Final Foursquare Cyberculture Report

You know when you feel like you’re being followed? If you get a Foursquare account, you just may be. Foursquare is a social networking site that users participate in nearly exclusively via their smartphones. The site allows users to “check in” wherever they go – tell the site where they are and what they’re doing. When a user checks in at a venue (most public places already exist on the site) they earn points and become one day closer to being the “mayor”, a title for people who have checked in at a particular venue more than anyone else within the last two months. The site also offers users points for check-ins and badges which users can collect. These badges can be for anything, from checking in all the time to being “On a boat.” These badges, along with the site’s new points system for check-ins, are a reward which seems to have no goal other than to keep the site fun and to keep users interested. After studying the site this semester, I believe the goal of the site, unlike most social networking sites, is to bring friends together in person, separate from the virtual world where so many of us spend our time. Often, however, users take a different approach, using the site to create an identity for themselves or to engage in competition for points and mayorships.

Step 1: Download the app to the smartphone or notepad of your choice. From there, your options are virtually endless. Check in everywhere you go in order to try to be the mayor of every place into which you step. Check in only at the gym so people think you’re really fit. Never check in and just leave “tips” at certain venues to leave advice (or snarky comments) for people who show up later. You do have to, at the very least, have a cell phone to use Foursquare. And to be fully included, though they have a texting version like Twitter’s, you have to have a smartphone with internet or cellular data access and the ability to download apps. On the site, the users you see are mainly those who are your "friends", people you have chosen to allow to see and get updates on your check-ins, and on a site where you’re constantly telling your Foursquare friends where you are, most people don’t want too many friends that they don’t actually know very well.

When I joined the Foursquare, I had very few friends who used the site, so I added everyone from my Facebook, Twitter, and email address book who the site told me used Foursquare. The problem, though, was that unless these people checked on the computer site, they couldn’t access my “friend request” (a problem which an app update has since solved). For a few weeks, I only had three “friends” on Foursquare. This made it so that some of the site’s main features, like checking in with friends, were not possible for me. Also, except for someone who was my “friend” or who was at

a given venue at the same time I was, it really didn’t matter much that I had checked in. I didn’t link my account to my Twitter or Facebook (I’m a little skeptical of the idea of telling the general public where I am ALL the time), so most of my friends that I see on a regular basis didn’t have any idea that I now avidly check-in on Foursquare anytime I go somewhere, or when I don’t, for that matter. In a way that no other site could, Foursquare seemed to connect me to my surroundings but also make me feel secluded, with the secret that I was an avid Foursquare user. The friends I did have who connect Foursquare to Twitter and such, while didn’t seem to have a problem with getting friends, but they still only

averaged around 40 friends, compared with over ten times that many on Facebook.

The first friend I have as an example of a type of Foursquare user is one who I not only don’t know well, but who I don’t know at all. Tony Weber’s avatar on Foursquare is Roger Moore as James Bond, not a “real” face. According to some of my friends, it really frustrates them when people don't use their real pictures as their avatar. I’m personally not a fan of avatars that aren’t your picture on most sites, but on Foursquare in particular, it seems odd. After checking emails I had received from Foursquare, I learned that I asked him to be my friend, but I have no idea who he is or when I did this. His avatar is William Shatner on Twitter (I don’t follow him) and is Sasquatch on Facebook (we’re not friends). I have no clue when or how I asked him to be my friend, but he lives in Austin, and I know everywhere he goes. I could stalk him if I

really wanted to, because the places of which he's mayor include “Tony’s refrigerator” and “Tony’s couch.” Tony obsessively checks in. In fact, he may be dangerously checking in – he doesn’t know me and I know where he is at all times! I get more notifications of his whereabouts than of any of my real friends. For Foursquare to really mean much, you have to be going somewhere when you check in, or you're inviting the killer from Seven to come get you for Sloth. But I'm mayor of my apartment building, and unless you follow me, chances are you don't know what floor or what room. Creating a venue for your couch and becoming friends with strangers is a different story, though. I don't really come off as threatening on my Foursquare page (imagine me smiling and checking in on campus all the time) but what if my picture was an avatar - just not a famous one?

