Daniel's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

I began this course on ELearning and Digital Culture under the illusion that I was somewhat of an expert on the subject.  My professional background is in elearning, multimedia and web application development and much of my personal time is spent online; either at play or connecting with geographically distant friends.  But how wrong I was.  I have discovered that online digital culture is something fluid and changeable, moving, reacting and adapting to current conditions as quickly and effortlessly as a flocking algorithm.  To claim expert knowledge of everything digital is shortsighted, and given the unprecedented and constant growth of the online community combined with relentless innovation, technical expertise is becoming ever more narrowly defined.  If this course has taught me one thing, it is that adaptation is essential for survival in the digital realm.  But this course has taught me many things, most of which can be seen in the various feeds which populate my lifestream.  Initially I found producing a lifestream to be an awkward and overly contrived exercise, and in truth I did not see the benefit until after some time into the course.  Often I will have looked in depth at a topic only to backtrack out towards another concept, however the record of this journey remains and I subsequently found this to be extremely useful when refining any later thoughts or research ideas.  In fact, this detailed record has often provided the pointer to a new direction or insight later on.  Over the last twelve weeks I have seen my lifestream develop from a seemingly random collection of disparate, unrelated links, into a focused record of my research progress.  Such detailed logging has obvious benefits, but it is also an indicator of the ever increasing volume of data that we produce and navigate on a daily basis.  Even if we are actively creating this record rather than mindlessly life logging, the result is still a massive data glut, something renowned computer scientist Jim Gray has humorously referred to as WORN (write once, read never).  Worse still, it produces an echo of our lives which may tell others more about us than we know ourselves.

The ramifications for education in this ocean of data are complex and potentially paradigm changing.  Our current educational models frequently reward students for feats of memory and recall rather than actual knowledge or information processing.  In a world of constant, ubiquitous recording and massive online data sets, memory is becoming less of a concern.  The skills most prized by industry (if not yet by the academy), are those of assimilating and digesting data in order to extract salient information and knowledge.  Perhaps tools like the lifestream can help to raise awareness of this issue.

Given the informal nature of blogging, I have employed the simple notation “(lifestream dd/mm/yyyy)” followed by an index number where there are more than one lifestream entries on a given day.   Where possible I have also hyperlinked the reference to an individual post on the corresponding remote site.  My thanks to the staff and students of #ededc for what has been a fascinating and rewarding experience!

Augmented Reality Learning Environments – A posthuman pedagogy

Although philosophical idealists will argue that there is no such thing as a common reality, in everyday practice we have chosen to believe in one. Through our senses and communications, we live in a shared reality that we refer to as the real world, but by degrees, this shared reality is being extended, enhanced and personalised through the use of tools that allow for a richer interpretation of what is considered to be “real”.  Such tools exist in many forms, from cognitive frameworks right through to actual physical devices that extend the senses and create “new forms of human presence, half-real, half-virtual” (Ascott, 2003, quoted in Bayne, 2010).  Perhaps the most conspicuous of these is the growing use of augmented reality as an layer of information on top of the physical world.  “Augmented reality (AR) refers to the addition of a computer-assisted contextual layer of information over the real world, creating a reality that is enhanced or augmented”, (Horizon Report, 2011).  When one first uses augmented reality to view the world, the experience is uncanny in the extreme.  The physical world is suddenly extended to include a rich layer of multimedia that the viewer can interact with to better understand their environment.  High end augmented reality systems can be very complex and may include many subsystems, such as head mounted displays, data gloves or global positioning systems; but for the average consumer (and therefore the average student), something as simple as a smart phone application can achieve a similar result.  An excellent example of such an app is Streetmusuem:Londinium.

Streetmusuem:Londinium is an iPhone app, developed in collaboration between the Museum of London and the History Channel, which recreates portions of London city as it might have appeared during the Ancient Roman era.  Layers of video and text, maps and 3D models of ancient architecture can be viewed on top of the real world.  As the user moves about their environment the scene changes in real-time.  These layers of reality combine within the consciousness mind of the learner. “From two, one—something different, new, and tasty”, (Carpenter, 2009).

