RL|redline

2006-12-24T19:18:00.000+01:00

The Blog has moved to http://larica-virtual.soc.uniurb.it/redline (update your bookmarks!).

Frecce Tricolori

2006-06-18T20:07:00.000+02:00

Frecce Tricolori
Originally uploaded by /luca.

2006-05-22T17:35:00.000+02:00

It's been a long time since my last post. My iBook was broken (a motherboard issue) and I sent it away for repairing. During this time I decided to move my blog away from blogger, Fabio set up a Wordpress server running in our Office so I've been fashinated by the wordpress power. The New url (that you can Bookmark) is http://larica-virtual.soc.uniurb.it/redline/, this is the RSS feed if you use a feed reader. Check out the new layout and tell me what do you think about it.

bad guys online

2006-05-06T17:07:00.000+02:00

Jill Walker reported a funny story originally blogged from Liz Lawley. Liz was online doing her work when she has been contacted by a friend that told her that Liz's teenage son was Ninja-looting in an instance in world of warcraft. The friend asked Liz to go online to tell her son to stop. There are several aspects that have could lead us to a very interesting debate: - zero: in MMORPG there are games rules set by the game designers and social rules that comes out from social interaction. - first: MMORPG are places where you can test your social behaviors: your ability to follow the rules and to act in a cooperative way. - second: what we do in MMORPG doesn't seems to be perceived by others players in the same way they perceive actions in offline videogames. The point zero should be considered as a common ground on which we can start analyze social practices in Online games. Something that should be widely accepted. The two following point are deeply connected one to the other. If MMORPG are a place where you can test you social skills (or, even worst, a place where you have to show your social skills) that leads us to the conclusion that MMORPG are not like the offline games. Some years ago when people wondered about psychological consequences of gaming and the most conservative thinkers were saying things like "if you play Quake you're surely going to shoot all your schoolmates" the usual answer of pro-gaming faction was "ehi, wait a moment... gamers are usually able to distinguish between real and virtual world. So they can act as a serial killer while they play Postal and being a very respectable fully integrated person in their life". So, where's the difference? Why act in a bad way playing alone is something less dangerous that act in a bad way when you are online? First objection that comes to my mind is that bad behavior is a rule of certain game and if you want to play that game you have to act in that way: if you want to play at quake you have to kill a lot of alien monster, if you want to play at Grand theft auto you'll be asked to do a lot of crimes. If you don't want: change game. Anyway this is not a very strong objection. There are several games where you can reach the end of the game both acting in a positive or in a negative way. The first that comes in my mind is Baldur's Gate where you can go trough the story as a good pity Paladin or as a bad shady sob thief. Obviously the answer is that where you've got to manage the social relationship act in a trusty way is far more important because the way you act is part of the social order (the rules) that are necessary to move on with the game. Just a final note: if it's so. MMORPG shouldn't be considered a way to release unexpressed aggressive behavior (highly unsocial) like others video-games were often considered.

is your neighbor a sex offender ? Paranoid use of google maps

2006-04-25T20:18:00.000+02:00

Google maps has finally come to Italy. Now you can get all the street information you need directly from your favorite next big-brother. An interesting (?) use of google maps is this Family Watchdog servicethat help you locating sexual offenders in your area or in your town. I really feel very uncomfortable with this service... I guess that my European mind can't really accept all this privacy violation.

world of warcraft naming

2006-04-20T12:57:00.000+02:00

Charlotte Hagström, aka Berthamanson, an honored member of the Truants is doing a research about naming in World of Warcraft. "How do you choose your name?" "what's the relationship between your name and yourself?" "do you choose a name that fitted well with you character or with yourself?". A lot of questions that could easily lead you (as they leaded me when I answered) to the fashinating subject of RealWorld/onlineworld identity issues. I just realized how complex has been the choice of Baldanders (name took from a Borges book) as my unique nickname for all my online-gaming activities. If you would like to helo Charlotte on her research you can email (charlotte.hagstrom@etn.lu.se).

April: good news

2006-04-12T00:51:00.000+02:00

Back in Italy just in time to take part at "the greatest show in the world" (C the Guardian, Saturday April, 8th): Italian general election. After a whole night too close to call this morning we waked up with the Unione (left wing party) that seems to have slightly won over Berlusconi's Coalition "Casa delle Libertà". This is a good news. A very, long waited, good news.

funology

2006-04-07T21:11:00.000+02:00

MS Symposium on Intelligent Environments is end. We saw a lot of funny things during these days, we've met very interesting people and we discovered such an interesting convergence between social sciences and Computer sciences. Well, this convergence often is resolved in computer scientist that does sociology or sociological analysis (with very few methodological precautions...). Anyway our last morning here in Cambridge (Fabio just left and I'm leaving tomorrow morning) was quite interesting. The last invited keynote speaker was Françoois Pachet from the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris who talked about a couple of projects they are currently developing. Apart from the project, that are strictly related to the music, what I found very interesting is the concept of fun they are working on. Following their research fun is everything that is able to enact reflexive process in the user: reflexivity is fun. What the call reflexivity is nothing more that the ability to observe ourself and to start thinking from a critical perspective about it. This aspect is observable in every kind of generative process... you do something, than you can start observing what you've done and thinking about yourself. More interesting is that this aspect is obviously widly present in the way people use (and have fun with) Internet today: blogs, podacasts, videoblogs etc. etc. are all activities that allows a high level of reflexivity because they involve a lot of observers: you product, you, your visitors. From this perspective reflexivity explain what could be obvious: all these activities work because they are fun!

