gnovis - Georgetown University's Journal of Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT)

Death of a User: The Overlooked Use-Case

whatknows — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:27:26 +0000

For all the time we spend detailing use cases for ever imaginable "happy path", when was the last time we stopped to create a use case that accounts for the "death" of a user? Are we good/humble enough developers to handle the potential that our users might want to, well... leave?

"User death" was a topic that I kept running into at CSCW this year. Not in any papers or presentations, instead the topic was relegated to quiet conversations where people dared challenge the impenetrable user/technology dyad. During one of the first nights at CSCW, I spent a good deal of time speaking with Mike Massimi, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. He was kind enough to share some recent theoretical work he submitted to SIGCHI about what he calls "thanatosensitive design." Quoting one his professors, “It's an odd feeling seeing a recent e-mail in your inbox from someone who is no longer here to receive the reply.” Massimi suggests that we need to reconsider user-centered design to account for our inevitable deaths.

Later that week, while talking to Janet Vertesi, we shared our mutual fascination with what we might call "digital identity death." She shared her interest the way that blogs change into memorials once their authors die, while I talked about the growing number of social networking profiles that are renamed to "In Loving Memory". Each of these binds users and friends into a new social network of sorts. Users come and converse around a shared interest: their deceased loved one.

Today, however, I am thinking about something much more fundamental: Why can't I delete my account? Or perhaps, what does it mean when I do? Since Van Gelder's 1991 account of online identity fraud and Dibbell's descent into the MOOs and MUDs, we have had to deal with the blurring of what we traditionally thought of (as Donath says) "one body, one identity". When online, what counts as a "body" or "identity" emerges out of the coconstruction, negotiation, and even contestation of users and technologies. While users may prove their existence with each Cartesian account (i.e., "I login, therefor I am"), the terms of their existence is often preregulated by the technology. Moreover, these jealous applications may go to extremes to prevent you from leaving. Technology does a great job of enabling our own sense of immortality.

To be clear, most of these online "identities" are rather facile. The username and password seems the most common and simple way of reconstituting the body online. MySpace doesn't care about your government issued ID, it is your username and password that proxies your body and allows access. It is not surprising, then, that the mass exodus from MySpace earlier this year during Simon Owens' "International Delete Your MySpace Account Day" equated to a form of cult-like suicide.

From the developer's perspective, it is hard to understand a user's desire to leave our software behind. A quick survey of some of the applications around my association reveals that in many cases, this isn't even an option. While drinking my morning joe, I casually accosted colleagues, forcing them to face their mortality, and asked: "Why can't you delete your user account?"

The most common response was a blank stare, followed by a "Why would you want to?" The answers varied, but were all rather weak: data integrity issues, research reasons, and my favorite "it's not really a business priority." It is certainly not an area that developers spend a great deal of effort on. Owens' blog post encouraging people to leave MySpace resulted in a microflurry of users trying to figure out how to do it in the first place. One of our architects admitted that he sometimes wonders what will happen to his Facebook account when he dies. "I guess my wife will clear it out?"

Clearly, the relationships we have with our online identities are not clear. What responsibility t\do we have to the identity artifacts we create, and what responsibilities do software developers have to us as users? My biggest take home is that no one seems to want to talk about this, let alone create clear exit strategies from the user/technology relationship. Perhaps preparing for the death of a user is similar to preparing a living will. Maybe we are procrastinating a task to a future date that may not even exist in the first place.

Blog Wrap Up

trish — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:37:34 +0000

On Gnovis:

A sermon in her family’s church, frames an ethical and moral wrestling match in Sarah Thompson’s first (hopefully of many) blog for gnovis. She asks:

“Rights…how do we draw a line between what constitutes a right and what does not, while respecting peoples’ differences? ….When is culture itself a right, and when does culture stand in the way of rights?”

ICCT’s meeting last week engaged in productive intercultural dialogue in last week’s meeting, as Margarita’s blog discusses. She uses the etymology of the words ‘privacy’ and ‘confidentiality’ to discuss questions like:

“Does the notion of trust in the physical world differ between cultures? And if so, is it extended, and how directly, to online activities? Might the introduction of online privacy settings into a culture transcend social networking sites and start affecting how people perceive privacy differently in their lives?”

