style over content

i've moved my blog!

2011-03-01T19:39:20Z

this blog has been migrated to Wordpress. please visit my new blog and site:

style over content: virtual materiality

i'll be leaving the old site up for a while, but most of the entries and comments have all moved to the new Wordpress blog.

Participate in a study about social media and international users

2009-08-16T03:35:17Z

I'm conducting some research this summer in the San Francisco Bay area, on social media and localization -- if you might be interested, read on!

Are you employed in the field of social media or Web 2.0? Interested in participating in an ethnographic study about new media design and international users?

This is a study being conducted by Jordan Kraemer (jkraemer@uci.edu), a graduate student in anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and is titled New Media in Design and Practice: Social Media Companies in Transnational Circuits. Tom Boellstorff is the faculty sponsor (tboellst@uci.edu).

You are eligible to participate if you are at least 18 years of age or older, are employed at a social media or technology company, speak English, and are in some way involved with the design, planning, or maintenance of social media (social networking services, blogging/microblogging, social bookmarking, or other media related to Web 2.0).

The research procedures involve an audio-taped interview that will last approximately 30-45 minutes at a location convenient to you, and an optional follow-up interview (1-2 hours). Your identity will be kept confidential.

There are no direct benefits from participation in the study. However, this study may explain the connection between international users, who are not often the target audience of new social media products, and design practices in the United States. This study will contribute more broadly to understanding the social impact of new technology.

Contact Information:
University of California, Irvine
Lead Researcher: Jordan Kraemer, graduate student, department of anthropology
jkraemer@uci.edu
Faculty Sponsor: Tom Boellstorff, Associate Professor of Anthropology
(949) 824-9944 | tboellst@uci.edu

what ever happened to micro-payments?

2009-04-19T19:00:43Z

with all this talk of the demise of newspapers (and potentially, print journalism), i find myself thinking back to the model of micro-payments (or microcommerce) that has previously been proposed as an effective method for earning revenue from online content (and apparently, more recently in the Times). in theory, micropayment involves charging very small amounts at a time for an online transaction, such as downloading a song or purchasing items in a game. the key, though, is reducing barriers to completing the transaction -- such as having an payment account set up in advance, linked to a credit card or bank account. the iPhone, for instance, takes advantage of this model with its App store, and even though iPhone apps aren't as inexpensive as the payments initially envisioned by the micropayments method, they are often only a few dollars, charged immediately to one's credit card through a user account which Apple practically requires all iPhone owners create.

the benefit of micropayments lies in the ease of accessing content, at low cost to users, while potentially generating significant revenue for content-providers when all those little payments add up (especially given the low cost of delivering content digitally, rather than through offline distribution channels). in addition, micropayments make it possible to earn revenue without relying entirely on advertising, which means content isn't as dependent on appealing to preferred audiences -- or on a secondary market of consumer goods (and such advertising has notably been slumping of late).

for newspapers, however, charging small amounts per article might still not represent a viable solution -- unlike a song or an app, an article is more like a television show, something you might want to consume once but don't need to own. moreover, reading an article online isn't the same as reading the paper -- a paper you can peruse, strew all over the coffee table, easily share with members of your household. so the challenge should be how to charge a modest amount for access to premium online content that is commensurate with its value to the consumer. perhaps very inexpensive subscriptions, on weekly, monthly, and yearly bases would fit this niche -- i can see myself paying a few dollars a month to read a website like the NYTimes.com, as long as i know up front what it will cost.

online sources also have to consider how readers access their content -- users are unlikely to pay in advance for something they aren't sure they'll use. perhaps trial services and subscriptions could address that issue. but it does seem to me that at low enough prices, with instant, easy-to-use payment services, some kind of micropayment system might be a viable way to keep supporting journalism and other kinds of professional-produced content.

writing for TechCrunch, Brian Solis has argued for a Darwinian-like survival-of-the-fittest model for journalism, mobilizing online social networks to cultivate successful individual journalists. this approach might work well for music, television, and other media whose value lies in their consumption, and where there can be niches for different tastes (independent music, for example, can benefit from the low cost of distributing songs directly to fans). but journalism it seems to me is more like research -- sometimes you have to support investigation that leads to dead ends in order to uncover important findings. while i don't want to over-romanticize the role of journalism in a consumer society, i do think there's a place for investigative reporting that requires new revenue models in a world of digitized media.

