Tag Archives: geeks

Coursenotes SOCI221 Week 3

SOCI221/2AA – Sociology of Cyberspace

Meeting 3
September 22, 2014
Geeks and Nerds by Randall Munroe CC-BY-NC
Geeks and Nerds by Randall Munroe CC-BY-NC

Logistics

  • “Definitive” class list
  • Two class meetings before Thanksgiving and Midterm
    • Social Structure (September 29)
    • Social Dynamics (October 6)
  • End class with preparation for next
  • Required texts
  • Activities

Past Week

Introducing Cyberculture

Required Texts

Silver, David. “Looking Backwards, Looking Forward; Cyberculture Studies 1990–2000.” Web Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age. Oxford University Press, 2000. http://rccs.usfca.edu/intro.asp
Turner, Fred. “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community.” Technology and Culture 46, no. 3 (2005): 485–512. doi:10.1353/tech.2005.0154. http://lar.me/2zb

Silver

Silver, David. “Looking Backwards, Looking Forward; Cyberculture Studies 1990–2000.” Web Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age. Oxford University Press, 2000. http://rccs.usfca.edu/intro.asp

Cyberculture Studies

  • Cyberspace as hallucination
  • Frontier mentality
  • Social groups
  • Introducing ‘Net to journalists
  • Technophilia and Technophobia
    • Enthusiasm and anxiety
    • Geeks and Luddites
  • Democracy
  • Distributed intelligence
  • Hypertext

Turner

Turner, Fred. “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community.” Technology and Culture 46, no. 3 (2005): 485–512. doi:10.1353/tech.2005.0154. http://lar.me/2zb

Counterculture/Cyberculture

Interior, Further / Furthur, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters famous bus, Hempfest 2010, Myrtle Edwards Park, Seattle, Washington, 2010, at which time it had recently been restored.
Further/Furthur 19
By Joe Mabel.

Interior, “Further” / “Furthur”, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters’ famous bus, Hempfest 2010, Myrtle Edwards Park, Seattle, Washington, 2010, at which time it had recently been restored.

New Communalists

  • War and Peace
  • Communes
  • Utopias
  • “Community” in strong sense (“disembodied tribe”, “transcendent collective”…)
  • West Coast, European-American, college-educated Baby Boomers
  • Collaboration and horizontality
  • Medium and networks
  • Employment, reputation, expertise
  • Shift to business
  • Subversion, recuperation, reappropriation

Crash Course

Sociology in a Few Minutes (or Refresher)

Sociology Bullets

  • WMDs: Weber, Marx, Durkheim http://lar.me/wmd
    • Symbolic Interactionism, Conflict Theory, Functionalism
    • Dialogue, Inequality, Stability
  • Group, socialization, role, status…
  • Power, control, conformity, norms, deviance
  • Culture, subculture, counterculture
  • Feminism as key
  • “Who Decides?” as key question
  • Structure and Agency

Next Week

Social Structure

Online Activity: Geek Test

  • Take one of the following “geek tests”:
  • Post something about your results or about the test itself.

Required Texts

Ritzer, G., and N. Jurgenson. (2010) “Production, Consumption, Prosumption: The Nature of Capitalism in the Age of the Digital ‘Prosumer’.” Journal of Consumer Culture 10 (1): 13–36. doi:10.1177/1469540509354673. http://joc.sagepub.com/content/10/1/13.short
Warschauer, M., and T. Matuchniak. (2010) “New Technology and Digital Worlds: Analyzing Evidence of Equity in Access, Use, and Outcomes.” Review of Research in Education 34(1): 179–225. doi:10.3102/0091732X09349791. http://rre.sagepub.com/content/34/1/179

Ritzer

Ritzer, G., and N. Jurgenson. (2010) “Production, Consumption, Prosumption: The Nature of Capitalism in the Age of the Digital ‘Prosumer’.” Journal of Consumer Culture 10 (1): 13–36. doi:10.1177/1469540509354673. http://joc.sagepub.com/content/10/1/13.short

Ritzer

  • Author of The McDonaldization of Society (1993)
  • Sociology of production, consumption, and prosumption
  • Change to postindustrial society
  • Web as context and hope more than focus

Warschauer

Warschauer, M., and T. Matuchniak. (2010) “New Technology and Digital Worlds: Analyzing Evidence of Equity in Access, Use, and Outcomes.” Review of Research in Education 34(1): 179–225. doi:10.3102/0091732X09349791. http://rre.sagepub.com/content/34/1/179

Warschauer

  • Known for Digital Divide
    • Representative of studies
  • Beyond access
  • Data-heavy
    • Almost “meta-analysis”
    • Can skip details
  • Focus on sections (out of school use, 21st Century Learning Skills…)
  • Study smart
  • Collaborative studying

RIEP1: Inaugural Episode

RIEP1: Inaugural Episode

RIEP1: Inaugural Episode

Here it is! The first episode of Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast.

