Scott Fisher

Are there some social habits that make people use some technologies than others?; Or are there some new cool technologies that create new social habits?; Or both? What are the influences and limits between both approaches?; Are there some migrations from some technologies or locations for satisfying some social necessities? Any ideas?

Has anyone seen the studies done on how cellphone rings have affected the songs of birds?
I'm definatly interested in how one's relationships and day changes due to the impact of all of the new forms of portable media. Also the studies on how relationships have changed from a few "deep" relationships to many "shallow" ones.
It should also be interesting to see how the American style of IMing affects how cells work in respect to text messages. Will all cellphones tend towards that trend or stick with the styles already set forth in Japan and other countries.

Also we should use the wiki to have a library database of various links to research and other such info. Not sure how comprehensive our library is in the ZML and Annenberg.

The major change I could see from addition of cell phone pictures and cameras is that people are sharing any bit of information now, instead of what's important. I guess as bandwith becomes cheaper, there's less of a censoring process over what needs to be communicated.

From what I saw, people were sharing any single thought that popped in to their heads. "Oh look - a donut". And suddenly, the picture of that donut is being shared with people all around the world. I wonder if that would change if there were a way to check to see how many people had gone online to see my donut link.

When I'm talking to somebody on the phone, I'm usually doing something else at the same time. But I assume that the person on the other end of the line is focusing 100% of their attention on me. Realisticaly, I know that the person on the other end of the line is doing the exact same thing I am. Being able to generate all this extra data on a cell phone sounds like it's a very similar experience. Here's all this stuff from my brain, and I'm going to pretend you care, but you've got better things to do than to see what I ate for breakfast.

What struck me as I was listening to the various ways people were communicating was that the importance of what people are communicating is dropping. I suppose that as bandwith gets cheaper, there's no reason to think about what you're saying, since you can say it all anyway.

I've always thought that video phones never really took off because they disallow the basic assumption of using a phone. When I'm on the phone with somebody, I'm usually doing about a million other things, but I just assume that the person on the other end of the line is paying complete attention to me. Realistically, they're doing the exact same thing as me. It seems like camera phones are allowing people to document every little detail about their life, and send it out almost instantaneously for everybody else to see. I'm going to call this the "oh look, a bench" phenomenon. I wonder how many people actually take the time to look through all that information, when most of it is bound to have the importance of white noise. But, when I'm doing it, I'm going to safely assume that all my pictures are being looked at meticulously.

There is a bird at my mom's house that has a song that sounds like a car alarm. It's not like you could mistake it for a car alarm going off, but it definately has a similiar pattern.

But that's not important right now.

As of this moment, my Nintendo DS can play video games, movies, music and display text files and photos, thanks to a third-party piece of plastic about the size of an original gameboy game. Thanks to it, I can carry just the DS and have a good deal of entertainment at my fingertips.

Cell phones with cameras, portable video game systems that can play movies... even internet-enabled refrigerators, creative minds keep coming up with new (and sometimes odd) ways to combine tools we begin to depend on... sometimes creating the demand by making it so accessible. For example, I'm sure that there are a number of people out there who are taking more photos since they got a camera phone than they did before they had it.

They have a video phone device that works on a Gameboy Advance as well... plug it into a phone line and you can send and receive streaming video over the phone with someone else who also has one. Not sure if that's relevant... but it seemed like it to me at the time. :)

What's my point in all this rambling? Not sure... but I think it's that more and more the things we want to have with us will be made smaller and combined to form new and exciting pieces of tech. And I, for one, look forward to using my internet-enabled, toothcleaning, mp3 playing, video game console: the iBrush.

All the young people that are using these technologies demonstrates the need for innovative ideas with these devices (not limited to Brazil’s plethora of examples). The time is not far off where visual media to document people’s lives will be the primary method people use to document and share their stories. It will be common knowledge for this future generations to not only understand the intricacies of this “new” picture taking phenomenon, but they will understand how to create, script, and invent new ways to utilize visual communication. For those interested in this progressive medium, the advantages of studying usage trends in different cultures, may find a way to bridge the difficulties that a language barrier presents. If I could effectively communicate with someone from another country about their culture, and they were interested in the same, the use of visuals may be the key to truly creating a universal language.

