IMD Forum for 2/18/09: "Social Computing"
Discussion leaders: Nahil Sharkasi & Diane Tucker
Time: Wednesday, February 18, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)
Discussion Topic: Tonight's seminar will focus on the topic of "Social Computing" raised in the previous two seminar presentations by Warren Sack and Andreas Kratky. Logs for the backchannel discussion can be reviewed on the respective talk announcements..
Abstract: Social computing – the dynamic ways in which technologies and social behavior reflect and affect each-other -- has become pervasive in this era in which the network is the dominant metaphor for everything from information technology to international relations and as Hillary Clinton works to make the network and its associates – crowdsourcing and collaboration – into bases for American foreign policy in the Obama Administration (http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/02/117345.htm )
Social computing's ubiquity has arguably inhibited our acknowledging the range of transformations linked to its rise-- e.g. changes in the geographies of networks, the economies of processing, and the topographies of expertise – and prevented our realizing that the peer production it facilitates constitutes a new mode of production. We'll talk about each of them as well as consider how radically what Benkler calls "commons-based peer production" promises to overturn businesses founded in more industrial models.
Readings/Watchings for this discussion:
TED Talks - Howard Rheingold: Way-new Collaboration
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus" by Clay Shirky
http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html
TED Talks - Yochai Benkler: Open Source Economies
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html
Do We Need a New Internet by John Markoff
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/weekinreview/15markoff.html?emc=eta1
Other recommended Readings are:
M. Ito, "Amateur Cultural Production and Peer-to-Peer Learning"