marmar1028's blog

On Gnovis: Halloween arrives three weeks late

The CSCW conference inspired Jed to write about user death (both voluntary and involuntary, physical and digital) and the implications this has for Social Networking Sites (SNS).  Jess Vitak responds with her own take on why users don't delete their profiles: "the costs are too high and the incentives are too low."  What do you think?  Read More »

This morning at the ICCT intercultural coffee hour, the Yahoo! Fellows presented some interesting data and analysis about how users in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries are using social networking. A significant aspect of their research is on privacy, both how users choose exercise their privacy online, but also how it is used by social network sites to market to new users (e.g . Facebook with stricter privacy settings, MySpace with looser ones.)  Read More »

This week, the place of politics

•    Stanley Fish, at the New York Times, tries to sort out recent university memos barring professors from wearing campaign buttons, attending campus political rallies, and even placing political bumper stickers on their cars. After discussing several worthy (and not so worthy view points), he concludes that it’s contextual: “It’s a policy matter, not a moral or philosophical matter, and as long as the policy is reasonably related to the institution’s purposes, it raises no constitutional issues at all.”

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We’ve all had the experience of walking into a room full of people and having every single person look up and stare at us.  Most of us taking CCT courses this semester have also had the experience of pushing the publish button, knowing that in a few seconds, some number of people will be reading (and necessarily, judging) our blog post.  Both are intimidating, even in the most casual or intimate of circumstances.
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This week's blog heroes, doing good one click at a time

• In honor of their 10 year anniversary, Google announced their Project 10^100, a contest based on the idea that “helping helps everybody, helper and helped alike.”  They are committing $10 million dollars to fund a winning proposal that “will help as many people as possible.”

• Gaurav Mishra, the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet critiques the cliché of “using technology to do good” and proposes a framework to help think systemically and strategically about the possibilities of communication technologies to “create disruptive models of social change.”

• Might the Planned Parenthood/Sarah Palin (subversive) fundraising campaign that Ashley Bowen blogs about be an example of the kind of disruptive model of social change that Gaurav refers to?  She explains: “This campaign combines the two actions campaign organizers are always begging for: donate some cash and/or write a letter.  Now, in just a few clicks you can do both.”