Watching You Watch Me!! (…on Facebook)

Theory: FOUCAULT

Michel Foucault described an obvious change in society where individuals are increasingly formed into an object of knowledge, and governments regulate populations through the use of “Bio-politics” and “Bio-power”. Foucault describes the notion of these terms as “a set of materials, elements and techniques that serve as weapons, relays, communication routes and supports for the power and knowledge relations that invest human bodies and subjugate them by turning them into objects of knowledge”(Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1977). He sees the increasing documentation of individuals as a form of this power, which serves the purpose of chronicling past and present tendencies and essentializing them to the individual, in the service of predicting future tendencies (Humphreys, The consumer as Foucauldian object of knowledge, 2006). By noting this change in society he uses Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon model, which is a prison design that allows an ‘omnipresent’ observer to observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched or not, as a metaphor for society. In short, individuals are increasingly being documented and thus turned into objects of knowledge, with a panoptic society in which these objects of knowledge are potentially under constant observation, as a consequence.

These theories give great significance to the analysis and understanding of the role of modern information technologies in society. Electronic technologies are seen to be intensifying the capacity and ubiquity of surveillance, creating new forms of social control (Ajana, Surveillance and Biopolitics, 2005). Through these technologies our physical bodies are being shadowed by an increasingly comprehensive ‘data body’, which can be seen as a compilation of all your personal digital information. In this sense, Web 2.0 applications, like social networking sites, seem to drive the creation and stimulate the growth of these data bodies, because individuals are publishing increasing amounts of personal data and information on the internet. With the growth of the amount of accessible personal data and information on a growing amount of individuals, the possibility for observing people without them knowing they are being observed, is made easier then ever before.

In such a model of power, the state, who wants to collect data about their citizens in order to increase the potential to identify threats to society, is no longer the sole agent of control. But individuals and communities themselves engage in their own (self)monitoring practices through certain regulatory mechanisms which Foucault described as ‘technologies of the self’; “a process of responsibilisation through which individuals are made in charge of their own behavior, competence, improvement, scrutiny and well-being” (Ajana, Surveillance and Biopolitics, 2005). So, Even though new, Web 2.0 like, technologies increase the possibility for the mass surveillance and monitoring of individuals by governments, the individuals themselves create and maintain the information which is used for their monitoring, and engage in surveillance and monitoring practices themselves. And so, as contrary to the idea of a panoptic society where few observe many, a synopticon is established in which the many watch the few. You watching me and me watching you watch me.

Analysis: FACEBOOK

The analysis of Web 2.0 social networking sites confirms these theories. Let’s take a closer look at the social networking website Facebook. Facebook enables users to create a personal profile and a comprehensive network of friends. It offers many other functionalities like chatting, leaving comments, using self-made sub-applications, tagging pictures and it provides users with a live feed on the online behavior of the people within your network. The main functionalities I’ll be focussing on are the last two mentioned here.

When pictures are uploaded to an album within the profile, the faces of the people on the picture can be tagged to the identity/profile of that particular individual. When tagged, the picture is automatically placed in or linked to a collection folder on that persons profile, where all the pictures in which that person is tagged are stored. This way my friends can upload a picture of me to their profile, tag my identity to this picture and the picture automatically becomes visible in the collection folder on my profile. The live feed facebook provides, will generate a message and feed it to every single user within my friend network. Everyone will be instantly notifified about the event that I’ve been tagged in a picture. The feed also supplies people with the abundant information on what the one friend comments about the other and who becomes friends with who.

Privacy? What privacy? Everyone within the networkof the other, whether friend, colleague or computer bot can track each others facebook behavior, through the live feed facebook provides its users, synopticism to the fullest. Next to that, my face is exploited to the world and inextricably linked to my databody. With the potential uses of facial recognition technologies in the back of my mind, I can imagine the possibilities of automated mass identification in the real world through CCTV circuits, and thus the “constant” observation and monitoring of individuals. Panopticism to it’s fullest.

