This is a well deserved thank you to the organizers of the Space, Place, and Imagination conference last weekend at the University of Rhode Island.

I will post more about the conference soon, but I wanted to post some resources for those who attended my presentation (thank you).

• Annoymously ISO Experience – The original article that kicked off this research, including the “I missed the connection with DC” post
• Theoretical (Missed) Connections (including Video) – These are my notes from when I originally posted the video I showed during my presentation. It’s a nice overview of my research, and it is set too good music no less.
• Responses to the Video – A lot of people had questions about the creation of the video, and there were some funny stories. You can read about how this video resulted in some unexpected missed connections of my own.
• Bridges between the Real and Digital World – During my presentation, I tried to argue that craigslist can actually shape the real world in ways that we might not expect. Here are two posts showing how this has happened, one about night clubs, and one featuring some incredible artists.
• The abstract for my presentation

If that list doesn’t satiate, site back and enjoy the film piece all over again!

I am off to the University of Rhode Island! This weekend I am presenting at the Space, Place and the Imagination conference. craigslist will be the subject of choice, and if you are feeling left out you can read the abstract here.

I will be on a panel featuring some really interesting analysis of identity in spaces. The other presenters are predominantly focused on literature, so I will have to report back once I hear their presentations, skim their papers, and realize its all over my head.

Because my presentation is based on an ongoing research project, I thought I would provide a creative summary instead of a already outdated 20 page paper. Click on the thumbnail, and take a peek.

UPDATE: The conference peeps called me today and asked if it would be okay to move my presentation to the session on “Hostile Spaces.” I paused for a moment, smiled while thinking about Disciplinary Regulation, and said “Absolutely.” This is going to be fun.

Apparently Jones Soda has decided that the best way to enjoy your burger and soda is in lulz. Yup, that is right. Those furry, yet grammatically challenged creatures are now pimping soda, leaving the internet community saying “Do no want!” (and looking for a bucket).

I once dated someone who famously said “When the Ann Taylor moves in, the gentrification is complete.” With the kittens selling out/corporately appropriated, will LOLartists be moving on to a trendier meme? Or will they open an Ann Taylor charge card and participate in the label competition?

via The Slog (read the comments, they are amazing)

Ready for something amazing? This last Friday I got to see what other people think about craigslist for a change.

Civilian Art Projects held an opening reception for a show titled “craigslist” featuring work inspired by the site and its occupants (Read on Civilian’s website here, and Steve’s coverage, and awesome photos, here, and then my Flickr photos here).

The curatorial write up captured exactly what I have been arguing over the past year:

A curious outcome of our global internet society is that while we are more hyper-connected than ever, our identities have become increasingly malleable to the point of anonymity… Anonymity can bring out the adventurous side of people, particularly when it comes to exploring socially transgressive situations. In this exhibition, the artists take full advantage of this growing social identity phenomenon and investigate how anonymity generates a new kind of portraiture.

This was readily apparent in Jason Zimmerman‘s pieces. (more…)

(This is the fourth post of a multi-post series on the relationship between the real and digital world. To read them all, start here, and continue here and here.)

“Does anyone know when the new ‘primetime’ is?” Dr. Tinkcom posed this question one day during a critical theory seminar. We had been discussing advertising and the impact of the Internet on traditional television viewership. Several students hypothesized that busy schedules had shifted prime-time back a couple hours. Others, myself included, wondered if it had been obliterated all together.

“Its between 8 and 9 in the morning, and 5 and 7 at night,” he answered, but then asked: “Does anyone know why?” Considering my own penchant for anything in syndication, I figured it was due to shows like The Simpsons and King of the Hill that show across the nation during the 5-7 time block. It was one of my quieter peers who answered his question correctly. “Commuters,” she said simply. (more…)

(This is the third post of a multi-post series on the relationship between the real and digital world. To read them all, start here, and continue here.)