For those who use Foursquare often, and this hits you as soon as you start using it, the check-ins can be a sort of competition. The site allows users to become “Mayor” of a particular

institution, place, even room – any venue you can create. You’re not really "mayor" in any sense other than being there all the time, usually. Occasionally venues offer coupons or other perks (free pizza, etc.) to their mayors. The University Co-op, for example, offers its mayor a $50 gift card on the 28th of every month. For me, the chance to gain mayorships made badges secondary. These types of incentives are still relatively rare, though. Soon after I joined the site, I began wanting very badly to be the mayor of my apartment building. I live here. I check in here nearly every day. The app even tells you when you’re within 10 days of becoming the mayor of any place when you check in. But for two weeks I didn’t get such a notification. When I first wrote about Foursquare, I was still an excruciating 9 days from becoming mayor, but I didn’t think I could actually make it. Someone else in this building was an avid Foursquare user, and they got to the site (and the site of our apartment complex) before I did. Now, however, I am the mayor. Foursquare started using a system soon after I joined so that “this week” really meant between this time exactly and this time seven days ago. During Spring Break, the person who had been relatively diligent about checking in at this building must have gone on vacation, because my Spring Break included a countdown: “5 days til you’re the mayor...4 days til you’re the mayor...” Finally, on the last day (Saturday) of Spring Break, I became the mayor of the Quarters Sterling House. Now, I am the old user who won’t stop checking in and who is keeping new users from being within ten days of becoming the mayor. Other places, though, like the bus I take to work, were ones that either no one cared to check in to or that no one was an avid enough user until now to check into often, and I took those mayorships easily, and hold them, even though I don’t check in at them very often.

There is a sort of class structure that is almost unnoticeable, but that I felt was tangible on the site. Some users check in at very specific places in order to create a certain appearance.

Others, like my Foursquare “friend” Vincent, truly are often checking in at venues like the airport. Vincent is a “friend” – he and I aren't friends in the true sense of the word, but we know each other through social networking sites and mutual acquaintances. To be honest, I’m not sure he'd recognize me on the street, but I know that he was in D.C. a couple months ago. Vincent owns a social media company and as such has the opportunity to travel for work often. On top of this, his group of friends includes more people than average who use SNS’s frequently. As such, Vincent has nearly 200 Foursquare friends and has checked in over 1,200 times. He’s the mayor of only five venues, but they include his Florida office and two gyms. He has more badges than anyone I know (I used his badge page to figure out how to get some of the badges) and when I see his check-ins or look at his page, I get the feeling that he’s, simply put, cooler than my other friends. When I joined Foursquare, Vincent was one of those first three friends, and while his pings were often things like "Mmmm Chipotle... Vincent H. @ Chipotle," I got the sense, from his not-exactly-rare check-ins at the airport that he was using Foursquare for something that was more important than my check in at Chipotle and then at my apartment.

A real hierarchy has been created by the makers of Foursquare that, unless one happens to be researching it, goes unnoticed to the average user. That hierarchy is one comprised of people called “Superusers.” No site that I could find online knew exactly how to become a Superuser, but from the people who didn’t mind bragging that they had been awarded the title, I have a feeling that it has to do with checking in often and being a member for a certain amount of time. According to AboutFoursquare.com, Superusers are “regular users who’ve been hand selected by the foursquare staff to help maintain the venue database.” Superusers come in stages: a user can be a 1, 2, or 3. At Level 1, users can report venues to have them deleted or combined and can edit any venue. Level 2 Superusers can, on top of their Level 1 power, complete suggested merges, add categories to venues, and close venues. Level 3 Superusers can create and remove venue names and can lock venues so that they can only be edited by other Level 3 Superusers. The Level 3 Superuser power is not often awarded. This real hierarchy, which also points to the fact that the site’s creators are intimately involved in the maintenance of the site through their choosing Superusers, is one that the average Foursquare user has no conception of and would not be very likely to notice.

