ICTlogy

Back in March 10th, 2006, I was asked to impart a workshop about Web 2.0 and diffusion of research. The workshop was improved, repeated and even published with a strong focus on teaching.

The subject quite caught on me and I’ve been working since to (a) strengthen the theoretical framework and (b) give it the “for development” bias that I’m so fond of. There’s quite a bunch or articles that I’ve been publishing here exploring ideas, doubts, thoughts about the issue — just on my previous article, for instance.

Finally, it has taken the appropriate shape and been published in the Knowledge Management for Development Journal, in an issue under the topic of Stewarding technologies for collaboration, community building and knowledge sharing in development, coordinated by Nancy White, Beth Kanter, Partha Sarker, Oreoluwa Somolu, Beverly Trayner, Brenda Zulu and Lucie Lamoureux. Having an article accepted — and commented — by such a team is something that makes you feel really good, as they all are people of reference in both the researcher and practitioner fields.

The full reference is:

Peña-López, I. (2007). “The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access”. In Knowledge for Management Journal, 3(1), 35-48. Amsterdam: KM4Dev Community. Retrieved July 30, 2007 from http://www.km4dev.org/journal/index.php/km4dj/article/view/92

On the other hand, a live presentation of the contents of this article will take place at the Web2forDev Conference in Rome next 25 to 27 September 2007.

Feedback welcome!

TOC:
Conferences 2.0
Why Academic Blogging
What Is Web Science
Acknowledgments

If I were asked to summarize everything that’s happened at the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme 2007 here at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society I would, undobtedly, quote Jonathan Zittrain in one of his comments past Thursday: Why did not Academia came up with Wikipedia?

To explain why, I can (1) draw a list of all the applications and/or online resources we used during the course, (2) write a little digression about academic blogging and (3) explain one of my recursive reflections during these days: what is Web Science.

Conferences 2.0

Speaking in public has changed, specially if you pretend the audience to interact. Solemn one way speeches are over; prettily packeted content is too. The full deployment of ways to interact with people and information during the course was astonishing. I might be forgetting some of them, but here comes a rough list:

• Presentation tools, such as PowerPoint or the like. Some speakers also used mind-mapping applications. Some of them uploaded here.
• The Live Question Tool, to publish questions on the fly why listening to the speaker
• Wiki, as the main reference, schedule and content manager of the seminar
• Blogs: many of them.
• Flickr, for the photos
• YouTube and other video streaming platforms to watch some footage
• del.icio.us, for the links
• BibCiter, for bibliographies…
• …and eMule and Ares to share them in PDF or other formats on P2P networks
• H2O Playlists, for academic references in general
• Instant messaging, to keep in touch with people home or students
• Skype, to call home
• One ring to rule them all: OII/Berkman 2007 Summer Doctoral Programme planet aggregator
• One ring to find them: Technorati
• One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them: Google Reader
• Facebook, with his corresponding group, to build and manage the social network
• doppler, for the followup geolocation followup
• Also for followup purposes and appointments Twitter or Upcoming
• In the meantime, some of the attendants are sharing their music tastes through Last.fm
• And, of course, there’s always plenty of e-mail.
• And SMSs
• And phone calls
• All these things on mobile phones, public phones (using fixed liines), handhelds, laptops and desktops either connected via wireless or LAN, some owned, some accesible at public points.
• Somebody even watched TV

And yes, most of them we used simultaneously all of the time, some of them were for post-conference purposes.

The fact: number of business cards delivered? Just one, to Samuel Klein in our visit to the OLPC Foundation.

The anecdote: Karoline Lukaschek asked me to borrow a pen for the card. I gave her a pen drive to download into it the photos on her camera card. Well, she just wanted to sign the greetings card for the Berkman staff. Weird.

Why Academic Blogging

The use and goals of these tools were many, but the main philosophy behind was absolutely the same: disclosure. Disclosure and engage in the conversation. As stated by John Palfrey himself the first day, blogging (and diffusion in general) will be the default; anyone interested in not to be blogged or whatever, should manifest it explicitly.

