Mathemagenic

We went again to Reboot, with all three of us. Although I really wanted to go, I have a bit mixed feelings after that. Because the people and the topics looked so exciting, but I couldn’t go to listen and to talk as much as I wanted to.

Going with a baby to a conference was a great experience (especially since it was the first one after my maternity leave). Going with 1,5 years old? Not sure. Although there was a kindergarten, Alexander is still too attached to us, so every morning we would stand in front of the schedule to decide who goes to which session and who is there for the babysitting rounds. As a result I missed a few sessions I would love to go, including the one that Robert did on Being free within organizational structures.

The good thing is that we’ve got smarter this year - staying in a hotel with many other conference participants (btw, loved it - Hotel Fox) provided an opportunity to socialise around breakfast and in the evening, after Alexander was asleep. We also took two days to drive there and back with a stopover at a German coast, turning it to a little holiday and making sure that Alexander had some fun after being so patient with lots of adults running around.

Anyway - was nice to catch up with old friends and get to know new people. I’ve got an inspiration topic-wise - those things are slowly sipping through, but would come out eventually in blog posts.

Themes to think about: architecture, structures that limit and create boundaries to play with, reinterpretation, encoding practices into structures, selfish altruism, nodal points… The “free” theme was also a perfect input for my on-going thinking about our need for structures and boundaries that comes together with the need to fight them.

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Reading a talk by danah boyd on Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace. Besides fascinating insights into online youth culture that danah brings so well, I find something that connects well with my own work - a piece on public, private and controlled spaces for adults and teens:

In this context, there are three important classes of space: public, private and controlled. For adults, the home is the private sphere where they relax amidst family and close friends. The public sphere is the world amongst strangers and people of all statuses where one must put forward one’s best face. For most adults, work is a controlled space where bosses dictate the norms and acceptable behavior.

Teenager’s space segmentation is slightly different. Most of their space is controlled space. Adults with authority control the home, the school, and most activity spaces. Teens are told where to be, what to do and how to do it. Because teens feel a lack of control at home, many don’t see it as their private space.

To them, private space is youth space and it is primarily found in the interstices of controlled space. These are the places where youth gather to hang out amongst friends and make public or controlled spaces their own. Bedrooms with closed doors, for example.

Adult public spaces are typically controlled spaces for teens. Their public space is where peers gather en masse; this is where presentation of self really matters. It may be viewable to adults, but it is really peers that matter.

Reading this helped my framing my research interests in yet another way - I’m interested in uses of technology on the intersection between private, public and controlled spaces in a case of knowledge workers.

However, before getting further with the distinction I have to figure out from there it comes. Any references to other work?

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/06/20.html#a1782; comments are here.

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From email - First Monday’s special issues on connections between cyberspace and real cities:

• Special Issue #4: Urban Screens: Discovering the potential of outdoor screens for urban society
• Special Issue #5: Virtual Architecture at State of Play III, 6–8 October 2005

The regular issue is on Law in Cyberspace

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/02/09.html#a1731; comments are here.

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Quite often in my PhD process I have complicated discussions about the role of theory in my research. Today, looking through my Flickr photos I realised that one of them could serve as a good example.

A year ago I probably wouldn’t notice it or wouldn’t make a photo - it’s just a city scene during a lunch break. So, what happened between now and then?

I read some theory :)

Being driven by my personal interests in architecture and fascination with cities as well as sensing emergent parallels between city life and social processes in online spaces, I went through reading “Life between buildings” by Jan Gehl and City: Rediscovering the Center by William H. White (see Edges and Individual in a public space: learning from weblogs and cities for some background).

Those two books are full with observations of people sitting on the curb and discussions on why, how and where it happens as well as implications for the design of public places in cities.

Now, equipped with knowledge I took from those books I look at things differently, I notice things that I wouldn’t notice before and I know what questions to ask…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/10/12.html#a1692; comments are here.

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People at BlogWalkSeattle:

• Cyprien Lomas
• Jia Lin
• Jon Husband
• Korby Parnell
• KrisKrug
• Lee Lefever
• Lilia Efimova
• LizLawley
• NancyWhite
• Nick Finck
• Phil Klein
• RolandTanglao

It was different and fun. Things to think and to write:

• conference attention modes
• most rewarding blogging experience
• need to play and authority challenging
• adult playgrounds (re: life between buildings and edges)

Add things to BlogWalkSeattleOutcomes.

Technorati: BlogWalk, BlogWalkSeattle

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/09/04.html#a1656; comments are here.