If a user checks in ten times in twelve hours, Foursquare will award him the “Overshare” badge. In our everyday lives, it seems, we have a conception of “overshare,” and checking in everywhere we go (and broadcasting it) just might be overshare, even to some of our closest friends. A friend of mine on the site was the person that inspired me to try Foursquare for this project – and he has no idea. My friend Josh is the sort of Foursquare user who checks in everywhere. He has his account connected to his Twitter and often takes flak from our friends about all his check-ins. A whole conversation at dinner, after I had already joined the site (I remained quiet), was dedicated to picking on Josh about his Foursquare use. He is the mayor of a few sandwich shops and proudly checks in at Chick-fil-A at least three times a week. For a long time, Josh checked in every morning at work, but after registering with Foursquare as an employee, he is no longer the mayor of the venue. Since this turn of events, Josh doesn't check in at work anymore, or at least not on a very regular basis. Still, at any given time, a third of Josh’s latest tweets are likely to be “Josh P. @ HEB” or “Josh P. @ Thundercloud Subs.” This sort of user is the type that is using the site purely for the fun of it and because it is a social networking site to be a part of. Josh isn’t the mayor of any venues who give incentives, and he certainly isn’t selective about the announcements of his whereabouts. My guess is that he’s the kind of user who genuinely enjoys using the site.

My friend Jenn joined the site after I confessed to her and another friend, Charity, that I was using Foursquare on the night of Josh's dinner ribbing. She didn’t judge me, as I was afraid she would, but rather said she had been mildly interested in joining herself. And boy, did she join. Jenn is an example of someone who likes checking in everywhere. Jenn checks in when she eats out, when she gets back to Brazos garage, and when she gets back to Jester. If I didn’t know where Jenn was for a few days based on her pings to my phone, I would probably begin

to worry about her. Jenn also provided me with my first-ever example of a Foursquare "flesh meet.” One day I was minding my own business and eating a burrito with my roommate at Chipotle when all of a sudden, I looked up to see two of my friends. I couldn’t believe they found me so randomly, but Jenn said, "I know where you are all the time.” I had checked in at Chipotle on Foursquare! Sometimes I forget that my actions on a social networking site have consequences. In the case of Foursquare, if I didn’t have that friend I don’t know, I think this sharing is completely healthy. The site, it seems, encourages "flesh meets" among friends. Foursquare doesn’t want me to be lonely – it wants me to see my friends more often.

Charity followed me and Jenn onto Foursquare, and the three of us ended up having a Foursquare day together. Charity acts like she’s above the idea of being on Foursquare, but she gets excited about beating people to a check in if you're together. She checks in mainly at the rowing center and at the Capitol, two places she wants people to remember that she visits. One time that she did get excited: Foursquare day at Six Flags. The three of us checked in at every ride, trying to get as many points as possible. This meant trying to beat each other to checking in at a particular coaster (I got my Overshare Badge that day), because you get extra points for being the first of your friends to check in at a particular venue. Like Foursquare does, we trusted each other to wait until we were actually to a coaster to check in – one could probably check in at any coaster from a central location in the park. This day of checking in together further solidified for me that Foursquare intends to bring friends together. In fact, that day we all got “BFF Bonus” points for being around each other so much.

On Foursquare, you can be whoever you want to be. As long as you tell your friends who that is so they can look for you. The point of Foursquare doesn’t turn out to just be about being the mayor or getting badges and points – Foursquare wants to help users hang out with the people they know. Unlike sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Foursquare encourages “friends” to actually be friends - to be around one another. It's true, this site and its perks are really only available to those who have smartphones, not simply internet access, but lately it seems that more and more people of all kinds are able to conform to that requirement. Concerns with letting someone know your location seem to be broken down more often everyday, at least among users of smartphones and other social networking sites. You have to be going somewhere, it’s true. If a person is a stay at home mom, it wouldn't be very worthwhile to check in. But her friends would know where she was. For people who are often, say, walking around Austin, the site provides a way to actually see those people who are their friends -especially when it turns out that it would only take walking a few steps down the street.

A Semester's Worth of Observations on Social Networking

When I started this class, I thought I knew all I'd really care to know about social networking. I had a Facebook and a Twitter account that I used regularly, and I really wasn't interested in joining any other sites. In fact, when we started our comparison projects, I considered sticking with Twitter for one of the sites. When I thought about what Dr. Davis said about the project and that we shouldn't do something we were too invested in, though, I realized something: I love Twitter.