I still remember the reticences around when the MIT set up the OpenCourseWare project: nobody’s gonna enroll in your courses anymore, they said. Well, the reaction to this Berkman disclosure policy has been twofold and crystal clear:

• For those not being able to attend the course, infinite gratitude (I’ve got e-mails) for sharing the materials, the experiences, the reflections, etc.
• For those aiming to attend the course, no crowding out effect at all but the contrary: the awaiting of a long long year before the call for applications for SDP2008 is out. I’ve got e-mails too.

But besides this unselfish sharing of knowledge (I wasn’t actually being unselfish, but just taking notes on my geeky notebook: WordPress) the real thing has been networking. On one hand, the ones blogging during the seminars have created a densest grid of posts, interlinked ones to others, and by thus enriching one’s own posts about a subject or session.

On the other hand, some posts got out of the circle and were mentioned by some other people such as John Palfrey, Ethan Zuckerman or Doc Searls, to name some of the ones that linked to me. Other faculty linked other attendants as well.

And not just contact, but also good input, as Julen’s on the XXVIIth session about IP incentives and peer production.

Reversely, I could almost close the circle I opened when I first met online Tobias Escher, by meeting in person Helen Margetts and Ralph Schroeder, both working with him. The circle will actually close formally in September in York when I’ll meet Tobias himself.

What Is Web Science

This eagerness to use these many online tools leads me to my next topic of reflection. Because, somehow, I think it can be used as some kind of proxy to measure what has been one of the recurrent subjects of personal analysis these days.

Related to the Internet, in particular, and this ICT enhanced society, in general (informational society, information society, knowledge society… whatever), I believe there are two opposite approaches to do research about it.

The first one, the traditional approach, is taking the changes in the society as a second derivative: I do research in Intellectual Property and I found that the Internet is changing my field of knowledge, the target of my research, hence, I will study the interaction between Intellectual Property and the Internet.

Second, the one I’d call the Web Science approach and is better explained with an example: I want to explore the concept of the Digital Native (I actually do, specially his relationship with the concept of e-Awareness). To do so, I must know about psychology and neurosciences (as Mark Prensky did), about how technologies work (Web 2.0, usability, server-client technical relationships, AJAX), sociological implications (social networks, digital identities), economical (broadband diffusion, mobile penetration), legal (cybercrime, intellectual property, spam), political (civic engagement, hacktivism, e-democracy), education (e-portfolio, personal learning environments, long-life learning, e-learning, game-based teaching), communication (citizen journalism), art and culture (mashups, rip-mix-burn), and the longest et caetera ever.

People I know range from one endpoint to the other, being myself, philosophically, no doubt in one of the furthest edges of the Web Science approach. I don’t think there’s a best or a worst approach, but I also believe that:

1. Some aspects of today’s (and tomorrow’s even more) life can only be fully explained (if possible) through a Web Science approach, e.g. Digital Natives
2. Some other aspects can be perfectly be approached in the traditional way, but will require a “digital effort” that, if not done, no valid conclusions can emerge from such researches. Cybercrime is, all in all, crime, but it will be absolutely necessary to understand what an ISP or an IP is, what and how works digital watermarking or hashing or electronic certificates, the technical difference between phishingh and pharming. Or why e-Democracy and e-Governance will be “2.0” (and what this exactly means) or they just won’t be. Or why the number of secure servers is a good proxy to measure e-Business (I owe Michael Best pointing me to this last one, thank you!).

And I suspect that, besides our darkest geeky side, most of the scholars signing up to each and every new next killer app of the year just pretend to analyze things from the inside, to learn by doing, to catch up with our recent digital nationality.

The answer to the question Why did not Academia came up with Wikipedia? is, under this train of though, quite easy: we were far and outside. In another galaxy. In a dimension made out of atoms and time.

Acknowledgments

I can help but end this series of articles by thanking the people that made possible one of my best fortnights so far, both at the intellectual and emotional levels.

