Fictional character creation is a useful tool in creating an intriguing narrative that captures attention, especially since the character can be easily adapted to fit different digital spaces, such as Video, Microblogging, and Image sharing sites. Media diversity  is also useful in building and unifying online communities that access with media in separate channels.

Creating a consistent brand all through many all social sites one of the best ways to maximize the value of a character or brand campaign.

Ryan Summers and I created a presentation on how to track users across various social media sites using mostly free tools. It was given at Web Analytics Wednesday in Portland, Oregon.

History

A few weeks before the MITX awards ceremony, ISITE Design created a short video called “El Consultador” as an introduction to other agencies.

The El Consultador campaign generated diverse social data. This created issues with tracking data from multiple social media sites across problems with social media is that these is no singular way to gather and rank all of the data over time. Tools like Radian6 and Trucast are in use by larger agencies and businesses, but there exist an increasing amount of free tools for data visualization and engagement reporting that are available online.

This Powerpoint was made for an audible presentation. I collaborated with Ryan Summers of ISITE design on it and presented it at Web Analytics Wednesday. I will attempt to explain the results/processes in a textual manner here.

Profiles Created for the El Consultador Campaign

We used analytic data from Flickr, Youtube, Vimeo and Twitter to determine the most successful aspects of the campaign.

On Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/2309025

On YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz6jt_aSFg0

On Flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/elconsultador/
(Workers at ISITE design superimposed the Consultador face onto a variety of characters in pop culture).

On Twitter:
http://twitter.com/elconsultador

——

Key Performance Indicators

We determined a number of Key Performance Indicators of the social media campaign.

-Direct awareness of ISITE design agency
-3rd part mentions
-Social media followers (number of Twitter followers, comments on YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr).
-Direct communication

YouTube Reports

We used YouTube reports to track the engagement with the video campaign.

Data tracked included:

-Age Demograpics
-Gender Demograpics
-Discovery Sources
-Timeline Trends

The campaign was viewed predominately by 26-45 year old males and mostly during and around the date of the MITX awards. This is the demographic it was aimed at.

Vimeo Stats

Vimeo is a high-quality Video sharing site with a limited but very engaged traffic demographic. We used Vimeo data to find more about who engaged with the campaign and compared it to YouTube data.

Flickr Reports

Flickr has a reporting tool for image views over time for every image. The data can be accessed with a premium Flickr account. We used this data to determine the most viewed (strongest/most impactful) pictures associated with El Consutador on the El Consultador account, and which images should be associated with the campaign on other sites (if future campaigns needed to be implemented).

Google Analytics

We used data from Google Analytics for the page on which El Consultador existed on the ISISTE Webpage. Data was tracked from the “El Consultator” and “MITX” keywords. New visitors and direct traffic were also analyzed.

Social Nodes

The campaign was picked up by three prominent bloggers, including Chris Brogan, Davaid Armano (VP of Experience Design with Critical Mass), and C.C. Chapman (Prominent figure in the community of podcasting, new media, cofounder of the Advanced Guard, a marketing company which focuses on utilizing social media and other emerging technologies).

Blogs linking to the campaigns were not found via inlink searches in Yahoo! Site Explorer, but with an intelligence feed created in Yahoo! Pipes (see below)

Tracking Overall Data

Custom intelligence feeds are useful for checking overall propagation of data. Yahoo! Pipes provides a free custom way to aggregate data across Google blog search, Google news, Technorati, Flickr, and Twitter.

———

Data Visualization and Tracking for Twitter

I presented an extended set of tools and data visualization methods for Twitter. Links for all of them are here:

Reports/Demographic Research:
Summize
http://tweetstats.com/

TweetVolume
http://tweetvolume.com/

Twitter Mobile (vs. Twitter in browser)
http://m.twitter.com/home

Neoformix Twitter Stream Graphs
http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/view.php (I provided a live demo of this).

Twitter Stream Graphs are a simple way to rsearch keyword volume associated with a brand or campaign. Neoformix also tracks keywords over time, meaning that one can see when a certain keyword became popular.
——–

Future Suggestions:
More Flickr photos could be linked to all of the other accounts, such as Flickr, Youtube, and Vimeo. Linking together social media campaigns in a more robust fashion will affect CTR’s by making the campaign spreadable across various demographic profiles and types of social media users.

——-

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist who studies new media and the relationship between humans and computers. She enjoys data visualization (click for more info on conference tracking), search engine optimization (ask), and how marketing works in the online ecosystem.

She graduated from Lewis & Clark College in May 2008 with a degree in Sociology/Anthropology and wrote her thesis on cell phones and the effect of technology on cultural constructions of space and privacy.

You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic, or drop her an E-mail at caseorganic[at]gmai[dot]com. She’s spoken at various conferences including MIT’s Futures of Entertainment 3, Inverge: The Interactive Convergence Conferece, Ignite Portland, and Ignite Boulder.

She also blogs at Nerdabout.com and http://www.blog.makerlab.org, a Portland new media incubator. She founded CyborgCamp, an unconference on the future of humans and technology. She is also involved with building and studying electronics with DorkbotPDX.

What an epic month it has been! There was  the WordPress 2.7 Release party, the Cubespace Holiday party, a couple of Beer and Blogs and a lot of snow. Also, CyborgCamp ran smoothly (the keynote videos are up if you haven’t seen them yet).

This next week looks pretty awesome, too. If you haven’t been before, you should really attend Dorkbot. A lot of amazing people and devices usually show up, and it’s kind of like going to a museum of electronics.

Next month, be sure to check out the SOUK holiday party, as you can work there for free the entire day. And January 14th continues the epic Lunch 2.0 saga at the OTBC headquarters. If you’re heading out there on the Max, make sure not to miss the Lunch 2.0 Party Train for some on-the-go networking.

If you’re a creative type, come to Drinking and Drawing on Jan 14th at 6:00Pm, where two types of fun will undoubtedly collide in new and unexpected ways.

Finally, on Februrary 20th, don’t miss out on RecentChangesCamp. If you’re at all interested in wikis, this place will be heaven for you. It is the only event of its kind in the world.

See below for a sequential list of all of the events happening this month, with details and ticket/RSVP information.

———————–

Monday, December 22, 2008 from 7–11pm

DorkbotPDX Meeting

Lucky Labrador Beer Hall
1945 NW Quimby
Portland OR 97209
US

Website
http://dorkbotpdx.org/

Description
Come join us for an evening of socializing, talking about odd hacks and poking around with other people toys. Bring things for show and tell if you like, or just bring a willingness to share your interests. We’ll be the kids with all the coolest stuff on the table. Hope to see you there.

See original posting on Calagator

Sunday, December 28, 2008 from 1–5pm

DorkbotPDX Open Lab

Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) Room 205
1241 NW Johnson Street
Portland Oregon 97209
US
(map)

Website
http://dorkbotpdx.org/

RSVP on Upcoming

Friday January 2, 2009

Beer and Blog (weekly, every Friday from 4-6Pm)

Green Dragon
928 SE 9th Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://portland.beerandblog.com/

We’ll still find a way to hang out and warm our bellies with Holiday ale! After all, even if I said we weren’t meeting, people still would show up. I love you guys for that. So, this Friday we’ll get together and toast to 2008 as we enjoy the last official Beer and Blog of the year (although people may still show up on the 26th).

January will be Beer and Blog’s 1 year anniversary and we have some cool plans in the works. We’re pulling together the best of what we learned in 2008 and turning it into a full or half day workshop for all those who want to start a blog or improve one. We’re also going to do a mini Job Fair.

Monday January 5, 2009

souk’s Birthday

souk
322 NW 6th Avenue, suite 200
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social

Website: http://www.soukllc.com

Celebration of a local small business serving the creative class - we’re 2 years old! Work for free today, or just stop by to enjoy cupcakes, cheer, Blazer tix drawing and more.

RSVP on Upcoming

Monday January 12, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:00pm

Mobile Love, Android Style #8

Lucky Lab Brew Pub
915 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, Oregon
Category: Social
2nd monday of the month is android day. Android is the mobile phone operating system from Google. meet with local area developers.

