Monthly Archive for June, 2011

Announcing Plenary Speaker Henry Jenkins for the 2012 Technology, Knowledge, and Society Conference

Published on June 30, 2011 in Conference, Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Henry Jenkins to the 2012 Technology, Knowledge, and Society Conference as one of our plenary speakers.

Henry Jenkins is Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He has written and edited more than a dozen books on media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006). His other published works reflect the wide range of his research interests, touching on democracy and new media, the “wow factor” of popular culture, science-fiction fan communities, and the early history of film comedy. As one of the first media scholars to chart the changing role of the audience in an environment of increasingly pervasive digital content, Jenkins has been at the forefront of understanding the effects of participatory media on society, politics, and culture. His research gives key insights to the success of social-networking Web sites, networked computer games, online fan communities, and other advocacy organizations, as well as emerging news media outlets.  Prior to joining USC, Jenkins spent nearly two decades at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the Peter de Florez Professor in the Humanities. While there, he directed MIT’s Comparative Media Studies graduate degree program from 1999-2009, setting an innovative research agenda during a time of fundamental change in communication, journalism, and entertainment.

For more information about our plenary speakers, please visit our website.

Technology Journal to be included in Scopus

Published on June 28, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: .

The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society was evaluated by independent reviewers of the Content Selection & Advisory Board and has been accepted for inclusion in Scopus.

Scopus, launched in November 2004, is the largest abstract and citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. With over 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers, Scopus offers researchers a quick, easy and comprehensive resource to support their research needs in the scientific, technical, medical and social sciences fields and, more recently, also in the arts and humanities. (from Scopus Overview)


Gamification Time: What if Everything Were Just a Game?

Published on June 25, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

By Katia Moskvitch, BBC

How Microtask’s Digitalkoot game helps weed mistakes out of the Finnish National Library’s e-archives

One more step, and a tiny creature will cross the bridge and get to safety.

Just one more step – but letters do not match, the fragile structure blows up and the brown mole falls into a digital abyss.

But as Juha Valtamo, a 21-year-old Finnish student, correctly types the next word that appears on the screen of his laptop, another mole happily reaches the destination.

Digitalkoot may sound like a typical online game – but there is more to it than just building bridges and saving moles.

Every time players complete a level, they help with a real-life task – digitising huge archives of Finland’s National Library.

Developed by Finnish start-up business Microtask, Digitalkoot – which means digital volunteers in Finnish – combines two very hot trends in today’s business world: gamification and crowdsourcing.

To Read More…

Oh, Infinite Stream of Data and Light

Published on June 22, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

By Beatrice Marovich, Killing the Buddha

We live, increasingly, in a world ruled by data. Countless rituals in our lives are tethered, umbilically, to a set of gadgets through which a smooth river of data brings us good news, bad news, flirtations, tasks, financial debits, credits. This stream brings us, in some odd sense, our lives.

These little machines, these data portals, are—like us—finite and mortal. Their memories are vast, but limited. The data they access and open into our lives, however, can be potentially infinite. They buffer their numerically coded information into our line of sight for a moment before it disappears, like an invisible snakeskin that’s always being shed and grown anew.

Our bodies aren’t built to understand this data, but Japanese sound artist (and former club DJ) Ryoji Ikeda has made repeated attempts to give sense to this flood. “The Transfinite,” his most recent multimedia project—on display earlier this month at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory—confronts viewers with a “datamatic” sound and light show that promises to reveal the shadows of the infinite that ghost the data passing through our lives. Ikeda pledges that his “symphony” will deliver no less than the transcendental, the sublime, pure awe, the “vast magnitude of the universe.”

To Read More…

Photo Courtesy of James Ewing

Why “Brain Gyms” May Be The Next Big Business

Published on June 17, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By E.B. Boyd, FastCompany

Back in 2007, Lumosity was a scrappy startup scrounging for seed money. Today, the San Francisco-based company that creates games to make your brain work better is announcing it’s landed over $32 million in new funding.

What a difference four years make.