I really, really do. I've learned a lot about it over the course of the semester, too, as I've devoted a lot of time to being involved in and studying another site: Foursquare.

My first big Twitter-happening of the semester came when I was told at work (in a Representative's office at the Texas Capitol) that my tweet about being excited to be off work for MLK day had ended up in my boss' daily update about her name on the internet. For a few hours after that, I had a crisis of conscience that ended in my setting my Twitter account to private.

But, to me, there's a problem with that. What am I doing on Twitter if I make it private? If I didn't ever actually "microblog" and simply used the site for news (which I think would be a completely legitimate use of the site) having a private account would make sense. But when I put an opinion of mine or link something I think people should see to my Twitter account, I want people to see it. In fact, I'm more likely to want people who don't know me to see it - my friends are already pretty well-informed of my opinion on most issues.

So, after a six hour private-account hiatus, I was back to tweeting.
I love Twitter, and I love the ways I use it. Occasionally I'm "retweeted" by someone I think is important or who I have a lot of respect for, and when it happens, I get really excited. If my account were private, I couldn't have the same influence. I certainly don't simply use the site to tweet my own feelings.

When we discussed where we got our news at the beginning of the semester, I said mainly on Twitter. This has proved true, and I actually heard on Twitter that the President would be giving an address before television news stations announced that the address would be about the death of Osama bin Laden (who we discussed in connection with Bert and Viral Texts at the beginning of the semester, interestingly).

All of this has been a long-winded way of saying that I am glad of two things, especially:

1. This class has given me an appreciation of SNSs in general and the role they can play for us even when we can't codify what participating in them (think: checking in everywhere you go) really satisfies for a user.

2. I didn't try to be critical of Twitter-use. I'm guessing, after the Twitter fangirl moment I just had, that I wouldn't have been very good at it. This was one of the great parts of the course, though. We got the opportunity to really explore something that was similar to our norm, but was apart from it. In this way, I think we have gotten the opportunity to really consider our "real" and "virtual" lives.

"Flesh meets" on Foursquare

If I think about it, I think the real intent behind Foursquare is for people to have more "flesh meets" with people they already know. Or at least to contact them more often. The site allows users to get updates on where their friends are whenever the friends check in. For me, this meant that a couple of my friends came into Chipotle and started talking to me one day. This freaked me out a bit until I realized that just a few minutes before they walked in, I had checked in at Chipotle.

Really, what's the point of telling your friends where you are if you don't want to see them? Some people use check-ins as an opportunity to brag about where they are or to create a sort of persona (always at the gym, always at the airport, etc.) and I have to admit that if I were on vacation, I'd probably check in everywhere, just to say I had. "Just to say I did" is also a big motivation for people on Foursquare, I think. I'm currently the mayor of five places, and none of these are places where I receive any kind of recognition or coupons or any of that. I've simply checked in there more than anyone else in the past two months, and Foursquare calls me the mayor.

I think Foursquare really wants to encourage "flesh meets", though, based on what Foursquare itself has done. With a few of my friends that I see a lot, I get "BFF bonus" points for checking in with them a few times a week. The point, Foursquare seems to be suggesting, is that you're supposed to be together in using the app. After my initial embarrassment, I've decided that you're supposed to run around Six Flags checking in at every roller coaster. And you know what? It's a lot of fun to become mayor of the only roller coaster that ever makes you feel sick and to spend the day acting like a fool with your other Foursquare using friends - in person.

Do any of your sites encourage flesh meets in a sort of backhanded way? What about those that have them set up intentionally - do they encourage having more non-organized flesh meets after your first site-organized one?

Foursquare's competitive edge

One of the biggest things I noticed when I joined Foursquare has become even more pronounced: Foursquare is competitive.

When I joined Foursquare, the "Mayor" system, where a member is rewarded with the status of Mayor for being the person to check in the most at a particular venue, was the most obvious way the site encouraged competition, but since I've been there, the site has taken it up a notch.