“One of the most promising aspects of augmented reality is that it can be used for visual and highly interactive forms of learning, allowing the overlay of data onto the real world as easily as it simulates dynamic processes”, (Horizon Report, 2011).  When a person interacts with these layers of media, they are essentially engaging in a constructivist and exploratory learning session within a new reality.  Because such media layers are fluid and may change based on user input, this new reality is individual and uniquely distinctive both for each learner and for each learning session.  When we connect augmented reality systems with other networks, the potential of new layers of reality grows exponentially, as does our capacity to create new realities for ourselves, or to share them with others.  One might argue that when we augment our reality, we simultaneously augment our own consciousness, and when we share our reality, we likewise  share our conscious state with others. “Just as the brain needs the body to create conscious activity, so the body needs the environment to create conscious activity”, (Pepperell, 2010).

Conclusion

The interface to an augmented reality system is a tool that allows the user to modify their own reality, extending it in directions never before imagined.  Graphical user interfaces allow us to visualise complex data sets but when those data sets correspond directory to our immediate physical environment, we suddenly gain the ability to understand that environment and our place within in it, in profound new ways.  Through the use of symbolic languages and well designed semiotic icons, we allow humanity to communicate without regional linguistic variation, achieving precision of expression and clarity in the transfer of meaning that is simply impossible in the “natural” world.

Augmented Reality Examples

MovableScreen at Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UODkvUTnAU

Streetmusuem:Londinium.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/07/29/roman.london.app/index.html

35 Awesome Augmented Reality Examples

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/news/2009/06/35_awesome_augmented_reality_examples.php

References

Bayne, S. (2010).  Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies.

Carpenter, R (2009). Boundary Negotiations: Electronic Environments as Interface.

Pepperell, R. (2009). ‘Art and the fractured unity of consciousness’ in New Realities: Being Syncretic Consciousness Reframed.

The Horizon Report, 2011.  Two to Three Years: Augmented Reality

Introduction

Diaspora is a distributed social network running on a collection of open source personal webservers across the Internet.  Diaspora is a community of passionate users who control their own data, control who sees it and who can harvest it. Diaspora is a project that I have been observing from a distance since the announcement by four NYU college students in 2010 that they wanted to to build a Freedom Box and make a step towards changing how we use social networks.  Diaspora used crowdsourced funding via KickStarter to raise over $200,000 which allowed the developers the financial stability to dedicate themselves to the project.  Diaspora is free (“as in freedom”).

In this brief ethnographic study of the Diaspora community, I have employed a combination of participant observation and direct interaction with users in order to better understand the community and its members.  I have posted questions to the community and received a considerable volume of responses given my status as a new (and consequently unconnected) member.  I have attempted to define what it means to be a Diaspora member and what it is that drives people to join the community.

Ethical Issues

Given that Diaspora provides the potential to limit who sees the information that you choose to share, I  have avoided using any user posts or data that came from private sources and have opted instead to publish only data that is specifically marked as being public.  Data produced with digital publishing tools simplifies any ethical decisions for an ethnographer but does not remove the responsibility to always consider any possible, wider implications of material that is published.  With this in mind I have chosen to anonymize any users data and avoid direct quotation where possible.  Any user names or avatars that appear in graphics have been blurred to further protect the identities of those involved.

Background

In researching the nascent Diaspora community prior to joining, I became aware of a strong sense that the development team considers this project to be something of a social movement rather than a mere social network.  Co-founding developer Daniel Grippi uses the phrase “a spark to start a fire” in the second video below.  This language sounds highly politicized and obviously hopeful for great things to come.  Since joining I have frequently noticed this same sentiment from Diaspora members themselves and must confess that I hold similar views and aspirations for the success of such a movement.  Hine tells us that “ethnography is appealing for its depth of description and its lack of reliance on apriori hypotheses”, (Hine C. 2000. “The virtual objects of ethnography”).   My sentiments therefore have caused me some difficulty in remaining fully objective in my research, and it is something that I have been continually conscious of and careful to avoid.  That said, the initial motivation for the development of Diaspora is indeed based on a politicized view that users have rights and are not just a product to be sold to marketing companies.  Diaspora adheres to the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy’s Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights.  Its very beginnings are inspired by Columbia University law professor Eben Moglens now famous lecture “Freedom in The Cloud’, first presented at NYU in early 2010 in which he describes centralized social networks as offering “spying for free” (from Wikipedia).  The projects main tenants of Choice, Ownership and Simplicity (see home page on https://joindiaspora.com/) serve to empower its users in a manor unheard of amongst profit driven social networks.  The following videos are what I believe to be key points in the emergence of Diaspora and what I hope will be a new movement for user empowerment online.