It'd be interesting to hear from the guy who decided to put a camera onto a phone, and what sort of behavior they expected.

The interesting point that I pulled from this seminar was how differences in culture shaped the adaptation of technology. It was interesting to learn that because Japan was slow to adopt PCs and broadband internet in the home, the majority of the population picked up the cell phone as the primary means of connecting to each other and to internet services. Because of this mobile service, and a culture built around SMS flourished. While in the US, the PC and broadband was well establish in American home, people engaged in broadband services, while mobile services would not as quickly be adopted.

Internet enabled refrigerators eh Brazil?

Would be interesting if it scanned all the food you had in your fridge and then looked for sales at the local stores. Also told you if you were running out and made a list for you that it could bluetooth or e-mail to your phone, PDA, or whatever mobile device.

Maybe hook you up with some good nutritional recipies.

As with all newer technologies, adaption increases when the price decreases. When the 3G and post 3G phones hit the market with their various functionalities (mp3 players, high stream video, am/fm tuners, easy web browsing) people will be more connected than ever- and this is a good thing. There should be no reason one's phone can't control your television, recieve GPS informtion about the area your in, and send off text messages with a better solution than T1.

As Brazil suggested, people who may not have been taking pictueres often may be doing so more often here in the states- and this is due to this functionality being included on the most basic of phone plans i the US. The same will follow suit, when phone with a new host of function appear cheaper. All in all, people like to goof off with their technology- its fun.

I am a fan of the whole “live” documentary everyone’s life on the web “Justin Hall” type of society we are headed towards. However, I do see some barriers to overcome if this way of life is going to be for the masses. The biggest problem I have with organizing my camera photos to flickr is tagging. It seems tagging is the key for the media to be useful to anyone besides the photo taker. There needs to be a better way to tag multiple photos. It can be as simple as being able to set the tag in your phone for all the photos you will take in a period of time. For example at GDC you would set “game developers rant” then subsequently all photos would be auto tagged with “game developers rant” until you changed the tag. Or, it could be as complex as adding facial recognition to camera phones and have the computer auto tag the photos. If RFID tags were in certain rooms your phone could read them and then use the facial recognition software to completely tag photos. “Korba, Brazil, Stein ZML” Also It would be helpful if the photos were uploaded automatically after snapping them.

I am vehemently against the concept called "datasmog." It's just what it sounds like. I kind of have to side with Mike Stein. IT's not all worth sharing, people. In fact, I rarely use the IMD flickr site for this exact same reason. I don't want to sift through every picture someone took with their camera at seminar for the same reason people don't like to sit through all 200 slides of Mount Rushmore the Joneses took on their family vacation. Some of these photographs are not good. Objectively. Not good. Placing the burden on me to edit through all this smog instead of leaving the burden with the artist is too democratic. You're not an artist at that point. You're an infodump. LEaving it "up to the viewer to choose the ones that are important to them" is a cop-out and relieves the photographer of the scary duty of taking a risk and standing by the choices they made.

over the course of working with her in the netrpublics reasearch cohort, mimi's work has had a very significant impact on my own personal research vectors. i have been particualrly inspired by her research on amateur cultural production where she introduced me to the field of fan studies and the writings of henri jenkins in particular. we also read some of her work on "co-presence" through mobile phones in japan early in the semester, a piece about the impact of these devices on the work culture at a large copy company.

my own thought, in reading the former, was that a critical analysis of the impact of these technologies may best be approached through reading it against Deleuze's Society of Control thesis. a quote from that essential piece of theory that may be relevant to sudents of this very program: "Many young people strangely boast of being "motivated"; they re-request apprenticeships and permanent training. It's up to them to discover what they're being made to serve, just as their elders discovered, not without difficulty, the telos of the disciplines. The coils of a serpent are even more complex that the burrows of a molehill."