RSVP on Upcoming

Wednesday January 14, 2009 from 12:00pm - 2:00pm

Lunch 2.0 at the New OTBC Office

OTBC in the Beaverton Round
12725 SW Millikan Way
Beaverton, Oregon 97005
Category: Social
For the first time, Portland Lunch 2.0 will happen in the ‘burbs, Beaverton to be precise.

The OTBC is moving into new space and partnering with the Beaverton Round Executive Suites.

So, to showcase their new digs and introduce Lunch 2.0 to the suburbs, the OTBC will be hosting Lunch 2.0 on January 14, 2009.

The Beaverton Round is right on the MAX line about 20 minutes from Portland. Just jump off the Blue Line at the Beaverton Central stop, and you’re 90 feet from the new OTBC office.

Lunch 2.0 is a Valley phenomenon that you can read about at lunch20.com, and we’re putting a PDX stamp on it.

You can follow all things Portland Lunch 2.0 at Silicon Florist.

Are you vegan or vegetarian? Please leave a comment so we can plan food accordingly. Thanks.

RSVP on Upcoming

Wednesday January 14, 2009 at 11:00am

Lunch 2.0 Party Train to OTBC

Pioneer Courthouse Square
701 Sw 6th Ave
Portland, Oregon 97204
Category: Social
All Aboard! We’re going to par-tay all the way down to the OTBC for Lunch 2.0.

Here’s the scoop: Meet up at Pioneer Square MAX stop and catch the Blue Line MAX at 11:27. It will arrive just a few feet from the OTBC at 11:50. We’ll all be in the rear MAX car cuz that’s how we roll.

Don’t forget to RSVP for Lunch 2.0 http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1148458/

Chuga Chuga Choo! Choo!

RSVP on Upcoming

Saturday January 17, 2009 from 1:00pm - 5:00pm

Masterbacon: A day for bacon lovers

Kveton’s
2822 SW Boundary St
Portland, 97239
Category: Social

Website: http://bacongeek.com/masterbacon

Have you ever wanted to get together with a bunch of other bacon geeks and just geek out about bacon? What if there was an event specifically catered to bacon geeks to be able to share their favorite bacon treats with the world? Wouldn’t it make sense to make it a competition complete with trophy and prizes? Of course it would.

Masterbacon is just such an event.

RSVP on Upcoming (63 people have saved this event at the time of posting).

Tuesday January 13, 2009 at 7:30pm

Portland Arts and Lectures: Michael Pollan

Portland Center for the Performing Arts - Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

1037 Sw Broadway
Portland, Oregon 97205
Category: Education

Buy Tickets

Wednesday January 14, 2009 at 6:00pm

Drinking and Drawing

The Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave.
Portland, Oregon 97209
Category: Media
Website: http://www.drinkinganddrawing.org

Drinking and Drawing is an evening of collaborative animation. Artists, animators, spectators- everyone is welcome, and anyone can participate!

The event is free to Cascade SIGGRAPH and ASIFA members- all others pay $5 at the door, and everyone must be 21+.

Visit www.drinkinganddrawing.org for more information about the event and how it works, and follow @DrinknDrawPDX on Twitter for updates.

Ticket Info: $5

RSVP on Upcoming

Monday January 26, 2009 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm

PDXCritique

CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://pdxcritique.com
The mission of PDX Critique is to provide a monthly forum for designers of any stripe (graphic, web, whatever) to crawl out of their work void to share information and constructive criticism.

Have something you want critiqued? Contact us via the google group or on the blog.

RSVP on Upcoming

Thursday February 19, 2009 at 7:00pm

Ignite Portland 5

Bagdad Theater and Pub
3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://www.igniteportland.com

Save the date! Ignite Portland 5 will happen on Thursday, February 19, 2009, at the Bagdad Theater. Stay tuned to http://www.igniteportland.com/ for more details, and submit YOUR talk idea now!

RSVP on Upcoming

Friday February 20, 2009 - Sunday February 22, 2009

RecentChangesCamp 2009

University Place Hotel
310 SW Lincoln Street
Portland, Oregon 97201
Category: Other
Website: http://2009rcc.org/

RecentChangesCamp (RCC) is the unconference for the Wiki community. Born of the intersection of wiki and Open Space (an unconference facilitation method), it is named after the “recent changes” page found on many wikis.

RCC is 100% free to attendees, and is open to everyone: from hardcore wikiholics to the mildly curious. No pre-registration is required, but it would be helpful if you could add yourself to our list of attendees on our planning wiki. You can also follow our updates at http://twitter.com/RCCamp.

RCC is held over the course of three days, with participants welcome to come and go as they please. Exact times have not yet been nailed down, but it generally starts Friday morning, continues all day on Saturday, and closes late Sunday afternoon.

RSVP on Upcoming

Tuesday February 24, 2009 - Thursday February 26, 2009

“Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills” Workshop

McMenamins | Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97211
Category: Education

Website: http://www.agileuniversity.org/course_details.jsp?courseid=1…

Beyond technical skills, Agile success depends on productive self-organizing teams. How do you develop, grow, and maintain a functioning self-organizing team? It’s not magic, but it doesn’t just happen either. Effective self-organizing teams rely on personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

In this hands-on workshop, we’ll discover the secrets to developing the skills you need to succeed and lead on a self-organizing team.

Ticket Info: $1500
Buy Tickets

RSVP on Upcoming

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Amber Case can be followed on Twitter @caseorganic. She is available for new media and online productivity consulting, data aggregation, and training in blogging and Internet marketing. E-mail caseorganic at gmail dot com for inquiries.

The Internet Age

There are strong indications that the Internet has already become the most pervasive factor in human life. By doing so, the first part of the 21st Century deserves to be named The Internet Age so it can be compared with other periods that have radically transformed human life such as the Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age.

The Internet has been called the Information Super Highway because it transmits billions of documents daily. It is the Internet as a super highway and how it competes with other forms of transportation that will be discussed in this article.

The Internet as Transportation

To get a better understanding of why the Internet is a form of transportation, consider the history of the Pony Express. It started in April 1860 to provide a fast mail service between the east and west coasts of the United States. It took about ten days to deliver its mail. The Pony Express announced its closure 18 months later in October 1861 just two days after the new Transcontinental Telegraph reached Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Pony Express came to an end because the telegraph was a new form of transportation that could deliver messages much faster (in just few minutes) and much cheaper.

Since the Pony Express and the telegraph both delivered messages, even though they did it in very different ways, both of them can be seen as competing forms of transportation.

Once it’s recognized that the telegraph is a form of transportation, it’s easy to see that the Internet is also a form of transportation. It delivers billions of messages, mail, documents, music, pictures and videos worldwide as fast as lightning wherever there are Internet connections, and it does it much cheaper than its slow moving competition—trucks, trains and planes. The Internet moves only digital information, but the problem is that this used to be non-digital information, which was moved by trucks, trains and planes. The Internet is in direct competition with them. The more digital media the Internet transports, the less non-digital media the others transport.

Print Media

eBooks

The promise of digital books, e Books as they are called, is that they can be delivered faster and cheaper and sold for significantly lower prices because they aren’t printed on expensive paper, stored in expensive warehouses and transported by gas guzzling trucks. Millions of acres of trees no longer have to be cut down to make paper. Millions of gallons of toxic ink no longer have to be manufactured to make printed documents. Millions of gallons of gas no longer have to be consumed to transport logs, paper and printed documents. Millions of tons of acid paper no longer need be dumped in landfills. Besides being much cheaper to produce and ship, eBooks are environmentally friendly.

The challenge of eBooks is that the industries that rely on the printed book will have to close their doors. Tens of thousands of print workers—booksellers, printers and truck drivers will lose their jobs and have to switch to other professions.

Some industry analysts believe that most bookstores will be out of business within five years.

Newspapers

Printed newspapers have all of the problems printed books have except they can go to press faster than books. Newspapers, however, have a big problem that books don’t have. Newspapers depend on getting a large part of their revenue from the advertising they print. As newspapers receive competition from TV, radio, blogs, twitters and online news, their advertising sales have declined but their costs have increased. Income from classified ads, once a major source of income for newspapers, has continued to decline as online companies take them over such as monster.com for jobs and eBay for products. Apartment rentals and real estate listings are increasingly be taking over by online companies that also have no newspaper affiliations. In the face of mounting print advertising costs, advertisers are taking advantage of the new online ad opportunities, an option they didn’t have before. They are finding that online advertising is not only cheaper but more successful.