“When we first invested, we were concerned this was just a niche area for people with Alzheimer’s or other cognitive problems,” Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners tells Fast Company. “But Lumosity has proved there’s universal demand for this among all demographics.”

Indeed, today, over 14 million people in 180 countries either subscribe to Lumosity’s website or have downloaded one of its iPhone apps. And revenues have grown 25% every quarter since its launch.

To Read More…

Image Courtesy of  Flickr user Arend Vermazeren

Uprising: The Internet’s Unintended Consequences

Published on June 17, 2011 in Book, Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Uprising: The Internet’s Unintended Consequences by Marcus Breen is now available from the Technology and Society imprint.

The Internet has transformed the social relations that were once managed by the powers that be. As a rapidly maturing communications technology, the Internet has brought people together even while it has reinforced privatism. The desktop computer, the laptop, the cellular and mobile phone, the Global Positoning System, the pilotless drone aircraft, video games and Government documents courtesy of Wikileaks, all are connected on the network of networks. Together these converged elements of a global socio-technical system offer wonderful possibilities for human emancipation, even while those ideas collide with established ideas of civility and decency.

Utilizing a transdisciplinary approach, Uprising examines the way transgressive knowledge circulates in places and spaces where communication regulation has been removed. In doing so, the book offers a new approach to proletarianization. It is based on the theory that the deregulation of the digital infrastructure allows transgressive knowledge to be mobilized in ways that remake political economy. The current moment sees the Internet opening up questions about social organization, power and democracy. The unintended consequences that are attached to this analysis of the Internet are discussed in research about pornography and jihad. These case studies show how proletarianization can be used to understand the Internet, culture and society.

The Test of Time

Published on June 10, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From The Economist

IT IS not, by any means, the world’s oldest company. There are Japanese hotels dating back to the 8th century, German breweries that hail from the 11th and an Italian bank with roots in the 15th. What is unusual about IBM, which celebrates its 100th birthday next week, is that it has been so successful for so long in the fast-moving field of technology. How has it done it?

IBM’s secret is that it is built around an idea that transcends any particular product or technology. Its strategy is to package technology for use by businesses. At first this meant making punch-card tabulators, but IBM moved on to magnetic-tape systems, mainframes, PCs, and most recently services and consulting. Building a company around an idea, rather than a specific technology, makes it easier to adapt when industry “platform shifts” occur (see article).

True, IBM’s longevity is also due, in part, to dumb luck. It almost came unstuck early on because its bosses were hesitant to abandon punch cards. And it had a near-death experience in 1993 before Lou Gerstner realised that the best way to package technology for use by businesses was to focus on services. An elegant organising idea is no use if a company cannot come up with good products or services, or if it has clueless bosses. But on the basis of this simple formula—that a company should focus on an idea, rather than a technology—which of today’s young tech giants look best placed to live to 100?

To Read More…

Building with Big Data: The Data Revolution is Changing the Landscape of Business

Published on June 3, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Staff, The Economist

IN A short story called “On Exactitude in Science”, Jorge Luis Borges described an empire in which cartographers became so obsessive that they produced a map as big as the empire itself. This was so cumbersome that future generations left it to disintegrate. (“[I]n the western deserts, tattered fragments of the map are still to be found, sheltering some occasional beast or beggar.”)

As usual, the reality of the digital age is outpacing fiction. Last year people stored enough data to fill 60,000 Libraries of Congress. The world’s 4 billion mobile-phone users (12% of whom own smartphones) have turned themselves into data-streams. YouTube claims to receive 24 hours of video every minute. Manufacturers have embedded 30m sensors into their products, converting mute bits of metal into data-generating nodes in the internet of things. The number of smartphones is increasing by 20% a year and the number of sensors by 30%.

The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) has no Borges-like qualms about the value of all these data. In a suitably fact-packed new report, “Big data: the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity”, MGI argues that data are becoming a factor of production, like physical or human capital. Companies that can harness big data will trample data-incompetents. Data equity, to coin a phrase, will become as important as brand equity. MGI insists that this is not just idle futurology: businesses are already adapting to big data.

To Read More…