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I’m in the middle of writing deadlines, so just a piece from Life between buildings that was hanging in my blogging notes for ages:

At the edge of the forest or near the façade, once is less exposed than if one is out in the middle of a space. One is not in the way of anyone or anything. One can see, but not be seen too much, and the personal territory is reduced to a semicircle in front of the individual. When one’s back is protected, others can approach only frontally, making it easy to keep watch and to react, for example, by means of a forbidding facial expressions in the event of undesired invasion of personal territory.

The edge zone offers a number of obvious practical and psychological advantages as a place to linger. Additionally, the area along the façade is the obvious outdoor staying area for the residents and functions of the surrounding buildings. It is relatively easy to move a function out of the house to the zone along the façade. The most natural place to linger is the doorstep, from which it is possible to go farther out into the space or remain standing. Both physically and psychologically it is easier to remain standing than to move out into the space. One can always more farther later on, if desired.

It can be concluded that events grow from inward, from the edge toward the middle of public spaces.

When I read this one as a well as lots of examples of places people choose for hanging out in public, it becomes clear that the edge between purely personal and private “my” space and truly social “our” space is important. This is the space for observing, making choices and getting ready to step out into social engagement. This is also the space in between that is so often missing or neglected. I’m thinking of “old” technologies that support either you personally (all stuff that runs on the desktop) or what ever group with shared activity (all kinds of groupware stuff). Being there just to observe before jumping in is lurking and often it’s not considered to be a good behaviour…

I guess it’s a bit cryptic, but if you read me long enough you probably able to connect the dots. Otherwise just wait till words around ideas mature and mould into something readable…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/06/03.html#a1580; comments are here.

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A slightly edited/linked piece from my proposal for Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium 2005 (and I’m very excited to be invited :) I have been planning to write a proper weblog post around bullet points at the end, but it’s not happenning fast, so I just post it as it is and come back to it later.

Although weblogs are perceived as low-threshold tools to publish on-line, empowering individual expression in public, there is growing evidence of social structures evolving around weblogs and their influence on norms and practices of blogging. This evidence ranges from voices of bloggers themselves speaking about the social effects of blogging, to studies on specific weblog communities with distinct cultures (e.g. knitting community or goth community), to mathematical analysis of links between weblogs indicating that community formation in the blogosphere is not a random process, but an indication of shared interests binding bloggers together (Kumar, Novak, Raghaven, & Tomkins, 2003).

Social structures emerging around weblogs are interesting for a number of reasons. Weblogs provide spaces for both individual expression and control, and interactions within social ecosystem; hence providing insights of interplays between practices of networked individuals (Wellman, 2002, .pdf) and social structures where those individuals belong. While some weblog communities mirror existing social structures, others emerge when strangers find each other and connect. Weblogs do not provide a shared space with central topic or activity to be attracted to, nor (often) pre-existing community, but do support emergent social connections.

The nature of those connections is especially interesting, since understanding them can help to design environments to support emergence of social structures without predefining their focus or membership. From this perspective blogging is similar to “life between buildings” in a real city that “an opportunity to be with others in a relaxed and undemanding way”. This quote comes from architect Jan Gehl (2001) who discusses how to design public spaces that welcome and support social life.

While reading Gehl’s work I couldn’t avoid associations with insights about “individual in a public space” from my own research (I study uses and effects of blogging for personal knowledge management). I’d like to draw on parallels between real cities and the world of blogging and propose characteristics of a space that supports emergent social activities:

• comfortable, protected space
• conditions for longer-term activities meaningful for an individual
• “soft-edges”, easy switch between inward and outward oriented activities
• opportunities for low-intensity contact: exposure and lurking without a commitment
• “shared space” in between, to move social activity when it grows

These characteristics could be illustrated with examples from other social software applications (del.icio.us, Flickr, etc.) next to weblogs, so I guess they provide a good start for a discussion.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/03/18.html#a1526; comments are here.

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There is so much fun in opening a long wanted book after finding the only place it could be ordered and patiently waiting for it to arrive. Fun of waking up and heading for it, before everything. Fun of taking time to read knowing that it would be a long day with lots of things to do. Fun of discovery, nodding at every other page - “ah, true..” - and stopping for a minute thinking all about all those association with your own work…

Of course, sometimes it’s nice to start a day from the blogosphere news, hot and exciting, but somehow this couldn’t beat the fun of reading a well-written book that travelled over five editions and thirty-something years.

And - in case you are curious - the book is Life between buildings by Jan Gehl. It’s part of my reading about cities and thinking about life between weblogs.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/02/20.html#a1498; comments are here.