The future of print newspapers is bleak. If newspapers are to survive, their only option is to develop a successful online operation as soon as possible so they can dump everything that involves printing newspapers—paper, ink, printing presses, employees who work with print media, delivery trucks, warehouses, etc. To survive online, newspapers must find a way to obtain enough ad revenues or they won’t be able to survive. The chance of finding enough online ad revenue is not encouraging. Those who hold out and try to make a go of it as a print operation will not survive. Most newspapers will be gone within five years.

Magazines and Journals

Magazines and Journals have all of the problems newspapers have except their article lead times are longer. They will continue to lose advertising revenue. Their choice is the same: switch to an online operation or go out of business. Unless they can carry over their print advertising in a downsized online publishing operation, they too are unlikely to survive.

Music, Pictures, Videos and Software—the Other Digital Media

Everything that applies to digital books applies to digital music, pictures and videos. Recorded music on CDs is coming to an end. Digital pictures have already replaced film prints. Videos can be downloaded from the Internet, and this trend will continue. Eventually Internet videos will replace video DVDs.

Software will become primarily available as Internet downloads.

The Internet as Teleportation

Just as the Internet is a form of transportation that threatens traditional transport companies, it’s also a form of teleportation that threatens many other traditional businesses.

The Internet has not yet reached the “Beam me up, Scottie” type of teleportation where humans are digitized, transported through space and reconstituted. Instead, live images of people are digitized and transported to some Internet cloud where they can transact in real time with other people’s digitized images. This is called videoconferencing. Cisco’s WebEx is one of many software packages that make online sales presentations and conferences possible.

The promise of Internet “teleportation” is that it means the millions of outside sales reps will be taken off the road so they can make online sales calls from offices and home. As online reps they will be able to make extra calls each day because they won’t have to spend time traveling between accounts. The geographical location of their accounts no longer matters because it’s just as easy to make sales calls in New York in the morning and San Francisco in the afternoon as it is to make several calls in the same city the same day.

This will take a million cars off the road and reduce gas consumption by millions of gallons a year. Companies will be able to reduce their sales expenses by tens of thousands of dollars per sales rep. Expensive weeklong semiannual conferences in major cities will be canceled because they can be replaced by inexpensive online video conferences where reps can attend from their offices and their homes.

The challenge of converting outside reps to online reps is that it will have a huge impact on world economies. These sales reps will no longer need company cars, airline tickets and car rentals. They will no longer stay in hotels and motels and eat at restaurants. All of these industries will be forced to downsize and lay off hundreds of thousands of workers as reps are taken off the road.

Virtual Visits

Free Internet phone calls such as those offered by SKYPE allow individuals to visit each other using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) no matter where they may be. This is just the beginning. As video conferencing systems come down in price, instead of getting in the family car to visit relatives and friends, many of these visits will take place over the Internet because they will be easier to make, cheaper and save time.

Virtual Vacations

If you want to see lions in Africa or Kodiak bears in Alaska, you can spend thousands of dollars to go there in person with the hope of encountering them, but if you choose to call up a video on the Internet, chances are you’ll see more animals and learn more about them because the photographers who prepare these videos often spend months and even years taking their pictures. It’s still more exciting to see these animals in person, but it’s likely that more and more people will see them over the Internet because it’s so much less expensive. You can expect to see a reduction in vacation travel because of this.

Telecommuting

As more people work at home by telecommuting, more two car families will become one car families as telecommuting families find they can get by with just one car. There will be less traffic on the road, and less office space will be required. People who work as telecommuters can live anyplace where they can get an Internet connection. Many of those who can afford it will leave the congested, expensive cities to live in cleaner, less crime ridden smaller communities.

Online Education

As education costs skyrocket, there is no choice but to develop an inexpensive system of online education to grant degrees and offer retraining to the millions of people who will find themselves unemployed as the Internet eliminates jobs in competitive industries.

Schools such as MIT and Stanford have already put most of their classes online where anyone can read the lectures and study materials. Online schools such as the University of Phoenix have offered online degrees for several years. Now, Stanford and several other universities are offering online master’s degree programs that they claim match the quality of education found on their campuses. It’s only a matter of time before more universities offer similar online degrees.

With technology changing our world so rapidly, most people will have to receive constant Internet training to update their skills so they can keep their current jobs or switch to new professions. From now on, continuing education will be a lifelong activity. Our current campus based educational system simply cannot handle this increased volume of educational traffic.

The Age of the Automobile Is No More

Even though cars, trucks and planes will continue to be an important part of our lives for the foreseeable future, their role will be diminished as billions of digital products are shipped via the Internet instead of by FedEx, UPS and USPS and as millions of workers no longer need cars for their jobs. To survive, the auto industry will have to downsize. There is simply no way that the auto industry can regain the sales of yesterday. The Age of the Automobile is over.

We Ain’t Seen Nuthin’ Yet

Artificial Intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil suggests that towards the end of the 21st Century it will be possible to create digital copies of human beings and upload them onto a computer. Once this happens, people will be able to live virtual lives that they will not be able to distinguish from life in the physical world. After people are converted to digital entities, it will eventually be possible to create android and “blank” human bodies that can receive the digital copies so that people can move between virtual and real life existences indefinitely.

There are quite a few advantages in having a system like this.

Space Exploration Instead of the huge cost of transporting human bodies through space and keeping them alive in some form of stasis for hundreds, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years, it will be much cheaper and more efficient to put copies of people onto a computer, turn off the power for the length of the trip and turn it on when the spaceship lands on a planet suitable for human habitation. Once landed, robots can reconstitute the people in physical bodies, perhaps android bodies to start with, so they can populate it. Since space travel is very dangerous, only copies of living people need be sent into space. The originals can remain at home where they can live normal lives—whatever “normal” might be one hundred years from now.

Once people are copied onto a computer, their digital folders can be sent over the Internet to places on earth as well as to locations in near space such as the moon’s spacecraft launching station. When this happens, it will be a real form of teleportation. Once a new planet has been colonized by the first spaceship, the fastest way to transport more colonists to that planet will, of course, be over the Internet.

Prison Reform Rather than maintain prisons where it costs five to ten times as much to house a prisoner as it does to send a child to public school, governments can use tax dollars more effectively by sentencing people who are convicted of crimes to virtual lives where they can serve out their sentences in inexpensive-to-maintain virtual worlds. For those whose sentences are not for life, they can be reconstituted in physical bodies at the end of their sentences and allowed to live in the real world again. Some prisoners, however, may prefer to remain in their new virtual world where they will have freedom to do things they could never do in the real world.

War and Other Dangerous Occupations Rather than send people to war as soldiers or put them in a dangerous environment, it will be easier to make physical copies of each person loaded into androids so that if the physical copy is destroyed, the original person will remain unharmed. Since the experience gained performing dangerous occupations can provide people with valuable professional experience, at the end of these assignments, these experiences can be merged electronically with their originals so the originals can continue to advance in their careers.

No Turning Back

There is no turning back. If we choose to return to the “good old days” by getting rid of the Internet, we shall simply empower other countries to develop superior technologies that they will use to compete against us. A refusal to utilize new technologies can only lead to greater unemployment and economic hardship.

The Internet is in some ways like Pandora’s Box. Even though it brings wonderful gifts to the human race, it does so at the cost by depriving millions of people of the old jobs that were created during the Industrial and Post-Industrial Ages. This will create poverty and major economic problems unless nations prepare proactively to provide top quality, inexpensive education so the unemployed can begin new careers. To solve the problems created by technology and to reap the benefits it brings, we have no choice but to use technology to facilitate our transition to a new, more environmentally friendly world.

The Internet is already making revolutionary changes in our lives. It is dominant technology of our time. In recognition of these changes, this era should be called the Internet Age.

—–

About

This article was written by Russell Dauterman. His career has covered teaching (philosophy with a specialty in logic), publishing (working for bookstores, book wholesalers and publishers) and computers (retailing and database design). He is also Caseorganic’s Uncle.

Russell Dauterman can be reached at dbtrees at gmail dot com.

