Digital Culture Studies

We did it, even though most of our neighbours did not. And although we live pretty green, we learned that we still have too many things that plug in. More frustrating was how little changed the Chicago skyline was during the hour - big buildings did turn off their lights, but plenty did not.

Scrabble by candelight is hard. Or maybe it was the wine. Better pictures than mine of Earth hour events can be seen in the Earth Hour Flickr Pool. But the big question is, did participation make a difference? Time says, maybe. Sceptics say no. Believers say yes. ComEd says there was a 5% reduction in power useage between 8-9, as compared to last Saturday. Is 5% enough? I don’t think so.

Of course the essential problem remains: people who think this is a problem will always be looking for ways to lower their carbon footprint number, and people who don’t think it is a problem will not, and as long as there are more people in the second camp than the first, very little will change, and that seems like a great shame.

High up on the list of ‘worst ways to break up’ might be this: via Wikipedia. It gets more salacious, what with the saved IM chats, etc. She is known as Ann Coulter 2.0, he is a creator of Wikipedia, and when they broke up, it got public and ugly.

Its called “getting your Google MD”, and you know you have done it - that late night search to diagnose yourself. This scratch, is it infected? That ache - sprain or break or strain, or cancer? Because all Google medical searches end in cancer, according to my own n=1 experiments. Hangnail, or …cancer? ACL issue, or….cancer? Migraine or brain tumour? Its cancer, always cancer in the end, with Google searches, but we do it anyway, and for the not squeamish and highly hypochondriacal, there are always Google image searches on medical ailments to help the diagnosis along.
But now Google is getting into the business of individual health on a very real basis, via our health records, by creating a system that will allow patients to access and transfer their health records to a google repository. While the official word is that these records will remain secure, as soon as I saw this I started wondering about the privacy implications. Fred Stutzman says it more eloquently than I:

Can I ever really give informed consent when I’m trading my health records, deeply personal and private information, for the measly tradeoff of what essentially boils down to online hosting of text files? Sure, I’ve already given Google my search and communication information, but they had to work for it. But my entire medical history just so I can access it when I want? And they can market to me with that information? This is simply too much to give away for convenience.

My own health service has a wonderful online component - I can see and track my test results, run simple charts to show change over time, and message my doctor for minor stuff and/or request refills online. Its convenient, and private, and gives me a measure of control over my medical history, and it isn’t hosted by Google. Accessing my records digitally in this manner is covered by HIPAA, but using a third party vendor like Google may be considered a form of opting out of the protection of HIPAA. I cannot help but wonder who will see those records at Google, how will that information be mined, and what will they do with it? After all, Google isn’t an impartial philanthropic foundation devoted to the betterment of society via technology, although that seems to be the stance most users take when they use the search engine, download the search bar, and link google functionality to their Firefox browsers.

How much does Google know about you, and about me, and where is the balance going to be - where is that thin line where what we give up to them, privacy-wise, no longer is enough for what they offer?

The last traditional speaker of the Eyak language died yesterday, making the language extinct. Eyak Chief Marie Smith Jones passed away yesterday at the age of 89, and as the last speaker of Eyak, her language dies with her. First Nations languages are especially at risk for this, for a number of reasons, but there are groups out there trying to save what they can.

Chief Jones’ obituary. She was the last living Eyak.

The Library of Congress has a Flickr site. And a blog. In their own words, “If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity.”

Ben can see, without eyes.

In the Chronicle this week was a brief article that referenced the CNet article about Universities setting up virtual campuses in Second Life. Couched in the notion that this might be a welcome relief to the lack of classroom space on many campuses was the always present fear of change, naturally, but an interesting note in the article (to me) is the collarboration between Emily Carr, BCIT, Simon Fraser and UBC, which have jointly created the Great Northern Way campus, to create, “…a collaborative initiative in education, research and technology transfer with a focus on the convergence of science and technology with art, culture and design.”

Now that is some interdisciplinarianism right there! It is funny to me the resistance that often occurs upon mention of a virtual classroom in Second Life - a defensiveness, of sorts, about how there is only one way to impart knowledge, and it cannot be improved upon, in any situation, or any circumstance, at any time whatsover, and trying to do so will only lessen the lesson.

I am not a Second Lifer (I have an account, but have only logged in to participate in specific events), but the more I read these articles, the more tempted I am, if only because building objects looks like so much fun. See also, Second Life’s Sketchy Census.

You cannot be interested in digital culture and not be interested in issues surrounding free speech - as the medium of CMC grows, questions regarding what can and cannot be said in online venues is in constant debate. So it was with interest that I recently discovered ReputationDefender, a site which states that, “who you are online is as important as who you are offline”. Can’t argue that! But in the FAQ, I found this, and it gave me pause:

Does ReputationDefender simply send cease-and-desist letters or sue everybody when it seeks to “Destroy” content?

No. Most of our approaches to effecting correction or removal of content are non-legal. We will only pursue legal options with the express consent of our clients, and these techniques are strictly optional and usually the last resort. They may incur additional cost.

The Museum of Modern Betas: a site dedicated to listing web-based betas.

360 Digital Influence: An exploration of what influences us.

Science is beautiful 

Danah Boyd put together a wiki documenting the timeline of social networking software. It is funny to think that widespread use of the web is only about 11 years old, and that if we don’t write these things done, they will be lost. Funny, in the I was a Classics major in undergrad and we used to drive ourselves nuts thinking about how much was lost because nobody writes down what is most obvious in their day to day lives.

Wikipedia has a great list of social networking sites, for those of you who think that MySpace and Facebook invented social networking :)