 Glossary of Terms[edit] AutomationIncreasingly important in the digital space to help smooth a number of functions such as social data gathering, form filling, and any other redundant experience that might dull participation culture. Automation also helps to make Impossible Feasts more tantalizing to the user. [edit] Data GeologyThe idea of a participation architecture that encourages updates that have timestamps and can be seen over time. This gives users layers of history like the rings on a tree or the rock layers that make up the geological formations on the Earth's crust. Examples include Blogs, Foursquare, Google Search Results, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook archives one's data geology, and Twitter does not. [edit] Data GravityThe pull of data on a user or system. Data with more attention has greater gravity and is more likely to reproduce. [edit] EcholocationA bat or whale-like behavior similar to the bee dance in which members of communities shout their location and status. Geolocal status update websites and networks are examples of these types of behavior. [edit] Fractal ValueThe idea of value becoming so easily created that it begins to fold in on itself and create smaller versions of its value at increasing rates. Hipster culture relies on minute changes and signifiers. Fark, Slashdot and 4Chan are all spaces in which value has become increasingly fractal due to speed. This fractal value affects culture and makes culture a fractal itself. [edit] HypercyborgThe hypercyborg describes a cyborg embodiment that is layered or cobbled together into a larger cyborg whole; the hypercyborg translator consists of a network of many smaller cyborg translators, as when a team of semicyborg translator-editors is linked together by listserv or webboard and their collective output is fed into a centralized database, term-management program, or other machine(-aided) translation system. Source: Cyborg Translation [edit] Hyperpresence
[edit] Identity ProductionThe conscious production of identity through action, whether the action is physical, mental, virtual or both. The production of identity in virtual reality can occur on a social network, through text, image or video and can occur in small moments or large ones. Identity of large companies strives to maintain a static brand. Individuals often change. In virtual interaction culture, status updates must be technosocially attractive to viewers, or else identity loses gravity. Brands, and increasingly individuals, seek to increase gravity. [edit] Impossible FeastA site with data that appears endlessly, inviting the user to consume to exhaustion without actually having depleted its resources. In the digital space, consumption does not deplete a resource, but rather encourages that resource to reproduce. The visitor can eat all they desire and never get full. Facebook is the prime example of an impossible feast in the digital space. The more a user logs into Facebook, the more tantalizing and targeted the data becomes. The feast takes on qualities of food that cannot be resisted. Over time, Facebook begins to target the individual food desires. [edit] Junk Sleep
[edit] MythologyMythology is an important tool used to understand cultural values and beliefs. The mythology followed by movie-makers creates Blockbusters. All cultures have mythologies. The American Dream of progress and rags to riches is the most common one. Images from films like Minority Report give rise to new ways to interact with data. [edit] Related Reading[edit] NeocyborgThe neocyborg "has the outward form of cyborgism, such as an artificial limb, but lacks full homeostatic integration of the prosthesis" (Gray, 14); the neocyborg translator consists of a human translator sitting at a computer, but so that the computer still serves as a typewriter, without full utilization of word-processing, term-management, e-mail, or web-browsing capabilities *the semicyborg, an intermittent cyborg, only hooked up to technology some of the time; most professional translators become semicyborgs when they work. [edit] Node Centrality[edit] DefinitionNode centrality is a term used to describe the closeness of an actor in a network to the center of the network. Online, those with clout or significant social influence are often closer to the center of node networks, especially node networks with dense clusters. Those with the most efficient and communicated ideas are also near the center of node networks. Key influencers can be found at node centralities. [edit] Panic Architecture[edit] DefinitionPanic architecture is a term used to describe a participatory architecture that demands compulsive interaction or attention. [edit] Playground as FactoryWork should be like play. Playgrounds are set in a way so that the consequences for trying something and making a mistake are low. -- David Merrill [edit] DefinitionThe idea that one gives up information though play, and that game mechanics get people to give away information or provide information to a system. This playground becomes a hidden factory. Underneath is real work, but on top rides the feeling of play. [edit] ExamplesFoursquare, which awards points to users who check into a place, and more points for users who create a place. Creating a place is technically a data entry task, but the addition of points makes the task into an experience that is rewarding for the user. When the points one user has accumulated is constantly compared to others, it becomes a digital playground with competitive elements and playful behavior. In this way, a seemingly dull and repetitive task becomes incentivized and even sought out, as the place database becomes increasingly populated, the amount of new territory, as well as the chance to earn a higher level of points, decreases. [edit] Conference on Internet as Playground and FactoryThe title of recent conference on digital labor. [edit] Conference Abstract"Today we are arguably in the midst of massive transformations in economy, labor, and life related to digital media. The purpose of this conference is to interrogate these dramatic shifts restructuring leisure, consumption, and production since the mid-century. In the 1950s television began to establish commonalities between suburbanites across the United States. Currently, communities that were previously sustained through national newspapers now started to bond over sitcoms. Increasingly people are leaving behind televisions sets in favor of communing with -- and through-- their computers. They blog, comment, procrastinate, refer, network, tease, tag, detag, remix, and upload and from all of this attention and all of their labor, corporations expropriate value. Guests in the virtual world Second Life even co-create the products and experiences, which they then consume. What is the nature of this interactive ‘labor’ and the new forms of digital sociality that it brings into being? What are we doing to ourselves?" [1]. [edit] References
[edit] Pseudoretrocyborg[edit] DefinitionPseudoretrocyborg is a term used to describe a cyborg transformation intended to recreate a lost form that never existed; well, we're pretty far into science fiction, here, but we can imagine, say, a retrocyborg made to look like a spirit-channeling translator, someone receiving the words of the target text from the spirit world (might be an attractive display at the main LDS museum in Salt Lake City, a cyborg demonstration of how Joseph Smith actually translated the Book of Mormon - although, of course, the Mormons would want to call the cyborg translator a retrocyborg rather than a pseudoretrocyborg).[1] [edit] References
[edit] RetrocyborgThe retrocyborg describes a cyborg transformation intended to recreate some lost form; a retrocyborg translator might be one in which, for purposes of historical illustration at a translator fair, say, a human translator sits at a computer made to look like an old pre-electric typewriter, which guides its human operator to make translation decisions typical of protocyborg practice (when to hit the carriage return, when to roll the page up and correct a mistake with whiteout, when to pull the page all the way out and start it over). Source: Cyborg Translation [edit] Soft Architecture[edit] Definition"Soft Architecture is a place in which structure is defined by memory. The lines dividing interior and exterior are broken down, creating an uncanny relationship between organic forms and manufactured materials. Fueled by a rigorous investigation of a remembered space and time, the "real" becomes hyper-real. Shifts in scale and vibrating fields of contrasting colors result in a customized utopia" [1]. Social networks are defined by soft architectures, in which inside and outside often change places. Wikis are a form of soft architecture because they are both structured and expandable. [edit] Related Reading[edit] References
[edit] Territory Marking[edit] DefinitionTerritory marking describes the canine behavior of marking places with scent and participating in sniffing formerly marked territory. This is also applied to Foursquare, as it is a territory marking participation architecture such as Foursquare or Google Search Results. In the analog space, this is shown in billboards, brands and logos in public spaces such as Subways, and private spaces such as sporting events. It bleeds into digital space when it is photographed or televised, expanding the marked space and the brand's reach. [edit] Time Geography[edit] DefinitionTime geography is a phrase used to describe a new field of study that graphs out time and space spent doing certain activities over time. It was founded in 1970, and was recently revisited to include mapping techniques for internet communication technologies where geography is not necessarily bound to visibly adjacent territory. [edit] Ubiquitous Computing
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