observing a group of coglioni

2006-04-06T11:51:00.000+02:00

My fried Fabio and me were waiting for this moment. As expected (Fabio did some nice work on this) after our prime minister Berlusconi said that All Italians that are going to vote for the other candidate are "coglioni" (here in Cambridge coglioni is usually translated as asshole ) a peak of posting has been saw on technorati just take a look at this picture and try to figure out when Berlusconi explained us his personal point of views about Italians:

Intelligent environment?

2006-04-05T16:22:00.000+02:00

As I should have said before, me and Fabio are in Cambridge (UK) for the International Symposium on Intelligent Environments hold here by Microsoft Research. Today we had a great keynote speaker: Don Norman. He had a cool speech against the idea of Intelligent Environment. I've got the felling that the idea of Smart-stuff communicating with other smart things all around you and ordering milk when you finish it is loosing its cool effect. Probably we won't live in a smart house even in 10 years from now... surely we are going to use better (and smarter) device, buit nothing that would take care to much about taking decision for us. Our everyday life, as the usual expert says, is always a special case.

videoblogging week

2006-04-02T13:39:00.000+02:00

videoblogging week in coming! April 3-9, seven days of vlogging. One video a day! Get involved and get ready to do some serious vlogging! TAG YOUR VIDEOS: Be sure to tag your videos with “videobloggingweek2006″ Like this: videobloggingweek2006. Stephanie Bryant calls it The Week of Vlogging Dangerously: Who: YOU! What: 1 week (7 days) of posting a videoblog post every day. When: April 3-9 (to get a full weekend in at the end) Why: because it's fun!

IVSA conference in Urbino

2006-03-30T11:12:00.000+02:00

The annual conference of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) will take place here in Urbino - University "Carlo Bo" on July 3rd 4th and 5th. Main topic of the conference is "Eyes on the City" trying to keep together the Visual methodology with the Urban Sociology. Quite far from my personal field of interests. Never-less watching at the list of sessions I've found two "non topic related sessions" that seems to be quite interesting: Theoretical and Methodological Issues of Visual Research and Visual Methods: New Approaches and Possibilities. I decided to keep working on the idea of visual semantic (I've posted about this topic before) and to submit an abstract about how it's possible to use flickr in viusal sociology research. I still have several doubts about this concept of visual semantic, but maybe the better way to solve them is to work on this concept and to share it with as many people as I can.

M->M

2006-03-28T09:37:00.000+02:00

Usually when you buy something using your visa or mastercard (or any other credit card you could imagine) you gain bonus points. You can use these points to get various prizes or discount but usually you are to busy spending real money to find the time to check out you awards. MAKE reports that very soon credit cards companies will reward their best costumers whit MMORPG currency: instead of getting useless bonus points you will get precious wow gold. This is far more than a funny news. Spending money (M) will give you virtual money (vM); but if you consider that it's possible to sell vM being paid in real money (M) you'll see that we're facing the fascinating Marx's schema M -> M. Now a "funny" question: if money gives you money, what's money for?

Gen M

2006-03-23T09:39:00.000+01:00

Time Magazine cover story is about "Multitasking Kids". How will learn and act kids that are user to carry on several IM conversation, watch MTv, download files and listen to their mp3 all at the same time? As usual "Scientists" are split in two between "that's all good" and " that's all bad", what's funny here is that now we've got a name for the phenomena: Gen M (I suppose that M is for Multitaskink). By the way, we noticed the problem some time ago when we conduced a research project on students attending lectures with their own notebooks. here you can fine a short abstract of the research results.

Flickrs knows it

2006-03-23T09:24:00.000+01:00

Back from Spain. A week in Tarragona with a school trip, I was supposed to be the Professor (kind of). It was fun, and Flickr knows it.

on air

2006-03-11T08:31:00.000+01:00

a couple of weeks ago RadioUno Rai (the italian national radio broadcaster) made a live radio show called "il baco del millennio" (the millenium bug) directly from our department. I was invited to speak about the future of the radio and the convergence with Internet. Well, that's not exactly my filed of interest but some ideas like the movement towards a personal media system and the shifting from media users to media creators seem to be still good even when you think about the future of the radio. You can listen the show in real audio here

next search engine

2006-03-09T15:03:00.000+01:00

Maybe the search engine war is not over as all. I (as many) was convinced that Google already won the war for "how to get quickly what you need on the web"; well it seems that at least from the quality of the search service I was wrong. Jean Véronis made some interesting research about the relevance of the results provided by several engine. The research reported in John Battel's Blog generated an interesting debate between Jean and Jakob Nielsen about how to measure the real relevance search engine result because users don't necessarily click the first hit so relevance should be calculated using the average relevance rather that single hit relevance. What's interesting here is that if you count 10 hits Yahoo is slightly better than Google. If this data are correct this means that search technologies are getting better also away from the "pagerank home", but the main point is that if get you quick on the right page is becoming easier the core business for search engines will be the interaction between real world and online data... and Google knows it very well.