CCT alum and former gnovis staff member, Dora, draws connections between recent news coverage of veteran’s health care and my Gnovis journal article published last spring.

“Iinjustices that vets encounter in place of proper health and mental care are reflective of all that is so wrong with the institutionalized perpetuation of enlightenment humanism—the disciplined and hierarchical separation of reason from affect and of the mind from the body, toward the construction of an idealized “idea-l” (as in, not rea-l) human subject—a definition that has lent itself quite readily to the bureaucratic understanding of the political citizen subject, war veterans inclus.”

Around CCT:

A new report from Nielsen online suggests that TV is still a thriving form of entertainment.

“Unique viewers of video content at the four television networks increased an average of 155 percent in September over the previous month. In addition to new and favorite shows, coverage of the presidential campaign and the financial crisis attracted viewers online. And let’s not forget the comic relief.”

On her personal blog, Ashley Bowen highly recommends two great pod casts: On the Media and Search Engine

“Basically, I use these as Cliff Notes to my education…”

AdFreak announced a new addition to DC’s bus advertisements courtesy of American Humanist Association.

“Washington, D.C., is now getting its own atheist bus campaign, headlined, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake."”

On Read Write Web, Marshal Kirkpatrick comments on Obama’s announcement to re-invent the fireside chat.

“President elect Obama will bring the President's weekly "fireside chat" into the 21st century by offering it not just on the radio, but in video on YouTube as well. It's as if the new populist President really cares whether the next generation has a connection to what he's doing.”

War Veterans, the American Bureaucratic Machine, and the Continuing Cultural Exclusion of Affect

TD — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:29:25 +0000

Watching CNN yesterday morning I got very sad and angry thinking about the affectless, bureaucratic nightmare that physically and psychologically injured or disabled living American vets frequently have to endure, in return for having put their lives on the line; or that surviving dependent families of veterans who have to endure on top of having lost their loved one. While there is a decent amount of visibility about the challenges of the return and transition home for the visibly or invisibly injured veterans, the inadequacy in care is glaring.

Upon their return and transition home, injured vets lack appropriate initial and ongoing care, especially when their injuries are invisible and psychological. And the stories of surviving families that have to fight to retain their health benefits are appalling.

Part of my strong reaction is of course rooted in the fundamental grief that war itself causes me. Another part of my outrage is linked to my own litany of grievances against our health insurance system, especially when it comes to issues of mental health coverage, and the coverage of medical treatments called “alternative.”

The frequently mute and bureaucratic, though no less outrageous, injustices that vets encounter in place of proper health and mental care are reflective of all that is so wrong with the institutionalized perpetuation of enlightenment humanism—the disciplined and hierarchical separation of reason from affect and of the mind from the body, toward the construction of an idealized “idea-l” (as in, not rea-l) human subject—a definition that has lent itself quite readily to the bureaucratic understanding of the political citizen subject, war veterans inclus.

It is paradoxical that the military is supplied and endowed with all the latest technological sophistication available, and yet the affective and nonrational components of their needs are so readily overlooked. It serves as a painful reminder that the ideology of the Enlightenment and the redemptive dream of empirical reason is entrenched and perhaps even inherent in our national institutions. And perhaps, indeed, it is this prevailing definition of the subject that does not account for affect, which is intricately related itself to the affective violence that war and its repercussions bring to bear.

Trish’s paper, “The Pleasure of Death: The Construction of Masculine Citizenship in Military Recruitment Ads,” published last spring, is instructive toward further understanding the relationship between enlightenment humanism, war and ideal subjecthood and citizenship. The paper, which derives its analysis from Freud’s work on the death drive, the pleasure principle and the uncanny, tells us:

Enlightened ideals and war are bound together, although contradictory, as inextricable aspects of our society […] civilization and war are dialectically related to each other so that the dominant element always conceals or marginalizes that which constructs and sustains it. In times of peace, the ideals and aspirations of a nation conceal a predilection toward war. In times of war, the possibility that men are all civilized and humane is marginalized by sheer aggression and violence. Discourses of idealized citizenship reflect the dialectic opposition between enlightened nations and war.

