Sociology 230: Internet and Society

This week's issue of The Economist has a special section on new media - I've put a section of it up on Blackboard - it's called "What Sort of Revolution?"

Note Changes to Tuesday's Readings Below!!!!!!

Our last week of class! (How did that happen?)

For Tuesday, I'd like you to read:

• Kotamraju, "Art Versus Code"
• Peterson & Ryan, "The Disembodied Muse"

Both are in Society Online.
Edit: I decided to axe the Kotamraju article... after a second glance at it, it's not going to be useful for the discussion I want to have.

For your final response paper, please do some web searching and find an example of artistic production that has been made possible by the Internet. In your response, please reflect on how that art form wouldn't have been possible without the 'net.

For Thursday, you should read:

• Bainbridge, "The Future of the Internet"
• Jones, "Conclusion"

Again, both of these are in the textbook.

"Internet carriers would have a free hand to charge the likes of Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc. extra for faster delivery of services to consumers under a bill approved by a House committee Wednesday."

One of your readings for tomorrow deals with a well-known Internet hoax in which a very popular 'blog maintained by a teenage girl battling and ultimately succumbing to lukemia turned out to be a hoax. While we'll be using this event to discuss what it means to be an online community, I thought some of you might be interested in reading a bit more about the details of the hoax.

• Big White Guy was very close with Kaycee and designed and hosted both her 'blog and her mother's 'blog (her "mother" being Debbie Swenson, the woman who perpetrated the hoax). His account (in .pdf format) is extremely detailed and informative.
• Much of the discussion of whether or not the whole thing was a hoax took place on MetaFilter. Read the actual discussion relating to Kaycee here.
• Allen Smith worked for CollegeClub, a social website where Kaycee was an active participant (in fact, the site where the hoax appears to have begun). He has webbed his e-mail communications with her.
• A San Francisco Chronicle news story about the hoax.
• A news story from the Peabody Gazette-Bulletin (in Peabody, Kansas, where Kaycee "lived").

As I said, we'll be using this case to talk about issues of online community - the meaning of it, what it takes to make an online community, etc.

If you downloaded the PP slides for today's lecture before about 9:05 this morning, you might want to go get an updated version - I made some minor changes.

MySpace blocked at a Texas community college.

After connections slowed to a crawl, it was discovered that 40% of the school's Internet traffic was devoted to MySpace.

Judge: Worker can't be fired for web-surfing.

"A New York City employee cannot be fired for surfing the Web from the work, an administrative law judge has ruled"

New Nokia NSeries phones will have Flickr support.

"Nokia and Yahoo! have worked together to provide camera phone users with means to upload and add comments to photos directly from their Nokia Nseries to Flickr. Consumers will be able to connect to their online Flickr accounts without the need to download or install any additional applications."

Microsoft piracy check comes calling

MS is rolling out an application that will verify the legitimacy of their products - if you have a pirated copy, you'll get warnings to that effect. They've been requiring this for upgrades & additional downloads for a while; they aren't using the app to target/prosecute the users of counterfeit versions of the software.

I've gotten a number of questions about what I want you to do in terms of diagramming your social network. Basically, I'd like you to do a quick drawing of the people or groups that you interact with on a regular basis. Show how they connect to you and how the connect to each other.

Here's mine, screencapped from my slides for tomorrow, as an example.

These will serve as the jumping-off-point for a discussion of traditional "community" versus "networked individualism".

For Tuesday, I'd like you to read:

• Wellman, Barry. "Community: From Neighborhood to Network"
• Wellman et al., "The Networked Nature of Community: Online and Offline"
• Norris, Pippa. "The Bridging and Bonding Role of Online Communities"

For your response, please:

• Draw a quick diagram of your social network.
• Reflect on whether or not your network supports Wellman's concept of "networked individualism".

For Thursday, I'd like you to read:

• Feenberg & Bakardjieva, "Virtual community: no 'killer implication'"
• Mesch & Levanon, "Community Networking and Locally-Based Social Ties in Two Suburban Localities"
• Jordan, John. "A Virtual Death and a Real Dilemma: Identity Trust, and community in Cyberspace"

Respond:

• Are online and offline communities comparable? Why or why not?
  

We WILL be having a guest speaker tomorrow - Nicholas Robinson will be coming to give a presentation on file sharing and field your questions. The plan will be for Nic to speak for about 40 minutes and then we'll have this week's student presenatation.

"Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Computer, maker of the popular iPod music and video player, is being sued by Burst.com, a provider of Internet audio and video broadcasting software, for using a technology within the iPod and its iTunes Music Store that allegedly infringes on a Burst patent, Bloomberg News reports via the Los Angeles Times."

I forgot to tell you guys this on Thursday - I'm not holding office hours this week because daycare's on vacation! If you need to communicate with me, best to do it via e-mail.

For Tuesday, April 18th
Read:

• Bahttacharjee, "Digital Music and Online Sharing”
• Shaw, ”Copyright in the Age of Photocopiers, Word Processors, and the Internet”
• McCourt, ”When Creators, Corporations and Consumers Collide”
• McLeod, "Confessions of an Intellectual (Property)”

Respond:

• How has the Internet forced us to change how we think about intellectual property?

For Thursday, April 20th
Read:

• Imfeld, "The Music Industry and the Legislative Development of the Digital Millenium Copyright Acts Online Service Provider Provision"
• The Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
• May, "Trouble in E-topia: Knowledge as Intellectual Property"

Respond:

• How should the law deal with intellectual property in the digital age?

"LOS ANGELES — ABC will offer four prime-time shows including "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" on its Web site for free for two months beginning in May as it continues to expand the ways consumers can watch TV online."

"Google, the internet search group, and Earthlink, the internet service provider, on Wednesday drew closer to covering the city of San Francisco with a wireless broadband network, after a city panel selected the companies as the preferred providers for the project."

For Tuesday, April 11, I'd like you to read

• Henderson et al., "In Touch: Young People, Communication and Technologies"
• Ling & Haddon, "Mobile Telephony, Mobility, and the Coordination of Everyday Life"

For your response, please consider the following question:
How do you think that cell phones have affected the social lives of college-age people?

"April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Major Hollywood studios began selling Internet downloads of their movies, including hits such as ``King Kong,'' the first time they have allowed U.S. consumers to buy films online and keep them on computers."

First off, I apologize for not getting this out by the weekend as I promised I would. From here on in, I guarantee that I will have all readings and discussion questions for the following week posted by Friday afternoon.

On April 6, we'll be talking about Google, their privacy policies, and the current case in which the Department of Justice is attempting to get Google to give up some search data.

You should read:

• Google's Privacy Policy
• Attorney General v. Google going to court
• Court Documents & Summary Of United States Versus Google Over Search Data (for those who are interested in things legal, this page includes links to .pdf files of the actual court documents)
• The compliers: AOL, MSN, and Yahoo hand over data, defend actions

Having read these 4 pages, I want you to do some research of your own. See what you can find on the web about this case. You should consult AT LEAST THREE ADDITIONAL WEB PAGES.

Your response for this class should be a statement of your opinion of the case and should include the URLs of the pages you consulted. Come to class prepared to discuss your opinion.