• Eben Moglen’s “Freedom in The Cloud’ presentation at NYU Feb 5 2010.  In this lecture Moglen introduces his concept of the Freedom Box, a device like a personal webserver that allows the consumption of network services without the traditional dangers.  This lecture has a profound affect on the Diaspora founding members.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEMv0S8AcA

• Diapora founding members report to the Internet Society’s New York Chapter on their work inspired by Moglen’s ideas.  NYU Apr 22 2010.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRTzRAtDujU

• Diapora pre-release promotional video showing the growth of the project and some cool features.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SehPS5J1lQA

Arrival Story

Taking the title of the introduction to Gatson and Zweerinks paper “Ethnography online: ‘natives’ practicing and inscribing community” to heart, i.e. that there there is “no such thing as non-participant observation”, I decided that the best approach would be to create a new account and dive right into the community as any newcomer would.  I posted the Diasporian equivalent of “Hello World” to my stream and announced ‘Hi, I’m #newhere’.  The use of this hashtag is something of a debut for new members, an announcement that they are ready to participate, meet and interact with others and begin to the form bonds that will connect them to the community.  I’ve speculated during this course that because of the ease involved in joining a virtual community, the traditional ethnographic arrival is less meaningful until the active creation of “connections” (ie friendships, followings or any one of the many terms used by social networking sites) occurs.  The following Flickr set shows this process as a series of steps.  It is in a sense my own arrival into the community and the beginnings of my real membership.  In the spirit of the community, these images are released under a Creative Commons, Attribution license.  The wordpress instance on which this blog post is written does not allow the insertion of iframe or embed code, but you can see a slide show of the set here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielgriffinnet/sets/72157628030760816/show/

Or a direct link (useful for viewing annotations and commenting) here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielgriffinnet/sets/72157628030760816

What is a community?  Is Diaspora a Community?

During the course of the last two weeks we have been discussing the notion of community and how it relates to groups of people whose primary method of communication is digital.  Indeed we have questioned whether such groups are indeed communities at all or whether they are simply loose collectives of people gathering around a common focus.

In his book The Virtual Community, Howard Rheingold references graduate student Marc A Smiths work on the concept of collective goods as a useful tool to determine whether a particular group constitutes a community.  “Every cooperative group of people exists in the face of a competitive world because that group of people recognizes there is something valuable that they can gain only by banding together. Looking for a group’s collective goods is a way of looking for the elements that bind isolated individuals into a community”, (Rheingold, 1993).  Smith proposes that the collective goods which create a community are social network capital, knowledge capital, and communion.  When I first read this quote I became very excited because although I have only recently become a Diaspora member, I have already encountered or observed these phenomena at work.  From its very inception, Diaspora has been a group based not around some minor theme or activity (not to say that such groups cannot themselves be considered communities), but rather focuses on a momentousness and potentially paradigm shifting goal, to empower the user and move control of the network away from traditional structures.  In this sense it is a textbook example of a gemeinschaft community.  Its members are generally technologically savvy and seem to be willing to help or offer advice readily to new members.  In my “#newhere” introduction, I asked the community what it is that interests them most about Diaspora.  Obviously the reach of such a question is fairly limited given my new arrival and the very small number of connections that I had, however the question did produce several interesting responses from other members.  Almost every answer that I received focused to some degree on the facts stated in Diaspora member David McCauly’s now widely circulated Dozen Reasons to Switch to Diaspora.  The typical user (in my experience) is well informed and interested in subjects related to the Free Libre Open Source Software development movement.  They have found a place online which cherishes and strictly upholds these values.  In their fellow members they may see many traits that they recognize within themselves, and from this there quickly grows a sense of connection, or the emergence of a shared communal identity.  One user response to my post was particularly succinct, giving the following reasons paraphrased here: it is non-commercial, open source, protects privacy and has some pretty interesting people.