Drawing the parallel, as Trish does, between the relationship of enlightened nations to war and the discourse of idealized citizenship (here portrayed in military recruitment ads) leaves the affective body of the soldier to bear the brunt of this ultimately nonviable paradox.

The most grievous and traumatic paradox for the idea-l/ized citizen comes in, of course, with mental illness as straddling the line between mind and body, an overflow of pathology into the seemingly impermeable space of pure rationalism in the ideal subject, rendering the subject unrecognizable to the paradigmatic definition of the human, per Enlightenment humanism. It is this unrecognizability that could well account for the gross oversights in addressing and treating these issues.

All this is to say that we’ve got a long way to go as a society, to move beyond the literally and figuratively crippling manicheanism that can be oh-so-appealing in its apparent neatness and simplicity.

Related links for further reading:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/387235_vetday11.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/11/vets.suicide/index.html

Culture and Social Media: The Issue of Privacy

marmar1028 — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:26:23 +0000

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.)

A request to translate the word privacy into Russian stumped me and provoked a short, but potentially fascinating discussion on how privacy is defined across cultures. More specifically, does the notion of trust in the physical world differ between cultures? And if so, is it extended, and how directly, to online activities? Might the introduction of online privacy settings into a culture transcend social networking sites and start affecting how people perceive privacy differently in their lives?

I'm not going to attempt to answer these questions in this post, but I was curious about how privacy would be translated and what that might say about the notion of privacy in Russia, and what that means for social networking.

According to the online translators (and my father) privacy is translated as "конфиденциальность", or confidentiality. The etymology of the two words are revealing:

Privacy comes from the Latin privatus "set apart, belonging to oneself" (not to the state), used in contrast to publicus, communis.

Confidentiality comes from the Latin con (with) fidel (trust).

The two words imply opposite directions: privacy implies a distancing, a separation, while confidentiality implies proximity, closeness. One describes a relationship between the individual and the state, the other between individuals. One is about keeping out; the other is about bringing in. Or as one of my Russian friend interprets: "Privacy excludes everyone but myself, whereas confidentiality excludes everyone but me and the people I trust. This is more in line with Russian and American relationships with personal information." Even if we take her conclusion at face value, where does a certain relationship with personal information come from?

Taking into consideration that Russia was governed by an oppressive state, where privacy was always precarious, we might hypothesize that Russian users might be reluctant to engage in online activity that might reveal their personal activities. On the other hand, perhaps no longer fearing state intervention in their personal affairs, they might be more likely to reveal their private lives.

However, the research presented this morning places them on par with Brazil and the United States - approximately 14% of Russian social network users are concerned with privacy, as compared with 14% for Brazil and 16% for the US. Furthermore, 36% of Russian social network users feel comfortable giving out personal details, significantly higher than Brazil's 23% but only slightly higher than the 30% in the US.

So, what shapes attitudes towards privacy? Historical political experiences? Media? Exceptionally high instances of spam? And what is the implication of these attitudes, not only for those running social networking sites, but for users themselves?

Update: Check out Ben Turner's column on the topic where he presents his research. His distinction between political and personal privacy resonates well with the distinction in the definitions of the two words I offer in my post.

When Wrestling With Rights, Thanks Be To Blogs!

Sarah Thompson — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:35:31 +0000

In a session of Adult Sunday School in the church of a Midwestern town, a local leader of the Lakota Sioux Tribe passed around slips of paper. He told those in attendance to write down, in ranking order, the things in life that were most important. Once the lists were complete, the leader asked participants to name the items that topped their lists, and share why these items were so meaningful. After some minutes of discussion, the leader instructed that all must tear off one of the items, and relinquish those scraps of paper to him. The group was then asked to relinquish another valued aspect of their lives, which was even more difficult. Then the group was asked to hold up the three remaining symbols of valued aspects of life. One of the last three was ripped from their hands; in his own hands he began to gather the words family, freedom of choice, love, my wife, in various contours and colors of ink. But from some he heard voices of protest – they could not let go of their scraps of paper. Those top items simply meant too much to sacrifice, even in their symbolic form. The leader then revealed the purpose of the exercise: to reflect upon what was taken forcibly from Native Americans – the most basic, and most important, joys and experiences of life. These are the things no one would sacrifice willingly, and that no one should take away.