Google Page Creator

2006-02-23T10:20:00.000+01:00

Google released Page Creator an online web page editor that allow anyone to "create and publish useful, attractive web pages in just a minute". Just two quick ideas: first there's a huge revamp of web editing tool for dummies. We saw this a lot of time ago during the time when homepages were made with front page and hosted in geocities... after that we faced a time when homepages seemed to be definitely buried and now after the "make your own blog" revolution we're back (take a look at iWeb released just few weeks ago). Second: are the pages made using Page Creator going to be better ranked in Google than other pages? Google conflict of interests is growing up.

video videomondi

2006-02-17T15:29:00.000+01:00

I've just made some quick editing on the movies recorded during the videomondi conference. Nothing special, just a way to say thanks to everybody.

Political blogging

2006-02-13T23:43:00.000+01:00

lot of work. Really nice feeling. We've just finished Videomondi a one day workshop about videogames and vidogaming and we're working on a next one day seminar about blogs and politic. I really like this one day event formula 'cause it's really less "formal" than a real Conference and you've got often the opportunity to speak with a lot of interesting persons. Blogs and Politic is going to be a very hot topic here in Italy especially because we're facing political election in April and there will be a lot of interest about political issues in (new) media. Now, we've got two main things to do: 1) find a cool name 2) start blogging

Europe: What does it seem?

2006-02-04T12:12:00.000+01:00

it's a couple of day I've worked on an abstract for a "young sociologists meeting" that is hold every years in Pontignano (near Siena) [oh, such a wonderful place ]. This year main theme is Europe and european Integration process. Well this is not my area at all, I've never worked on this kind of subject, so what am I'm going to say once I'll be (luckily) there? The main focus of my paper will be on methodology. Specifically on visual sociology and how it changes when has to face such a growing phenomena that is the online publication of personal photos. Flickr, MSN spaces and others give to users the chance to publish and organize their own personal photo album: a nice way to share pics with friends living far away but a great opportunity for researchers that gain access to a huge amount of visual information, self produced and self organized from the users. That's a completely new way to look at visual sociology research. But there's even more: when you upload a picture on flickr you describe it using your own tags, later the system analyze all the tags and visualize them in tag clouds or (even more interesting) in tag clusters. Now the question is: when we are looking at flickr's tag clouds or clusters what are we looking at? The main idea/hypothesys is that tag clouds/clusters a some kind of visualisazion of the Semantic of the Society: subjects and concepts that Social System uses to reproduce it's own communication. What's really cool here is the possibility to shift quickly from a single point of view (the world as it's saw from an individual point of view: the specific picture) to a wider social system perspective (the tag aggregation visualization). A double layer logic that's usually so hard to understand and to explain. And in Pontignano? double layer and European integration process!

videomondi (videoworld) : abstract

2006-01-24T14:28:00.000+01:00

I've just finished a short abstract (italian only) for the "Videomondi - working seminar" we are holding in Urbino on February 9th. The paper will analyse the differences that occours in "in-game" contruction of identity between Interactive (traditional) Videogames and Interaction based (MMORPG) videogames. This working seminar should be a good opportunity to test some ideas, if they seem to work I'll try to fix them on a more complete article where I would like to use the experience we are doing with the Truants guild in Wow.

OII Summer Doctoral Program

2006-01-17T20:22:00.000+01:00

It's available the application form for the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Program. The program hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute but manged by serveral well known universities (The Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology) aims to bring together a small number of PhD students from all over the world to share interest and discuss topics related to Internet Studies. The deadline for application is February 20th. Last year the Summer Doctoral program has been hosted in Beijin (china)... quite far away for me even to think about applying. But damn, Oxford is quite near and if you take a look at these photos (that are from the 2004 edition) you'll discover that these people surely know how have fun and "meet informally".

back in the game

2006-01-10T18:30:00.000+01:00

a new year has come. everyone around me says that 2006 would be a turning year. We will see. Right now I can say that 2006 would be a Game Year. This evening I'm joining the first online meeting of a World of Warcraft research guild and on February 8th we are going to organize in Urbino a one-day conference on Videogames: Social aspects and connection to other media (music and movies industries at the first place). It's going to be nice. If you want to join you are welcome.

