Liz Law­ley:
saw Twit­ter becom­ing a con­ver­sa­tion like IM away mes­sages that didn’t require a response, could

hap­pen over a period of time
stu­dents build­ing a typol­ogy of Twit­ter users
these kinds of com­mu­ni­cat­ing pres­ence
Linda Stone sees these tools de-emphasizing your rela­tion­ships
Liz sees them as strength­en­ing ties
com­mu­ni­cat­ing day-to-day lif — the pat­terns, the nuances of it – is dif­fi­cult to do across

dis­tances

Panel on “inter­est­ing imple­men­ta­tions of presence

Matt Bid­dulph — Dopplr (http://dopplr.com/)

Much more about poten­tial pres­ence than some­thing like Twit­ter
“absence of noti­fi­ca­tion” – you’re going where she lives but she won’t be there
all they do is take where you tell them you will be
the impor­tant thing about travel is mem­ory – the side arti­facts of your pres­ence in a place
the idea of URLs as impor­tant resources
if you put a trip on Dopplr, there is no URL you can use out­side of Dopplr for it, but that is

going to change
heuris­tics for who trav­els a lot to a cer­tain place
explor­ing exper­tise through the social graph; help­ing peo­ple help each other
show­ing you some­one who knows about where you’re going instead of say­ing “we’ve started a forum

about your trip and invited this per­son to join it”
look­ing at the fuzzy edges
Jyfi Enge­strom — http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2007/08/what-makes-a-go.html
what would hap­pen if you fuzzed up the edges of your trip
can opti­mize travel and fig­ure out which is the best day to go if you know who will be there when

(ear­lier than you, later than you, dur­ing your trip – if you go a few days early, you’ll see these

peo­ple)
geo­graph­i­cal fuzzi­ness (how far you can travel from where you will be) = “coin­ci­dences”
how do we cre­ate natural-feeling inter­faces to make these things fuzzy?
The doc­u­men­ta­tion and real arti­facts that you put out there from your trip
can eas­ily hit the Flickr pho­tos or Twits for a trip
can you take this data set and com­pare it against another one with­out hav­ing to do the geotagging

(which most peo­ple don’t get around to)
work­ing on a Face­book app that puts your Dopplr updates into your mini­fied
What has changed in the world of the peo­ple who mat­ter to you? – not just their sta­tus
how can social soft­ware avoid lying to your friends about your presence?

Tom Coates – Yahoo
“Geo­p­res­ence & Fire Eagle” – It’s where you’re at
Com­mu­ni­cat­ing your state to other peo­ple
90% of Twitter’s traf­fic comes from APIs
con­nected data sources – “an aggre­gated web of con­nected data sources and ser­vices”
data that actively looks for oppor­tu­ni­ties to recom­bine itself
let­ting these data sources “see” you and poten­tially hook into you
not so much as me mak­ing myself vis­i­ble, but also mak­ing myself com­pre­hen­si­ble to soft­ware as well
becomes a foun­da­tion to build on, rather than a goal between two peo­ple
Fire eagle tries to express this — http://fireeagle.research.yahoo.com/
what if the web just updated your loca­tion ambi­ently in the back­ground?
how you could use fire eagle to man­i­fest your pres­ence:
1 – twit­ter maps
2 – phone app that would com­mu­ni­cate ambi­ent loca­tion of friends so you could look for a group
Geo­t­rag­ging all user con­tent
app on mobile phone would SMS your loca­tion to tell you use­ful things around you
“prox­i­mizer” – boss status/presence (how far away she is)
desk­top wid­gets show­ing pic­tures of peo­ple and their status/location
ambi­ent sense of where your fam­ily is
Unex­pected uses of this infor­ma­tion and what could go wrong
1 – reveal­ing too much infor­ma­tion and not know­ing you’re doing it
2 –how to trust whom
3 — spe­cific cir­cum­stances when you may want to hide
Slide of how you could autho­rize Flickr to use your fire eagle data and how much they could have

access to
App would check in peri­od­i­cally to make sure you still want to share infor­ma­tion at the level

you’re at
Could spec­ify a neigh­bor­hood instead of a spe­cific loca­tion (like your home)

Gilad Lotan – Pres­ence: inti­macy and imme­di­acy in medi­ated spaces (http://giladlotan.com/)
Love, power, trib­ute, cul­ture, archi­tec­ture, reli­gion
Con­nec­tion and how it informs in medi­ated spaces:
– tan­gi­ble: impor­tance of the tan­gi­ble online and how we can enhance it
– inti­macy: the abil­ity and choice to be close, lov­ing, and vul­ner­a­ble (eg, imPulse – heartbeat

shar­ing devices, some­thing you don’t share with any­one other than your loved ones or doc­tor)
– imme­di­acy: hav­ing a mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion, the more syn­chro­nous it is, the more atten­tion it

requires; asyn­chro­nous lets you con­nect with many friends at once but is super­fi­cial; wanted

deeper mean­ing in deeper rela­tion­ships, less on the screen, more com­plete expe­ri­ence so went to