From anonymity to exhibitionism: whither Twitter?

2009-03-19T19:19:40Z

It's funny how, once upon a time, people both valued and mocked anonymity on the internet -- most users picked a "handle" or an online moniker, and avoided sharing their real names or identifying details, while it was joked that "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" (or an adult man pretending to be a teenage girl, as was often imagined). Facebook has gone some way towards undermining that convention, encouraging users to use their full names, and making it easy for people you once knew (say, in high school) to find you. And though not required, plenty of people put their real names on Twitter -- including numerous well-known people and celebrities, from actors and musicians to social media authors (I tend to assume that anyone famous with thousands of followers is probably who they say they are -- but who knows?).

Microblogging as superficial exhibitionism
Twitter, in its increasing popularity and visibility, is generating some anxiety as well. A teaser for new animated series "Supernews" describes Twitter users as exhibitionists who have only superficial online friendships, and who confuse microblogging with real social connections ("if they were _really_ your friends, wouldn't they call you personally to see how you're doing?"). It's entertainingly short-sighted to imply that a phone call is more intimate than an online interaction, when not so long ago, people were anxious about the social consequences of telephones replacing in-person communication.

The future of Twitter
At the other end of the spectrum, Nova Spivack voices concerns about the widespread adoption of Twitter, a service which as yet doesn't offer much in the way of filtering. Twitter, in its relative simplicity, can be used in many different ways by its participants -- and whom you follow determines the kind of conversation you'll experience (Howard Rheingold, for example, advocates "sampling" from the Twitter stream, not trying to stay constantly up-to-date). Spivack describes the various ways in which Twitter is subject to possible overload -- users who post too often, but have little to say, spammers who hijack hashtags (twitter content tags marked with a # sign) and @replies, and an excess of notifications, from news updates to your own desktop apps. Twitter for now remains a relatively even space for communication, in which the biggest distinction between famous or popular accounts is their number of followers. The downside of this lies in the equal access Twitter provides for spammers, advertisers, and other potentially unwanted content providers. Spivack concludes that some form of filtering will be necessary to preserve Twitter's usefulness, ideally through some kind of metadata to allow ranking by popularity, credibility, content type, provider type, and so forth (assuming these are straightforward to implement, that is!).

For my part, I'm always most fascinated by the unintended uses of sites like Twitter, and the creative ways users appropriate online services and technologies. While Twitter may be risking its longterm viability, as Spivack suggests, its very simplicity permits users to innovate and generate new applications its creators never envisioned.

women and video games

2009-02-13T21:18:38Z

my friend and fellow grad student Morgan Romine was featured on Fast Company earlier this month, blogging on "Why Women Should Play Video Games." Here's an exerpt:

I realize that gaming is still a decidedly male-dominated pastime and industry, and I understand that mainstream culture is still deeply influenced by the notion that games are only for the stereotypical antisocial, tech-nerdy, teenage male. But I’ve been advocating games for years now, and playing them for longer, so I’m impatient for the change in popular perception that I’m sure is waiting right around the corner.

netbooks: lowering the bar to entry

2009-02-13T21:06:11Z

reading various tech blogs and discussion boards lately, i've been following some of the debate around "netbooks," small, underpowered laptops that cost much less than full-sized ones. so-called netbooks aim to meet basic internet and computing needs (email, web surfing, some wordprocessing) in a superportable form, such as Acer's Aspire One, the ASUS Eee PC, the Dell Mini 10, or the MSI Wind. some netbooks seem to be more like glorified handhelds -- cramped keyboards, small screens, and limited processing power (many run on Intel's Atom chip), but long battery life -- and they have been touted for precisely these features. in theory, netbooks are poised to fill a niche between smartphones and full-sized laptops, offering an inexpensive, internet-capable device with the benefits of both -- perfect for traveling or taking to a coffeeshop.