Happy Christmas

2005-12-23T18:43:00.000+01:00

I'm back home for a couple of days. I whish you all a Merry Christmas.

success 2.0 sites

2005-12-15T11:54:00.000+01:00

It seems that Web 2.0 has become adult. I saw on digg (I digged?) an interesting link to a Mark Millerton article that argues that times has come to stop wowing about everything is 2.0 and to start saying who's really innovating in this field. First 3 are ranked : TravBuddy; Rollyo and TagCloud. All these services are great especially because are a true attempt to make something new using two main forces that are growing with web 2.0 technologies: the power of relations and the "want to be media" phenomena. Travbuddy offer you the opportunity to be a travel journalist...and to offer you "travelogue" linking together something that you like (traveling) to the opportunity to establish social relations. Rollyo and tagclouds are in some way very ambitious projects but are a true attempt to redefine a what search engine are going to be in next years... yes Google (at least as we see it today) won't stand forever.

good works on online ethnography

2005-12-06T15:21:00.000+01:00

Online ethnography has quite a long tradition (as long as it can be something related to the online world) and you ca get trough it since Sherry Turkle wrote the well known "Life on Screen". Anyway during last years the Massive Multiplayer Online Games phenomenon has lead to a new rise of interest around this topic. Experiences in complex online world are nowadays quite commons that is possible to run a whole university class working on online ethnographical research. Just take a look to those greats works done by Trinity College students about World of Warcraft from an ethnographical point of view.

e-conference

2005-12-01T16:28:00.000+01:00

It's online the call for paper for the Second International Conference on e-Social Science that is taking place in Manchester, UK. It sound quite interesting except from the "e-" on the title. First of all the "e-stuff" sounds very outdated now in the 2.0 era... but the main reason is that I simply can't understand what would be the main research topic of e-Social Sciences and why it should be different from (traditional) social sciences. I guess that technologies should be used as an observation field where look for more wider social phenomena. If researchers that are working on e-technolgies are going to research only e-topics we are doomed to obtain just a e-useless e-sociology. By the way... I'm going to ask to my friend FG to present a paper together.

gamestudies

2005-11-29T09:56:00.000+01:00

There's a lot of buzz around Massive Multiplayer Online Games. Well in fact there's a lot of buzz around game-studies (isn't it better to say e-game-studies?), but I guess that most is related to Massive Multiplayer Online Games. Why? Well when you face a whole world with its own rules and functions (let's thing about world of warcraft) you'll probably start thinking about what kind of sociality and interpersonal relationships you can observe in such a world... you would start shifting your observation level. Anyway... even if you are not familiar with I°/II° order observation there's still a lot of buzz around games as an observation field for social dynamics. We at LaRiCA are thinking about hosting some kind of workshop on this topic. Gametalk?

snow

2005-11-24T12:15:00.000+01:00

time to (blog) talk

2005-11-21T17:50:00.000+01:00

I've just discovered that a new blogtalk event has been scheduled. BlogTalk conference will take palce on October 2-3, 2006 in Vienna. Right now the steering commitee is working on the mission statement and on the call for paper. I must admit that I would like very much to join them in Vienna, I'm going to look forward for the research topics.

director of warcraft

2005-11-14T17:40:00.000+01:00

I'm jiggling with this post too long. Since I've started playing World of Warcraft I had the feeling that Massive Online gaming is a great place to observe social phenomena (especially if they are linked with new media). Obviously World of Warcraft is also damn funny... Anyway to role playing online is not such a new thing so I've always decided to skip on this post. What's changed? Well thanks to Jill I've discovered Warcraftmovie.com that represent what a videogames can be in the "we the media" age. The basic idea is to use the graphic engine of World of Warcraft to realise GC movies scripted and directed by the "players". This is a strong sign of how every expressive possibility offered by new media is now used to create some kind of content, to tell stories, to became media. In fact blogs, videoblogs, podcasts and warcraftmovies are all part of the same cultural wave. ps: every movie genre is represented in warcraft movie, laste week was released the first Erotic/Porn movie.

dans les banlieus de Google

2005-11-08T14:15:00.000+01:00

Banlieu is nowadays one of the top searched word in Google.

Jean Véronis pointed out that if you search "Banlieu" in Google France you'll find a "Sponsored Link from UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) that ask you to support Nicolas Sarkozy's politics. That's quite interesting because the main force that is used here to obtain people attention is their own research for information. Probably during next years all political campaigns will be tuned just in time to match "people's searches". just a curiosity: If you go further looking at the Banlieu results page you'll find on the top of the list Mahnparis Banlieu Blog, "life and cooking in a Paris suburb". I'm sure you'll find delicious receipts in that Blog, but I feel that the main reason 'cause it's ranked #1 is related to the search for information about what's happening in Paris suburbs. Maybe "Banlieu Blog" leads people to think about firs hand information where you'll find just hand made cakes.

testing flock

2005-10-25T15:13:00.000+02:00

I'm trying out Flock, the Social Browser. It seems promising, it's not so responsive on my old powerbook G3 but it crashed just one since yesterday that it's quite good for a pre-release version. I still have to fully understand if my idea of the wed is going to change thanks to it. Obviously a blog software integrated in the browser (that I'm using right now) it's something good but I'm still using a feed aggregator to read my favourites blog. Blogging is not only write, is mainly be connected.

