(Anne Beaulieu (left) and Sally Wyatt. Photo and interview: Ulises Mejias, Creative Commons 2008)

Anne Beaulieu (bio, publications) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Virtual Knowledge Studio (VKS). Sally Wyatt (bio, publications) is Professor of Digital Cultures in Development at Maastricht University and also a Senior Research Fellows at VKS. The Virtual Knowledge Studio “supports researchers in the humanities and social sciences in the Netherlands in the creation of new scholarly practices and in their reflection on e-research in relation to their fields.” My interview with them took place on June 6 at the VKS Amsterdam offices, housed in the International Institute of Social History.

Ulises Mejias: Why don’t we start by you telling me what the VKS does?

Anne Beaulieu: The Virtual Knowledge Studio has a dual mission of studying new research practices and also supporting researchers who want to ‘play around’ with new research practices. We are called upon to play three different roles: The first is as broker, as someone who can translate between the different groups who are active in this new area of e-research–between humanities scholars and people who are actually building tools, for instance; and the requests for us to play that role can come from both kinds of actors. Another role we have is to document what these practices are, whether it means new kinds of collaboration, or new kinds of communication, or new ways of producing data or sources. That work is of interest to people in technology studies, but also to people in the field, where we are studying the practices. The third role is really to think and try out new practices, and sometimes these are things we do in-house, in our ‘collaboratories,’ but it can also be very concrete contributions in ongoing outside projects.

Sally Wyatt: One of the main ways of collaborating with researchers is through what we call campus sites. We now have one at Erasmus University in Rotterdam and the other at Maastricht University, which I’m responsible for and which we just started a few months ago. So that’s a way to extend our reach. (more…)

Who owns your social network profile? — An Interview with Marc Worrell

(photo and interview: Ulises Mejias, Creative Commons 2008)

Marc Worrell (social network profile, personal website) is software architect and partner at Mediamatic, a hybrid enterprise/cultural organization in Amsterdam engaged in developing software applications for clients as well as exploring new media, art, and society through exhibitions, presentations, workshops, manifestations and all sort of onsite/online cultural events. Marc is the architect behind Mediamatic’s content management system (CMS) anyMeta, which you can see at work on their website. I interviewed Marc in the high-traffic kitchen area of Mediamatic on May 30th.

Ulises Mejias: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the history of Mediamatic?

Marc Worrell: The Mediamatic Foundation was started in the mid 1980’s by Willem Velthoven and Jans Possel. I think they were still students in Groningen, in northern Netherlands. And they started a magazine about new media. At the time, new media meant interactive CDs and such, so they started incorporating that into their work. As Willem himself says, because he started writing about new media, people assumed that he knew a lot about producing it, which is not necessarily the same! So the Foundation grew a more commercial branch next to it, Mediamatic IP. This company did web sites, print design, more commercial stuff. It also made it possible to fund the Foundation a little bit, at least with office space, etc. There was another branch that focused on education: people learning how to make websites, editing, how to write for the web, project management around Internet projects, etc. The philosophy at Mediamatic was always that once you learn how to do something, you immediately make it possible for other people to learn how to do it, redistributing the knowledge. Then of course we had the dot com crash. Money just ran out for Mediamatic IP. It was decided to continue with some projects, like the Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands, but Medimatic IP itself declared bankruptcy. At that time Mediamatic Lab was started, as a partner to the Foundation, and that’s where we do our work today on social networks, websites, etc. for our clients, and where we do the implementation of the “strange” ideas that come out of the Foundation. (more…)

Making Sense of Information: An Interview with Rik Maes

(photo and interview: Ulises Mejias, Creative Commons 2008)

Rik Maes (bio, personal website) is currently Dean of the Executive Master in Information Management Program and Program Director of PrimaVera at the University of Amsterdam Business School (full disclosure: my research fellowship is sponsored by this program). We sat down to talk on May 28.

Ulises Mejias: What is PrimaVera?

Rik Maes: PrimaVera is the Program for Research in Information Management. It is part of the Department of Information Management, which is located in the UvA Business School. We started the program about 10 years ago, as a way to bring together a number of perspectives on the way we deal with information management. From the very beginning, a basic point was the issue of structuration, of the architecture of information systems. But another very important issue was the area of ‘making sense,’ of transforming information into something more: knowledge, wisdom… Over the years, our focus has evolved. One of the main subjects we are now dealing with is what we call ‘information governance’: producing and making good use of information in your organization. It is a positive concept, not so much a technical or operational concept. (more…)

The networked society and its outsides: Interview with Geert Lovink

(photo and interview: Ulises Mejias, Creative Commons 2008)

Geert Lovink is a media theorist, net critic and activist (bio, blog, publications). He is the founding director of the Amsterdam-based Institute of Network Cultures, where I sat with him to chat on May 22.

SEARCH ENGINES AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY

Ulises Mejias: Have you heard about Rushmoredrive.com? It’s a search engine for the Black community. It’s in English, and I guess the idea is that it functions as a Google for Black people. Whatever search they perform, it’s going to organize and bring up results that the search engine thinks are of more interest or relevance to the user. And obviously the next step is that we have a search engine for Muslims, and a search engine for Gays, and a search engine for every minority. So I guess my question is basically: Will there still be margins within the information society when everybody has their own custom-designed search algorithm?