This story recounts my parents’ morning at Spirit of Peace, my childhood church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; it came up this afternoon during our weekly phone call. Lately, I have wrestled with my thoughts about rights -- and at moments like these when the mental wrestling gets really rough, I forget that others are probably fighting the same fight. So…Thanks Be to Blogs! I will use this case of today’s Adult Sunday School at Spirit of Peace, which is but twelve hours old and twelve hundred miles away, to ask a question that builds a necessary ring around my mental wrestling. You, of course, are my audience, cheering and jeering from your computer monitors…

Those lists of items were written in ranking order of importance. Obviously, there was some variance among each of the very first items: family, freedom of choice, and so on. Yet I imagine all of those first items were similar in essence to many of the rights named by the UN General Assembly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948): “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family…” (Article 16). “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion…” (Article 18). But what about the items further down the list? They were still considered among the most important in life, but presumably their importance decreased with their ranking, increased in variance, and would have perhaps been easier to tear off and give up?

This leads to my primary question: Which of these items are rights? If we had to draw a line beneath the last item a person should never have to give up because it and all preceding items are rights, what would that last item be? Could that last item be the same for all? To claim that it could points in the direction of essentialism, a concept that Martha Nussbaum wrote a few years ago was "becoming a dirty word in the academy” (1993). She further elaborated that essentialism, the notion that there are properties essential to humans and which all humans share, “is taken, usually without extended argument, to be in league with racism and sexism, with ‘patriarchal’ thinking generally, whereas extreme relativism is taken to be a recipe for social progress.”

Rights…how do we draw a line between what constitutes a right and what does not, while respecting peoples’ differences? What are the rights of a woman living in a culture that requires her to stay confined to a room while she is menstruating? What are the rights of a child suffering from life-threatening illness whose religion prevents him from taking life-saving medicines? When is culture itself a right, and when does culture stand in the way of rights?

Like any good wrestling match, the rowdiest of audience members eventually find a way to break into the ring and join the fight. So I invite you, essentialists, relativists, and all folk in between, to do the same…online, of course…not in the hallway outside the CCT lab.

References:

Nussbaum, Martha C. 1993. Social Justice and Universalism: In Defense of an Aristotelian Account of Human Functioning. Modern Philology 90 (May): S46-S73.

Blog wrapup: Election!, online behavior, and justifications

whatknows — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:07:26 +0000

at gnovis, election!

Before November 4th @ 8PM PST:

The election left us netizens awash with technical ways in which to observe, participate and predict the outcomes of this election. I wrote about a grass-roots initiative to detect voting problems via Twitter at TwitterVote. Ashley, talked about the proliferation of poll-watching websites, but reminded "everyone that no matter what all the projection polls say, the only poll that really matters is the last one... Isn't it time for us to get to call elections like the talking heads on TV? Yes. It. Is."

After November 4th @ 8PM PST:

Now that the election is won, to what did all of these polls and viral videos amount? Brad authored a post documenting his experience and thoughts about this election season. It includes the blogs, and the polls, and the way in which Washingtonians gathered at the White House once the results were announced. I will never forget where I was that night, but even so, it seems we were all still taking pictures. "...in a hyper-mediated era, what will be the media-bites that come to define this moment, in our collective memory? How will we choose from all this stuff?"