one purported use of the netbook is as a secondary computer, an ultralight portable for an affluent consumer who already owns a larger, more valuable, and full-featured machine. for such users, a netbook can offer a disposable, affordable alternative for their "mobile lifestyle," presuming, of course, a particular kind of mobile, middle-class, professional consumer (not coincidentally, the targeted demographic for many shiny new tech devices). but unlike an iPhone or a Blackberry, which remain expensive devices with pricey data services, a netbook is priced low relative to that of full-sized laptops. low-end PC notebooks in the same range ($300-600) are inevitably bulky, heavy, and impractical for taking on the go.

still, netbooks' inadequacies have been criticized by Techcrunch's Michael Arrington, who contends that their popularity will be limited: "Netbooks are designed to appeal to two very different markets - the price sensitive and the size sensitive. The two are really mutually exclusive." Arrington makes a good point, but at the same time, there are shifts in how people are using technology which will make netbooks more appealing. personal computers have become primarily networked devices, for messaging, web browsing, streaming music and video, and so on, where an earlier generation of computers were seen as "productivity" tools. WiFi and wireless data networks make it possible to connect to the internet from almost anywhere -- on campuses, in coffeeshops, at the airport. while smartphones have greatly improved their capacity to access the internet and social media services, they remain expensive compared to mobile phones without data plans, and are only used by a minority.

what's more, computers, like cell phones, have become highly personalized items -- for those as can afford it. no longer primarily a shared family or classroom device, laptops conform to a modern Western ideal of possessive individualism -- a sense of personhood as singular and individual, One Laptop Per Child. netbooks, precisely by virtue of their affordability, promise to make available the always-on, interconnected world of social networking sites, cloud computing, and streaming media to a wide audience. as personal computers go, they offer a highly portable, technologically sufficient device that provides access to popular media and services, in a market saturated by products overpowered for many everyday uses. moreover, the coming popularity of off-site "cloud" computing may make netbooks even more viable.

still, i suspect the netbook naysayers are correct in their dismay with netbooks' constrained capacities, and that most people won't prefer to have an undersized, underpowered device as their main computer. but for a growing generation of students, young people, and others of limited means, netbooks may offer the most cost-effective way of participating in a digitized, networked world of personal portable devices, regardless of preference. netbooks offer the promise of improving access to new media for many, but this comes at the cost of better performing, more expensive computers. technology use will remain marked by its economically and socially uneven terrain.

recent projects

2009-02-08T01:35:27Z

i've been continuing to think about questions of mobility, spatial scales, and technology, particularly in terms of how our ideas about mobility often influence what kind of new media are developed and marketed. most recently, i proposed a small project funded by Intel as part of collaborative effort between Intel's People and Practices group and UC Irvine. there are a whole number of interesting projects as part of the initiative, which you can read more about on the PAPR blog.

in addition, i've returned to blogging for Smart Mobs, so keep an eye out for me there.

whose mobility?

2008-09-25T21:41:59Z

with this summer's iPhone 3G from Apple and Google's latest unveiling of the G1 smartphone, mobility seems to be the current communications tech buzzword, especially for so-called social media. having just acquired a new iPhone myself, i admit i'm pretty excited by its possibilities -- continuous data, location-based services, and a superslick interface that may indicate the future of touch-based interfaces. i've been especially impressed by the free applications offered by established social media sites, like Facebook, MySpace, Last.fm, and Twitter. where internet services have tended to focus on web-based applications, the iPhone redirects usage back to standalone apps which implement their own framework while drawing on networked content.

i find myself updating my Facebook and checking my Myspace messages more often, as the iPhone apps are often quicker and cleaner than their web-based counterparts, and more fun to use. i'm titillated (and a little creeped out) by how Yelp and Google Maps can now figure out where i am, and deliver data specific to my location. i'm beginning to envision how devices like the iPhone and G1 might allow for more constant engagement and interactivity with peers -- as long as, of course, they also own the pricey equipment and pay for the data subscription (not to mention having a working wireless network, which neither AT&T nor T-Mobile consistently provide).

