Thursday notes

The internet time is so condensed: So many big changes and transformations happened in just 3-4 decades. What will happen in the forthcoming decade?

The internet helps connect in meaningful ways with other humans. Nevertheless, we have to navigate murky waters. How much to share to maintain a minimum level of safety and privacy?

How to find a balance between on-screen and off-screen life?

Thinking about our techno-social future and how it is co-determined and decided by big tech-media commercial companies.

What are the limits of AI? Is there a standard normal? Do we have to adapt to a new normal more and more often?

What’s next? “escapism: A person prefers the digital instead of reality because he may think that reality is too boring or unpleasant”

The ethics of AI

The above in the form of a (comic) digital artifact.

 

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MacGuffin Artifact

This week’s reading and task

Please read pages ix-xi (preface) 1 – 28 (introduction) from the book:Boyd, D. (2014). It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Yale University Press.

For this week’s task, please reflect on your personal blogs about the above chapter (about 250 words). For your help in your reflection, you can answer the following questions (optional):

• How I felt
• What did I learn
• What do I understand
• What do I like to ask

For every personal reflections that you post every week, make comments on the reflections of at least two other participants.

Excerpts from the book pages above:

“Although some teens still congregate at malls and football games, the introduction of social media does alter the landscape. It enables youth to create a cool space without physically transporting themselves anywhere. And because of a variety of social and cultural factors, social media has become an important public space where teens can gather and socialize broadly with peers in an informal way. Teens are looking for a place of their own to make sense of the world beyond their bedrooms. Social media has enabled them to participate in and help create what I call networked publics.” (Boyd, 2014, p. 5)

“To understand what is new and what is not, it’s important to understand how technology introduces new social possibilities and how these challenge assumptions people have about everyday interactions. The design and architecture of environments enable certain types of interaction to occur. Round tables with chairs make chatting with someone easier than classroom-style seating. Even though students can twist around and talk to the person behind them, a typical classroom is designed to encourage everyone to face the teacher. The particular properties or characteristics of an environment can be understood as affordances because they make possible—and, in some cases, are used to encourage—certain types of practices, even if they do not determine what practices will unfold.7 Understanding the affordances of a particular technology or space is important because it sheds light on what people can leverage or resist in achieving their goals.” (Boyd, 2014, pp. 10-11)

“Because technology is involved, networked publics have different characteristics than traditional physical public spaces. Four affordances, in particular, shape many of the mediated environments that are created by social media. Although these affordances are not in and of themselves new, their relation to one another because of networked publics creates new opportunities and challenges. They are:
• persistence: the durability of online expressions and content;
• visibility: the potential audience who can bear witness;
• spreadability: the ease with which content can be shared; and
• searchability: the ability to find content.” (Boyd, 2014, p. 11)

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