Jerusalem; inti­mate con­nec­tion to the Wall in Jerusalem at Kotel (web­cams) but peo­ple rarely do

that
– cul­ture & con­text: we’re all used to cul­tural norms all around us; when you take a cer­tain norm

or an object and place it out­side of its cul­tural con­text, you get a much stronger sense of it;

took real mis­siles that fell in the Gaza Strip and re-enacted scenes on open streets (art exhibit)
Ubi.ach – takes email away from the screen; a ubiq­ui­tous doll (pro­nounced u-beeyatch, heh) that

uses email fil­ters
Tibetan prayer wheels – took the con­cept and let them react to world news – as you turned these

“news wheels,” images from cur­rent news would ran­domly appear

danah boyd
publics not just as civic spaces but where col­lec­tions of peo­ple come together, often with people

you don’t nor­mally inter­act with
we val­i­date who we are and make sense of the world around us, dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves, in the

pres­ence of oth­ers
“always on inti­mate com­mu­ni­ties” – spaces cre­ated via mobile phones
(davidtr on irc: “atten­tion can­not be forced, but surely dis­trac­tions can be min­i­mized”
You have a way to express your­self through what your friends say about you, meant to be witnessed

by oth­ers (eg, you know oth­ers will look at the wall on face­book– show­cases your rela­tion­ships)
Pub­lic dis­plays of teenage dat­ing – you talk about hav­ing sex long before hav­ing it; pro­gres­sions
who is the intended audi­ence of these per­for­mances? Peer group
teens cre­ate these images to cre­ate pres­ence online and be together when they can’t be
con­stant con­struc­tion of pro­files as pres­ence
ani­mated visual cues, two pic­tures merged together, writ­ten for the dis­play to peo­ple around them
when a breakup occurs, you delete some­body (the only time you do this)
pres­ence and invest­ment dis­ap­pears when you delete them – com­ments dis­ap­pear (except on Face­book)
When we con­cep­tu­al­ize pres­ence, it’s peo­ple shar­ing place and time
uncou­pling loca­tion but keep­ing time together; can be doing the same thing in dif­fer­ent places at

the same time
asyn­chro­nously being together
how do we think about tech­nolo­gies that inspire these things
Pres­ence as etch­ing into arti­facts
actu­ally see time as part of it
Why does pres­ence mat­ter to peo­ple? What is nec­es­sary for pres­ence? Shared space, shared time?
What role does per­sis­tence or ephemer­al­ity play in the con­struc­tion of pres­ence? Synchronicity,

asyn­chronic­ity, semi-synchronicity?
Is time bend­ing syn­chronic­ity?
How are peo­ple cre­at­ing pres­ence out of tools that aren’t made for that?

Microsoft’s Social Com­put­ing Sym­po­sium, Sep­tem­ber 17–18, in Redmond

Social Genius game to intro­duce peo­ple – http://txtst.com/sg/ (note to self: must try this in the con­text of ALA!)
for MSR interns orig­i­nally
works bet­ter for small groups who come together for a short time

“social net­work fatigue” and mov­ing to mean­ing­ful and pro­tected net­works
“con­nec­tions for a pur­pose”
con­vey­ing “emo­tional fidelity” and “trust”
bridg­ing together pop­u­la­tions that never had rea­son to bridge before
stu­dents design­ing their own cur­ricu­lum and learn­ing envi­ron­ments
embed­ding tech­nol­ogy in phys­i­cal objects
design­ing sys­tems that allow strangers to inter­act
inten­tion­ally find­ing peo­ple to do what you need to do – prob­lem of cul­ture and sci­ence and shar­ing that also includes the sci­en­tists and the farm in the field
strange behav­ior seen on ManyEyes
pub­lic and pri­vate spaces
dif­fer­ences between how peo­ple share infor­ma­tion and how genomes share infor­ma­tion
col­lab­o­ra­tive social visu­al­iza­tion of data
trou­ble explain­ing to the peo­ple back home what we’re talk­ing about here and at my job
social devi­a­tion – how bring out the social freaks online
how we could make astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­tions social objects that can be more eas­ily shared on the web
writ­ing a book about ethnog­ra­phy of Lin­den Labs – how orga­ni­za­tions are gen­er­at­ing legit­i­mate decision-making when they are deny­ing tra­di­tional hier­ar­chy
build­ing hor­i­zon­tally and more shal­lowly to stay con­nected with friends
our own lack of ambi­tion con­strains what we can be – Anil Dash
how to get your par­ents and friends to join in these net­works eas­ily and under­stand them
how much you can take algo­rithms and fig­ure out what’s going on in an explicit way but also through implicit behav­iors – video search is very dif­fer­ent, can inject human-powered into the auto­matic
user gam­ing as a social form of media – how kids are adopt­ing gam­ing prac­tices into their online world in gen­eral
sta­tus in social media
do things in real life and tell sto­ries about them – game became a sto­ry­telling engine
embed­ding games and sto­ries in cloth­ing we wear; alter­na­tive real­ity games – stage­less enter­tain­ment
shuf­fle­brain game design stu­dio – inter­sec­tion of game and social design; next gen­er­a­tion brain games that are much more engag­ing
human viruses aren’t so dif­fer­ent from bac­te­r­ial viruses
computer-mediated col­lec­tive action
gps games – invis­i­ble crea­tures on the street; DS games that change based on where you are when play­ing it
peo­ple who share space should share expe­ri­ences – crappy trivia game on the seat­back on a plane that becomes com­pelling when you’re trapped on a plane – instant neigh­bors, how you con­sider the peo­ple around you and have a con­ver­sa­tion with them with­out trans­gress­ing cer­tain bound­aries
one of the places a lot of peo­ple share is TV; where do we get peo­ple to play these games – it turns out 10 mil­lion peo­ple are still watch­ing TV
wants to know why the tools still suck – the gyra­tions I have to go through to be a Glad­wellian con­nec­tor are ridicu­lous (typ­ing in con­tact infor­ma­tion, using these net­works for any­thing use­ful, etc.)
should be able to just hit a but­ton “share this screen” with this spe­cific per­son
human adapt­abil­ity and our pen­chant to put up with stuff
imag­i­nary worlds, tak­ing your imag­i­na­tion and putting it some­where else for some­one to play with
how we learn from one another – Dewey and Plato J
“our books rely heav­ily on games and sto­ries” – O’Reilly (?)
geoweb – there was no data to share except third-party data; now, though, there is an ecosys­tem to pub­lish your own data via maps, google earth, etc.
I want to work on soft­ware I want to actu­ally use
online pro­files and how cus­tomiza­tion fits into that

