EduPeter

New social spaces created by the internet.

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 17:03:57 -0400

I recently read an article about New Emotions created by the Internet that struck a chord with me. The associated graphic shows the map of human emotion, and lists just a handful of new emotions created by the internet, but I think that this graph, while a good start, barely scratches the surface of the entirely new social space created by the internet. If anything, it seems to focus on the individual sitting at a computer, when that is the wrong light to take the internet at. Sure, you can passively surf through pages and do a minor amount of messaging, but the entirety of the internet gets really interesting when you understand it as a dynamic between two or more people existing across different mediums.

The internet has popularized many new, bizarre mediums to communicate across, and we as a species have adopted it with surprising enthusiasm. As a thought experiment, I began to visualize each website that humans use for massive communication as a crowded room, and how they would communicate via that specific medium. I started with the idea of a message board- a room full of people wearing cowls that obscured their face, and could walk up to an overhead projector and write whatever they wanted on a transparency and add it to the overhead projector. That simple message board, one of the earlier internet communication mediums, was what I grew up and it worked fairly well, and doesn’t seem like such a stretch of the imagination- if anything, it evokes visuals of Plato’s cave. However, when you visualize facebook, twitter, tumblr, instagram, 4chan, things get really bizarre. For example, I saw twitter as people distributing messages they had written on fortune cookie notes to specific people in a crowd, and slowly by showing off other people’s fortune cookie messages, people would become increasingly intertwined until it became impossible to visualize. Facebook takes it to a whole other level of complexity that I actually found myself likening to a game of The Sims.

Yet, for all these different social spaces, I think one of the most important things to look at is how this changes a social space between two people. Going back to basic communication technologies, I remember in high school and college having a number of really interesting experiences (before I became a bit of a digital hermit) that reshaped the real world social space. And while these are just a few anecdotes, the possible permutations of how the internet reshapes real relationships is staggering.

The first experience that impacted me strongly was in my Sophomore year of high school. One of my friends had a webpage with a guestbook. One of my closest friends and I had a spat on the guestbook over something I don’t remember, and then I had to go to class with him. I remember sitting, wondering what he would do, and yet we spoke rather civilly, not mentioning the argument. Then, back at our computers, we were back at it.

What’s interesting about that incident is that the entire experience of having a separate online persona was so new, so unfamiliar. Now, we are both digital natives, but back then, we were still just getting used to the internet, so in the real world, we didn’t have a real way to process the fact that we had just had a fight on the internet. So, we just ignored it until we were back at our computers. Later, once we both got better at understanding that this line of text being an asshole represented a real person, internet arguments became serious business that could legitimately mess things up.

Ahh, high school.

But what I really take away from that experience was there was a major disconnect in our understanding of internet personas and real world personas, so we both experienced some bewilderment (or perhaps didn’t have enough gumption to carry on the fight in the middle of English class). This emotion has since changed, as the real world and the internet are becoming more entrenched in people’s minds, and now Facebook drama spills over into English classes everywhere.

The next experience that really sticks out to me was much more recent, (as in about 5 years ago.) and represents a much more pertinent interpersonal experience, one that can still be experienced today, and concerns my girlfriend. Now, I’ve looked at this one rather extensively, as there were a number of other psychological factors occurring. I used to be very active online back then, as I worked a social work job and generally didn’t want to deal with real world people at home. Now, I work a tech job, and I find myself seeking out a lot more real world social interaction in my free time. However, I don’t know how much of that impacts the following situation.

I had just started dating my girlfriend, and while I liked her and all and we knew each other fairly well from being friends for several years prior, I was just getting used to the whole being in love with her thing. So, after a very passionate date, we went our separate ways- she was going to college in a town an hour’s drive away, and I often didn’t have enough gas money to get there as much as I’d like. So, we’d chat on gchat for hours each night, and I gradually began to grow this really strong attraction towards this screenname. Whenever I saw her online, I got a nice little endorphin rush at seeing my girlfriend, just a line of text in a window. So, this continued for a long time, and then I began to visit her more.

Suddenly, this person that had been a nonthreatening line of text was a real, breathing person. She’s very introverted in real life, so I was rather shocked to see her not really opening up as much as she would online, and then the whole fact that there was a physical, warm, soft body associated with this line of text added another layer of complexity. While it was nice, I often yearned for the text box version of her. In some ways, I loved that version more than the real version. The text version I could read back on what she had just said. The ‘I love you’ at the end of the conversation persisted as long as I had the window open. There were no awkward silences, I could just browse to another tab. (Ironically, these awkward silences between us are now filled with smartphone checking.)