The point system, implemented about a month ago, gives users points for their check-ins. As far as I can tell, one only gets points for the sake of getting points. The site also awards "badges" for checking in at certain types of venues, for example, but there has not yet been any indication that members will be receiving badges based on their points. So why do we get points?

Well...members are now encouraged to keep going -- check in everywhere you can! Check in at places you've never been and get more points! Check in somewhere your friends have never been and get extra points! Check in somewhere at least three times a week and get extra points!

Every time you get points for a check in, Foursquare reminds you how many points you got, tells you if you passed any friends in total points for the week, and encourages you to pass the friend you're closest to catching. All of this seems to really just be competition for the sake of competition.

My guess is that this must be Foursquare's way of trying to get its members to check in at every venue they visit. Some people, as I've mentioned in class, only check in to certain places that will create a "cool" Foursquare persona. Perhaps the site is using its new point system as a way to boost its stats, so to speak. If people are checking in more often, as my friends have been since the change, Foursquare will be able to boast about the amounts of check-ins that are taking place on the site.

Have any of you seen your sites using competition in this way?

I'm the kind of person who's always hated group projects...

As I tend to be pretty conscious of my grades, "aw, heck naw" was my knee-jerk reaction to the idea of crowdsourcing grades. I did my best, especially after reading Davidson's reply to her critics, to take her word at face value and not to scowl.

I must say, I think Davidson's argument has value. She has students be more responsible through the whole process of taking the course and makes them responsible to one another for the quality of their work. From this angle, I think crowdsourcing grading sounds like a relatively great way to do it.

As a student, though, I don't think I could help but object to crowdsourcing. I don't think I would choose a class if it said this would be going on in its description, and I think the idea of my peers grading my papers and other assignments would make me...angry.

If Dr. Davis gives me a really awful grade on a paper, I'm not going to be happy, but I wouldn't question that she's the authority on the subject. Like with group projects, though, if a peer seemed to have not done a satisfactory job and caused me to have a poor grade, I'd be angry. This class, with these specific people, after reading your blogs and interacting with you in class, I MIGHT be willing to participate in this with.

I think Davidson's argument presents a sort of utopian idea of what classes are like. All the students are suddenly motivated to work hard when they have the opportunity to run the show (at least a little). My fear is that this wouldn't be as much of a motivation for other students as it would be for me and that those students who work hard would be subjected to the group project nightmare - all semester.

S/R 3: eXistenZ

In the beginning, whether or not it’s really the beginning, of eXistenZ, a group of gamers is given the opportunity to test the newest creation of Allegra Geller, the gaming world’s best and most famous game designer. Before they get a chance, however, Allegra is attacked and shot by a realist, a person who wants to end the influence of gaming’s alternative reality. Ted Pikul, a marketing person for the gaming company, is sent away with Allegra and told that she is in great danger. When Allegra believes she is somewhat safe from the attacks of the realists, she brings up the trauma that her game pod, a fleshy object that we later learn is made with animal innards and synthetic DNA, must have gone through, and that she needs to check on the game by playing it. Allegra convinces Pikul to have a “port” inserted into his spinal cord (an enhancement she is shocked he didn’t have to begin with) so that they can play the game. After multiple complications with Pikul’s port, the two are finally able to play eXistenZ. Once in the game, Pikul is surprised to find that he feels he’s really there, like his body in the game is real. Allegra and Pikul work their way around, soon going into a game in the game. Pikul realizes that in the game he can’t tell what’s real and that he has no idea what’s going on with his real body. After pausing the game and finding that they seemed safe, Allegra convinces Pikul to return to the game. In the game, Allegra and Pikul find themselves realizing that they don’t know who their friends or enemies are, and both in the game and “out”, later on, they find themselves willing to kill people that they don’t truly know the motivations of. Finally, Pikul realizes that he is Allegra’s true assassin, but she is one step ahead of him, and she blows him up through a bomb she inserted in his game port. Suddenly, all the characters we recognize from the game are sitting in a semicircle, taking off headsets, and being told that the trial of a brand new game, tranCendenZ, is over. They’ve been in the game for twenty minutes, though it feels like days. In the final moments of the film, Ted Pikul and his somewhat timid girlfriend, Allegra Geller, shoot and kill the designer of tranCendenZ, using the wording of the original realist shooter, leaving the characters and the audience to wonder whether or not the game is still going.