An Easy Way to Meet Hot Chicks…Using ‘Tagged’

Lot’s of research has been done on “new” digital environments, also known as Social Network Sites (SNS), which enable people to display themselves publicly through the use of personal profile space. Danah Boyd, a well respected researcher on this defines these sites as:

Web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

Scholars from a variety of disciplinary fields have examined Social Network Sites in order to understand the practices, implications, culture, and meaning of the sites, as well as the users’ engagement with them. One thing is sure and instantly noticed from whichever angle or disciplinary field you look at the sites. SNS’s have a very promising feature for everyone who uses the software; that is the ease to search for, find and meet other people. Whether searching for a friend or a complete stranger, SNS’s enable individuals to locate others online. Whether looking for old classmates, people who share interests or just simply searching for hot chicks, these digital environments make it possible in an easy and sometime fun way.

Take the social network site Tagged, which allows users to send messages, leave comments, browse photos, watch videos, play games, give tags and chat. Just like any other SNS, the user needs to create a personal profile. Age, gender, location of residence and other personal information can be filled in and later displayed on the profile. There is space for users to upload pictures and videos, and to leave comments on the profile or pictures of other people. But next to these super basic things, tagged has an interesting, fun and very easy to use applications to assist people in finding and meeting others. It’s called “Meet Me”.

Using Meet Me is extremely simple. The user enters the preferences which the search engine uses to find people. After (optionally) specifying gender, age, country, location and city name the search task can begin. The engine filters users according to the specified information and displays one by one the profile picture (with some additional information) of a person who meets the search criteria on the screen. The user now has the option to click on YES if the profile picture displayed is liked, and NO is the profile picture is disliked. After this click (on yes or no) a next profile picture of another person is displayed and the same action as before can take place. With this easy to use click and meet system users can scan through a huge amount of profile pictures in a short amount time, searching for people he or she wants to meet, judging only on physical appearance.

When clicked on YES, that person is automatically added to a “Yes List”. Here a link to and an overview of all the profiles of the people the user has clicked YES on are collected. The magic happens when a person a user clicked YES on also clicks YES on that user’s profile picture. Now both users have clicked YES on each other, stating they would like to meet each other. When this happens a Match is created. Every match is then kept in the “Matches” list. So the user has a clear overview of all the people with which a match is created.

This is a good example of an extremely easy and according to its users also fun and effective way to meet new people. It shows that maintainers of Social Network Sites can come up with a variety of types of services which provide the user the ability to “articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection with” (Dana Boyd’s 2nd aspect of SNS’s). In this particular case, an extremely basic method is provided to the users with a reasonable high account of effectiveness incorporated with an element of fun.

So… If you want to meet some hot chicks (or guys of course) in an area near you (or an area for you to choose), Tagged provides you with an easy to use application to find people that meet your physical taste and standards. Go forth and click!

Twitter, The Aphorism & Semantic Analysis

Twitter
What are you doing?

Twitter allows us to broadcast (“Tweet”) the answer to this question for the rest of the world to view. Using 140 characters or less, twitter users can communicate their thoughts, ideas, links to external web pages or just any type of message or any form of textual expression to a global audience. This form of “microblogging” has increased in popularity dramatically since its release in october 2006. Thanks to its ease of use and its ‘addicting’ factor, countless users in a wide variety of countries use twitter to generate an ever increasing amount of information on thoughts, opinions and occupations, creating a fluid network of information exchange in real-time. Because of these properties twitter holds the ingredients to be(come) a reliable platform for doing research stretched across multiple disciplinary fields. In this blog post i’ll discuss certain approaches for doing research on microblogging and aspects associated with microblogging.

The psychology of aphoristic writing
What do you mean?

Because of the fact that users are limited to using 140 characters to express themselves, twitter becomes in a sense a platform for aphoristic writing and communication. The aphorism being “a phrased statement of a truth or an opinion” or in my own words, (expressed on twitter), the aphorism is a way of using few words to convey valuable meaning. Using short sentences in expressing one’s self will result, as I believe, in communicating easy to understand and sometimes even powerful and useful meaning. Psychological research may create insights on this matter and can point to the hypothesis that limiting the amount of characters a person has to express the mind, results in the transmition of significantly valuable data, information, knowledge and wisdom. This can be valuable for use and comprehension on a variety levels, like:
• opinion polling
• Trend watching
• Human behavioural science
• (inter)national security
• surveillance, monitoring and tracking.