2.0 age

2005-10-24T10:16:00.000+02:00

Alan Levine marks how the new mark of coolness in hi tech world is the "2.0" suffix. First it was the "e-era" (eMail, eBusiness, eMarket, eBank, ewhateveryouwant), then comes the i age (first was the iMac, iPod, iMate....) and now has come the 2.0. here there is the title for my phD research "property 2.0" quite cool, isn't it?

bird flu

2005-10-21T16:03:00.000+02:00

It's always interesting to observe how the Mass Media Systems works. Good opportunity to observe that are during global threat or menace such as war or Pandemic. Bird flu is a good opportunity to see what Mass Media System is able to manage and in which way.

This video that boing boing linked some days ago it's a very funny way to start thinking about it. Just before you go downstair to buy you vaccine.

Touristic suggestion: Zombietown

2005-10-19T12:04:00.000+02:00

just a quick post to report something really funny.

On October 23rd if you'll be in Canada you could join the Toronto Zombiewalk 2005. It seems that thanks to recent Romero's film "Land of the Dead" Toronto is going to become the Zombie Town. Movie related tourism is quite common nowadays, but what I found funny here is the image of hundred zombies walking in Toronto downtown.

mobile personal web server

2005-10-18T18:13:00.000+02:00

SmartMobs reports that two Dutch companies a launche a Bluetooth advertising service for retailers as an enabler to reach the masses on the street with an advertisement and seduce them to enter their store. Bluetooth commercial location based application start coming out. I feel that this is just the first step. There are several signs that next frontier, after personal publishing (Blog.. Vlog... Podcasting...) could be some kind of "mobile personal web server". Most clear sign probably is the web server installed on a PSP. Once you've got with you all your digital life (let's think at the iPod that is able to carry music, texts, pics and (now) videos) you probably would start share it with the people around you. One person one media.

(not so creative) commons

2005-10-05T22:33:00.000+02:00

I've always been against the copyright on the net. Especially when you manage culture and research I feel like there have to be a moral duty to share for free your thoughts. This is my idea of how Academia should be, a free and continuous exchange of knowledge. From this point of view to report sources, to quote them, to use the proper references is in some way far more important. There is no need to claim for other's idea, what we can do is just start from other's final conclusions to reach our owns. Obviously this is an optimistic perspective but I thought that in new media studies this kind of principles where quite widely accepted. So I felt very uncomfortable this afternoon when I discovered (with my friend FG) that a widely used (here in Italy) University Book about New Media "Introduzione alla Comunicazione Mediata dal Computer" (Introduction to Computer Mediated Communication) by Antonio Roversi (a widely known italian professor of Sociology of Communication) is incredibly similar in some part to an article from Roberta Bartoletti published on Sociologia della Comunicazione (an italian journal of Sociology of Communication). The article from Roberta Bartoletti has been published in 2000 and the book from Roversi in 2004. If you would like to understand what I mean with similar you can observe several pages compared in FG blog.

NSA? national search agency

2005-10-05T15:12:00.000+02:00

Kingsley reported an interesting news from C.Net. It seems that NSA (National Security Agency) obtained a patent on a method to locate a computer's geographic position. I'm always worried about this kind of patent. Identifying a spatial location measuring the lag between several computers is quite common in all wi-fi location related services. Obviously NSA knows that with the uprising free wi-fi access point movement (eg. Google in San Francisco) to be able to locate malicious users is a key factor. Conceptual shifting between online and offline worlds is something always fascinated me. Semantics and ideas grown online seems spreading themselves very fast in the offline (e.g. proprety related issues, search engine approach, tagging... )world and seem to be very hot topic for future research works.

searchable world

2005-09-29T12:38:00.000+02:00

It's a lot of time my blog is waiting for a new post, the main reason is that I'm still waiting for my DSL connection at home... well this sound like a poor excuse. by the way a quick post just to link an article on RFID technology real world usage. RFID technology is really amazing if you observe it from the right perspective. If everything (your clothes, your watch, your mp3 player...) could just say "Hey, I'm here..." to a computer it's quite easy to imagine some kind of search engine for the real world. E.g. "Is anyone wearing a red skirt in this building?" A step forward toward a searchable world.

help us to watch you(r city)

2005-09-17T00:35:00.000+02:00

Ryanne just edited and posted a very interesting video. The video is about a project called wefixNYC.com that's quite amazing. Everyone that has got a mobile phone with photo capabilities is called to be an extra eye of the New York City Public administration. If you are walking around and you see something that is broken and that should be fixed as soon as possible you simply take a photo and send it (saying where's the place) to the web site. Every citizen can know do his own part. What's funny about that is that in some way people is asked to check the city. a panopticon-style control dimension spread everywhere and we've been asked to help.