Throughout the movie, the characters bring up the question of reality. Like in the Matrix, characters are given the choice between the game and reality, but in eXistenZ, the preferences and subconscious thoughts of the players create the world in which the game operates. As in the real world, those playing the game both bring their own thoughts to create the game and are changed and manipulated by the game itself. Pikul’s objection to the world of the game and its not giving him much free will leads Allegra to say “it’s like real life – just enough to make it interesting.” We have free will, Allegra the Designer would argue, but only so much as we’ve been given by our circumstances. This critique of life, by a woman who is intent on staying in a game that she created to mimic life, brings an audience to consider our own lives. It seems the game is both an imitation and a critique of the lives we lead. In a way, characters in the game are like people we deal with in our lives. We can at no point determine their true motives or know how their stories will cross with ours. We are at once a being that gets to make conscious choices and one that cannot decide for itself its next steps. We are constantly being shaped by the role we were given when entering the “game” and by the other players. When considering whether or not we have free will, many people determine that humans don’t have any. On the other hand, even people who believe that humans have free will would be remiss to ignore the fact that our position in society, the game character we’ve been given, has a huge impact on what we become, or even on what it is possible for us to become. The question of where our motivation comes from is a more complicated one, but it doesn’t take much a logical leap from here to see that the world we live in has a huge influence on what we desire. Reality, it seems, creates us and is in turn created by who we become.

eXistenZ: Too Real?

When, in a moment of uncertainty, Ted Pikul (Jude Law) tells Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that he feels like he's just stumbling around, unsure of the motivations of anyone else and not sure of even himself. After raising this as an objection to being in the game and saying that he can't believe anyone would really want to play a game like this, Allegra responds, "But it's a game everybody's already playing." This really hit me, because in a game like eXistenZ, or online where Case "jacked in", or when using AR technology or SNSs, we're "playing the game" the way we live our lives. In all these cases, the participants can't be completely sure of the motives of players we interact with. Our lives are so intertwined with the game and with the lives of the other players that our fate depends on them, even if we can never figure out whether they're trustworthy or how much they really know.

This comparison that Allegra makes is one that is well taken, whether or not our nervous systems are actually connected to the interface. In a way, me, the real me, the Jenna that people believe they know, is the one that can be found online on my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Online, on these sites and others, I am the character, and my life outside the "game" could be forever affected by my actions online. I never thought of myself as actually "in" Banjo-Kazooie or Sarge's Heroes (yes, my video game knowledge is small and not too up-to-date), and I was never too invested in the characters. I got multiple chances at life, and if I decided to, I could reset the world and start over. eXistenZ seems so real because it offers players a chance to feel that their actions truly have some consequence. In eXistenZ, the game has become so real that Pikul and Allegra end up having a hard time deciding whether or not they're actually in the game, and the audience, it turns out, has been tricked into its own dilemma about whether or not the game is still going. In a way, Pikul makes a great point, whether you're in eXistenZ, "jacked in", or posting on Twitter. You need to be worried about your body, your real body, because it might be in danger.

Separation on the Internet: What does it mean?

When it comes to this idea of people separating themselves out voluntarily on the internet and its effects on the perfect democracy we may have hoped for, I'm going to have to take a position that opposes what the Stephanek reading and what many of my classmates said. Do I think people are just as separated online? Maybe. Do I think it's a bad thing? Not really. First, let me explain a bit. Since we read Jenkins, I couldn't help but keep in mind that while some sites provide a lot of "democracy", stratification happens there. "In" groups happen there. And the sites themselves tend to be based on the members having common interests (Survivor, etc). To me, this system seems to definitely be different than our daily "real" lives, but because we use our own identities (or at least part of them, through our interest in the subject), it isn't surprising to me that we see the same class and social stratification that we do in the real world. Online, what we do is every day more likely to be connected to us at some time in the future than ever before. Potential employers, graduate schools, and many other professional and personal resources could find what you've "done" online and link it to your future in the "real world". Because this is so, we're less likely to be pushed to engage in conversations online that we wouldn't want to answer for later, and we're less likely to step out of our comfort zones. Because I don't see employers and such putting an end to their checking our facebooks, twitters, etc, I don't see people doing much online (at least as themselves) that they wouldn't be able to quickly and easily explain offline.