Eventually, I got used to the fact that this person and this line of text were the same, and that was that, but the take away here is that we do behave very differently online, and this dissonance between real world personality and online personality is a very real thing. I imagine many people who go on their first date after meeting and chatting on a dating site experience the same thing.

So, these are just two examples of how the interpersonal dynamic between two individuals can be influenced by the internet. While there are obviously more, I think it’s frankly more important from the point of view of someone who studies the internet and human behavior to take into account the obvious and not so obvious ways that this dynamic is constantly changing (now with smart phones rising as well) and take that into account when studying the internet, especially in reference to things like education, UX and UI, and any other number of fields.

The issue there, I’ve found to my dismay, is that it’s like trying to hit a moving target. I did a cursory look at the state of internet psychology, and was relatively unimpressed. Perhaps I didn’t dig deep enough, but I found the academic world simply couldn’t keep up with documenting all of this. Just as they’re beginning to understand message boards, twitter happens. Just as they’re geeking out about how amazing twitter is, Smartphones explode. God only knows what Google Glass is going to do, if anything.

Anyway, I’m going to wrap this up. If anyone has any suggestions how to better tag this, I am really, really bad at this sort of thing.

Uh, bye?

jtotheizzoe: edwardspoonhands: neilcicierega: Wow a lot of...

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:28:23 -0400

jtotheizzoe:

edwardspoonhands:

neilcicierega:

Wow a lot of very shrewd minds have pointed out inaccuracies in my inspirational Einstein image. Just goes to show you what an incredible resource for fact-checking that Tumblr is.

I have updated the image to reflect the amazing truth about this amazing man.

<3 Neil

Welcome to 1 in 5 internet quotes!

I am so happy someone did this.

atzomatic: I should be offering online commissions soon! Here’s...

Thu, 02 May 2013 01:16:13 -0400

atzomatic:

I should be offering online commissions soon! Here’s some sample images from the B&W RPG character portrait option, I’ll have full color, full character and creature options too.

Bottom one is Herbert Cornelius the Third, an old character of mine. He was a nutjob alchemist who burned all his hair off when an ornery furnace ~~killed~~ brought him down to -8 HP. Ended up in house arrest after dating a serial killer (With the help of a gnomish power ballad as he walked away from an explosion awesomely) and helping her escape after being discovered, thus only being allowed out to help when they needed his help dealing with some bad stuff. That was fun times. She really captures his essence.

theremina: (via) I’d go.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:45:13 -0400

theremina:

(via)

I’d go.

jackrad: waiting4beckett: Always weed horcruxes. gawd, i hate...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:05:39 -0400

jackrad:

waiting4beckett:

Always weed horcruxes.

gawd, i hate it when ppl try to return horcruxes to the library, it’s really a hassel to have to run around tracking down magical objects to destroy them with and i would feel really irresponsible just sending them to the friends of the library, undestroyed, for the book sale.

doctor-lucky: FINALLY found a photo of my Rattmann cosplay from...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:01:29 -0400

doctor-lucky:

FINALLY found a photo of my Rattmann cosplay from someone other than Skella - this was the one taken by a Valve employee, I’m pretty sure!

Found at this Google+. His other album (day 2) contains a bunch of TF2 photos, some of which made it onto the TF2 blog!

I had a good day with Gordon and Doug. Gordon was quiet and chill, and I couldn’t make sense out half the shit Doug was going on about, guy seriously needs some pills.

introspectiveillumination: I loooove super in-character...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:49:47 -0400

introspectiveillumination:

I loooove super in-character cosplayers. Mr. Control Group Tester, you were amaaaaaazing! Killer cosplay, great display, wonderful expressive poses for photo-ops. I loved my little tester sign up questionnaire.

Greetings from the Chell with PotatOS, you were easily my favorite Portal cosplay on all accounts. I’ll have Portal shoot pics up once I can get them cropped and tidied up and whatnot.

So, I occasionally do weird things for conventions. This was fun.

atzomatic: Done! My girl does good work. <3

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:27:27 -0400

atzomatic:

Done!

My girl does good work. <3

writingprompts: #717 8 Years Later This is a writing prompt...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:19:20 -0400

writingprompts:

#717

8 Years Later

This is a writing prompt for kids?

I call it singularity prep. Of course, most ~~kids~~ people are cyborgs anyway.

katnissthelastmockingjay: theangelshaveteslasatncis: folie-a-killjoy: eli-manning: gurry: Aren’t...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:12:06 -0400

katnissthelastmockingjay:

theangelshaveteslasatncis:

folie-a-killjoy:

eli-manning:

gurry:

Aren’t we all internet explorers?

do you mean we all run slow and people don’t like us?

thats exactly what we are

Well there goes my fucking self esteem you ass

Oh.