Conclusion

Given my personal interest in the subject matter, I have attempted to remain as unbiased as possible during the course of this study; however my findings do indeed appear to echo my preconceptions.  The Diaspora community is composed of many unique individuals, all of whom are connected through their passion for social freedom and personal empowerment.  They are for the most part highly technically literate and vocal on subjects relating to the use and misuse of technology.  As a group, they represent and share the ideological viewpoint that it is not only possible, but essential that we “provide privacy in normal life, and safe communications for people seeking to preserve their freedom in oppressive regimes”, (http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/).  Again I am reminded that an ethnographer should attempt to ignore any preconceived notions and to remain as objective as possible, however I must admit to identifying strongly with these statements and to holding very similar views myself; perhaps I too have found a new home online…

References

Diaspora Foundation Homepage http://diasporafoundation.org/

Hine, C. (2000)  The virtual objects of ethnography.

Rheingold, H. (1993)  The Virtual Community.  (online, retrieved 01.11.11)
http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html

Gatson, S and Zweerink, A. (2004) Ethnography online: ‘natives’ practising and inscribing community.

Wikipedia Diaspora page, (retrieved 01.11.2011) 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28software%29

This week we’ve focused on the theme of digital literacies with a particular emphasis on the visual.  We have each explored some really stimulating ideas through the production of a visual artefact, and it has been interesting to notice how each of us interprets one anothers work differently (lifestream 14.10.2011 #1).  The title of my own artefact, We Are The Web, reflects my belief that while the Internet may be produced by people, in many ways it also is people.  It is live and interactive, and for those of us who live and work within it, it is becoming an extension of ourselves.  We are drawing ever closer into a symbiosis with technology, and while this can offer many conveniences, my fear is that we may be blinded by the benefits while ignoring the potential dangers (lifestream 11.10.2011 #6 – music video).

Siân has commented on my emphasis of “the implant and the prosthesis”, while Grace notes the discomfort shown in some of the images that I’ve selected to be part of the piece.  This was a very deliberate choice that I made when creating the image, because for me, our love affair with technology is something that we have forced upon ourselves.  It is an unnatural coupling and something that requires us to actively modify both ourselves and our behaviour if we are to reap the rewards.

To express such complex ideas visually is particularly challenging, especially when we consider the many influences affecting the way that we interpret images, combined with the fact that images must be seen in context if they are to be understood at all.  In order to better address these issues, I did some surfing and discovered amongst other resources, a brilliant presentation by Doug Belshaw entitled The Essential Elements Of Digital Literacies (lifestream 12.10.2011 #1) as well as some excellent and free online graphics tools (lifestream 12.10.2011 #2).  Visual literacy is without question an essential skill for todays learner, and definitely something that I’ve become more sensitive to during the course of the last week.

I’ve been re-watching the excellent Bendito Machine and have decide to notionally “tag” sections of the piece with my own titles.  You can read this either as my interpretation of the story or as a (tongue in cheek) political manifesto.

• Opening Scene: The prophet considered as an early adopter.
• @2:28  The dangers of mass media on the young.
• @2:37  Advocates of technology worry more about its welfare than the damage it can cause.
• @4:03  Version 1.1, now with added terror; (or, “Corrupt Download”).
• @5:02  The system is broken; the people want control; a new prophet seeks the light…
• @5:26  Version 1.2 “The Freedom Patch”.
• @5:56  System Crash.

As to the actual title, Bendito (“blessed”) Machine, I would add one word: Nuestro.  The system belongs to us as surely as does ones own faith.  If we are to worship the system then we must be sure to debug it fully, or risk its collapse.

Not too many tweets for the first week so I will have to fill in the gaps a bit…

We’ve been discussing two films this week over twitter and in a synchtube session based loosely on the subject of digital culture.  But interestingly it seems that the dominant theme has been the idea of a digital space being a kind of alternate reality or other place that we go to.  The same is true of the many tweeted film nominations being suggested.  So do people think of digital culture as somehow unreal, or perhaps even escapist?  I think there is definitely an element of other-worldliness to the way in which we interact digitally, but for me at least, it’s not about the decorations in the room, but the people at the party and what they are saying to one another.  This motivated me to nominate a sample of the The Visions of Students Today project for our film festival (lifestream: 23.09.2011 #2).  Anything that Mike Wesch and his students produce is always fascinating, but VOST2011 seems like it will be particularly appropriate to this course, given the medium of sharing and the collaboration that is taking place.  From my personal perspective, a culture is nothing if it is not shared; indeed it can not even exist without some forms of interaction.  Experiencing something virtual on ones own is not a cultural event, but the sharing of that experience,  synchronously or asynchronously, in real time or after the fact is what makes it important.