While doing research for my thesis on cell phones, I came across a report prepared by Anthropologist Sadie Plant called “On the Mobile”. It was extremely well written, and very enjoyable to read. [You can download a .pdf of it from Motorola here] But recently, I found this video of another lecture on cell phones at MIT.

In the past, people lived in zones: you live at home, do other stuff at work, or while traveling. That’s changing now. Things are continuous. There’s no difference between work, home and travel. You want to have the same things with you. We believe people don’t live in categories anymore. As we’re moving around, we want seamless transitions to occur in life.

We’re living as low tech cyborgs now. It is only going to get more interesting in the future.

I’m posting this video to get everyone into the mindset for CyborgCamp this weekend [Dec 6th, 2008 at Cubespace from 9-6 Pm [Get a Ticket] [Preparty at Vidoop, 8:30 Pm Dec 5th, 2008 [RSVP] ]. The world around us is changing, but I’ll let Padmasree Warrior, now CTO at Cisco (and @padmarsee on Twitter [thanks, @nelking] tell you her story:

Nancy King / nelking

Warrior describes how thousands of Motorola engineers are trying to create a transparent network so that individuals can take their music, video, pictures —virtually any kind of data with them — wherever they go. “Mobile devices have become the remote control for life. Let us do things we have not thought about before,” says Warrior. For 75 years, Motorola has specialized in what Warrior describes as “preemptive innovation.” This means not just enabling new ways to communicate (for example, creating the two-way radio and cell phone), but giving customers new reasons to communicate. Within technological view are cars that can download information about a driver’s preferences, from seat height to mirror settings, and homes that can broadcast a favorite radio show from room to room, so the listener misses nothing.

Thanks to MITWorld for the video.
April 27, 2004
Running Time: 46:22

About the Speaker

Padmasree Warrior
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,
Motorola Incorporated

Padmasree Warrior has worked at Motorola since 1984. She currently leads a global team of 4,600 technologists, guiding creative research from innovation through the first stages of marketing. She also serves as a technology advisor to the office of the chairman and to the board’s technology and design steering committee.

Before assuming her current role in January 2003, Warrior was corporate vice president and general manager of Motorola’s energy systems group. Warrior was corporate vice president and chief technology officer for Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector. She was appointed vice president in 1999 and was elected a corporate officer in 2000.

Warrior received an M.S. degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University, and a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India.

Warrior served on the Texas Governor’s Council for Digital Economy, and is a member of the Texas Higher Education Board review panel. She was one of six women nationwide selected to receive the “Women Elevating Science and Technology” award from Working Woman magazine in 2001. She also is a director of Ferro Corporation.

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic, see also the Makerlab blog, as well as coverage of local Portland tech events at Nerdabout.com.

A lot of times we wait around for technology to just “appear” like we see in films. But if we continue to do that, nothing will get built. Thankfully, people are out there filling in the gaps.

There’s a set of a new sign language for controlling movement from a distance. Very intuitive and simple to learn. Especially with the rewards of being able to move things across the room without touching them.

The rest of this post is over at the CyborgCamp.com Blog, as it relates directly to the event.

Gesture Recognition Demo at the MIT Media Lab with Jamie Zigelbaum.

—————

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist who also posts over at the Makerlab Blog, which is something you might enjoy reading if you enjoyed reading the post above. It’s about more experimental tech and activities related to pushing the limits of art and technology. If not, you can always follow her on Twitter @caseorganic.

Recently, multiple people have been asking me about cool conferences occurring in 2009. I have two answers for them.

1. These conferences are difficult to search for and place in one spot. I’m really interested in knowing what conferences everyone is going to in 2009. I don’t have an exhaustive list.

2. Regardless, and for visibility’s sake, I’ve made the following short list of conferences that I’ve found to be awesome. Please add yours in the comments, if possible.

I’d like to set this us as a Wiki so we can all edit, add, and collaborate. Blog posts are good for getting an initial idea to many people, but are not so good at allowing additional ideas (unless people read the comments).

Search Marketing Expo - West 2009

Santa Clara, California. February 10-12, 2009
Search Marketing Expo - West 2009 Website

SMX conferences serve up some of the most innovative minds in search marketing as keynote speakers, so you know what’s about to happen and prepare for inevitable change. Past speakers have included:

* Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce North America & Vice President, Google Inc.
* Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President, Portal & Advertising Platform Group, Microsoft
* Bill Tancer, Author, “Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters”
* Frazier Miller, Yahoo! Local General Manager

———–

MakerFaire 2009

Saturday May 30, 2009 - Sunday May 31, 2009
San Mateo Fairgrounds
2495 South Delaware Street
San Mateo, California 94403
MakerFaire Website
RSVP on Upcoming

Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things.

Like a science fair, the Maker Faire will have lots of DIY tech projects from the magazine and elsewhere.

Make magazine’s and Craft magazine’s “urban Burning Man” for tinkerers and crafters returns to the Bay Area this year.

———–

Interaction 09

Interaction’09|vancouver will be held from February 5-8, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in conjunction with Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Join several hundred Interaction Designers from around the world as we address the design of interactive systems of all types: applications (web and desktop), mobile, consumer electronics, digitally enhanced environments, and more. Start your year off with stimulating talk, fun parties, and smart discussions about our growing field.

http://interaction09.ixda.org/

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SXSW 2009

Austin, Texas.
Interactive: March 13-17
Film: March 13-21
Music: March 18-22
SXSW Website

Music, film, and interactive conference and festival. Includes schedules and band and film lists. The SXSW MUSIC AND MEDIA CONFERENCE features a legendary festival showcasing more than 1,800 musical acts of all genres from around the globe on over eighty stages in downtown Austin. By day, the Austin Convention Center comes alive with conference registrants doing business in the Trade Show and partaking of a full agenda of informative, provocative panel discussions featuring hundreds of speakers of international stature. In its 23rd year, SXSW remains an essential event on the music industry calendar.

———–

Webvisions 2009

May 20-22. Portland, Oregon.
Webvisions 2009 Website

Discover the future of Web design, user experience and business strategy for two days of mind-melding on what’s new in the digital world. Get a glimpse into the future, along with practical information that you can apply to your Web site, company and career.

Submit a Session, Panel or Workshop Proposal for WebVisions 2009

WebVisions is now accepting submissions for sessions, panels and workshops for WebVisions 2009, which will be held from May 20-22, at the Oregon Convention Center.
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WWW 2009 - 18th International World Wide Web Conference Madrid

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain. Apr 20-24, 2009.
www 2009 Madrid Website

The World Wide Web Conference is the global event that brings together key researchers, innovators, decision-makers, technologists, businesses, and standards bodies working to shape the Web.

Organized by IW3C2 since 1994, the WWW conference is the annual opportunity for the International community to discuss and debate the evolution of the Web. The conference will feature a range of presentations on world-class research, as well as stimulating talks, workshops, tutorials, panels, and late-breaking posters.

WWW2009 seeks original papers describing research in all areas of the Web covering the implications of ubiquitous access to the Web through the “three screens” – computer, phone, and TV – and how such Web access will change the way we live, work, and interact in the future. Accepted refereed papers will appear in the conference proceedings published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Topics of discussion will include Browsers and User Interfaces, Data Mining, Industrial Practice and Experience, Internet Monetization, Mobility, Performance and Scalability, Rich Media, Search, Security and Privacy, Semantic / Data Web, Social Networks and Web 2.0, Web Engineering, XML and Web Data. The conference will also feature plenary speeches by renowned speakers, and tracks devoted to developers and to recent W3C activities that are of interest to the community.

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Improved Mobile User Experience 2009 (IMUx 2009) | HIIT

This the third IMUx workshop and it will be held in conjunction with Pervasive 2009 in Nara, Japan. The first IMUx workshop was held in conjunction with Pervasive 2007 and the second IMUx workshop was held in conjunction with Pervasive 2008.