What exactly is a homestuck?

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:40:02 -0400

Ok, so, I go to enough conventions and stuff to know that his homestuck is a thing. But what the hell is it? I’ve tried to get into it, it’s a story about a guy who has a boring videogame life, and then the world blows up in a flash animation and then a million people are dressing up in gray make up and horns and there’s a million pages or something?

And this is the guy that made those great star trek edits? And there’s something about watching out for stairs?

It seems like it’s historically significant- in years, when internet anthropologists study the history of the internet, people will note that Homestuck was a thing. Or maybe not. Maybe it’ll be a religion.

Still, it’d be interesting to gather all sorts of information on why this is a thing, what populations this is a thing with, and why.

PS- does anyone have any good accordion music they can recommend?

So, I should actually update.

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:32:23 -0400

Last I left off, I had just gotten a job in IT. I moved to Redmond, where there are more jobs, and have been doing it ever since. I wrote a novel in November, and have recently taken up drawing as a hobby after seeing a beautiful painting of skeletal humans clawing their way across a hellish landscape painted by a friendly beardy man at a comic convention. It was beautiful and terrifying, and I wanted to move people with art the same way that painting had disturbed me.

Drawing is going well. Information retrieval has been going well. I keep up on blogs, and take in more and more information each day, and am constantly plugged in. Working for a mobile app company, I am constantly connected, a personal choice I have embraced fully.

Meanwhile, winter has not been kind. The dark days sap away any ambition or new ideas, leading only to dark nights and sleepless mental wanderings into whatever bizarre vista I may decide to travel, often times completely irrelevant to any reality, although the introduction of melatonin has made these nightly wandering even more strange, accompanied by the bizarre dreamscapes encountered when hitting the snooze button 4 times each morning. I suppose I have optimized my existence to align with a schedule until the sunshine can breath life back into me.

The sad thing is how true this all is, my sad dependence on the sun. Monday, I went on my favorite run, as it was actually sunny. 10 miles later, and my mind was on fire. I had thought up so many new ideas, and wanted to write, play games I had forgotten about, read books, and be a genuine human. Then the rain returned, and I returned to my treadmill and news networks with tickers that tell me about all the ways I can die, choking me on science fiction posing as science news, and minecraft.

But soon it will not be winter, and I will be a human again. Maybe I shall start blogging here, or perhaps I will find some other humans to follow. Are you a human worth following?

ps- that’s really cool, I can create questions.

Dicks?

Oh god that’s really cool. It auto generates questions that people can answer to. So, people can respond to the question of dicks. Or being worth following. I COULD ASK THE INTERNET QUESTIONS, like what exactly is a homestuck?

Which is one of the things I’ve been keeping an eye on, how people are becoming more and more connected, and open. I’ve been interested in how, while Google has aggregated fascinating and eye opening data about what people are interested in and willing to search for, and facebook is making a science out of how people talk to each other, (over a website that is a relatively unknown format to humankind, but they keep on changing the environmental factors for any legitimate data to be collected… Facebook style updates, ugh.) what will happen when Google Glass becomes a thing? (Oh god I love how it asks if I want to ask questions! YES! ALL THE QUESTIONS?) I have seen blog entries and whatnot saying that Google Glass makes people incredibly uncomfortable, even within silicon valley bars where robots are the norm, but I wonder once they become ubiquitous if that will change, and people will accidentally stream themselves in the bathroom. The web is already changing privacy and the way the media views the body politic. I read an article recently about how, if twitter had existed, would the US have gone to war with Iraq? Now, I think we’re faced with more options as people can go and create whatever the hell they want, post it online, and become online famous. My current favorite example is Aaron Dias of Dresden Codak, a friendly, mousy man who I would always talk to at comicons for his excellent webcomic that initially had a very good singularity arc, and has grown into much greater things. He now has a kickstarter making gobs and gobs of money.

So, this should tell the people in power that people like this sort of thing. Some guy can raise 400k in weeks, that’s significant. And god knows the media forces are holding their fingers to the pulse, constantly trying to create youtube miniseries and the like, but… It’s not perfected. I think you’d need an actual mind, a semantic web or skynet or CADIE whatever, to actually see any sense. But until then, the way of the web is not something that can be easily monitored, as it’s entirely social in nature- people sharing links and talking about things in person.

Maybe that’s why Google Glass is a thing. They want to capture interpersonal linking.

I for one welcome my nerdy cyborg overlords.