complexity and blogosphere

2005-09-12T16:11:00.000+02:00

I'm in Liverpool attending at the CSS Conference. This morning durign the Social Theory stream Dennis kingsley made an interesting presentation about Blogosphere. He showed several datas (mostly known) and he stressed how the core of blog reality is not the exibition of the self (that's the basis)but the relational aspect. need to go now...

observing the observer

2005-09-06T14:39:00.000+02:00

I've just discovered flickr group about Panopticon. That's something really cool for many reason. First of all it's some kind of grass-root observation of the observer. So the question is who is observing who? On the other side I'm always been impressed by Flickr groups, it seems to me that group's pool are places where you can observe some kind of visual semantic (or at least the visualisation of the semantic) born around a specific topic/item/word. You can get it easily looking at the tags that are related to the panopticon group. Tag observation give us some interesting suggestion about where the phenomenon is perceived (most in the US) and about what feelings are related to this: for example security and surveillance seem to be more linked than spy and privacy. think about that.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2005-08-30T23:11:00.000+02:00

really busy days. Tania just moved to a new town for her job and I'm going to move back to Urbino tomorrow for the upcoming semester. the worst part (or the best one) is that I've rent a new (bigger) house that tomorrow I'm going to move there a huge amount of stuff. By the way... Few weeks ago I saw a nice movie that summarise what's personal memory in our society The movie (not really new) is "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (the horrible Italian translation is "Se mi lasci ti cancello"). If you think about how we are digitalising our personal history you gonna face the idea that in digital memories you can delete something leaving no trace of that action, what you've deleted is just disappeared as it wasn't never been there. Digital reality has no memory (if we call memory the relationship that occurs between past and present as it is in modern western society), but has only an eternal present.

SLOG

2005-08-21T15:44:00.000+02:00

Jill Walker posted about a very interesting web service. Treasuremytext is a website to which you can send SMSs you've received to keep them safely stored and to create some kind of SMS log. The usage of writing received SMS of a diary is quite wide spread and this is in some way the digital version, but what's most interesting is that, if you want, you can publish your SMS on the main page of the website. You can broadcast your SMS. You can broadcast your life. Another step in the "becoming media" path.

summer rain

2005-08-20T19:25:00.000+02:00

After some summer hard work I finished a paper I'm presenting in Liverpool. If someone is interested you can found the paper here(Probably this link won't work. I'm sorry about that but I'm sure the cool Guy who's managing the server will kix the problem as soon as possible. Meanwhile if you email me or leave me a comment I will send you a copy). Obviously comments are welcome. I'm not sure about how I feel about this paper. Obviously I like the topic (the relationship between digital technology and private property), it's the main topic of my PhD research but what I realised during this writing time is that's so a huge topic. Now I'm here watching at this mountain unable to focus the borders. Worst is the fact that while I'm stuck with this problem my mind is still looking for new perspectives and for new conceptual linkage.

blogging your own suicide

2005-08-09T20:21:00.000+02:00

Luca K. (fake name as we are going to discover) few month ago started a blog to describe his own suicide (the title of the blog 'prima di partire' means "before leaving"). On July 12th Ciro (aka Luca K.) died. He jumped off from a bridge near Milan. He posted on his blog after his death using a well konwed feature of wordpress. Hundreds people commented the suicide, some claiming that it was just a fake, others wanted simply to say goodbye. Well, Ciro really died (it was on the newspaper some days later...) but that's not the point. I'm not cynical or something, but what I really would like to understand is why someone needs an audience to die? Ciro's story really shows how bloggers are simply looking for an audience. Ciro said "I started blogging my suicide because I wanted to make a show, and to tell to you my story". Are we really becoming some kind of "one-man-story"?

The Pope, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2005-07-14T17:36:00.000+02:00

How about when you are supposed to be in vacation and a (supposedtobe) friend call you to say "Hey, you have to complete 10 literature review for the next week!" (I know you are reading this...)? By the way, this morning while I was having breakfast taking a look to news headlines I noticed something funny: "Pope sticks up for Potter books". Well I'm not catholic at all but what's wrong with HP? I guess that the problem is more serious that it could seem. The religious system (Framework: Social System theory) has been identified by Luhmann by the code salvation/condemation and it's supposed to work Religious direction, prohibitions, etc. It's some kind of conceptual frame that society uses to move trough actions and facts. So why the pope attacked Harry Potter's saga? Maybe because nowadays those kind of huge media phenomena (Harry Potter, Star Wars, ...) are places where you can carry on your on experiences and construct your ideas about what's wrong and what's right. (Someone would say that they are media-mondo that could be translated as media-world). If you get an idea of the world trough HP's books is it possible to say that you set up a brand new (non exclusive) salvation/condemation code? Is that what the Vatican calls "the do-by-yourself religion threat" ?

RC51

2005-07-05T16:17:00.000+02:00

I'm in Maribor for the RC51 conference. A whole week about "Innovation and Communication". Quite an interesting topic. Most of all I've discovered Slovenjia as a nice place, really in the middle of Europe even geographically and culturally.

