work in a triangle: person, picture/ bookmark, and tag(s). Or more abstract a person, an object of sociality, and some descriptor...”

(Zylstra in Second Life, 2007)

“…In every triangle there always needs to be a person and an object of sociality. The third point of the triangle is free to define[,] as it were.”

-http://www.zylstra.org, 2006(emphases added)

More emergents• Web Office

– Productivity tools in the social Web

– Zoho, Google

• Web OS– How much of

the desktop can migrate to the Web?

(“Online Communities”, XKCD, April 2007 )…

For academia, this can seem a bit overwhelming

(“Online Communities”, XKCD, April 2007 )

Already out of date

For academia, this can seem a bit overwhelming

Flickr and storytelling

• “Tell a story in 5 frames” group

“Gender Miscommunication”, Nightingai1e, 2006

Web 2.0 storytelling

“Gender Miscommunication” (Nightingai1e, 2006)

Social photo stories

Or remix social media into narratives

Example: "Farm to Food", Eli the Bearded (2008)

• Library of Congress collections

Social photo stories

Social photo stories

Social photo stories

Flickr, Tell A Story in Five Frames group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/)

Example: "Food to Farm", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Social photo stories

Example: "Food to Farm", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Social photo stories

Pedagogies:• Remix• Archive work• Social

presentation• Visual

literacy

(http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/discuss/72157603786255599/;http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/ )

Social workshopping

In the Tell a story in 5 frames group, 'Alone With The Sand' , moliere1331 (2005)

Pedagogies and publications

Teaching with Web 2.0: it’s not all new - Web 1.0, internet pedagogies• Hypertext• Web audience• Discussion fora • Collaborative document authoring• Groupware

Teaching with Web 2.0: it’s not all new

Earlier pedagogies• Journaling• Media literacy

Teaching with Web 2.0: principles

http://smarthistory.blogspot.com/

Distributed conversation

Collaborative writing

Object-oriented discussion

Connectivism (G. Siemens, 2004)

Social object pedagogies

• Prompts• Discussion

object• Compositio

n materials

Teaching with Web 2.0: “net.gen”:“Fully half of all teens and 57 percent of

teens who use the Internet could be considered Content Creators, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.”

http://www.pewtrusts.com/pdf/PIP_Teens_1105.pdf

“[S]tudents… write words on paper, yes— but… also compose words and images and create audio files on Web logs (blogs), in word processors, with video editors and Web editors and in e-mail and on presentation software and in instant messaging and on listservs and on bulletin boards—and no doubt in whatever genre will emerge in the next ten minutes.

Note that no one is making anyone do any of this writing.”

Kathleen Blake Yancey, "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." CCC 56.2 (2004):297-328.Emphasis added.

More social object pedagogies

• Annotate details

• Remix (“Make it mine”)

Jason Mittell, Middlebury College, spring 2008

(http://justtv.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/teaching-technology-remix-video/)

Wiki pedagogies

• Collective research

• Group writing• Document

editing• Information

literacy• Discussion• Knowledge

accretion(Romantic Audiences project

Bowdoin College, 2005-present

• Discussion• Knowledge

accretion

Edublogging for yearsSelected, documented

practices:• Publish syllabus• Publish student

papers• Discussion• Journaling• Project blogs• Public scholarship

• Creative writing• Distributed seminars• Campus organizations• Prospective students• Library collections• Alumni relations• Project management• Liveblogging

New forms of scholarly communication

CommentPress implementation, Institute for the Future of the BooksMcKenzie Wark, Eugene Lang College

Still more bookblogging

Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia

Podcasts and teaching: profcasting

• Duke: “Classroom recording”

• Example: Bryn Mawr College, Michelle Francl, chemistry

Scholarly presseshttp://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/podcast/

Student program podcasting on campus

• War News Radio (Swarthmore College)

•PEPI courses (University of British Columbia, department of Land and Food Resources)

Podcasts and research• Public intellectual

– Out of the Past– Engines of Our

Ingenuity – In Our Time– University

Channel– The Missing Link

Academic open archives for social media

Freesound archive

•DIY copyright•Social networking values•University of Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona)

(http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/)

• Peak or ubiquity?http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/14/the-death-of-web-20/

What is “Web 3.0”?

Several models are in play:

• The 3-d Web• The Semantic Web• Web on mobile

devices• The social Web

(http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/googlescholar/archives/046534.html )

Web 3.0?

• Web 3D, virtual world as browser

(Second Life scene;Sony, Home, from Wired)

II. Web 3.0?

Missie Wadlandis game, http://www.wadlandis.nl/

Google Earth-Keyhole DB-2d: KML-3d: Sketchup-reach-Geotagging

photos, videos

• Web 3D, Google world as browser

Web 3D pedagogies• Virtual worlds• Teambuilding

…but not much Web content, yet

Arts Metaverse;Second Life,

Web 3.0?• The Semantic Web

“Ultimately, Reuters' news is the raw material for analysis and application by investors and downstream news organizations. Adding metadata to make that job of analysis easier for those building additional value on top of your product is a really interesting way to view the publishing opportunity…”

“… If you don't think of what you produce as the "final product" but rather as a step in an information pipeline, what do you do differently to add value for downstream consumers? In Reuters' case, [CEO] Devin thinks you add hooks to make your information more programmable.”

Tim O’Reilly, February 2008http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/02/reuters-ceo-sees-semantic-web.html

Semantic tool in play: ClearForest Gnosis, FF plugin

http://sws.clearforest.com/ examples from Wikipedia VLE, SakaiProject pages

Android: CrunchnetiPhone: swruler9284

• Web 3D: the mobile Web

The Social Graph, as Sir Tim sees it

“I called this graph the Semantic Web, but maybe it should have been Giant Global Graph! Any worse than WWWW? ;-)...

So, if only we could express these relationships, such as my social graph, in a way that is above the level of documents, then we would get re-use. That's just what the graph does for us. We have the technology -- it is Semantic Web technology, starting with RDF OWL and SPARQL…”

-CSAIL post, November 2007http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/215

• Synthesis: Google's CEO's vision

[Eric Schmidt]: Web 3.0 would ultimately be seen as applications that are pieced together [and that share] a number of characteristics: the applications are relatively small; the data is in the cloud; the applications can run on any device - PC or mobile phone; the applications are very fast and they're very customizable...”

Web 3.0?

[Eric Schmidt]: … and furthermore the applications are distributed essentially virally, literally by social networks, by email. You won't go to the store and purchase them. ... That's a very different application model than we've ever seen in computing...

Transcribed by Nicholas Carr, August 2007http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/08/what_is_web_30.php

CriticismWhat do you mean, 3.0?

Reactions to question, “What do you think of the term, ‘Web 3.0’?”, from NITLE events in 2008:

•Faculty member: “AIEEE! no más!”•Instructional technologist: “My brain is exploding!”

CriticismDeal with 2.0, already

“Gartner analysts are avoiding the temptation to give a new label to the latest technologies such as virtual worlds and the semantic Web, saying they’re not providing the same kind of fundamental change as blogs, wikis and social networking tools...”

November 2007, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/092107-gartner-web-20.html

CriticismDeal with 2.0, already

“…It’s not going to be another era like Web 2.0,” Phifer said. “However, there will be some very interesting innovative things coming out. If you’re in love with numbering schemes, maybe it’s Web 2.1.””

November 2007, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/092107-gartner-web-20.html

(presentation continued in part 2)