this brings me to my current question concerning increasing mobility -- whose mobility is at stake here? the "digital divide" between technological haves and have-nots may not be a foreign concept in tech circles, but it's not one that has been very well addressed either, as it's often chalked up to socio-economic inequities that must be solved separately. certainly it's not surprising that tricked-out web-capable smartphones are mostly available to consumers in the upper social strata (with devices starting at $179 and combined voice/data plans running $55/month and up). moreover, social and geographic mobility have often been the purview of the middle (and upper middle) classes, those who are more likely to leave home for college, take jobs in different cities, and establish themselves far away from their extended families.

migration, of course, is a reality for many working-class people in the US and abroad, whose ability to earn a living is often tied to the movement of global capital. the demands of the global market tend to drive mass labor migrations, as people must move to find jobs that can support them and their families -- often living far from home and working abroad illegally (from migrant Mexican and Central American laborers in the US, to domestic workers in Europe and the Gulf states who come from South Asia, the Phillipines, and elsewhere). mobility per se may not be limited to those with greater resources, but voluntary mobility is still a privilege.

yet by contrast, mobile communications technologies have precisely been adopted in places where more extensive infrastructure may not exist. in the US, for instance, mobile phones were adopted first by younger users, partly because they're less likely to have their own landline (or own a home), and also because cell phone carriers began offering pre-paid plans that made phones accessible to those without steady incomes (the Pew Internet Project has some interesting reports on cell phone and internet use among different American demographics, though their methodology is limited to phone interviews, and they appear to conflate race with regional ethnic identity). outside the industrialized world, furthermore, mobile phones increasingly provide communications access to low-income regions and neighborhoods where landlines are simply unavailable. according to this article on MobileActive.org, for example, Brazilians living in favelas (slums) have taken up cell phone use, as have low-income youth in South Africa. free incoming calls and text messaging make mobile phones useable where landlines aren't, and encourage different ways of engaging with mobile technologies. according to Jeffrey Juris' review, The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication, shows how mobile phones in Jamaica allow low-income users to intensify their social networks in beneficial ways.

what's clear is that mobile technologies are used differently by different groups, often in ways not intended or imagined by marketers or tech companies. marginalized populations are probably less likely to be targeted by companies like Apple or Google, but at the same time, new technologies do present novel possibilities for social interaction at multiple social strata. text messaging, as the New York Times anxiously warned last week, is on the rise, often over and against voice calls, while improved handheld devices might actually provide web access to those who can't afford more expensive computer equipment (though Apple and Google for now are both assuming their devices will be paired with a home computer and broadband connection). mobility may turn out to mean more than just the latest toys for those of us who can afford them, and perhaps suggests an emerging way to think about and analyze new patterns in technology practice.

brass is the new... black?

2008-02-09T07:17:59Z

retrofuturism has been gaining, well, steam lately, notably in the form of steampunk, a literary-genre-turned-nascent-subculture, which imagines a Victorian future that never was, of steampower, dirigibles, and brass gears. as a genre of science fiction, of course, steampunk is not new (from jules verne and jean-pierre jeunet to william gibson and neal stephenson, and most recently, the movie version of The Golden Compass), but it seems to be finding increasing articulation in tinkering/diy projects, installation art, and fashion. kinetic steamworks in oakland have made viable steampowered works of imaginative art like the Neverwas Haul and the Steampunk Treehouse, while various tinkerers have posted online about their steampunk-themed diy projects. legions of former cyber clubkids and gothic lolitas appear to be taking up steam fashion, from pinstriped corsets with pocketwatch pockets (a one-off from Morua Designs) and kneehigh punk rock granny boots, to ruffled collars and cuffs from designers like Steamtrunk Couture.

all of which fits in nicely with the profusion of circus-freak perfomance art and vintage aesthetics proliferating on the margins of popular culture in places like new york and california, among others, and lovingly documented on artsy alt culture blog Coilhouse. nothing, however, sounds the death knell of a new subculture more than well-meaning bougie media attention:

Steampunk Brings Victorian Flair to the 21st Century

i'm enough of a bob siegel fan-girl to find the coverage entertaining, but i find suspect the theory that steampunk is somehow a response to the impersonal mass-produced consumerism of the information age.

as i recall, the entire point of the Dickensian aesthetic was precisely to chronicle the devastating effects of industrialization and urbanization on so many people (to say nothing of imperialist expansion across the globe). and the steam engine was central to the industrial revolution, which inaugurated factory production and the possibility of mass consumerism. but shoddy memory for history aside, the imagined world of steampunk sure is pretty:

The Mysterious Geographic Adventures of Jasper Morello (animated short)

modern neuroses or just shortsightedness?