Jhon Edwards videoblog

2005-06-30T13:16:00.000+02:00

Obviously I had no excuses. Sure I've been really busy with life, university work, summer's coming, and various stuff. I'm still thinking about videoblog. I guess that this will be reminded as the videoblog's summer. VLogs seem to have been accepted as a fully qualified media language also from the political system. Jhon Edwards started a videoblog. What's behind? Maybe nothing but however is interesting notice how fast videoblogging has become a place for political debate. Take a look at this elder women posting a video question to Jhon Edwards. She's simply great... I can hardly imagine the same thing here in Italy.

Theories

2005-06-23T17:12:00.000+02:00

What's the right theoretical background to approach (new) media studies? What's a theoretical background for? Last week I was in a Conference in Campobasso and between the remarks I (better: we) received some focused on the absence of "quotation" in my speech. Of course I have a theoretical approach! I guess that Social System Theory could, at least, be defined this way! But is it really necessary to declare our approach every time? I think that theories (all kind of theories) are no more than useful tools. I might be wrong.

BlogWalk 9.0

2005-06-16T09:18:00.000+02:00

BlogWalk 9.0 is coming. The Blogwalk salon will be on June 25 in Innsbruck, Austria. The conversational topic is Personal Stories, Collective Histories so it could be interesting to many of you. As you may know BlogWalk Salons are invitation only events, so if you think you have something to say and you should be invited you should get in contact with one initiator .

Complexity, Science & Society Conference

2005-06-07T18:16:00.000+02:00

I'm going to present a paper at the Complexity, Science & Society Conference . [here the short abstract]My presentation will be in the "Law" section coordinated by Joseph Savirimuthu. The paper is about the relationship between the property institution (the way we own things and the way owning is perceived from the social system) and technologies of communication. The main assumption is that there is a co-evolution between media and property. I'll try to identify a distinctive practice of owning for every media-era from the common property of primitives communities to shared property (open source, creative commons licences...) of (post)modern age.

Blogging EU failure

2005-05-31T21:45:00.000+02:00

These days seem so bad. I guess most is related to the EU referendum in French and to the question "what's next". Whatever is your opinion about THIS constitution I've always thought that to build something you have at least to start. By the way I'm still working on the paper about VideoBlog and I'm analysing a short interview I had with Ryanne. There's something very interesting in these quotations I quickly realized that television, as a tool, was not effectively able to initiate a two way conversation between audience and creator. ... and later.... I believe that as videoblogging becomes more widespread, a more diverse group of voices will be heard throughout the world. It seems to me that (video)blogs could be read as part of some kind of "continuous discourse" made by (video)bloggers. I'll keep on working.

Why we(?) VideoBlog

2005-05-25T16:16:00.000+02:00

I'm working on a paper about videoblogging. The paper will be presented in June during a workshop in Campobasso (Italy). I actually found Vlog more interesting than "common" Blogs. Maybe that's because videos requires more time to be prepared compared to normal text-posts. What happens during this time? What's the editing process for a videoblogger? We all (I'm 26 years old) are child of the television era, and videobloggers acts like "one-man channel". But what about their "viewers"? Are viewers opinion take in consideration during the video making process? If people is becoming media... how they represent their own audience? I'm going to interview Ryanne Hodson and Michael Verdi founders of FreeVlog.org. FreeVlog is a fantastic site zealot to VLog and seems to me the right place to start.

Is Star Wars a movie?

2005-05-20T12:08:00.000+02:00

I realized that writing about what's buzzing on the net is a good strategy to catch new readers (at least those who come from google). What happen between someone who has a blog and his (supposed) audience is something quite interesting. By the way I wasn't at E3 so I can report on PS3, XBox360 or Nintendo Revolution... but I was on theater last night to see the New Star Wars Movie (some interesting post on the movie here here and here). The movie was good, the best of the new trilogy but what I feel is that it's wrong to observe those movies using classical movie critic tools. What we should look here is how much the "saga-experience" is realized. From this point of view The revenge of the Sith is absolutely great: the ability to link new and old was great! The birth of Darth Vader... the exile of Yoda and the great scene when Obi One brings Luke to Tatoine. Great emotional experience. Who care about the movie?
ps. the italian translation is really bad.

Google Will Buy Itself

2005-05-11T17:17:00.000+02:00

I'm definitely in love with this project. GWEI (Google will eat itself) is based on this simple Idea: Each time someone clicks one of the Google text-ads, GWEI receives a micropayment, which will be invested in Google shares, meaning that Google will slowly be bought via its own advertisement-system. The same mechanism that's behind Google success is being used "against" Google. It is possible to reduce Google to some kind of click-generated system (What's the ranking system if not a click generated system?), and what's better of a click centered mechanism to get the control of it?

no longer Godgle?