Improved Mobile User Experience 2009 (IMUx 2009) Website

Topic Description

Current interfaces of mobile devices are rather limited when adaptability, context-awareness and proactiveness are considered. For example, they do not utilize the context of the interaction, nor the environmental changes in the user’s proximity or the capabilities of the device itself. This context can include information about the situation and the user preferences, longer or shorter time usage histories, etc. To improve usability and to provide a better user experience, the interfaces of the devices should become more intelligent and require less intentional user inputs. In order to achieve this goal, novel interaction methods need to be developed and combined with statistical models of the user that capture, for example, her behavior, personal preferences and goals.

Furthermore, the developed solutions need to be evaluated via extensive user tests to guarantee they are valuable to the users. To improve the dialogue between the different research areas and their practitioners, the workshop aims at bringing together researchers from the fields of user modeling, user interaction and user experience, with developers of mobile and ubiquitous applications. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to provide a common forum for exchanging ideas between these domains.

Submissions:

The workshop welcomes two kinds of paper submissions: research papers and position papers. Also demonstration and video submissions are welcome.

The research papers should present original research related to one or more of the following areas:

* user modeling in mobile environments
* user interaction in mobile environments
* user experience in mobile environments

The position papers should address challenges in combining the above-mentioned areas, and beyond, for an improved mobile user experience, and propose approaches for overcoming these challenges. We encourage authors to take a visionary view and a critical stand towards current practices and trends.

Example topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* adaptive interfaces for mobile devices
* case studies of mobile computing applications with adaptation (e.g., mobile guides)
* considerate computing
* context-aware information retrieval
* embedded solutions for machine learning
* evaluating mobile user experience in situ or in the field
* large scale data gathering and its challenges
* methods and tools for evaluating mobile user experience
* meaningful abstractions of sensor data (e.g., activity recognition, social analysis, place identification etc.)
* minimal/implicit/reduced user interaction
* mixed-initiative interaction
* mobile spatial interaction
* sensor fusion on mobile devices
* statistical methods for providing feedback to the user
* use of machine learning for instrumented usability research

Publication

Authors of accepted papers are invited to submit a revised version of their work to a special issue at IJMCHI (International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction) or PUC (Personal and Ubiquitous Computing).

Timeline

* Submission deadline: February 10, 2009
* Notification of acceptance: March 1, 2009
* Workshop: May 11, 2009

———–

More Conferences in ‘09?

I apologize for the brevity of this list. Surely you know of more conferences than I do. If you’d like to see something added to this list, please send an E-mail to caseorganic@gmail.com with the following:

*Conference Title
*Date
*Location
*Venue
*Website
*Description
*Optional: Paper submission details (if any).

Or simply comment below.

———

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and Tech Journalist from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her online @caseorganic.

My attempts at writing about the subject of Cyborg Anthropology have always resulted in long texts. This attempt is no exception.

Definition

Cyborg Anthropology is a set of mental models that can be applied to the examination of the interaction between humans and comptuers, and how the capabilities of our bodies are extended when they are uploaded into hypertext.

Invisible Robots

The traditional manifestation of robots is vastly different from the real robots we interact with in our everyday lives. The traditional robots that are locked in the collective consciousness of the general public range from behemoth, terrorizing giants that destroy cities — to smaller, equally intense characters (such as the Terminator). Now we have little robots everywhere, giving us our search results and our mail.

One of the questions that Cyborg Anthropology has a real power to approach is the question of what our lives will look like in the future.

Currently, we are duplicating ourselves every time we or others associate a page or profile with our identity. Projections of ourselves are capable of accessing and being accessed by multiple individuals at a time. The extension of ourselves into the online space is transforming our social interactions into relational, dynamic social profiles.

What is Cyborg Anthropology? When did it come about?

Cyborg Anthropology was officially founded when Gary Lee Downey, Joseph Dumit and Sarah Williams presented a paper titled “Cyborg Anthropology” at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco.

Paper Excerpts

“Cyborg anthropology offers new metaphors to both academic and popular theorizing for comprehending the different ways that sciences and technologies work in our lives-metaphors that start with our complicity in many of the processes we wish were otherwise”

“Cyborg anthropology is interested in the construction of science and tech-nology as cultural phenomena. It explores the heterogeneous strategies and mechanisms through which members of technical communities produce these cultural forms that appear to lack culture, for example, scientific knowledge that is objective and neutral, the product of only empirical observation and logical reasoning.

“Cyborg anthropology is interested in how people construct discourse about science and technology in order to make these meaningful in their lives. Thus, cyborg anthropology helps us to realize that we are all scientists.

“That is, by reconstructing scientific knowledge in new contexts, including across na-tional and cultural boundaries, we all do science. Since the practice of “doing science” is no longer reserved for scientists, studying science becomes both more amenable to ethnographic investigation and more important as a topic of research” (Downey, 265-266).

Cyborg Anthropology Author(s): Gary Lee Downey, Joseph Dumit, Sarah Williams Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 10, No. 2, Anthropologies of the Body, (May, 1995), pp. 264-269 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: Link to JSTOR Article.

A Cyborg Curriculum

Since I made my thesis on Cell Phones and Cyborg Anthropology available online, I’ve been contacted by numerous professors wishing to compare notes and course curriculum for educating their students on the field of Digital Anthropology.

It is due to these requests that I’ve decided to create a reudimentary list of questions and resources that may aid the beginning professor in his or her course preperation. In a world of open source technologies, it is important to , it is I’ve If you are a professor tasked with the job of bringing new ways of thinking into your classroom, this may be a valuable resource to you. Please feel free to alert me of any additional items you’ve used in your courses. Or, if you are a student of Cyborg Anthropology, please let me know what articles and books you’ve been assigned.

Potential Drawbacks of a Technosocial Future

A recent conversation with Todd Kenefsky, board member of Legion of Tech, brought up some interesting points on the future of human-computer interaction. “As a species we tend to test the borders and boundaries of what we can do”, he began, “and if we go too far we get smacked backwards. Maybe with cyborg technology — going too far would have far greater repercussions. Maybe we could get terminal viruses that wipe out the human race”.

He made a good point. Cyberspace and reality do not exist exclusively — the online space is influences offline places, and the offline the online.

We are still detached from actually touching and interacting with data. We still cannot touch the data of the Internet with our own hands. We are still forced to input data into interfaces via keyboards, trackpads, and mice. We cannot access data ubiquitously, and RSS is limited to global RSS systems.

We cannot yet continuously update our location and subscribe to data relative to the needs of our immediate environment. We still have boundaries between the ecosystem of the Internet and the ecosystems of our own bodies.

But we are making progress. We can walk while communicating with others around the world, and sounds from elsewhere travel across long distances to get to our ears via iPod. We have blogs, Wikis, and microblogging services like Twitter.

Discussion Questions

Let us think of electronic devices as objects, and then those objects in a system of greater objects.

Online there are temporary autonomous zones — fluid spaces that come and go. Objects placed there can change meanings quickly. Personalities, social engagements, and power capabilities change. Objects change their value based on their environment, or the system around them which acts on them as objects. Objects change meanings once placed in different systems.

Consider the system in which the object exists.

• What kind of a system is the object a part of?
• How is the object birthed?
• How is the system that the object is birthed in different from the eventual system it inhabits?
• How is the birth of a tree and its eventual location different from that of a child?
• A piece of clothing?
• A piece of data?
• What systems exist inside the object?
• What about complex objects with multiple systems?
• How can these systems be visualized across time and space?

Systemic Friction

Online, friction is less prevalent than offline. Iterations, or software releases can happen more quickly than the equivalent revolutions in real life. In the analog sphere, interactions based on growth in response to systems happen at a slower rate. A tree is constantly in co-production with its environment. What the tree does influences the system, which in turn influences the tree. The network of trees acting together influences a wider system.

Interfaces

Maureen McHugh wrote that “soon, perhaps, it will be impossible to tell where human ends and machines begin”.

How is the digital accessed? How are different environments accessed? What separates them? How do the qualities of these separations affect the experience of the environment? How can the digital and the analog be intersected in non-traditional ways? Are there spaces that the analog and the digital blur?

Constructions of Mobility and Capability Online

Let us, for a moment, consider the construction of mobility in online communities. What makes a powerful/respected user on a social network? Each type of space allows a different creation of power.

Social Networks as Bases of Social Interaction

Different individuals are using different social networks as bases. The social network base they use influences how they communicate with others in real life. The shape of the digital affects the shape of the social.