2007-06-29T22:25:52Z

Mommy Is Truly Dearest - New York Times

i'm not entirely sure why this is news, but the Times reported last week that young middle-class women are increasingly close to and connected with their moms -- and that this constitues a trend worthy of social scientific study. i suspect that as communications technologies come to permeate our daily lives, our social and personal relationships will be transformed as a result -- but conversely, social organization can also affect the technologies we cultivate and develop.

but there's a certain shortsightedness in suggesting that it's a new development for daughters to stay emotionally close to their mothers. on the contrary, i think the unprecedented mobility of the middle classes in the past half century has separated adult children from their families to a degree that may be unusual compared to most other cultures and time periods. although traditional marriage practices have often taken young women away from their parents, closely knit extended families are historically more the norm than the highly mobile nuclear families of the postindustrial United States. perhaps the ubiquity of cellphones is reconnecting young women to their mothers, and permitting the kinds of close relationshops that are beneficial for many people, rather than somehow prolonging childhood in an unhealthy way.

to report this as newsworthy suggests more about American conceptions of maturity and adulthood, in which independence and individualism are valued over close family relationships. i think these underlying assumptions represent a much more interesting topic of study than the fact that daughters like to spend time on the phone with their mothers.

the ongoing hype over online predation

2007-05-23T20:28:21Z

MySpace reaches accord with Attorneys General - May. 21, 2007

so via Broadsheet, i noticed the news that MySpace has partnered with a "background verificantion" firm (Sentinel Tech Holdings Corp) to create a database of convicted sex offenders, which MySpace then used to begin expunging users who were cross-listed. of course, not all sex offenders are pedophiles, and statutory rape laws still mean that sometimes consenting teen couples have sex across age lines, and the older partner is charged and becomes a registered offender. but fine, so MySpace is trying to keep convicted sex offenders off the site, as a way to respond to charges from both legislators, the press, parents and others that social networking sites are havens for predators seeking to lure naive children to their lairs (or wherever) and abuse them.

According to CNN (via Reuters), MySpace worked out a legal way to hand over this information to government officials (a group of state attorney generals). So far, they've deleted about 7,000 profiles identified as belong to sex offenders (out of a total of about 180 million (that's about 0.00004% for the curious).

as usual, i think this raises some issues of privacy -- does being convicted of a sexual offense deprive you of your right to create online profiles, and is any profile you create subject to government surveillance? i imagine MySpace has some legal standing in denying accounts to sex offenders, but i think targeting all sex offenders so widely tends to conflate a range of offenses as equally dangerous, when they may not be.

but in my mind, the bigger question still revolves around the visibility of MySpace against the actual risk to young people who use the service. the Connecticut attorney general was quoted as saying "Social networking sites should not be playgrounds for predators." and yet, most children are still at much greater risk from people they know than strangers on the internet -- a risk which can be further minimized by basic safety practices around meeting new people online.

perhaps it makes sense for all minors with MySpace accounts to have private profiles, so only their friends can see their personal info -- but digital technologies tend to make it difficult to ascertain the real age of members. digital media require learning new habits for safety and protection, similar to being cautious with personal financial information. the danger of "predators" on MySpace is continually hyped in the media (even the usually critical blog Broadsheet jumping in), at the expense of the most common forms of abuse experienced by children. perhaps after we insure that all American children have health insurance and are free from violence or abuse at home, we can begin to concern ourselves with digital dangers. until then, though, we have to keep asking why sex offenders seem to capture the legal imagination and divert our attention away from the less sensationalistic violence of the everyday.