Say you spot a cute guy across the dance floor, and try to make a move, only to get blocked by his posse. It happens to us all. This is a prime candidate for a Missed Connection, right? “blocked by posse at Town – m4m – 24.” Town, that new DC gay club that is harvesting club kids’ personal information, is interested in a more immediate response. My friend John brought me up to speed.

“So as soon as they scan your driver’s license, they slap a number on you.” The look on my face must have been priceless. Not only are they scanning you like a number, but then they actually slap a number on you. In this case, however, the numbers aren’t for Town. Instead, they are for Town’s “users.”

“You can just look at some guy’s number,” John continued, “and then write a message on a piece of paper, and you hand it to this guy, and he types it up. Then the message goes up on these screens in the club. So like ‘342, you are totally hot – let me buy you a drink – 126.'” (more…)

(This is the second post of a multi-post series on the relationship between the real and digital world. To read them all, start here.)

Last year I attended a session at the Aspen Institute featuring John Clippinger of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. His book, A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity, was about to hit the shelves and so a conversation ensued about how digital identity (in the technical sense) was transmitted and authenticated in digital environments. What struck me about the group, however, was the absence of discussion about protocols and authentication schemas. Instead, this group was looking for examples from outside of technology (policy, biology, psychology, etc.) to help guide technical efforts. It was not an easy conversation.

“The problem with identity on the internet,” Clippinger said, cutting through the palatable frustration in the room (and paraphrased of course), “is the same as going to a bar.” The room held its breath, waiting to see the connection. “When you hand the bouncer your driver’s license, how much of that information does he need?” (more…)

What is the relationship between ‘real’ and digital world? Anyone who reads my blog knows that much of my research revolves around this very question, but I wanted to return to the topic explicitly. It seems that in many recent conversations I have been arguing that they are tightly coupled. Castranova seems to agree with me:

There is certainly a relationship between the synthetic world and the real one… people are crossing all the time,… carrying their behavioral assumptions and attitudes with them. (Edward Castranova, Synthetic Worlds)

While I feel it is theoretically sound, and have spent most of my time discussing implications of this connection, my more pragmatic peers have been looking for an example. I can’t blame them. When I argue, for example, that the m4m section on craigslist is a proxy for the gay community, they want to know where I get off making such a claim. If that isn’t enough to get them riled up, I frequently continue on to insist that the distinctions between online and offline selves are not as tidy as we might like.

We are going to trying something new over the next couple of posts, and try to build out these concepts with some interesting examples based on recent occurrences locally in DC and across the broader interwebs. What is on the agenda? Privacy, relationships, and Missed Connections, of course.

(Image credit: SecondLife via abcNews, and on a side note… I probably need to invest some more time there.)

A quick note here to point out Google’s latest approach to breaking down social network data warehousing.

One of the current struggles of which all social networking evangelists are aware is centered around who owns your data. Google’s embryonic OpenSocial seems to hold some promise there.

What is sometimes missed, but becoming more pervasive as we are now users of multiple different social networking sites, is how to create relationships beyond the boundaries of Facebook, MySpace or Friendster. Google seems to have a solution via their SocialGraph API that would let you scrape various online spaces in order to navigate interpersonal relationships across various platforms.

To top it all off, they gave us a nice video!

The links are based on XFN and FOAF markup, so I can see some adoption problems there. My blogging software allows me to manage these, but it certainly isn’t foremost on my mind. Facebook app, anyone?

Read more about it at Google Code (link), and thanks to WeSeePeople for catching this.

A little bit of humor is needed for this Friday. Remember those LOL Theorists? (here and here) I thought I would try my hand.

These two theorists are the perfect signifiers of my week. Critical theory and economics. Same theory, completely different outcomes, leaving you with no where to go. Yep, that kind of sums up this week. What’s one to do? Sit back and LOL, I guess.

(Thanks Patrick for loosing sleep for the sake of the lulz.)