Of coarse everyone expresses themselves differently, but what if there is a deep/underlying psychological principle in all of us which determines that expressing ourselves in less will convey more. Research will show, time will tell. In the mean time, keep on keeping on.

Methods of research used
What do you want to know?

Being a fluid network of information exchange, twitter proved to provide a valuable resource of information for doing social research in real-time. Because of the opinions expressed on the platform the public opinion on certain subjects can be monitored and polled (in real-time). Take for example the ‘research’ done on twitter during the superbowl in 2008, “TwitterBowl”. As explained by the ‘researchers’: “TwitterBowl is a real-time social experiment where the audience rates million dollar advertisements in real time using Twitter”. Here users can rate the commercials they see while they are seeing them, providing a live feed on their opinions. Even though this wasn’t an official experiment it does show the potential twitter has, to become a real-time opinion tracking device to be used by anyone. As said about TwitterBowl: “but it’s not for anything official, just another way for social media to be an overlay where we take charge, where we control, and where we voice our opinions”.

The downside of this type of research is the method used to analyse the incoming information. In total this experiment received more then 2500 Tweets which needed analysis. The Tweets were hand copied into a spreadsheet then analysed one-by-one which is a serial exhaustive method and a complete strain on the person having to do it. Just imagine the amount of work to be done when there are tens of thousands of updates (coming in every second) that need to be analysed? The need for tools that automatically analyse the incoming information and generate the results in easy to interpret reports, would be essential for doing this type of social research on Twitter. Make way for tools that enable semantic text analysis.

Semantic text analysis, Tools that enable
“Was heißt Aufklärung?”

We need the proper tools to be able to effectively analyse the vast amounts of data and information generated on the web. Semantic search and analysis help us doing just that. Through advanced linguistic software, generated information can not only be categorized and retrieved, but it can also extract meaningful entities within the information which help the understanding of the information, rather then merely producing search results. Semantic search improves traditional Web searching by linking and defining information in a way that provides more effective discovery. It reaches beyond today’s single hyperlink connection into many different kinds of relations between resources. One way to accomplish this advanced search method is by using eXtensible Markup Language (XML), the standard for defining data elements on the Web. And because every piece of information generated on twitter is instantly coded into XML, these tools have a perfect workspace within the twitter domain.

So, what’s really going on here? Scientists, Companies, Governments and ordinary people are all interested in knowing what is really going on here. Twitter enables us to provide the world with (sometimes and only for some) an interesting, relevant and meaningful information feed, creating a fluid and dynamic network of thoughts, ideas, actions links and expressions. The need to extract and analyze important and relevant information has become prominent, so the tools to enable this have been designed and put into practice. Whether you’re a scientist doing research, a company or government observing trends, polling opinions and securing the nation or just an ordinary person using and abusing the technology, we are all subjected to the tools that enable the goal we our trying to achieve within the digital information sphere.

*Note: This post is subject to change and updates over time

Line Tower Wars 7

Line Tower Wars 7 is a custom Warcraft 3 game hosted on battle.net, in which 7 players battle it out to claim victory for their own.

The Objective is to run your men past your opponents’ defence to steal their lives while preventing your opponents from getting past Your defence and stealing Your lives. Each player starts the game with a fixed amount of lives, 25 in most versions, but since the game can (andover time will) be modified this amount may vary. When selecting your builder you get the option to build defence towers, which you must build and later upgrade in order to defend your line. To send units of your own the unit towers, or in other versions the town halls, need to be selected. Up to 12 units of increasing costs can be bought and thus sended from each unit tower. In most versions you have two different unit towers, but in some verdions you have three. By buying/sending these units you build up income. The higher your income the more and better units you can send.