shameless

2007-05-13T20:24:16Z

here's a little refreshing back-talk from a recent college grad, giving some badly needed lip to all the recent moralizing over young women's increasingly public sex lives:

Sex-Crazed Co-Eds! - Nerve.com Screening Room

the author, Annsley Chapman, isn't exactly flawless in her logic (young women today are just unashamed of casual sex, and are too busy pursuing the opportunities furnished to them by feminists of yore to focus on establishing more longterm, committed relationships), but it's nice to hear a little dissent from actual college-aged women, over and against the tiresome clamor of older feminist and non-feminists alike (Ariel Levy and Caitlin Flanagan come to mind, and Chapman points to a number of others equally poorly poised to speak for young women).

Chapman's gloss of the current fruits of feminism remains a little thin, though -- i'm not remotely convinced that today's college women are graduating into a world of boundless gender equality and consequence-free casual sex (rates of HPV and HSV are still pretty high last time i looked, a reminder to be attentive to safer sex, not give up on sexual freedom altogether). and she explicitly emphasizes the lives of white, middle-class, straight girls, typically minimizing the visibility of women whose experiences and social positions often place them outside mainstream public debate.

but Chapman is right to call attention to both the tone of recent critics, and their tenuous claims to speak with authority about the lives of young women today. girls and not boys are still being held disproportionately accountable for changing attitudes towards sex, which only reinforces the reality of unequal gender relations that persist in our culture.

hard to swallow: overblown fears of teen oral sex

2007-03-19T19:37:19Z

there was a piece in the Atlantic Monthly a few months back that was a thoughtful but ultimately disappointing musing on the alleged oral sex craze among teenagers today (Are You There God? It's Me, Monica).

Caitlin Flanagan (about whom I have many reservations, thanks to reading Salon's Broadsheet too frequently) succeeds in resisting the tempting moral outrage over the news that young people are having oral sex, in particular, girls casually performing fellatio on their male acquaintances. but despite Flanagan's willingness to probe the topic of youthful hummers with some measure of sensitivity and introspection (including some meandering through Judy Blume and other young adult novels), she contributes to the distorted media contention that teens today are having disproportionate amounts of oral sex, in which young women have renegged on their own sexual desire in favor of performing a media-inspired, pornified sexuality for their peers.

in particular, Flanagan doesn't appear to have looked closely at the very study which supposedly bolsters the controversy over teen oral sex, writing "[a] huge report was issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. It covered the topic of teenage oral sex more extensively than any previous study, and the news was devastating: A quarter of girls aged fifteen had engaged in it, and more than half aged seventeen." interestingly, what the study actually reports (the pdf from the CDC can be found here) is that a third of all boys 15-17 have had vaginal intercourse, while slightly less (28%) have given oral sex and slightly more (40%) have received it, and of young men 18-19, two-thirds had had vaginal sex, 52% had performed oral sex on a woman, and 66% had received oral sex -- that is, the same percentage of men 18-19 had engaged in vaginal sex as had received oral sex. among teenage girls and young women, over one-third of 15-17 year olds had had vaginal sex (39%), 30% had given oral sex, and 38% had received it -- again, fewer had actually performed oral sex on a male partner than had engaged in vaginal sex, and the same percentage had received oral sex as had had intercourse. for older girls, the study repeats the findings, that as girls get older, most of those who are having vaginal sex are also engaging in oral activities. the study further explains that in each age group, about 10-14% of young men and boys who had had oral sex had not had intercourse, and about 9-11% of young women aged 15-19 had engaged in oral sex only. as the percentage of young men 15-24 increases who have had intercourse, the percent who have only tried oral sex declines to 3%.

these data, shockingly, suggest that sexually active teens who are engaging in vaginal intercourse are also likely to experiment with oral sex (giving and receiving), and that only a small proportion have had oral sex but not intercourse. over time, the majority of sexually active young people will be having intercourse as well as oral sex. and while slightly more men report receiving oral sex than giving it, of the young women surveyed, more actually reported receiving it than giving it (how this adds up remains to be seen).