2005-05-09T10:29:00.000+02:00

This morning reading the feeds I found interesting this quick post made by Dan Gillmor where he explains some concerns about Google's last services. I'm quite happy about thate because for a while Google seemed to be untouchable. I've always felt unconfortable with Google. Those guys where absolutely great working on that search engine... but they have definitely too much power. What's behind Google is a very simple idea: we are the web. So what's wrong whit that? I find two different problems: first of all the algorithm that ranks the pages is unknown, that means that using Google we see a "picture of the web" that we don't know how is draw. The second problem is related to what is becoming the web. The web seems, every day more, the place where we search information about the real world (eg. where is the nearest pizzeria?)... well Google is even more the place where we look for everything. What I feel is that we are going to know the world trough an algorithm owned by someone else.

TRex in London

2005-04-29T13:52:00.000+02:00

Finally Ourmedia published my video. Sorry for the bad quality... my camera has no audio-in and at the Natual Nistory was very dark. By the way I loved so much this TRex that I decided to post it anyway. I hope you'll understand...I used to dream about Dinosaurs when I was a children.

WC in Milan

2005-04-27T17:31:00.000+02:00

I love this picture that Mayamai took in Milan. We are no more passive image-viewers, but we're image creator (or manipulator). That's quite obvious, but now every image seems to be ready to be modified.

BlogWalk 7.0

2005-04-26T18:23:00.000+02:00

Sebastian Fiedler post the date of the next BlogWalk. BlogWalk 7.0 will take place on 20th May in Mechelen, Belgium. I think BlogWalk could be great opportunity to focus what's happening to the blogoshpere. Topic of BlogWalk 7.0 will be "Civic journalism".

going to london

2005-04-21T00:20:00.000+02:00

Going to London for a couple of days. Any ideas about something I shouldn't miss? I've already been there twice so this time I'll visit the Tate modern and go shopping around. Suggestions are welcome.

Physiognomy of Blogs

2005-04-18T09:46:00.000+02:00

I'm reading "New Media, 1740-1915" (Ed. by L. Gitelman and G.B. Pingree) and I find it really amazing. I find really interesting Wendy Bellion essay "Head of State: Profiles and Politics in Jeffersonian America". Even if I have some doubt about the relation between political crisis of representative system and technologies of representation (at least in such a direct way) I was really fascinated by the physiognotrace. "Peale consistently decribed the profiles [obtained using the physiognotrace] as "perfectly correct" resemblances and attributed this quality to the procedures of self-operation and mechanical circumscription" Physiognotraces were machines used to self-draw the head silhouette using some kind of modified pantograph. What I find interesting is that the idea of correctness, likeness and accuracy seems to be granted from the autonomous use of technology. Technology can lie only if it's used by someone else. Once you can control technological mediation, technology is "innocent" and can be used to tell the truth. There's something that reming me how blogs are sometimes perceived.

private/public images

2005-04-13T09:51:00.000+02:00

Fabio Giglietto posted on the Media-mondo blog (only italian) something that sounds very interesting to me. He searched on flickr images about the Pope that recently died. Maybe you should know that during the funerals TVs show hundreds people taking picture of the body whit everything you could imagine (photo camera, mobile phone, video camera...). Fabio searched pictures using this tags: pope; papa; johnpaulii; karol; wojtyla - and he founded only few images. That's really strange. He suggest that usually pictures has a relational value (you take picture to show/share something with your friends) and I partially agree. By the way picture are, nowadays, the main medium we use to define our memory. From this point of view pictures are taken for an personal usage: to remember ourself our history-memory. So there seems to be a double layer to observe flickr: the public/relational and the private/intimate.

how to recharge yourself

2005-04-11T12:14:00.000+02:00

I spent the weekend in a Design-hotel in Cattolica (Italy). Sleeping... walking on the beach... sleeping.. walking in the rain... sleeping, and sleeping again. Not so bad.

Memorymaps

2005-04-09T12:14:00.000+02:00

Memorymaps is a great idea. The idea is to take a satelitte image of your neighborhood from your childhood, and use "notes" to tell the story of you growing up. Really interesting is how self observation is changing. To tell our story we choose now satellite images that are some kind of "non human images". We (usually) never saw our town from the sky but we choose this perspective to tell our story. Our story/town/world observed.

2005-04-07T17:35:00.000+02:00

On Mathemagenic there is a very interesting couple of post (well.. the whole blog is superb) that could be really useful if you're working on online ethnography or on blog identity, media production and so on. All this stuff? Yes, I guess that blogs nowadays seems to be such an interesting place to observe social dynamics and people's self observation because we are facing the extreme consequences of the mass media system. Obviously all of you are thinking that there is nothing so far to mass media than Blogging our personal life; well that's true, but if we are able to blog our life we have to thank the mass media system. That's not about technological availability. Experience reality trough mass media give us the opportunity to develop some kind of second order observation capability. Watching TV we are not watching the world, we are watching someone's observations about the world. And the most fascinating thing is that we know that. Well blogging is an extreme consequence of that, bloggers are simply producing media where they could practice a second order observation upon their own life. We actually working on this idea... far away(?) from my original Ph.D. project but really fascinating.

welcome | benvenuti

2005-03-04T14:37:00.000+01:00

following the red line. just to keep everything together. the sense will(?) come.