This must be some kind of a tip­ping point. Users won’t know this as “RSS,” but the main­stream march continues.

http://my.nytimes.com/

A Kid’s-eye View of Lap­top Design

“A group of kids from one of our local ele­men­tary schools has formed a ‘mini-laptop club.’ They don’t use elec­tronic machines. Instead, these first-, sec­ond– and third-graders draw their own lap­tops on con­struc­tion paper and pre­tend to e-mail each other. They ded­i­cate a sur­pris­ing amount of time to this activ­ity. I once had a chance to exam­ine one of their ‘key­boards.’ I was fas­ci­nated to learn which Inter­net func­tions had sunk into the minds of these kids, who are just get­ting their first expo­sure to com­put­ers from watch­ing their par­ents work, and from using kid-friendly sites.”

[CNET Tech News Blog]

The title of this post is a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, as they’ll just be using mind con­trol for their infor­ma­tion devices any­way. :-p

I’m intrigued by Karin Dalziel’s Chart of 4 Types of Infor­ma­tion Lit­er­acy, although I would add “eval­u­at­ing” to the first “infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy” box.

Sadly, most libraries don’t teach her third and fourth types — media lit­er­acy and dig­i­tal lit­er­acy. For sev­eral years, I’ve high­lighted Illi­nois’ Project Next Gen­er­a­tion in my pre­sen­ta­tions and how it cre­ates col­lab­o­ra­tive work spaces where kids can learn the skills nec­es­sary for media and dig­i­tal lit­era­cies. I’d still like to see more libraries pro­vide these types of oppor­tu­ni­ties because after all, where else are these they (and adults) going to learn them? Are libraries really just about books and infor­ma­tion, or is there more we can and should be edu­cat­ing users about? Or at least pro­vid­ing the spaces in which they can do that?

A Per­sonal Tour of Learning

“I’m not say­ing that my school­ing was worth­less, nor that there aren’t things that need to be taught. Absolutely not. I’m just say­ing that education’s job, in the 1950s and ’60s, was to pre­pare stu­dents for a future that was sta­tic and predictable.

I believe that we no longer live in those times. I believe that we need schools where stu­dents teach them­selves. We must assure that they become lit­er­ate, but that it is a lit­er­acy to learn — learn­ing lit­er­acy. We should assure that they are gain­ing a com­mon con­text for them­selves, who they are, what they are, where they are, when they are, and that they appre­ci­ate the ways that their envi­ron­ment impacts them and how they impact their envi­ron­ment — and that they learn these things through their devel­op­ing learn­ing lit­era­cies.” [2 Cents Worth]

Applic­a­ble to how we teach infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy, as well as how we teach in our library schools.

Prov­ing that even test­ing your knowl­edge of the place­ment of U.S. states can be a fun game, Mary­laine Block’s Neat New Stuff points us to Stateris-USA. I fin­ished in 11 min­utes on medium, mainly because I wasn’t sure which way to turn Rhode Island. You can also test your knowl­ege of Africa, Europe, France, the Nether­lands, and the UK.

There are some fun links in the left­hand nav­i­ga­tion, too, that cre­ate maps with a mes­sage of your choos­ing using smoke sig­nals, crop cir­cles, and the “Hol­ly­wood” sign.