so what gives? why is the media continuing to promote the myth that girl-on-boy oral sex is rampant amongst youth (in place of good old-fashioned intercourse), when the data indicate that young people begin experimenting with oral sex, but ultimately resort to the heteronormative standby? this report seems consistent with my own recollection of sexual exploration among my peers at that age -- perhaps attitudes toward oral sex have changed in the past 30 years, so that it's now considered an intermediate step between heavy making out and intercourse, but that doesn't remotely support the premise that scads of young women are suddenly going down on their male peers without reservation.

unfortunately, not only does Flanagan accept the media reports in place of reading the statistics for herself, she ultimately reduces female sexuality to women's delicate, emotional nature: "I am old-fashioned enough to believe that men and boys are not as likely to be wounded, emotionally and spiritually, by early sexual experience, or by sexual experience entered into without romantic commitment, as are women and girls." boys, of course, have unlimited sexual appetites whose bases are unquestionably biological and unemotional, whereas women are fragile flowers who need to be loved and cared for to protect them from the dangers of sexual pleasure. not only is this line of thinking offensive and demeaning to women, but it perpetuates the equally damaging idea that men don't bring emotional needs to sexual relationships.

finally, she comes to the sparkling conclusion that "...the forces of feminism have worked relentlessly to erode the patriarchy--which, despite its manifold evils, held that providing for the sexual safety of young girls was among its primary reasons for existence." yes, that's right, the systematic domination of women in Western society actually represents a safety net that protects the delicacy of youthful femininity from the ravages of early sexuality, and has nothing to do with controlling and exploiting female reproductive capacity. i think the prevalance of rape and domestic violence in Western societies offers an excellent testament to the protective role of the Patriarchy (TM). if anyone is going to challenge the media's portrayal of youthful sexual behavior, or investigate how sexual norms are changing and what implicatons that might entail, clearly it's not going to be Ms. Flanagan. parents, the media, and other public voices too often retain this prurient tone in which their fears over female sexual desire overshadow the ways in which teens are actually exploring and experimenting with their sexuality in a decade of abstinence-only education and abundant internet porn. perhaps instead of frothing over "rainbow parties" and other urban legends, we should be thinking through what kinds of positive messages about sexuality we actually want to be transmitting to young people.

digi-pedia: wikipedia's digital hegemony

2007-03-15T22:11:23Z

the other day on NPR, i heard a brief segment about Wikipedia, and how conservative critics have put together an online alternative called "Conservapedia," supposedly in correction to the "liberal bias" rampant in the former. i would believe that many of Wikipedia's articles reproduce liberal perspectives, particularly the academically-informed entries which tend to reflect leftist scholarly criticism, but i'm not convinced that this kind of "bias" needs to be "balanced" by an opposite conservative opinion. the polarized political spectrum doesn't always represent two equally valid critical positions. or maybe i've just been reading too much Althusser.

still, clearly Wikipedia cannot offer a neutrally produced body of knowledge -- all knowledge is situated and specific to the contexts in which it emerged. Wikipedia is necessarily a result of the communities that collaborate on it -- particularly those that are technologically enabled, and often academically informed. establishing "Conservapedia" strikes me as a bit fruitless, since once you assert your political position openly, you've already marked your ideas in a particular way. i suspect that the original site will maintain its dominant ground as the unmarked, normative version which most people will prefer. it's bad enough when students try to use Wikipedia as an academic reference -- imagine those who try to support their arguments with an explicitly biased source!

Conservapedia aside, i'm also not convinced that "bias" is the most pressing issue limiting Wikipedia's legitimacy. i'm interested more in its overall structure as a site of knowledge production -- in particular, what kinds of entries are created in the first place? i've noticed an increasing number of individual figures with their own Wikipedia page (especially those who are well-known online, like jwz, danah boyd, and howard rheingold), as well as night clubs, internet memes, and various contemporary yet transient topics. should every person, place, and concept ultimately have its own page? of course, entries on Wikipedia tend to reflect its users' predilections for all things digitally mediated, a tendency i think is more significant than any alleged "liberal bias."