Geert Lovink: Well, one of the margins is the relative drop of the importance of English on the Web because of the growing presence of other languages. It’s a relatively small group of people who speak English and so its influence is shrinking very rapidly. That’s a fact. If we look at the search engine market, there are very serious competitors to Google, and they are not where we might look. The biggest one is Baidu, which is in Mandarin only. Google has no entrance to the Chinese market to speak of, and it’s the fastest growing market of internet users. Is that a margin? No. Is Baidu going to focus on a certain type of identity? No…

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(photo: CC by sandydr)

Considering that Amsterdam is situated two meters below sea level, the Dutch have really done a magnificent job not at “fighting” nature but rather incorporating it into the function and aesthetics of the city. While doing a research fellowship in this beautiful city, I decided to conduct a series of informal interviews with theorists, educators, artists and activists to learn how they are applying some of the same ingenuity at figuring out how new information and communication technologies are transforming the fabric of society.

I will update this post as new interviews are completed:

• Geert Lovink: Founding Director, Institute of Network Cultures
• Rik Maes: Program Director, PrimaVera
• Marc Worrell: Software Architect, Mediamatic
• Anne Beaulieu and Sally Wyatt: Senior Researchers at the Virtual Knowledge Studio

The theme of the conference was summarized as follows:

Has there been a shift in political use of the internet and digital new media - a new web 2.0 politics based on participatory values? How do broader social, cultural, and economic shifts towards web 2.0 impact, if at all, on the contexts, the organizational structures, and the communication of politics and policy? Does web 2.0 hinder or help democratic citizenship? This conference provides an opportunity for researchers to share and debate perspectives.

The conference was in large part the brainchild of Andrew Chadwick, Founding Director of the NPCU. There were 120 papers organised into 41 panels, and over 180 participants from over 30 countries. Some of the conference topics included: Parties, Elections and Campaigning; e-Governance; Constituency, Mobilisation and Engagement; The Politics of Blogging; Platforms, Power, and Politics; Young People, the Internet and Civic Participation; New Perspectives on e-Democracy; and Theorising Web 2.0.

What follows is a review of some of the presentations I found relevant to my interests (a summary of my paper is provided towards the end).

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As social networks are actualized by information and communication technologies (ICTs), they cease to function as mere metaphors and become templates for organizing sociality. Networks –as assemblages of people, technology and social norms– arrange subjects into structures and define the parameters for their interaction, thus actively shaping their social realities. But what does the social network include, and what is left out? What are the politics of the network as episteme? By definition, social networks are not anti-social, but they manifest a bias (which I term “nodocentrism”) against engaging anything that is not part of the network. Nodocentrism embodies a politics of exclusion, since in order for something to be relevant or even visible within the network it needs to be rendered as a node. For nodes, what is outside the network diminishes in social value. Using the framework of nodocentrism, I explore the politics of the social network through its stages of growth (creating new nodes through assimilation), preferential attachment (favoring rich nodes), hyperinflation (widening of the inequality between nodes), capitalization (converting inequality into gain for a few and loss for the rest) and segregation (purging of unwanted nodes from the network). I end by proposing the concept of the “paranodal,” the expanse between nodes, as the only possible site from which to un-think the logic of nodocentrism. Paranodality can provide the subject with the political context for disidentifying from the network, offering a site for the critical assessment of networked sociality.

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Shoot Mexicans trying to cross the border, or guide Mexicans across the border. For every political stance, a video game. Are we what we play? If video games excite us cognitively and affectively, why not put that stimulus to use in the service of a cause—preferably a worthy one? Save the environment. Learn how to overthrow a government peacefully. Manage a disaster relief operation. Have fun while doing it.

Are video games effective tools for promoting social change? Can a good deed in virtuality make a difference in actuality? If so, how do we promote video games for social change, given that in reality the market for Halo eclipses the market for PeaceMaker? Do we need, as David Rejeski suggests, a Corporation for Public Gaming (similar to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to promote educational and socially conscious games?

This year, FLEFF has again assembled a sample of “serious” games, video games that attempt to promote social change through education, critique, or simulation. The work ranges from simple maze games such as Homeless: It’s No Game, to more sophisticated strategy games such as Karma Tycoon, to a full-fledged simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to an alternate reality game (ARG) called World without Oil.

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Attention Economy: The Game

Ulises A. Mejias

How do new bloggers gain recognition? Why are some people in MySpace or Facebook more popular than others? Why does one YouTube video get seen by thousands of people, and another by just a few? What does it mean that “on the internet, everyone is famous to 15 people”? Can the subject matter of the content we post to an online network make us more or less popular?

This game is an accelerated simulation of the process of gaining attention online (acquiring more readers, friends, hits, etc.). The goal of the game is to collect the most attention. The game tries to condense a process that can take weeks or months into about an hour. It is intended for people who are new to the study of online social networks, but anyone can play. The game can also be used to teach some basic characteristics of networks, such as the role of hubs or connectors in scale-free networks. Players are asked at the end to critically reflect on the values that drive this Attention Economy.

Number of players: around 10-25

Time for activity: 45 minutes to 1.5 hours (depending on number of players)

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