And mad props to this guy, (Steve Mann) who’s been doing it for years.

I’d wear that. Diggin’ the sweater too.

ohai.

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:59:49 -0400

Holy shit. I forgot I had a tumblr.

Still doing IT. Still paying off student loans. I read up on educational stuff, and am a little afraid that I’m missing the revolution, but nothing in education happens fast. (Except for a number of examples, but I don’t think elearning is one of them.) There’ll still be plenty for me to do, once I take a break from everything.

kthxbai.

Not a Single Story: Reinventing the dying local library

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 00:12:19 -0400

Not a Single Story: Reinventing the dying local library :

opebukola:

I love the New York Public Library and it’s been sad to follow their tumblog and see pleas to stop funding cuts and keep branches from closing. Thankfully, last Thursday, the city restored most of the funding it proposed to cut for next year. Still, there’s no denying that local library…

I for one like the idea of making Hackerspaces in local libraries.

Update.

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 16:00:55 -0400

Haven’t posted much lately. Finished my thesis. Finished my Master’s. Got a job doing IT support yesterday, will do paperwork for it soon. Hopefully it will work out.

Have the dream of eventually breaking into educational technology, but currently just trying to make ends meet and move out of my home town. Once I have a financial cushion and can work off some of my student debts, I’ll start pursuing it. However, in the mean time, I’m monitoring everything.

End of line.

Net Literacy.

Thu, 17 May 2012 01:26:45 -0400

Been somewhat busy lately working on a project dealing with increasing digital literacy to populations that lack it in the Seattle area. Also trying to get a job in the Seattle area. Thesis is pretty much done. Making connections like crazy. Will talk more about the Net Literacy project later.

I’m excited to be moving towards a career in elearning. This field is going to be amazing in 10 years.

My thesis poster on e-learning. Comes with a companion website:...

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:04:36 -0400

My thesis poster on e-learning. Comes with a companion website: https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/the-eposter/

I'm so e-learning.

Thu, 03 May 2012 20:48:13 -0400

So, for my thesis on hybrid education, I have to do a poster presentation. Alongside creating the poster, I made a website that people can view with extra information that wouldn’t fit on the poster, and a quick video introduction.

My poster is a cyborg.

Harvard and MIT team up to create EdX, a new distance college education problem.

Wed, 02 May 2012 14:06:08 -0400

Harvard and MIT team up to create EdX, a new distance college education problem.:

Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today announced edX, a transformational new partnership in online education. Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.

This looks interesting. From the press release, they say this isn’t meant to replace a campus environment (i/e the face to face aspect of learning), but I could definitely see how this could really help a lot of schools in struggling areas to create a high quality hybrid model.

Linuxfest: Final panel notes.

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:48:43 -0400

So, the final panel I went to at linuxfest outlined some practices for teaching linux administration as a distance course. What I appreciated about this panel leader is that, instead of saying this course was going to be about distance education, he stated that it would be specifically oriented towards his experience teaching linux administration via a distance course. Ironically, this panel ended up being more about the methodology of distance education in general, and less about teaching a specific course.

What I gleaned from this presenter was that when teaching a distance course, it helps if A: students are highly motivated, B: you create your OWN teaching setup and style (He bought a lot of his own equipment, including a generic tablet, webcams, various open source software tools, and even called his students via phone and mailed them packages), and C: You are personable and do your best to connect with the students at a human level. The biggest problem he ran into was students failing to show up to his weekly ‘class sessions’ which consisted of google hangouts.

The presenter from the first panel, the guy who had worked as a network admin and now taught Cisco certs, told him he had a good way to work around it: Make the class sessions worth credit, with the earlier class sessions worth extra credit, so early adopters would be rewarded, and that extra credit tapering off at the end. Apparently his class sessions were usually pretty busy.

This panel was great as it ended up being a more open discussion of best practices for distance learning, with the presenter often saying, “That’s a really good idea. I should do that.” It was dynamic, and the tension between techie and teacher was completely erased. Good way to end the convention.

The biggest lesson I learned from attending the education panels at Linuxfest is that there is a right and wrong way to go about addressing educational technology. I went to two panels where the people leading it were not educators, and two where they were IT people turned teachers. In the former, the complete lack of relevance to education was painfully apparent and alienated the teachers in the audience, but in the latter, the mastery of both fields created an authentic dialogue about what works and what doesn’t with educational technology.

What this ultimately tells me is that there is a big void for people who speak education and IT. Hopefully more districts will see this and look into hiring these translators soon, especially when looking at distance and hybrid programs, as going into it without someone who can effectively combine pedagogical practices with IT is likely to end badly.