How do you escape the grid?

Reading Benkoil's article on AR, or Augmented Reality, I couldn't help spending most of the article thinking one thing: "Wow, that's cool..." At the end of the article, though, Benkoil mentions the "'creepiness' factor" of the whole thing. He argues, as one who'd been reading the article might guess, that the technology should move forward anyway, as it is only in the early stages and is making a lot of progress. Part of what he said, though, struck me as odd. In the final line of the article, in his final plea for AR technology to move forward, Benkoil says, "But let's see how far the technology goes...then see what objections are raised to how the technology is being used." It seems that Benkoil wants to halt debate on the merits/downfalls of AR. This is where skeptical of the government, conspiracy theory me kicks in. In cases where I hear about new technology, I try to consider, especially lately, partly because of this class, what the technology does to my ability to "go off the grid" if I were to choose to do so. After reading this article, I've decided that this sort of technology, if used widely, would fundamentally alter my ability to "go off grid".

This technology, it seems, makes the "real world" part of the grid. With a very common tool, a cell phone with apps and a camera, one can turn the world, while walking down the street, into a digital one. For me, this sounds a little scary. Not because it's not cool to be able to go apartment hunting by walking down the street, because I think that's pretty awesome. However, the way a government (or a powerful company, Google, for example) could use the technology seems a little scary. As I've said in a previous post, I've gotten in the habit of telling (presumably just my friends, but also the technology behind Foursquare) where I am at all times. Could AR be linked to this technology? Point your phone at the Union and find out that me and twenty other people are sitting here at this very minute? It doesn't seem too farfetched to me. This henges on human action, though. I have to say where I am (or at least carry my GPS-enabled iPhone with me, if you want to further the conspiracy) in order for me to show up on the grid. The question, I guess, isn't whether all this could happen, but whether we'll let it. If that's true, Benkoil's idea that we should just wait and see what happens, without much discussion, sounds like one I wouldn't suggest.

S/R 2: William Gibson's Neuromancer

As we begin Neuromancer, we are immediately introduced to a world that is unlike our own. The story is set in Chiba and the color of the sky is defined by technology. The main character of the novel, Case, a rather young man, in his early 20s, is in an awful state. He uses drugs, alcohol, and any other remedy he can conceive of to attempt to forget the terrible thing that has happened to him – his nervous system has been damaged, seemingly beyond repair, and he can no longer “jack in” to the matrix, the cyberspace where he used to work as a hacker and to which he so desires to return. Suddenly, Molly and Armitage show up, Armitage offering Case a job. He needs a hacker, one who is desperate, both for money and for his life, and is willing to have Case’s nerves fixed, if only he’ll take the job. Case, being desperate to return to the matrix and to do what he loves, takes the job, and the story begins. As the book goes on, Case and Molly learn more about their mysterious employer, and are introduced to some AI, Artificial Intelligence, which they soon learn is really running the show. What they are working for, truly, is to bring Wintermute and Neuromancer together, both of them being very powerful AIs that were, conscientiously, separated from one another. In their quest to hack into ICE, similar to firewalls in the matrix, Molly and Case are confronted with many characters, each of them very different from our reality and more interesting when considering the human condition. 3Jane is a clone, Riviera is a sociopath, and Armitage, it turns out, is basically a shell of a man, built by a computer on the broken spirit of a soldier named Corto. In the end, Wintermute and Neuromancer are together, contacting AI from other galaxies, and Case, our antihero, goes on with his life, in a way that seems extremely normal after the whirlwind and game-changing job he has just been a part of.

