Website up and running!

Or, well, a sort of prototype one where I can mess around and perhaps actually learn what I'm doing.
... Maybe.

Go Explore the Digital Grid 2.0!

Stick around for new content this upcoming week!

Networks and Nodes - Investigating Personal Network Connections

Personal Network Visualization

For class we were asked to record information on the different people that we spoke to only one day last week and create a visualization based off of this information (I used NodeXL for this). My chart analyzing this information can be seen above. The node shapes were chosen to group individuals by both geographical proximity and social ties - circles are family members that live in the same house as I do; diamonds are family members that live >100 miles away; the square is a friend who lives locally; solid triangle is a friend located >500 miles away; and the open triangle (which is unfortunately covered in the graph by the label) is a professor who lives locally. Node size is representative of how often or how long I spent communicating with that individual on the sample day.

With 5 of the 8 connections I made that day being members of my family, it's not surprising that the majority of my daily personal connections know each other. That said, we often still utilize each other to pass on information to the others because it's easier than texting or calling everyone we want to keep in the loop. The other individuals that I spoke to do not know each other and while information might flow from them to other members of my network, there is no way for them to convey that information without going through me.

tl;dr : Even with the widespread use of advanced technology it all still boils down to interpersonal connections and relationships.

Time for a Technology Detox?

Are we spending too much time with technology?

Apparently yes. Websites ranging from Net Addiction Recovery to Forbes to Laywerist.com all suggest we go on a technology detox or diet - heck, there's even a 4-Step self help book out there to help us break our technology addictions.

TG Daily (who, for the record, also recommend a tech diet) cites research conducted by scientists UCSF claiming that the multitasking current technology enables is not only killing our attention span but also hindering "long-term memory and mental performance."

However, whether we choose to engage in a tech diet or not might not be our decision to make if state governments have any say in the matter - most states have some sort of law against texting and driving and TGDaily (in the above article) suggests that some are attempting to take that legislation even further. You can check out what legislation your state has put forth over at handsfreeinfo.com.

Capitalist undertones aside, what are the benefits of constant technology use?
... Bueller?

Personal Digital Ecology - an Analysis of Use

Background: As a class assignment, we were instructed to collect data on what is called our 'personal digital ecology' - in essence, the context within which we engage in and create digital writing - for the span of 7 days. The following is an analysis of that data.

Check out the full-size image over at wordle.net

As the word bubble above should demonstrate, the biggest area of my digital writing is done as a part of my job. Between coordinating patient nutrition and procedural transport, as well as logging reports of broken machinery, all of which is done digitally from an satellite location, there is a lot of digital communication flowing back and forth between myself, my team, and hundreds of patients and health care personnel all across the Central Florida area. Outside of my job, however, my digital communication is a bit more straight-forward: texting family and friends, tweeting, email, Facebook and Tumblr blogging to keep up to date on activities and topics of interest. The layout of the word bubble, as well as the color scheme, was chosen to reflect the relative simplicity of the components and individuals involved in my typical digital environment. 

When analyzing the data that I had collected, which included the location, time of day and emotion tied to each action, a rather clear dichotomy arose between work and home. That said, while there was an understandable difference in program utilization between the two (mainly due to access), quite a few of the programs I accessed remained the same - all programs which I utilize to communicate with friends and family. It is rather clear to me that the majority of my digital writing is done to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships in my life. Given my insane schedule, this is not a surprise.

In my opinion, the most valuable aspect of my data collection was in recording the reasoning behind my actions in conjunction with the methodology - something Marilyn Cooper, author of "The Ecology of Writing", might be happy about. The perceived and understood audience of the message, as well as the social standards of communication, influenced the content of my messages far more than the technology used to convey them. While certain programs might impose technical limitations on the structure of communication, the intent of message determined what programs were used, not the other way around. 

Not to say I think Bruno Latour is total quack job, but in the context of my understanding I find his argument to be a bit constricted. 

For my fellow classmates...

Twitter is a fickle mistress, my friends.

I spent an hour or so yesterday troubleshooting what the issue might be with posting to our class hashtag - while I'm not completely sure what the underlying problem is, I did find some tips to making sure your tweets show up in the search results:

1. Tweet from twitter.com
2. Include a short text blurb
3. It helps if you shorten your url (tinyurl.com is awesome for that) but it's not entirely necessary in my experience
4. Type the hashtag correctly #enc4932h

It seems that when you tweet using a 3rd party client and include a link, it is not showing up in the hashtag search.

There was one quirk that I discovered during my testing - Tweetdeck, a 3rd party twitter account manager, has the option to track a hashtag and display it alongside your twitter feed. I found that this application would display tweets using the class hashtag that would not show up in the search results on the twitter website. HOWEVER, tweets from this application that include a link DO NOT show up in the search results on the twitter site.

Edit: I tweeted the link to this page from my phone using the twitter app and it went through no problem. That may be an option for some of you.

Also, just a heads up - if your first tweet with the hashtag does not seem to work, wait a couple minutes before you try again. If you rapid-fire tweet, even if done with the appropriate formatting, twitter considers it spam and will not display your tweets in the results.

Hope this info helps you in your tweeting adventures!

Are we really failing the Turing Test?

This author certainly thinks so - and he put it right in the title of his blog post (a very clever reference, if I may say so). He argues that online communication is often viewed to be entirely different from face-to-face interaction to the extent that we are no longer held accountable for being 'human'.

It is a fascinating idea to me. Does the mode of our communication absolve us of some degree of humanity? In the social constructionist line of thought, in which it is said that humans create their reality through their daily interactions with each other, are we absolving ourselves of certain societal norms by utilizing technology to communicate? Are we beyond the reach of our culture when we step into the digital realm? I disagree, but I'm not sure Robinince (the author) does.

It is an interesting line of thought, and I enjoyed reading what he had to say.

Computer leads to Humans failing Turing Test - by Robinince, posted 6 Sept 2012

Microtask: Playing around with code

When tasked to write something up in code for class, I churn out some deep philosophical thoughts on digital communication.
Not.

Check it out