On "Web ushers in age of ambient intimacy"

This article was a great boon to defining a part of my research. The new code of the internet or user driven code creates a complete new frame for not only online interactions, but also IRL.

For many people — particularly anyone over the age of 30 — the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae?

(From the Article)

I'd say this is indicative of the change in our social interaction. This generation is the first to concern itself with the hour by hour status of digital information. When a parent does get on facebook, we all whisper a silent prayer in hopes that our parents never join the site. Because it would change how the college or high school student would interact with their digital selfs.

Even the daily catalogue of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing

(From the Article)

I think that this touches on the impact of every interaction that we create on the internet. No longer are we subjected to the code...rather we are infused with it, a part of it, assimilated by it. Our real life identity is tied so strongly with these pixels and binary bits stored on a screen or a server, that we can't look away from it. A status update becomes as normal as taking note of a windy day or the feeling of brushing our teeth. It could be noticeable, but it sinks into the background like it simply belongs.

My overall...number is thus 301: Facebook (254) + Twitter (47), double what it would be without technology. Yet only 20 are family or people I'd consider close friends. The rest are weak ties — maintained via technology.

(From the Article)

"Maintained via technology" is an interesting concept, because technology does not maintain these relationships, we do. But the author and all of us identify with technology so closely that it becomes an extension of us. It is an omni-present entity that we trust, a vanguard of our information and social lives.

"I outsource my entire life," she said. "I can solve any problem on Twitter in six minutes." (She also keeps a secondary Twitter account that is private and only for a much smaller circle of close friends and family — "My little secret," she said. It is a strategy many people told me they used: one account for their weak ties, one for their deeper relationships.)

(From the Article)

More examples of the the simbiance of both users and code. The digital network information is simply users and code becoming one in the same. One acting upon the other, to create a network of connections that becomes "bigger" or more meaningful than the code itself, and the code becomes as important as real life for its users.

The interaction cannot be created by the code (bots?), and the interaction could not be created simply by the user.

She had broken up with her boyfriend not long ago, but she hadn't "unfriended" him, because that felt too extreme.

(From the Article)

The aforementioned is a perfect example, the code is simply that...code or a sires of symbols. This code or connection has completely taken over what might seem like a prudent emotional choice. De-friend and the symbol disappears, but then the ex is no longer survivable, symbolization without representation becomes a problem. And much like in V for vendetta, the symbol has power. Ideas have power.

A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world.

Maybe rather than "blowing up a building" it could be "changing a twitter status" or "writing a note".

On "Looking Backwards, Looking Forward: Cyberculture Studies 1990-2000"

Since the popular inception of the Internet, many people have tried to characterize how it affects people's lives. While I enjoyed the concise wrap-up of the recent history of the many facets of online interactions, the topics switched quickly and I never felt like I got the "whole picture" idea of what the author was trying to convey. Some parts of the paper seemed to be interjected with a strong stance on a particular part of the Internet.

I enjoyed the "Discoursing Cyberspace" section, that began to unravel the "frontier" metaphor. This really interests me because of the rule of "cyberspace" part of the project I plan on working on.

On "Virtual Ethnography" and "The Wealth of Networks"

Just try to go here, and not have a train wreck reaction. A message board where there are no rules, and anonymity is almost enforced. A community where the anonymous and immediate transfer of information worldwide is just another day.

Inside of all of its cultural shock and awe chaos, there is order. A series of regimented rules and regulations, ways of stating what individuals want or "DO NOT WANT". You might read things like "TITS OR GTFO", or "Rule 34" or "OP IS GOD!!!1!"


Before beginning research, I had never been on /b/ channel or 4chan. I am fluent in LOLcat, and my Internet lingo was passable, but /b/ itself has a language all of its own. Hines, in "Virtual Ethnography" discusses how digital ethnographers have an advantage on traditional ethnographers, in that we can "Lurk" or covertly participate in cultural observations. Armed with urbandictionary.com, anyone who spends a few hours on /b/ could be participate on /b/ like a native.


Though Hines also writes about how we are not, in a purist sense, doing an "real" ethnography. The space and community exists in virtual space, and that distances us. Giving the feeling that the lurking on /b/ is "not quite" participant observation.


"The Wealth of Networks" Looks more widely at the Internet as a whole and how it effects the tech-junkie and the computer illiterate population. Benkler comments that conceptually, social norms are changing with social networking, Voip Internet phones and social information sites like wikipeida. The network of the Internet seems to keep us changing, rather than forcing us into a state of anomie.

Second Trailer for the tubes.

Made with Final Cut Pro!

Law of the Info Superhighway: Potential Project Abstract

The Internet, in all its freedom and seemingly endless power, has shaped and molded many facets of life worldwide. The fluid structure of many people working together can be molded and bent to fit any need or demand from every user. Entire communities of people are forged in a crucible of information, where people acclimatize into news feeds, posting rules, languages and new on line norms.
The Internet infrastructure is at times a generous giver of totality, freely distributing meaning, identity and information to all; bored teenagers in basements, presidents on wireless devices and armchair stockbrokers. The supposed darker side connects children with criminals and makes copyright felons out of dead women, 8-year old children, printers and 90-year grandmothers.
The information superhighway speeds along, daring anyone to try to stop it. A torrent of necessitated expeditious systems that the system of law itself relies on cannot, and will not, be simply switched off or shut down. The only option to change the dizzying super-structure seems to change the very parameters on which the structure is built. How would this change be implemented? Has it already been implemented? Does the seemingly tortoise-like bureaucracy of “Big-brother” have a chance to make such a change that this little brother won’t be watching him?
All these questions will be looked into through the following semester, and beyond.

Short Youtube Spot on Anon and the Law

::::EDIT:::Please Watch In Fullscreen, embedding is cutting off some of the vid.

Here it is! Some more flashy moments of Anon and the Law.

Though this vid is meant to give a rough idea, I might end up covering the subject of Anonymity more broadly and how different laws are used to govern "flock" behavior. I.E. The Belirus Flashmob that was busted up by government special forces...because unschedualed ice cream socials are a threat to government power. See here.

Cyberspace: The Anonymous Frontier

His semester mission,
To explore strange new digital worlds,
To seek out new life and new civilizations,
To boldly go where no-named wo/men have gone before!