Everyone I talk to here in DC seems to agree: Something has changed. Trish eloquently captures this new spirit when considering what it means to be an American. Quoting Obama's speech on election night, "Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. That's the true genius of America: that America can change." Thank you Trish for what was a very touching post.

around cct, online behavior

Ben Turner, this year's Junior Yahoo fellow, poresents a possible model for attritudes about online privacy. Considering the different privacy attitudes around the world, he proposes that privacy attritudes may emerge out of social bevaior and fear of the government. This an interest thought in the growing body of work around the contexts the inform our user/computer relationships.

Ashley writes a post rejecting a get out the vote effort on Facebook. Apparently petitions, phone calls, and donations are great, but tampering with her Facebook status is across the line. We all have to have boundaries, right?

Finally, I took issue with some overly simplified explinations for online rage in a CNN article on anonymous anger. "I am far from a doom sayer when it comes to the internet (quite the opposite, actually), and it may be that these anonymity/anger effects are contextually bound to communication on blogs and chat rooms. Either way, it is interesting to consider how anonymity is used as a tool, regardless of the objective."

around the blogosphere, justification

With "good design" increasingly codified into cheap furniture sold in large blue and yellow stores (which I love), where should the designer inovate? Tad Toulis at Core 77 makes the case for "ugly": "Embracing the word "ugly"—so readily identified with everything popular design claims to have been a reaction against—seems a logical choice if we are to create a vision for the practice of design freed from the restrictions and prejudices of its past."

David Spark over at Mashable, gives us the classic "Top X" list for twitter in his post "Sixteen Great Twitter Moments". I'll admit, going over 10 items was daring, but this list is really good. Try this one the next time someone says Twitter has no value: "Andrew Warner (@andrewwarner) was stuck late at night with his bicycle on the side of the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) in Los Angeles. Andrew called a cab and 911 and neither would pick him up. Alone, he Twittered his dilemma and a Twitter friend (@KenFeldman) offered to pick him up. Others not in the neighborhood kept him company by Tweeting. While he wanted to take Ken up on his offer, Andrew’s girlfriend eventually was able to pick him up."

“What, then, is the American, this new man?”

trish — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:36:43 +0000

Like Brad's blog posted this morning, I could not discuss anything other then this week's historic election and I will also start with a question. Unlike Brad, I can not promise to avoid all emotional gushing. Please excuse me this once.

“What, then, is the American, this new man?”

This question was first posed by Crevecoeur in the 18th Century and was again considered by my students last week. Wednesday morning, as I unfolded one of the last copies of the Washington Post in the city, I smiled and recalled this ageless question.

When Crevecoeur, a French gentleman who was enchanted by the new world and the new identity forming, asked this question he also answered it: a simple yet hard working Pennsylvania farmer. By the time the Revolutionary War began, Crevecoeur already found it necessary to redefine his “American man”.

Likewise, we are in the midst of social change that requires re-defining American identity.
In his speech, President-elect Obama reminded us that we are a nation held together by shared ideas:

"Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. That's the true genius of America: that America can change.”

The beauty, then, of America is that our shared ideas and identity are always in flux and perpetual redefinition. Each generation offers a new answer to Crevecoeur's question, "What is the American, this new man?" Each generation redefines, reclaims, and reassesses American identity to create the definition fresh and ever new.

Tuesday night, America, in a crystal clear voice, enunciated a new answer to this classic question and Obama crystallized that definition. For me, American identity is a very different thing today then it was Monday. Now is the time to discuss our new definition of America. I offer these two changes:

Equal Opportunity - Overnight, the horizon of potential for millions of American expanded exponentially. I saw a little boy on TV choke up while speaking of the chance that he too could be president. He literally could not utter the word 'President'. He could only lay his head down and cry.

The American Dream – I am thinking now that there is no single “American Dream”, rather, what is unique is that America dreams and we dream big. In Obama’s acceptance speech we were reminded of the history of America’s dreams: suffrage for all, trips to the moon, Democracy’s increase, and Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of equality. Tuesday night and well into Wednesday morning, I skipped, ran, and hugged my way through Howard University, down the U street corridor and to finally sing in front of the White House. In the streets with me and in other cities, thousands of people left their homes with renewed (for the first time for many) belief in American’s power to Dream.