Amar Ashar, Suzanne Henry, Colin Maclay, John Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain, Marcus Foth, Urs Gasser and Ralph Schroeder — the core organizing committee, if I’m not wrong — deserve my highest gratitude, the one you pay by giving them your home keys and a bed in your best room when they’re around town, just that one.

The Faculty leading the seminars is one of that treasures you’d like to keep forever, specially when knowing that they came just for the pleasure of it — and how accessible, willing to share and how good listeners they were.

The attending students — my colleagues… my friends — are responsible for one of my worst headaches (knowledge overload) and heartaches (emotions overdose) ever. Never forgive you about that. I mean it. I just wish the hangover will last for long if not forever… or even get worse.

Last, but not least, I have a huge debt with Tim Kelly, Pere Fabra and Julià Minguillón for their support in me coming here. You all added up to make it possible: thank you, thanks a lot.

More Info

• My SDP Square Metre, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• Wrapping up: SDP, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• SDP 2007; My Final Report, by Joris van Hoboken
• Berkman Buzz, week of July 23, by Patrick McKiernan

Leads: Jonathan Zittrain, John Palfrey

We don’t know who uses Wikipedia, we don’t know what values does it vindicates

How do people actually use/abuse it?

• many kids use it without participating/understanding; are kids plagiarizing
• how easy is to become a Wikipedian: try participating earnestly; experiment with particular forms, like deleting articles; concerns about “going native”

Is wikipedia egalitarian?

• who is participating, excluded
• control of code – control of content
• abuse of those who give freely?

Does peer production make us into the Borg?

• effects of lack of singular authorship

Is Wikipedia accurate?

• citing Wikipedia as a source

Why did not Academia came up with Wikipedia? Is Academia losing the sense of what’s important? And what’s important right now? Maybe the health of the Network is an issue that should be urgently addressed (disclaimer: I fully agree, but it’s Jonathan Zittrain who says this at the gates of the publication of his next book The Future of the Internet – and How to Stop It ;)

Readings

More info

• Wikipedia’s Technological Obscurification: Three ways Wikipedia keeps 99% of the population from participating, by Jason Calacanis
• Thinking of Wikiing, by Daithí Mac Síthigh

Quick, brief introductions to tools used by researchers in the management of their… uh, life?

BibCiter

• http://bibciter.sourceforge.net
• by Ismael Peña-López

Free software bibliographic manager. Allows both management of bibliographies and publication on the net (RSS feed included)

Yep

• http://yepthat.com
• by Daithí Mac Síthigh

File manager. Mostly for PDFs you can tag. Mac version only.

LinkedIn

• http://linkedin.com
• by Marcus Foth

Social networking. Really effective as based on degrees of separation”

Dopplr

• http://dopplr.com
• by Marcus Foth

To manage one’s trips. Export to calendar by iCal. Shows who else is going to be in that place.

ClaimID

• http://claimid.com/
• by Fred Stutzman

User centered identity. Avoid inconsistent identities over different websites.

HyperPo

• http://tapor.ca
• by Peter Ryan

Text analysis. Frequencies of words, information about the text.

Dapper

• http://www.dapper.net/
• by Peter Ryan

Data mapper.

del.icio.us

• http://del.icio.us
• by Alla Zollers

Social bookmarking

ma.gnolia.com

• http://ma.gnolia.com
• by Alla Zollers

Social bookmarking. You can have groups

Student research seminar: Rachel Cobcroft

In his consideration of Verkeersbordvrij, Jonathan Zittrain poses the challenge of identifying the technical tools and social structures that inspire people to act humanely online. This presentation engages with the notions of philanthropy and gift giving in virtual communities, seeking to understand the factors that motivate members of Flickr.com to share their images under Creative Commons licensing. It seeks to identify the tipping point at which an individual’s focus is turned from their own ‘life blog’ towards participation in an online community, aspiring to collaborative, commons-based peer production. Investigating frameworks of P2P and integral theory and employing the methods of virtual ethnography, this research explores the way in which the wisdom of the crowd may be harnessed ethically and sustainedly, pointing towards best practice business models for web 2.0.

What’s like the framework that engages collective creation?