As I was editing it, I noticed a number of flaws. For instance, there are several things I mispronounced there are some things I might have wanted to take out of it. But I maintain my RERO principle and I’m posting it as-is.

As this is the “enhanced podcast” version, with chapter markers, you can skip around as you please, between different sections. I should post MP3 files for the different sections but the official release will always be with the enhanced podcast.

My shownotes were in OmniOutliner. I cleaned them up a bit but it’s probably still obscure for anybody else…. 😉
Apart from the jingle (that I created with CCmixter content), I’ve used funky/blues impr. hungarian shepherds’ flute. 100bpm by furkosbot for tags.

  • Presentation
    • Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast (RIEP)
    • Inaugural Episode
    • Hello all
    • I’m Alex, your informal ethnographer
    • welcome to the inaugural episode of rapport: the informal ethnographer podcast
    • today
      • about me
      • ethnography
      • informality
      • and this podcast
  • Whoami
    • An informal ethnographer with formal training in ethnographic disciplines
      • Informal
      • Casual
      • Happy-go-lucky
      • Friendly
      • Playful
      • Anti-snob
      • Nobody important
    • A semi-nomadic French-speaking ethnographer from Montreal
      • Moved 22 times from December 2000 to April 2008
      • French-speaker from Montreal
        • Québécois and Swiss
        • Not WASP
    • Generalist
      • creative generalist
  • Interests
    • Informal
      • Coffee
        • Diversity
        • Homeroasting
        • Brewing methods
        • Growing
        • Cafés
      • Beer
      • Music
      • Social media experience
    • Formal
      • Semiotics
      • Language
      • Music
      • Mali
  • Training
  • Experience
    • Ethnographic experience
      • Informal
        • Keep observing
          • Bored at party
        • Food
          • Sharing
        • Geek culture
          • Beer geeks
          • Coffee
          • Tech geeks
        • Second-hand
          • Projects from students
      • Formal
    • Social media experience
      • Mailing-lists
      • Blogs
      • Social networks
      • Geek crowds
      • Microblogging
    • Podcasting experience
  • Motivations
    • Fun
    • Learn by doing
      • Participant-observation
    • Own approach
    • Connections
    • Visibility
      • Approach
      • Myself
  • Ethnography
    • Why ethnography?
      • Realization on ethnographic disciplines
      • Avoid four-fields anthropology
      • Allows for extension outside antropology
      • Became “freelance ethnographer”
    • Defining ethnography
  • Informality
    • Casual
    • Personal
    • Modest
    • Informal concepts
    • Informal Podcast
      • Trying out
        • Link to participant-observation
      • Podcasting
        • Independence
        • Easy to make and distribute
        • Audience/niche
        • Lydon’s Open Source
        • Listen at will
    • Lack of formal requirements
      • Genres
      • Not lecture
      • “Without footnotes”
      • Beyond narrative
    • Informal language and tone
      • Sociolinguistics
      • Politeness
        • Call people by name
        • T/V
        • First name
        • Nickname
      • Proximity
      • Assumed rapport
      • Shared knowledge
      • Acronyms
  • Editorial policy
    • Focus on ethnography
      • Perspective on ethnography
        • Approach
        • Diverse disciplines
        • Extends to ethnographic disciplines
    • Themed
      • From practical to theoretical
      • Overlap
      • Topics
      • Themes
      • Revisit
    • Not time-sensitive
      • Discuss news through blog
    • Format
      • Variable
      • Won’t promise
    • Features
      • Themes, topics, categories for episodes
      • Interviews
      • Feedback
      • Possible guest and/or co-hosts
    • Blog
      • with shownotes
      • Other files
    • Versions
      • MP3
      • Enhanced podcast
    • Duration
      • Elastic time
      • Chapters
      • Snippets?
    • Frequency (monthly)
      • Second Monday
      • On blog with shownotes
      • May post advance
        • May even stash up a few episodes
        • Maintain my official posting date
        • Other things on blog
  • Interaction
  • Site