Digitally:

• On Facebook, identity and value is constructed through image, wall posts, addins, and updates.
• On Flickr, identity and value is related to interest and topic. It is also indexible and searchable.
• On Linkedin, power is constructed through history, recommendations, and connections, and sharing data/experience. It is the ‘emptiest’ vessel of many of the social networks available, and thus it can share data in the largest variety of ways.
• On Twitter, power is constructed through text, retweeting, link exchange, content, avatars, background images and followers.
• On Myspace, power is constructed through music, pictures, blog posts, and wall posts.

Culturally:
What types of cultural constructs allow objects to take on different values? How can a system of representation (the Disney store, the end aisles in a shopping market vs. the inner rows) bring power to an object? How does the ‘psychology of space’ make people act in a different way than they would place?

Excerpts:
“The…area of study is a broad critique of the adequacy of “anthropos” as the subject and object of anthropology. In this respect, cyborg anthropology poses a serious challenge to the human-centered foundations of anthropological discourse. The term “cyborg anthropology” is an oxymoron that draws attention to the human-centered presuppositions of anthropological discourse by posing the challenge of alternative formulations. While the skin-bound individual, autonomous bearer of identity and agency, theoretically without gender, race, class, region, or time, has served usefully and productively as the subject of cul- ture and of cultural accounts, alternate accounts of history and subjectivity are also possible” (Downey, 2).

“The autonomy of individuals has already been called into question by post- structuralist and posthumanist critiques. Cyborg anthropology explores a new alternative by examining the argument that human subjects and subjectivity are crucially as much a function of machines, machine relations, and information transfers as they are machine producers and operators. From this perspective, science and technology affect society through the fashioning of selves rather than as external forces. For example, the establishment of anthropological sub-jects and subjectivities has depended upon boats, trains, planes, typewriters, cameras, telegraphs, and so on” (Downey, 4).

“How the positioning of technologies has defined the boundaries of “the field” as well as the positioning of anthropologists within it has been a notable silence in ethnographic writing. It is increasingly clear that human agency serves in the world today as but one contributor to activities that are growing in scope, that are complex and di-verse, and yet are interconnected. The extent of such interconnectedness has been made plain both by the decline of challenges to capitalist hegemony and by the empowerment of information technologies, the latter through the combined agencies of computer and communications technologies” (Downey, 4).

“A crucial first step in blurring the human-centered boundaries of anthropo-logical discourse is to grant membership to the cyborg image in theorizing, that is, to follow in our writing the ways that human agents routinely produce both themselves and their machines as part human and part machine. How are we to write, for example, without using human-centered language? And if writing is a co-production of human and machine, then who is the “we” that writes?” (Downey, 5).

-Downey, Gary Lee “After Culture” Reflections on the Apparition of Anthropology in Artificial Life, a Science of Simulation.

The Relational Self

The psychologist Kenneth Gergen suggests that “we may be entering a new era of self-conception. In this era the self is redefined as no longer an essence in itself, but relational” (1991:146). “The concept of the individual self,” he continues, “ceases to be intelligible. At this point one is prepared for the new reality of relationship. Relationships make possible the concept of the self. Previous possessions of the individual self—autobiography, emotions, and morality—become possessions of relationships” (p. 170) in the New Superorganic (468).

As Lucy Suchman has put it, “humans and artifacts are mutually constituted. . . Agency—and associated accountabilities—reside neither in us nor in our artifacts, but in our intraactions” (in Hanson, The New Superorganic, 469).

The increasingly intimate connections between humans and nonhuman entities such as prosthetic devices and machines (especially computers) and our growing dependence on them are resulting in a similar kind of splicing that transforms us into cyborgs: new kinds of beings partly organic and partly mechanical. Far from the stable, clearly defined, and bounded units that populate the traditional worldview, cyborgs are hybrid, indeterminate, and ambiguous (Haraway 1991; Dumit and Davis-Floyd 1998:1) in (Hanson, the New Superorganic, 469).

“In Melanesia, aboriginal Australia, and elsewhere, the person is defined as much by position in a network of social relations as by individual traits” (Strathern and Stewart 1988, Wagner 1991, Myers 1986) (in Hanson, the New Superorganic, 468).

David Gunkel holds that communication, which “involves multiple individuals and is often mediated by
electronic or other technological devices, has always been the province of recombinant cyborgs” (2000:340).

In Hanson, “. . . Borg subjects float, suspended between points of objectivity, being constituted and reconstituted in different configurations in relation to the discursive arrangement of the occasion” (Hanson, 345).

Similarly, Mark Poster perceives that, “in the shift from written to electronically mediated
communication a change in the subject from “an agent centered in rational/imaginary autonomy” to one
that is “decentered, dispersed, and multiplied in continuous instability” (1990:6). For example, the notion of the unique author is fading as technological developments such as word processing and hypertext make it easy to modify written texts. These blur distinctions between original author and readers, who are coming to be seen as jointly exercising the role of author (Poster 1990:114–15; 2001:91–94; Landow 1997:90), in Hanson, the New Superorganic, 469.

Source

“The New Superorganic” Current Anthropology Volume 45, Number 4, August–October 2004 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

“…Today’s children readily think of digital entities as alive and are comfortable with indeterminate
boundaries between organism and machine” (Turkle, 1998).

Profiles of Cyborg Anthropologists

I’ve had numerous people ask me how many Cyborg Anthropologists there were in the world. I’ve generally given the answer of seven, but there are actually quite a bit more than that. From Donna Haraway’s seminal article, A Manifesto for Cyborgs, to Manfred Clyne’s coining of the term ‘Cyborg’, the following people have be closely involved with Cyborg Anthropology since its inception.

Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts. Professor Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

Seminars at the Initiative on Technology and Self led to three edited collections, all to be published by the MIT Press, on the relationships between things and thinking. The first volume, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, was published in Fall 2007. The second volume, Falling For Science: Objects in Mind, will appear in Spring 2008. The third volume, The Inner History of Devices, will follow in Fall 2008. Professor Turkle is currently completing a book on robots and the human spirit based on the Initiative’s 10-year research program on relational artifacts.

Sharon Traweek

Associate professor in the History Department at UCLA; on the faculty of the Anthropology Department at Rice University and the Program in Anthropology & Archeology and to the Program in Science, Technology, & Society at MIT. Has held visiting faculty positions at the Mt Holyoke Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, the Anthropology Department at the University of California at San Diego, and the Program in Values, Technology, Science, and Society at Stanford University. Received my Ph.D. in 1982 from the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Lucien Taylor

Assistant professor of visual and environmental studies and of anthropology and director of the Media Anthropology Laboratory. Teaches “Sensory Ethnography”, a collaboration between the departments of Anthropology and Visual and Environmental Studies. The course began last spring semester as students with varying degrees of artistic experience and ethnographic training met to learn video and audio production techniques, as well as to experience and discuss existing work in nonfiction media.

Allucquere Rosanne Stone

Academic theorist, artist, and performer, currently Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) and the New Media Initiative in the department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Concurrently she is Wolfgang Kohler Professor of Media and Performance at the European Graduate School EGS, senior artist at the Banff Centre, and Humanities Research Institute Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. Stone pursued successful multiple careers in film, music, experimental neurology, writing, engineering, and computer programming.

Paul Rabinow

Professor of Anthropology at the University of California (Berkeley), Director of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory (ARC), and Director of Human Practices for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC). He is perhaps most famous for his widely influential commentary and expertise on the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

His major works include Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary (2007); Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment (2003); Essays on the Anthropology of Reason (1996), Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology (1993); French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (1989); The Foucault Reader (1984), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (1983) (with H. Dreyfus); Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (1977 & 2007).

Constance Penley

Professor of Film & Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Co-Director of the Center for Film, Television and New Media

Professor Penley’s major areas of research interest are film history and theory, feminist theory, cultural studies, contemporary art, and science and technology studies. She is a founding editor of Camera Obscura: Feminism, Media, Cultural Studies. Her most recent work includes NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America and The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Science and Gender (ed. with Treichler and Cartwright). Her collaborative art projects include “MELROSE SPACE: Primetime Art by the GALA Committee” and “Biospheria: An Environmental Opera,” on which she was co-librettist.