Tuesday expanded millions of Americans horizons, but religion and sexual orientation still limit millions of others from achieving equal opportunity. We also made strides to achieve some of our most auspicious dreams, especially Dr. Kings but we are still a long way from realizing “a more perfect union”. – The American, this new man, is far from complete and will need to be redefined again and again.

After a campaign season that made various claims to define real American, we witnessed both the fruits of great social change and planed the seeds for even more change.

I’m excited to see how we will answer “What, then, is the American, this new man?” in eight years and to imagine how my children will answer in their turn.

The Obama Moment - Making and Documenting Historical Memory

sleepcamel — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:05:58 +0000

Yesterday was the first Wednesday of the month, which means I was supposed to be continuing my thesis series, focusing this time on the writing of the thesis proposal -- but, even after taking an extra day, I can't bring myself to write about anything other than what I saw on the streets of DC on Tuesday night. Since this is gnovis, though, I'll try to turn off my emotional gushing and say something of academic worth, by focusing on digital media and collective memory.

I'll begin with a question. The pivotal moments in American history are, in our collective memory, linked most vividly to specific images, soundbites, and quotes, which act as a common reference point for summoning forth all of the complexity of that moment - "Four score and seven years ago...," "Ask not what your country...," "One small step for man...," and so on.

So in 2008, in a hyper-mediated era, what will be the media-bites that come to define this moment, in our collective memory? How will we choose from all this stuff?

Great Speeches and Big Media

There are two fairly obvious answers. First, the examples I gave above suggest that history favors great speeches, and Obama is an amazing speaker in both style and substance, so in all likelihood his speech from Grant Park will feature prominently in our collective memory.

Second, despite all the changes that the Internet has brought to political media, television is still very much the gatekeeper, particularly for large events. So the choices made by the major media outlets over the next few weeks, as they choose which soundbites to play over and over, will further determine the details of our collective memory.

Personal Portable Media and the Individual

However, I'm not quite comfortable suggesting that, a generation from now, Tuesday night will be remembered as nothing more than the night that Barack Obama said "America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more
to do." I danced that night in the streets of DC with thousands of strangers, and woke up to inbox full of links to their instant memories. Maybe I'm just being stubborn, but I can't quite accept that the
thousands of hours of footage from handicams and camera phones, now
posted on YouTube, and the millions of photos on Flickr, don't count
for something in our collective memory.

But how will they count? Maybe this is just the tired information overload question, recast in the light of a particularly significant historical moment. However, at least in part, it is about the way that digital media allows us to move away from "collective memory" and towards "collections of memories," in a way that historians have already been trying to do.

I'm thinking a bit of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and the way that so much historical work, right now, is about documenting the stories of passing generations, on an individual basis, while they are still alive. I think this reflects two things: a growing interest in the individual narrative, or sets of individual narratives, as a way to understand history, and the failure of earlier media to capture those narratives in the moment. So we see a scramble to record individual memories while the individuals are still living.

The Self-Documenting Generation

Among today's younger generations, however, this isn't even an issue, because we document ourselves. When I'm 85, it's highly unlikely that a historian will come to me to record my stories for future generations. Maybe she'll ask me for some links, or for access to my harddrive, but in all likelihood she'll just wade through digital archives of my blogs, online articles, videos, and so on. And if she comes looking for me and learns that I'd already passed away, she'll still be able to study me, through my digital footprint.

If, however, she should happen to ask me about the day that Barack Obama was elected, I'll probably just point her to this post, by my partner Emily, which captures almost everything I would ever want to say. Emily, who is not a blogger, woke up on Wednesday morning, sat at the computer, and wouldn't talk to me until she'd finished documenting the previous night.

"What I saw last night - all of us rallying together to celebrate the victory of a man we all believe in, and to celebrate the fact that we now live in a country that elects itself a black president - elicited a feeling of community I have never felt before in my life." <read it>

I don't want to speak for her, but I suspect that, at some level, Emily was motivated by the sense that her personal experience needed to be documented and shared, and that she had something to add that all the other bloggers and vloggers and photographers hadn't already shared. I had the same urge, but was too caught up in everything to make sense of it, so I was incredibly relieved that Emily was able to do so on our behalf. Ensuing emails and Facebook comments suggest that many feel the same way.