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A piece from the paper:

An individual weblog is not likely to represent a community, while shared social spaces seem to emerge between weblogs, like in a city where life between buildings accounts for many social activities of its inhabitants. As in cities, blogger communal spaces are not evenly distributed: some neighbourhoods are full of social activities and conversations, while others look like a random collocation of houses where inhabitants have nothing in common. Blogger communal spaces may have visible boundaries, but more often indicators of a community are subtle and is difficult for a non-member to distinguish. Just as a local garden is not likely to have a sign indicating that there is a chess-player community that inhabits it every Sunday, blog communities do not delineate obvious community boundaries.

Somehow city metaphor was hitting me hard during last half a year…

I guess it’s started from A city is not a tree. Then it was reading Emergence and talkings about communities, shared spaces and weblog reading at BlogWalk 2.0, Ton’s post on founding a City in Cyberspace, Torill’s Dialogue in slow motion at BlogTalk.

And a post by Anna Vallgårda pointing to Life between buildings by Jan Gehl… Just a quote from this book:

Life between buildings offers an opportunity to be with others in a relaxed and undemanding way. One can take occasional walks, perhaps make a detour along a main street on the way home or pause at an inviting bench near a front door to be among people for a short while. One can take a long bus ride every day, as many retired people have been found to do in large cities. Or one can do daily shopping, even though it practical to do it once a week. Even looking out of the window now and then, if one is fortunate enough to have something to look at, can be rewarding. Being among others, seeing and hearing others, receiving impulses from others, imply positive experiences, alternatives to being alone. One is not necessarily with a specific person, but one is, nevertheless, with others.

As opposed to being a passive observer of other people’s experiences on television or video or film, in public spaces the individual himself is present, participating in a modest way, but most definitely participating.

And it’s got connected with lurking, degrees of strength in relation building and some others things that I can’t articulate yet…

This post also appears on channel BlogWalk

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/11/15.html#a1429; comments are here.

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To start with - a piece from my comments to Blogs and CoPs: Can blogging replace communities of practice? (scroll to find)

For me (please forgive simplification) the essence of a community is in a sense of belonging and practices that its members share. I can understand that it’s hard to believe looking at loosely-coupled weblogs “out there” that their authors belong to a community, but I can not discard my own feeling of “belonging” as well as indications of many other bloggers saying that weblogs help to build relations and shared understanding and to engage into reflective conversations.

I’ve been thinking on it for a while and trying to articulate my ideas about community clue in case of weblogs to a few people in Nürnberg and Lisbon… One more attempt.

Elmine Wijnia talks about weblogs as communication hub (also here) to find others and connect with them. I think weblogs do a bit more - they provide shared thinking space. I know that it’s hard to believe that many individual weblogs, even linked, can provide a shared space, but it feels like that (and I tend to trust my feelings :)))

For me the closest metaphor is a city, a shared living space. Usually we don’t know many others in our neighbourhood, but we walk on the same streets every day, see the same familiar strangers, get wet under the same rain, miss the same bus… We have a lot of context to share and meeting each other abroad we will connect easily. Living in a same city creates a sense of belonging and a sense of community…

Weblogs do as well. Of course, not for everyone (as in a city, you may not feel it). I was thinking what creates such shared context in case of weblogs. I guess it’s weblog reading.

I’m thinking about my own weblog ecosystem. We don’t read same weblogs, but they are interconnected, so at the end we get exposed to similar names, events, ideas, books. For example, once you get into KM blogging, you will quickly learn about wikis, join Orkut or find out who Dave Pollard is. Our experiences of blogging are never the same, like experiences of living on different streets, but in some cases they overlap enough to create a feeling of sharing the same space.

I think that those “some cases” of overlapping weblog experiences have to do with several things: density of a network, speed of ideas travelling around and time that one devotes to reading weblogs of others. The last one is important: getting to know your community takes time and you will never connect with a city when you jump in and out of a tourist bus.

I’m getting more and more convinced that when introducing someone to blogging the most important thing is to help newcomer to start feeling rhythms of blogging cities: getting a map for an orientation, learning basic terms to find a way around, finding good guides (blogs to start reading), taking time to explore and soak…

I’m playing with a “city” metaphor to explain blogging… I’m thinking of RSS as public transport lines - they take you faster where you have to be, but you miss little secrets on a way. And about risks of generalising in weblog research when one studies only specific communities (think of aliens making their opinions about humans based on their study of New York ;)

I guess it’s time to dive a bit deeper into research on cities (thinking of Emergence on self-organisation of cities, William H. Whyte’s theory of triangulation, and may be even connecting with A city is not a tree).

So, may be at the end we can find out if and when weblogs can turn into a knowledge spaces…

This post also appears on channel BlogWalk

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/06/07.html#a1232; comments are here.

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