Deborah Heath

Associate Professor
Sociology/Anthropology
Lewis & Clark College

Also my Thesis advisor.
Collaborated on Cyborgs & Citadels Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies

Donna Haraway

Currently a professor and chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. She is the author of Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology (1976), Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991), Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©Meets_OncoMouse (1997), The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003), and When Species Meet (2008).

Deborah Gordon

Presented the original paper on Cyborg Anthropology at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco in 1992.

Manfred Clynes

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism (i.e., an organism that has both artificial and natural systems). The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space.[1] D. S. Halacy’s Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman in 1965 featured an introduction by Manfred Clynes, who wrote of a “new frontier” that was “not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between ‘inner space’ to ‘outer space’ -a bridge…between mind and matter.”[2] The cyborg is often seen today merely as an organism that has enhanced abilities due to technology,[3] but this perhaps oversimplifies the category of feedback.

Gary Lee Downey

Center for the Study of Science in Society
Virginia Tech

Joseph Dumit

Program in the History of Consciousness
University of California at Santa Cruz
Also presented the original paper on Cyborg Anthropology at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco in 1992.

Sarah Williams

Women’s Studies
Also presented the original paper on Cyborg Anthropology at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco in 1992.

Resources

The following is a list of resources that I’ve found useful to my study of Cyborg Anthropology. They’ll be reviewed individually at some point in the future.

Augé, Marc 1995 Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. New York: Verso.

Bauman, Zygmunt 2000 Liquid Modernity. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Beck, Ulrich 1995 Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society.

Benedikt, Michael, ed. 1991 Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. de Certeau, Michel, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol 1998 The Practice of Everyday Life.

Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. NY: Penguin, 1982.

Best, Kellner, “Deluze & Guattari, Schizos, Nomas, Rhizomes,” pp.76109.

Durkheim, Emile, ed. 1951 Suicide, a Study in Sociology. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.

Goffman, Erving 1982 Interaction Ritual : Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. 1st Pantheon Books ed. New York: Pantheon Books.

Goffman, Erving 1963 Behavior in Public Places; Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. [New York]: Free Press of Glencoe.

Gray, Chris, ed. 1995 The Cyborg Handbook. New York: Routledge.

Haraway, Donna 1987 Donna Haraway Reads National Geographic. Video.

Haraway, Donna, Jorge Hankamer, and Gary Lease 1999 Between Nature & Culture Cyborgs, Simians, Dogs, Genes & Us.

Horst, Heather, and Daniel Miller 2006 The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. New York: Berg.

Ito, Mizuko 2004 A New Set of Social Rules for a Newly Wireless Society. Japan Media Review 2(4).

Latour, Bruno 2005 Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Moore, Gordon E. 1965 Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits. Electronics Magazine.

Oulasvirta, Antti, Sakari Tamminen, Virpi Roto, and Jaana Kuorelahti 2005 Interaction in 4-Second Bursts: The Fragmented Nature of Attentional Resources in Mobile HCI.

Plant, Sadie 2004 On the Mobile; the Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life . Motorola.

Poster, Mark, “Consumption and Digital Commodities In the Everyday,” Cultural Studies. 18, 2/3 March/May 2004, pp. 409-423.

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 1986 The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

Sennet, Richard 1978 Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism. .

Turner, Victor 1967 The Forest of Symbols; Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Weiser, Mark 1993 Ubiquitous Computing. Computer 26(10).

Looking for something to do this week/month/season in Portland? Itching to get to know more people/minds/ideas? Look no further. I’ve created this list for you of a bunch of Portland tech events for your convenience. Hopefully it is a useful resource.If you want to connect to more Portland Tech resources, check out the AboutUs.org Wiki for Portland Tech. There’s an RSS feed of Portland Tech Events there, as well as a very robust Portland Tech Twitter directory. Events are updated every two weeks, and there are areas for event reviews. And if you need to add something to it, you can edit it—as it is a Wiki.

And, of course you can always follow me on Twitter for more up-to-date event reviews. If I’ve missed anything, please let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to this list. Please include the date, time, a short event description, and a link (if applicable).

There’s also the awesome Portland-based Calagator and Yahoo’s! Upcoming, which was created by Andy Baio, a Portland resident. Hooray for awesome event databases!

Portland Tech Events for the month of October, November, and Beyond

Oct 27, 2008: Introduction to Google Android — Mobile Portland at AboutUs offices

A year after making a splash with the announcement of the Google Android platform for mobile phones, Android-based phones have finally hit the market. The G1 from T-Mobile and HTC shows an early version of what is possible on this new platform. Sean Sullivan will be talking about what Google Android is, what it means for the market place, and how developers can start building solutions for this new mobile phone platform. Sean will also demonstrate his latest Google Android project which combines OAuth and…

Renewable Energy Finance Forum-West

Renewable Energy Finance Forum-West Monday, October 27, 2008 at 8:30am through Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 4:30pm Grand Hyatt Hotel 721 Pine Street Seattle , WA 98101 US ( map ) The Renewable Energy Finance Forum-West (REFF-West) will unite investors, financiers and project developers in the renewable energy sector, with a particular focus on the Western U.S. The conference builds on the success of the Clean Tech Investing in the Pacific Northwest conference and REFF-Wall Street. Attendees will…

DorkbotPDX Meeting

DorkbotPDX Meeting Monday, October 27, 2008 from 7 – 10pm Lucky Labrador Beer Hall 1945 NW Quimby Portland , OR 97209 US ( map ) Come join us for an evening of socializing, talking about odd hacks and poking around with other people toys. Bring things for show and tell if you like, or just bring a willingness to share your interests. We’ll be the kids with all the coolest stuff on the table. Hope to see you there. Links Website Tags dorkbot, electronics, hardware Download to iCal You…

PDX Critique monthly meeting

PDX Critique monthly meeting Monday, October 27, 2008 from 7 – 9pm CubeSpace 622 SE Grand Ave. Portland , Oregon 97214 USA ( map ) Share your creations and get constructive feedback Links Website Download to iCal You can edit this event . This item was added directly to Calagator Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 10:37am .

Oct 28, 2008: Microsoft Brings Free IT Expertise to Portland, Oregon at Oregon Convention Center

The Microsoft Across America team will be in Portland, Oregon delivering three seminars demonstrating how to drive your business. These educational events are free of charge and specially designed for business owners. Through demonstrations and face-to-face interaction with Microsoft Technology Specialists, attendees will learn how to save time and money while driving efficiency and profitability. TS2 – Target Audience: Microsoft Partners Microsoft’s TS2 seminars teach attendees how to increase revenue…

Science Pub: Science Circus - The Physics of Fun

Science Pub: Science Circus - The Physics of Fun Tuesday, October 28, 2008 from 7 – 9pm McMenamins Mission Theater 1624 NW Glisan Street Portland , Oregon 97209 ( map ) Come see physics in action! Jugglers, acrobats, and other circus artists often base their acts on simple Newtonian principles of motion and balance taken to extremes. How does gravity’s constant rate of acceleration affect the juggling of bowling balls? Why would a Nobel Laureate beg a vaudevillian to spin a ball on his finger?…

AeA: Going Green

AeA: Going Green Tuesday, October 28, 2008 from 7:30 – 9am Oregon Zoo 4001 SW Canyon Rd. Portland , OR 97221-9704 US ( map ) Human Resources Networking Event Date: Oct 28, 2008 Going Green Going Green is one of the hottest topics in business today. It is not just good for the environment, Going Green is good for business. From your facilities to your business processes to your people, there are easy and inexpensive ways to truly improve your company’s Green quotient. Join our industry panel to…

Smalltalk Users Group meeting [tentative]

Smalltalk Users Group meeting [tentative] Tuesday, October 28, 2008 from 6:30 – 8:30pm GemStone Systems 1260 NW Waterhouse Ave # 200 Beaverton , OR 97006 US ( map ) pdx.st is the Portland Smalltalk Users Group. The group welcomes programmers interested in the Smalltalk language. Members interact through a mailing list and meet regularly for presentations, demos and discussions. Links Website Tags programming, smalltalk Download to iCal You can edit this event . This item was added directly…

Oct 29, 2008: Portland Open Coffee Club - October 2008 at Backspace

Portland Open Beer Club and Portland Open Coffee Club are monthly meetups offering a low key, agenda-free format centered around meeting like-minded individuals and talking about technology, the web, and startups. The Portland Open Coffee Club meets the last Wednesday of every month at Backspace at 10 am. Read more at http://portlandopencoffeeclub.com/

Portland State Aerospace Society: General & Team Meetings

Portland State Aerospace Society: General & Team Meetings Tuesday, October 28, 2008 from 7 – 11pm Portland State University, Fourth Avenue Building - FAB 155 1900 SW 4th Avenue Portland , Oregon 97201 US ( map ) Links Website Download to iCal You can edit this event . This item was imported from http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/r… Saturday, October 18, 2008 at 4:49pm and last updated Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 12:41am .

