On the Facebook stuff, some MSc people might have caught Norm Friesen’s excellent talk last year on this paper: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3149/2718

@Neil
It is an interesting choice of name but I think they actually regret it now. The original idea was for Diaspora pods to spread over the Internet, almost organically. The project logo of dandelion seeds blowing off in the wind really captures this idea well. However I think the name doesn’t really capture the concept of connections very well. The developers make a brief mention of this in the second video (which is admittedly quite technical and probably difficult to view for non programmers).

I think there has always been a counter culture working to promote real freedom (rather than the supposed “freedom” offered by free market globalization). The emergence of services like Facebook and their dodgy practices have highlighted the problems to a wider audience, so perhaps its a question of more people tuning in rather than a resurgence of an old idea. You’re right that freedom is often a fragile luxury and it would be nice to think that Diaspora can help this but it is still quite easy for oppressive regime to disable or block such services. Still, it’s a step in the right direction and hopefully just the first of many.

@Austin
Thanks Austin. Glad to introduce you to Moglen, he is one of my heroes. I know you are interested in Second Life; I actually discovered him myself by chatting with a random stranger in SL! You’re right, Zuckerburg deserves all that and more!

@Jen
Thanks for pointing out Hines observations about objectivity, I suppose I missed the point but it’s good to know. I really did wonder how it could be possible to immerse oneself in a community and still remain an objective observer. Actually I did mention the study in my profile when I posed the question to the community, since I thought it would be the best way to avoid any ethical dilemmas down the line. I suspect you’re right about the newness being an issue, but I do hope that the bonds are strong enough to make this succeed; only time will tell I suppose.

@Grace
It is exciting isn’t it! Personally I’d like to see an end to FB but as i understand it, that’s not the aim of the developers. They claim to be going after a different space. It would really be a David and Goliath situation anyway and would probably result in Diaspora being crushed somehow. Still, we can hope!

@Carol
Cheers Carol, brilliant picture! You’re right, it is getting scary now. Everything we do produces data in some way. I had a similar conversation with a colleague on Friday about behavioural targeting; we are doing some similar research and have both noticed highly specific advertising everywhere we go online lately. It is very easy to forget that we generate this data, and the location based stuff is downright Orwellian when you consider its potential for monitoring and profiling. Whenever I speak with people about this topic the response usually goes along the lines of “well I have nothing to hide so why worry about it?”. But I think that is really missing the point. Illegality isn’t the issue, and the real dangers probably haven’t even been realised yet. I’m with you, lets take the power back!

There was some interesting stuff about last year’s SXSW (http://sxsw.com/) conference in the Guardian:

‘The big idea O’Reilly is touting is “sensor-driven collective intelligence”, but since he coined the term “Web 2.0″, he seems resigned to people labelling this new phase “Web 3.0″. If Web 2.0 was the moment when the collaborative promise of the internet seemed finally to be realised – with ordinary users creating instead of just consuming, on sites from Flickr to Facebook to Wikipedia – Web 3.0 is the moment they forget they’re doing it. When the GPS system in your phone or iPad can relay your location to any site or device you like, when Facebook uses facial recognition on photographs posted there, when your financial transactions are tracked, and when the location of your car can influence a constantly changing, sensor-driven congestion-charging scheme, all in real time, something has qualitatively changed. You’re still creating the web, but without the conscious need to do so. “Our phones and cameras are being turned into eyes and ears for applications,” O’Reilly has written. “Motion and location sensors tell where we are, what we’re looking at, and how fast we’re moving . . . Increasingly, the web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an ‘information shadow’, an aura of data, which when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mindbending implications.”‘

I heard someone talking the other day about keeping a handle on students’ ‘digital footprint’, including when they swipe in and out of, say, the library. So, as O’Reilly says, ‘the web is the world’

I like this notion of Diaspora taking back autonomy and thinking about social networking ethically. We recently introduced a new management system to deal with all student information and its been a disaster, so I hear one dept are running the old system under the wire. Perhaps, given the current Occupy movement, people are trying in their little way to take some of the power back!

I hadn’t heard of diaspora before. It sounds very exciting. I’m not getting access to the videos at the moment but I’ll try again later. Do you see this as being an alternative to fb?

The ‘arrival story’ screenshots were very evocative – nicely done. I wondered about your decision to study the group ‘covertly’ (in the sense that I don’t think you mentioned your ethnographic work in your profile) – did you have a sense at the outset that you might choose to stay around in this community as ‘yourself’ and not just as a researcher?

I also found myself thinking about the relative newness of this community – it seems to be a space where not a lot of conflict has emerged, and I wonder if you think that it’s only a matter of time before clashes surface, or if there is something about this group that will facilitate consensus (perhaps the strength of the shared ideology you mention).

Anyway, really nice work – I thoroughly enjoyed this.

I did spend the time to watch the Eben Moglen Freedom in the Cloud video which is a nicely presented and eye opening introduction. He laces into Zuckerberg in an entirely appropriate way in my view. I liked his reminder that X-Windows was conceived as giving the server at the user end… to serve and control access. I will tweet the link.

I love his references to Oceania and personally served information served by YOUR server under YOUR control on requests as you feel appropriate. This reminded me of some work we did 20 years ago on a user owned and portable personal profile… so I will blog a little on this… thanks

http://holyroodpark.net/atate/weblog/6624.html

The historically infused “taste” was heightened for me by the language and this, I think, connects with Carol and Jeremy’s discussion of discourse analysis. Diaspora seems to be tapping into an almost 60′s like culture with some slogans and invocations of freedom. An IT faculty member once said to me that you can have all the freedom you want online but if you don’t own the hardware (servers etc), it’s based on someone’s willingness to let you have your freedom. Do you feel that this is relevant here? I’m asking because I live in the Arabian Gulf and we are very conscious here of censorship (though the UK PM notably did not include this part of the world in his criticism of Russia and China…) and also the fragility of the web. When I was doing IDEL, a cable was cut and we were suddenly catapulted back to a time reminiscent of dial up connections and slow, slow downloads. The Arab Spring, despite Western media frenzy over the “Twitter Revolution” highlighted how things can be switched off for all but the most technically savvy.

Sorry to ramble on! But your thoughtful study triggered a screed of thoughts in my head and I think you’ve raised some crucial issues as to how we perceive ourselves and our presences online. Your highlighting of the newbie experience reminded me of joining a new place of work when you’re asked to stand up and say a few words about yourself! Diaspora seemed quite a friendly place to do that!

Thanks again for opening up this debate and introducing an artefact I had never heard of!