David Hockney and the iPhone

A few days ago the BBC ran a great article on the art work of David Hockney. This included three digital paintings that he did on his iPhone.

I was really impressed so I thought I would have a go myself. Here is David's:

And here is mine:

I don't see the difference!

MySpace and Class

I was really pleased to read danah Boyd's recent piece taken from the PDF conference on 'The not-so-hidden politics of class online'. I was first pleased to see that she had taken the time to recognise how MySpace is not 'dead', rather that it just appeals to a younger audience, which is sometimes not apparent to an academic community.

The issue of class is an interesting one. And one that she is correct in writing will not simply go away by 'fixing' the technology. More and more the Internet is becoming about people. We need to find the best way of designing the site so that that there is a high level of functionality and usability, but this needs to be combined with the way that groups of people come together in the space, the sociability. Of the research I have conducted on MySpace I have certainly seen a wider range of cultural differences on MySpace compared to that of Facebook. This is related to the sense of 'homophily' as Danah suggest (also Mike Thelwall has a good paper on homophily and MySpace) and I think we need to think more about the different ways that people tend to stick in groups online. What is the experience of those who and try and cross different social boundaries? Something I have found in MySpace is that those people who try and make 'new' friends construct the practice in such a way that are instantly recognisable as part of the same group (here is your homophily) - this practice then requires the entirety of the profile. So, for example, a user may change their profile layout, write a new blog, add a new song and then begin a conversation with one (or many) of a desired group of people. The other people that they talk to and the things they do are also of a great importance. It is in then in these practices that social inequities are continually reproduced. It is in this way that homophily is constructed through the community practices that draw the boundaries between different social groups.

We need good technological usability that is open to all and 'critical eye' for the way new technology is enabling social inequality.

Lovely article, hopefully there will be more on this soon.

boyd, danah. 2009. "The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online." Personal Democracy Forum, New York, June 30.

Roundtable Link

HERE is the link to the Roundtable sound file (thanks once again to Thies for making the recording)

Conference pics and recording

I am back in Loughborough from an excellent trip to Copenhagen with all the AoIR people. The conference this year benefited from a wide range of topics and methods. I was really please with the roundtable that Daniel and I organised (Nancy counted over a 100 hundred people) and think that it worked as a good opportunity for the audience to ask questions that may have gone unanswered otherwise. Although, next year I will definitely present a paper as I don't think the folks at aoir would let me get away with just doing a roundtable again! I have posted a couple of photos to my flickr account (here) that were taken on the day (thanks to Theis).

This sound file is also from the even, which I will have to upload from work because my connection from home is to slow. I will do that tomorrow. Check back here for that...

IR 9 and other stuff

I am shortly leaving for Copenhagen and this year's IR 9.0 conference which looks to be amazing. They have over 400 people due to be gracing the ITU this week. Once more let me promote the Roundtable that myself and Daniel Skog (Umea University) will be chairing entitled 'Life on the Move: Social Network sites and Online Communities'. We have some excellent speakers lined up including Nancy Baym, Malene Larson, Amanda Lenhart, Raquel Recuero and Jan Schmidt. With the massive amount of people there and the time limitations on each paper session, we hope that our Roundtable will serve as a good opportunity to actually have the time to ask a question and discuss some of the core issues of the conference a s a whole.

Conference season seems to be in full swing now after attending the ATACD conference last week and a trip I have planned to the States in the coming weeks.

I also might have time to squeeze in the odd other bits and pieces, but they mostly will have to be in England before Xmas. One thing that caught my eye was the following day at the British Library talking and about 'Web 2.0 and Social Research' on the 4Th Nov. Let me know if you are interested and I will send you more details.