Oct 30, 2008: OEN’s Venture Northwest at Portland Marriott (Downtown)

It starts with a simple seed. But from that seed grows strong, vibrant and sustainable companies that are ripe for investment. Venture Northwest (formerly Venture Oregon) is the premier forum for new and emerging investment opportunities in exciting companies from Oregon, Washington, and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Learn about the region’s growth segments, explore exciting new technology and research, and connect with entrepreneurs from the area’s hottest emerging companies including nanotech,…

Nov 1, 2008: Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Install Party at Backspace

Celebrate the release of Ubuntu 8.10, the Intrepid Ibex. Get a copy of the .iso file without waiting for the long download. Get a burned CD or burn one of your own and pass on the free software love. Get installation help and talk to local linux experts.

Nov 5, 2008: Social Network Spaghetti - Portland Web Innovators at Vidoop

Scott Kveton will tell us where he thinks we with the state of current social networks and how we’re actually on our way to the promised land. Kveton is a digital identity promoter, open source contributor, and VP of Open Platforms for Vidoop.

Nov 5, 2008: Lunch 2.0 at the Eclipse Foundation at Eclipse Foundation

The Portland Lunch 2.0 saga continues at the Eclipse Foundation in downtown. Come join your old Twitter pals, meet some new people, learn about what the Eclipse Foundation has going on these days. Did you know they had a Portland office? Worried about parking downtown? It’s probably going to be raining by then. No worries, the Max Oak Street stop is right in front of their building. Lunch 2.0 is a Valley phenomenon that you can read about at lunch20.com, and we’re putting a PDX stamp on it. Are you…

Nov 6, 2008: The Smart Grid and the New Electricity Economy at The Nines Hotel

The Smart Grid and the New Electricity Economy Date: Thu, Nov 6th Time: 4:00pm-6:30pm Location: The Nines Hotel 525 SW Morrison Portland, OR 97204 Cost: $35 for non members $10 Discount for walking or taking mass transit Registration Deadline: 11/06/2008 Topic: The Smart Grid and the New Electricity Economy Register for this Event Back to Event Calendar The Clean Technology Alliance is proud to present a special event hosted by noted expert Jesse Berst of GlobalSmartEnergy to chronicle the rapid growth of…

Nov 10, 2008: The semi-un-not-so-official Wordpress Upgrade Party at CubeSpace

We saw the demo at WordCamp, now lets get together for the grand launch of WordPress 2.7!

Nov 12, 2008: Refresh Portland at Jive Software

Refresh Portland is a monthly talk (held every 2nd Wednesday) about design, front-end development, usability and web standards. We’re in the process of finalizing the speaker. Please watch this space and our twitter account ( http://twitter.com/RefreshPDX ) for future developments. Refresh Portland is part of the Refreshing Cities Movement.

Nov 13, 2008: Ignite Corvallis at CH2M HILL Alumni Center

I hope you’ll join us for Ignite Corvallis in November at High Tech After Hours. Ignite Corvallis Thursday, November 13th, 2-3pm CH2M HILL Alumni Center, Corvallis, Oregon (Across from Reser Stadium) NOTE: Submission deadline for presentation proposals is Tuesday, November 4th. email proposals to ignite [DOT] corvallis [AT] gmail Ignite is coming to Corvallis! Share burning ideas. If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15…

Nov 13, 2008: Ignite Portland 4 at Bagdad Theater and Pub

Save the date! Ignite Portland 4 will happen on Thursday November 13, 2008, at the Bagdad. Same venue. Same format. Even more burning ideas. More details to come - stay tuned! http://www.igniteportland.com http://twitter.com/igniteportland http://friendfeed.com/rooms/igniteportland

Nov 15, 2008: Cre8Camp Portland (@SOUK)

Cre8Camp Portland is a BarCamp-like unconference with a creative twist–it is for creative industries professionals. Saturday November 15, 2008 from 10:00am - 3:00pm Participants drive the session topics and lead the discussions. Registration required. Ticket Info: 10.00 Buy Tickets. Visit the web site for more information. To see photos from the last Cre8Camp, click here. Cre8Camp will be at SOUK 322 NW 6th Avenue, Suite 200. Portland, Oregon 97214. Website: http://www.cre8camp.org/Cre8CampPortlandAdd to calendar.

Dec 6, 2008: CyborgCamp 2008 at CubeSpace

[[Note: The date of this event has been changed to Dec. 6th]] CyborgCamp is a simulcast unconference about the future of the relationship between humans and technology. We’ll discuss topics such as social media, design, code, inventions, web 2.0, twitter, the future of communication, cyborg technology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. CyborgCamp’s aim is to have many communication channels such as Twitter, Flickr, UstreamTV, Video and Audio recordings and live chats displayed on the screen.…

Jan 4, 2009: The Ethics of eWaste at Westminster Presbyterian Church

Electronic waste or “e-waste” is broken or unwanted electrical or electronic devices. Many components of e-waste are considered toxic. Due to the difficulty and cost of recycling used electronics as well as lacklustre enforcement of legislation regarding e-waste exports, large amounts of used electronics have been sent to countries such as China, India, and Kenya, where lower environmental standards and working conditions make processing e-waste more profitable. Oso Martin, President of Bear…

Jan 14, 2009: Lunch 2.0 at the New OTBC Office at OTBC in the Beaverton Round

For the first time, Portland Lunch 2.0 will happen in the ‘burbs, Beaverton to be precise. The OTBC is moving into new space and partnering with the Beaverton Round Executive Suites . So, to showcase their new digs and introduce Lunch 2.0 to the suburbs, the OTBC will be hosting Lunch 2.0 on January 14, 2009. The Beaverton Round is right on the MAX line about 20 minutes from Portland. Just jump off the Blue Line at the Beaverton Central stop, and you’re 90 feet from the new OTBC office. Lunch 2.0 is…

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant from Portland, Oregon. She goes to lots of tech events because they are fun to go to!

The Ignite Portland 4 lineup is in.

As Josh Bancroft said, “Man, that was TOUGH. We received over 50 talk ideas for Ignite Portland 4. The vast majority of them were really, really good. But we only have room for 13 talks on stage at the Bagdad (plus the traditional “What is Ignite?” talk)”.

Josh also wanted to give a HUGE “Thank You!” to everyone who submitted a talk that wasn’t chosen, pointing out that, “Your talk ideas made the competition fierce, and that competition means that the talks that were chosen are the cream of the crop. Even if you didn’t get picked, submit your talk idea next time - don’t lose heart! :-)”

Here are the 14 talks that will make up Ignite Portland 4. Follow the links to read the speaker’s description of their talk:

• What is Ignite? - Josh Bancroft
• Five Things Portland Can Learn From Kentucky in Five Minutes - Jeff Hardison
• A Short Introduction to Cyborg Anthropology - Amber Case
• Spirituality in Community: It’s not just for religion anymore - David Kominsky
• How to Bluff Your Way Through Life or a 5 Minute Presentation - Cami Kaos
• Cooking with the Seasons: The Garanimals Method - Katherine Gray
• Dating Rules for the Actual World - Alexis Rehrmann
• Story as Bloodsport: Battling to craft narrative - Melissa Lion
• How To Make People Think You’re a Portlander - Without Actually Living in the State of Oregon - Carolynn Duncan
• 7 One-Night Stands with a Baseball Fan - Nova Newcomer
• Divided We Win: 5 Reasons Why FOX News is Saving Our Media and Democracy - Abraham Hyatt
• Juice Up a