I feel that this is a markedly different way of thinking about personal experiences and history - we write down our thoughts in the moment not because we want to save them for ourselves, in a diary, but because we want to share them with others, and because we know others want us to share them.

Cutting to the chase

OK, so the gist of what I'm saying here is that digital media allow our generation to self-document historical events, adding to the "collection of memory" instead of simply consuming "collective memory."

Until very recently, there has been a structural gap between the collective memory of history, constructed by the media and other institutions, and the personal narrative of history, residing in the minds of individuals. The work of many historians was to interview passing generations, extract the personal narratives, and then organize them into collections of memories in order to, in effect, break through that gap.

Now, the gap has been largely eliminated, as individuals can self-document, self-publish, and self-organize their collections of memories. This will, of course, create new challenges for historians, but at least the memories are no longer trapped in our fragile, organic minds, unrecorded.

History was made throughout this election cycle, in uncountable ways, but certainly including the use of digital media to connect new voices to new audiences, to organize campaign actions, and to register and mobilize new voters.

History was most certainly made on Tuesday, not only by the most significant presidential pick in my lifetime, but by the use of digital media to monitor lines at polling places, to say "I voted" to the world, to aggregate early projections, and to coordinate the spontaneous revelry in DC on U St, 18th St, and outside the Whitehouse.

And, looking ahead, history will continue to be made in the ways that we use digital media to document this historical event, making history into History.

Back to the question

But enough about what I think; what do you think about my original questions, which I never quite answered:

So in 2008, in a hyper-mediated era, what will be the media-bites that come to define this moment, in our collective memory? How will we choose from all this stuff?

Don't forget to cast your TwitterVote!

whatknows — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:09:32 +0000

It's election day - you struggling yet? 49 minutes until the majority of East Coast polling locations close, and until then, all of those pretty Flash interfaces on CNN, MSNBC, and even BBC remain completely empty, waiting for streaming data to make them come alive. If you are like me, you have followed the polls, listened to the pundits, and watched more Meet the Press than might be healthy. If you are like me, this is the no man's land between speculation and confirmation.

Well, here is a site that is trying to capture the voting experience via twitter: TwitterVote!

From the "about" page:

Millions of Americans will be voting this Election Day. Many of these voters will have terrific experiences and we'd love to hear about those. But many voters will experience voting problems that we have been hearing about for years: long lines, broken machines, and registered voters who can't vote because their names aren't showing up on the registration rolls. Using Twitter Vote Report, voters will be able to share their experiences and resources with one another (e.g. "#wait:120" meaning that the wait time is 120 minutes). These messages will then be aggregated and mapped so that we can "see" voting problems around the country in real-time.

What does this mean for you? If you had a bad experience (or even longish experience) report in on TwitterVote. What does it mean for me? I have more data to watch!

Testing Your Poll Knowledge

bowena — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:06:39 +0000

At first, I wanted to post today about the incredible proliferation of poll-watching websites in this election cycle. Then, I realized that what those poll sites are really good for is helping you handicap your election night predictions. After a 2-year campaign, isn't it really about bragging rights at your local watering hole? Thus, behold the election night game sheet (via MurphyJ).

As someone who does not read FiveThirtyEight.com or Poll Tracker religiously, I probably wont do too well at this game. On the other hand, I am tempted to remind everyone that no matter what all the projection polls say, the only poll that really matters is the last one. I understand that when I campaign goes on and on for years, eventually, you run out of stuff to talk about-- poll numbers always provide a new topic to chew on, but I wonder what they really reveal about the electorate?

After McCain's apperance on SNL this weekend, I feel okay about taking the election seriously but also not taking it too seriously. It's been long enough-- I've made calls, licked envelopes, begged friends to vote... at this point, I feel like its got to be okay to start laughing and engaging in some friendly punditry with our friends. Isn't it time for us to get to call elections like the talking heads on TV? Yes. It. Is.