generally, i accept the premise that Wikipedia's content is regulated by an interactive style of editing that allows users to continually tweak and rewrite entries according to their own level of engagement with a given topic, and i'm often impressed by the quality of articles on historical figures, terms from critical theory, and general knowledge of popular culture, all of which make the encyclopedia incredibly useful for general reference. but at what point does it become a promotional site for certain kinds of people and ideas, or an archive of internet fads? the open editing process of a wiki can't exercise much influence over what kinds of entries are useful or appropriate, something that more traditional editing might allow. interestingly, Wikipedia has been using "dis-ambiguation" pages recently to clarify related terms and redirect users to pages of interest. i think this highlights some of the possible drawbacks of an interactive, communally produced reference work. perhaps the proliferation of pages will be managed through user interest and will self-regulate in practice, but it's worth considering how interactive and collaborative sites of knowledge may privilege certain trends, ideas, and information over others. Wikipedia's conservative detractors are feeling nervous precisely because of that potential ability to dominate popular thought.

the semiotics of sex

2007-03-09T20:12:40Z

is it porn when college students pose naked for campus magazines with literary intentions, or just ironic, erotic photography? has sex-positivism among young people been twisted into another expression of so-called "raunch" feminism, or does gender diversity shift the power dynamics inherent in consuming images of naked sexuality? the times' magazine last week published a reasonably even-handed piece on the increasing prevalence of campus nude mags, sometimes offered as porn, but often couched in more aspirational terms (Campus Exposure - Alexandra Jacobs - New York Times).

i was in graduate school at the University of Chicago when Vita Excolatur was first published (prompting me to write my own proposal for a more genderqueer magazine called "Cum Laude," but the demands of my thesis prevented anything from coming to, um, fruition). at the time, i was largely unimpressed by the amateur and somewhat pretentious forays into "polyamory" and "sadomasochism," neither of which appeared to have been informed by participants in those sexual subcultures (polyamory was imagined as a typical menage-a-trois, and the S&M surely would've disappointed Foucault).

still, the article alights on a number of themes which have been recurring in the media on the topics of youth, sex, exhibitionism, and social media. author alexandra jacobs repeats the popular notion that young people today are so saturated with "overt sexual imagery" even among the "educated elite" that "maybe it's not so strange that students are confronting their own sex lives so graphically and publicly." our culture, we are reminded, increasingly embraces fetishistic exhibitionism, especially for women, who attract inappropriate sexual attention through suggestive clothing and provocative pictures. jacobs stops short of concluding that young women today are proof that the patriarchy has won, subjecting them to its overarching ideology of female sexual display for masculine consumption.

but neither can jacobs resist the ubiquity of social networking sites in the lives of young people, such as Facebook and MySpace: "to attend college now means to participate in a culture of constant two-dimensional preening" where students can immediately check one another's online profiles, complete with revealing photos. but what, exactly, is so flat and superficial about online profiles? of course, these websites streamline individual interests into predetermined categories, producing identities which revolve around popular media and digital imagery. at the same time, digital spaces often reproduce the kinds of semiotic indicators we all deploy in the three-dimensional world of flesh to communicate social and cultural positions to each other, such as fashion, bodily comportment, brand labels, and consumer products. social networking sites may intensify these tendencies, but they also provide spaces for youth to engage in creative appropriation of popular media, reconfiguring music, words, and images in a semiotic assemblage of individual subject position.

the world of college porn ultimately emerges as too diverse to summarize or criticize easily in a few words, when some of the magazines challenge gender norms, while the editor of Harvards' H-Bomb was quoted as saying "I don't think men and women are equal at all. I think we're different, and what's wrong with that?" clearly, she's never read Donna Haraway or Anne Fausto-Sterling on the social and cultural conditions under which sciences like biology are produced, including the biological construction of sex. but i remain suspicious of how young women today are frequently depicted as conflicted about sexuality, unhappy with the reality of their erotic encounters, and displacing personal desire onto performed sexuality, expressed in the emerging predilection for "slutty" and "sexy" costumes on Halloween (or just out at clubs and parties). without seeking to dismiss these concerns, it strikes me that there may be deeper currents beneath the surface of co-ed porn rags and risque MySpace profiles which deserve greater critical analysis and attention.