faraway nearness

"Two virtual places may be "separated" by only a keystroke, but their inhabitants will never meet." Kenneth J. Gergen (2000). Technology, Self and the Moral Project. in Identity and Social Change.

mobilities & open data

Reading Timothy Cresswell (2006), On the Move, and continuing with visual data collection of information artefacts that people carry (including mine) over time.

Not all data collected for my study is open (following participants will) but the ones that are open keep me wondering why they attract so many visitors. Always thought that only me and the people that are participating in the study would have any interest in the photos. Curiosity? An opportunity to look inside private places?

Implications for the study still need to be fully understood, namely the ones that deal with the agents awareness of wider visibility and interest in the photos, beyond research purposes.

will you?

Metcalfe, Mike (2003). Author(ity): The Literature Review as Expert Witnesses [45 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 4(1), Art. 18, [40 paragraph]:

"My excuse for not presenting any authors' credentials is that I am not saying, "X is true because Smith said so." I hoped I was merely letting the reader know where I sourced an interesting idea and implicitly where they might look if they want to read more on the topic. LATOUR (1987) suspects that most of you will not."

transdisciplinarity is about transgressing boundaries

Helga Nowotny (2009), The Potencial of Transdisciplinarity:

"Here I want to assert that knowledge, as well as expertise, is inherently transgressive. Nobody has anywhere succeeded for very long in containing knowledge. Knowledge seeps through institutions and structures like water through the pores of a membrane. Knowledge seeps in both directions, from science to society as well as from society to science. It seeps through institutions and from academia to and from the outside world. Transdisciplinarity is therefore about transgressing boundaries. Institutions still exist and have a function. Disciplines still exist and new ones arise continuously from interdisciplinary work."

Visual Research Conference

For some time now that i feel that i need to know more about the use of visuals for research. Lack of «local» peers to talk about the use visuals in research and the implications of those for the research design, have made me go back to readings... but never really able to discuss what I read.

Just now, a friend of mine, also doing her research, sent me a link to Visual Sociology. They have an open call (till March 30) for an event that will take place in Bologna, July 20-22, this year.

Apart from not knowing how can I afford going in there, the main issue is getting to prepare my contribution and facing that this would be a great opportunity to learn with other people using visuals for research... and a great opportunity to change my long time fears of talking about my work that turn into procrastination.

Thinking, Doing and Publishing Visual Research: the state of the field? Bologna, Italy, July 20-22, 2010.

Although all sessions are interesting, the ones that address more questions I've been doing to myself are:

«Theory of the image»:

- Panel 1, Visual Mobile Landscapes, because it addresses the issues concerning how mobility is perceived (or mobilities like explained in Urry). I'm not only dealing with artefacts (mobile phones being one of them) but I'm also trying to «capture» what kind of mobilities do workers face for getting work done and how do they perceive it. Historical context is also of important and it is addressed.

- Panel 2, Sociology of the Visual, would be great when I can present the results of my research. But I would like to be expose to research done using visuals in order to have a feel of the problems, solutions and options that people using it as a method face.

«Methodology»

- Panel 7, Integrating fieldwork methodologies using Net and its Tools, cause I feel that I don't need to be re-inventing the wheel when finding/learning how to use existing tools and adapting them to my ongoing needs (although it is one of the things that I like most and that also contributes for what others perceive as procrastination)

- Panel 10, Methodological issues of Visual Data Collection, Production and Presentation, cause I have accumulated so many questions during visual data collection and accompanying readings that I feel like jelly when it turns out to justify the need of visuals as an integral part of the basis of my research set in Information Systems.

«Fieldwork»

- Panel 22, Doing Work, a lot of issues in here, but one of the main connections is about «visible» and «(un)visible» work. When we use visuals we bring the «unvisible» visible by way of image... I'm also dealing with use of information artefacts in «private spaces» that by way of documenting visuals become not-private anymore. «Doing work» anywhere is also an issue for conducting fieldwork and, more often then not, I keep asking myself how to have a more robust work?...