The basic towers: the Archer tower and the Sharp tower aren’t powerfull enough to kill the more expensive units passing your line. By upgrading these towers you enlarge their power. You have to upgrade to Super Towers in order to create the most solid defence. You can get these towers by selecting the Super towers tower. Here you can trade pieces of lumber for Super towers of different elements. Choose between Fire, Ice, Electricity, Light and Poison. Trade one lumber for a level 1 super tower and trade an other piece of lumber for the level 2 UBER tower of that element. When defeating an other player you get a new piece of lumber as your prized possesion. Use this piece for more Super towers.

Be the last player alive to call yourself victorius in this fast-paced multi-player online strategy game!

Rubiks Cube

Een Rubiks Cube, is een kubus met aan elke van de 6 vlakken een andere kleur, namelijk Wit, Rood, Blauw, Groen, Geel en Oranje. Elk vlak bestaat weer uit 9 kleine blokjes van diezelfde kleur. Dat betekent dus dat de kubus bestaat uit 54 verschillende blokjes. De vlakken kunnen allemaal om hun middelpunt draaien, waardoor blokken van het ene vlak met de ene kleur terecht kunnen komen bij vlakken van een andere kleur. Hierdoor verspreiden de blokken zicht over de hele kubus en kan het puzzelen beginnen.

Het doel is om alle blokjes weer bij het juiste vlak te plaatsen door ze op de juiste plek te draaien, dit is gemakkelijker gezecht dan gedaan. De Rubiks Cube kent namelijk ongeveer 8.8*10^23 mogelijke combinaties, dus eindeloos blijven draaien op zoek naar de oplossing zit er dik in als je niet je hoofd er niet bij gebruikt.

Over mij

Na de eerste 18 jaar van mijn leven op Curacao te hebben gewoont, ben ik naar Nederland gekomen om te studeren. Ik begon aan de studie Engeneering, Design & Innovation in het jaar 2004/2005 aan de Hoge School van Amsterdam. Maar al snel merkte ik dat die studie niets voor mij was, dus ben ik er meteen mee gestopt. Het eerste jaar dat ik in Nederland woonde heb ik dus veel gewerkt voor verschillende bedrijven en uitzend bureau’s. In het jaar 2005/2006 begon ik aan de studie BetaGamma aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam.

BetaGamma is een interdisciplinaire studie waarin het wetenschappelijk denken vanuit verschillende disciplines centraal staat. De vakken Wiskunde, Natuurkunde, Scheikunde, Aardwetenschappen, Logica en Sterrenkunde komen aan de orde vanuit de  “Beta” kant van de studie. En de vakken Sociologie, Filosofie, Psychologie, Functieleer en Politicologie komen aan de orde vanuit de “Gamma” kant van de studie. Er zijn hiernaast drie interdisciplinaire thema colleges waar de BetaGamma student aan moet deelnemen. Dit zijn Thema I: De Handelende Mens, hier wordt diep ingegaan op vraagstukken als “Hoe worden beslissingen en keuzes genomen” en “Waarom handelen mensen hoe ze handelen”. In het tweede thema college, Thema II: Onze Genetische Identiteit, hebben we aan de hand van de filosofen Michel Foucault en Peter Sloterdijk, gekeken naar de invloed van nieuwe ontwikkelingen op het gebied van genetica op het doen en laten van mensen en het functioneren van de maatschappij. In het Derde thema college, Thema III: Het interdisciplinair onderzoeksproject, ben ik met 2 mede studenten aan een onderzoek begonnen naar de realiseerbaarheid van een implanteerbare RFID chips. Vanuit de wetenschapsgebieden “Biomedische wetenschappen”, “Cuturele Antropologie” en “Documentaire informatiewetenschappen” benaderen we dit probleem.

Naast BetaGamma volg ik (dus) ook de Major Documentaire Informatiewetenschappen. In deze studie houden we ons onder andere bezig met het bestaan en functioneren van bibliotheken, musea en archieven. Daarnaast wordt er ook aandacht besteed aan huidige ontwikkelingen op het gebied van informatie en communicatie technologieen en systemen.