Factors influencing participation (4C)

• Convergence – Technical
• Community – Social
• Commons-based Creativity – Legal
• Commerce – Economic

Collaboration is the killer app
User-led development
The ‘produser’ (producer+user)
Life-caching

Motivations to Participate

Hemetsberger’s (2003) Motivational Framework:

• Task- and Product-Related motivation
• Long-term utilitarian goals and social significance
• Internalized group goals and services
• Socio-emotional Relationships

More info

• Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig
• Sharing Nicely and Wealth of Networks, by Yochai Benkler
• Why Hackers Do What They Do, by Karim Lakhani
• Peer to Peer Foundation, by Michel Bauwen; Cooperation Commons, by Howard Rheingold
• Fostering Cooperation on the Internet, by Andrea Hemetsberger
• ccMixter
• Rachel Cobcroft (2007) Open Your APIs: Flickr’s Perspectives on Play
• Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Rachel Cobcroft shares Flickr wisdom, by Daithí Mac Síthigh

Lead: Talha Syed

The main criticism Talha Syed makes is that it should be possible to shift the debate from the established mainstream (economic) discourse (for or against, but inside the system) and try and move towards new mental maps, new ways of thinking.

Premises of conventional approach

• homo aeconomicus: man is naturally narrowlyh self-regarding material gain
• preferences fixed, invariant
• policy is neutral

Premises of most critics

• heterogeneous rather than unitary motives
• but still relatively exogenous to policy
• policy should be neutral (efficiency)

Further departures

• heterogeneous
• but context-sensitive, exogenous to policy, culture
• normatively, neutrality untenable, undesirable

Pluralist motives

• intrinsic: internal drives and ambitions; enjoyment
• social: activity’s social contribution; peer approval/credit; social recognition/esteem
• extrinsic: prosperity, wealth; social status, hierarchy; power

We should ask ourselves whether it’s true that once you throw money on the table, the economical / homo aeconomicus / extrinsic reasons to create do crowd out the other two categories of motives. It usually has been stated that yes, but there are no serious positive analysis about this. Yochai Benkler might do right in describing what’s happening in the generative Internet, but he somehow manages to shape the whole thing into Liberalism. But, should it have to be this way? Is this the only way? Is there no alternative?

Context Sensitive

What mix of motives flourishes depends on which motives are:

• socially acknowledged, valued
• expressed or pursued by peers, rivals, leaders
• reinforced or undermined by institutional signals

And maybe there’s some room for policy makers and policies to reinforce or give incentives to one or another motive depending on the context given.

Open Science

• Sustaining foundational, exploratory research: markets under-incentive for these; provides a somewhat de-centralized alternative to state direction
• Relatively rapid dissemination: rapid growth; cutting down on reducing duplicative failures and successes
• Quality controls: less internal conflicts of interest; no property barrier to peer review (and strong incentives for it)
• Effective and cost-effective: scientists being motivated partly by pleasures of inquiry and desire for credit and satisfactions of social contribution contributes to effective performance (Henderson & Cockburn, 2001); also is cost-effective
• Intrinsic virtues of these motivations: sustaining such a a motivational culture is arguably worth valuing intrinsically, for its own sake, as part of what constitutes an attractive scientific culture and surrounding society

Crowding out

Raising money incentives can dampen non-monetary motives:

• undermining social meaning of a practice
• undermining responsibility, self-direction
• undermining self-esteem
• reducing overall gain from activity by making unavailable those benefits which simply can’t co-exist with money payment
• corroding non-monetary virtues

My reflections

• I think that for those policies to foster other motivations, we should somehow let entrepreneurs understand those policies as not ways to benefit dumping of one’s market. Actually, most reinforcements of IP rights/regulation are just reactions to, I guess, such a feeling.

Readings

More info

• Henderson, Rebecca; Cockburn, Iain M. (2001) “Publicly Funded Science and the Productivity of the Pharmaceutical Industry” In Adam B. Jaffe, Scott Stern, Joshua Lerner (Eds) Innovation Policy and the Economy. Cambridge: The MIT Press