And also the panel 27, that deals with representations in visual research and the need for reflexivity. Trying to address this on my research by expliciting my practices, making visuals of my own artefacts in work context but still, not knowing how to integrate that as part of one of the research layers.

continuous present

"When a photograph is situated in the present tense and is treated as a realist representation, a particular relationship between the text, the image and the ethnographic context is constructed. The specificity of the photographic moment, set in the past, is lost and instead the photograph is situated in a continuous present." Sarah Pink (2009). Doing Visual Ethnography. Sage, p.150. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

«I draw to better understand things»

David Macaulay, TED Talks.

social artefacts

From ongoing research project Networks and Mobility in Everyday life: Gustavo Cardoso, Maria do Carmo Gomes, Rita Espanha and Vera Araújo (200?), Mobile Society: mobile phones and social change 2006-2008

"Although cell phones are usually considered mere instruments at their owners’ service, they are also social artifacts. As a communication channel, they support the relationship with others. But, more than this, cell phones communication patterns is influenced by the social context in which it is used, and, as it can be activated from anywhere, at any time, cell phones took up also an active social role. But who communicates with whom? What is the structure of social networks created by communication through cell phones? Is cell phones use connected to a borderline blur between social contexts and individual practices, as our daily roles intertwine?"

(...)

"The present study allowed evaluating the level of Portugal involvement in the Mobile Communication Society, highlighting the main differences between socio demographic groups within the area of several use contexts. On the other hand, it contributed to identify user profiles, enabling to foresee the development path on this sector, where everyday new possibilities emerge. Its major contribution will be perhaps the opening of a discussion about the need to analyze mobility role in general, and cell phones in particular, in today’s society."

in LINI - Lisbon Internet and Networks Institute

"Does this sound familiar?"

A piece by Nick Wingfield, on the Wall Street Journal (found via Lilia in my Friendfeed :):

"At the office, you've got a sluggish computer running aging software, and the email system routinely badgers you to delete messages after you blow through the storage limits set by your IT department. Searching your company's internal Web site feels like being teleported back to the pre-Google era of irrelevant search results. At home, though, you zip into the 21st century." [added the bold]

It's also an evidence based on the data I'm collecting. But not in the Information Systems literature, where the research work «assumes» that workers use (only) the organizational  systems to get work done. «Assumes» in here refers to the fact that personal artefacts are not part of the conceptual models of Information Systems (IS) nor are the other spaces that workers use to get work done. Maybe this can be seen as deliberate absence of something (John Law, 2004).

Inforgs for The Edge Informavore

Food for though: discussions on The Edge have the transcript of a talk with Frank Schirrmacher, The Age of the Informavore ["The term informavore characterizes an organism that consumes information. It is meant to be a description of human behavior in modern information society, in comparison to omnivore, as a description of humans consuming food."], and short note to bring Luciano Floridi Inforgs to The Edge discussion.

Luciano Floridi (2009). The Philosophy of Information, its Nature and Future Developments. Special issue of The Information Society, dedicated to "The Philosophy of Information, its Nature and Future Developments", vol. 25(3):

"We become mass-produced, anonymous entities among other anonymous entities, exposed to billions of other similar inforgs online. So we self-brand and re-appropriate ourselves in cyberspace by blogs and facebook entries, homepages, youtube videos, and flickr albums. We use and expose information about ourselves to become less informationally indiscernible."

Inforg, connected informational organisms. Detailed explanation in Floridi, L. (2007), "A Look into the Future Impact of Ict on Our Lives", The Information Society, vol. 23(1), pp. 59-64.

"The most obvious way in which the new ICTs are re-ontologizing the infosphere concerns (a) the transition from analogue to digital data and then (b) the ever-increasing growth of our digital space."

"(...) a quieter, less sensational and yet crucial and profound change in our conception of what it means to be an agent. We are all becoming connected informational organisms (inforgs). This is happening not through some fanciful transformation in our body, but, more seriously and realistically, through the re-ontologization of our environment and of ourselves."

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Would like very much to connect to Leonor's thoughts about PI and listen to her reflections about it. Are you there?...

Why Personal Information Management (PIM) matters?

“Learning to be intelligent starts by learning to manage information.” Choo, 2003

idiosyncrasies and information behaviour in teams

Hyldegård, J. (2009). "Personality traits and group-based information behaviour: an exploratory study" Information Research, 14(2) paper 402:

"(...) Many studies exist on information behaviour in groups or teams (e.g., Case 2007), and a number of influencing variables have been identified, such as role, complexity of work task and social cost. Building upon this previous research it is hypothesised that the mere group setting in focus here will influence as well as mediate between individuals’ personality traits and their information behaviour."

technologies as cultural artefacts

Cornford, Tony (2003) Information systems and new technologies: Taking shape in use. In: Avgerou, Chrisanthi and La Rovere, Renata Lèbre, (eds.) Information systems and the economics of innovation, pp. 162-177.

Woolgar, Steve (1996). Technologies as Cultural Artefacts. In Dutton, William and Peltu, H. Malcolm, (eds.) Information and communication technologies, pp. 87-102.