Throughout Neuromancer, I could not help but compare my own dealings in cyberspace with “jacking in.” Though my neurons are not connecting me physically to any sort of matrix, I am no doubt connected, and the emotional reaction I would have to forgetting my phone at home or to being without internet service in part proves that, like Case was at the beginning of the novel, I’d probably be in a sort of desperate, miserable state if my version of jacking in was taken away. As far as being “in” the matrix is concerned, between my Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts, I could only be more “in” if I truly were. On my Facebook, one can find all my day-to-day ramblings, pictures of my friends, accounts of my interactions with others, and reminders of events I’ve attended and plan to attend. On Twitter, one could read about 2000 short entries chronicling my life, starting in April 2009. On my Foursquare account, one can see where I’ve been the past couple of months, and where my body that is not in the matrix is at most times during the day. Perhaps Gibson caught onto what we’d be like thirty years later. He seems to have a good sense of the sort of withdrawals that one can experience when we can’t “jack in”. On top of this, Case can get stuck in the matrix, his body forgotten, or he can live on as a saved consciousness. In a way, this idea of a saved consciousness or disembodied personality is like the way we interact on Facebook. Though our bodies are not in the matrix, a piece of us, a piece that is every day less likely to be truly deleted, is still online. We can even leave messages for friends who have passed away, and speak to them as if we expected them to respond. While we’re away, our friends can interact with our online identities, leaving messages for us to attend to the next time we “jack in”. None of us are truly disconnected anymore. We may not feel ourselves going into the matrix, but we are increasingly like Case and his obsession.

Will we surrender to our computer overlords...?

The idea that a computer can understand the nuances of human language freaks me out. I can't lie, the first time I heard of "Watson" and its attempt to beat Ken Jennings at "Jeopardy!" I was not excited for how far humanity had come in being able to build such a thing -- I was a little worried that such a thing existed. Whether it's been because of dystopian novels or in movies (ranging from normal sci-fi stuff to Disney Channel tv ones), I've grown to see these super-computers as something that we should avoid (they could make all our electronics go haywire, trap us in our houses, etc). In reading Neuromancer, though, I've found myself rooting for Wintermute, and I thought I'd have my post be used toward considering why.

Firstly, I think the way Wintermute is introduced, through a very ominous sounding scenario and with just its name causing a bit of a stir for Case and Molly, I, especially as someone who is not fond of supercomputers, should have had my guard up about Wintermute.
But when Wintermute introduces itself (himself?...) to Case, the interaction seems so innocent, trying to find a way to connect with Case and apologizing when Linda Lee is the wrong way to do so.
This realization, and that's the only way I can think to call it, for Wintermute is an essentially human one. When people don't understand how they are coming off to those they are trying to connect with, we say that they have no social skills. While I'm sure it's not just a human thing (animals probably do this, too), I think we consider knowing how to interact with people a very non-computer sort of thing. I imagine most of us have felt the sheer frustration that comes from trying every option we can think of and having a computer produce the same ERROR message each time. Computer voices (which are addressed in Neuromancer, interestingly) are usually not very sensitive to how a listener would best understand or most easily follow a line of argument. Wintermute, then, in realizing that it (I typed "he" first. Agh!) had chosen a bad way of communicating with Case and then apologizing, is doing something very un-computer.

In being un-computer, Wintermute got me to sort of pull for it... But I'm not sure I like that.

Neuromancer: Do a double take.

I'm a fan of dystopias. I love them. And what generally strikes me about them while I'm reading them is exactly how much different the world is from ours, and how much it's really not so different. As a political junkie, I enjoy considering the types of legislation and other policies that would/could be put in place that would make our society more like the one in the book. In general, the author of books like this have to spend a good chunk of the book explaining what the world is like around the characters. How exactly the government keeps up certain lies, how things have changed, etc. In Neuromancer, however, the book takes no time to help the reader adjust. The world is very different, we can tell that right away, but Gibson essentially makes the reader figure out what is going on in the world. Gibson gives vivid descriptions, but generally only as the characters in the novel run by them or consider them as a normal part of the scenery (ex: octagon, joeboy, coffins, etc).

Another thing that hit me was the subtle ways that the society is different from ours. There are very obvious things that are different from the beginning: there's a lot of cosmetic surgery (so much that it's weird, and a choice, to be ugly), people have extra metal and silicon parts attached to their bodies to help them do things (though this may be closer to reality than it seems), and the idea that one could lose their job by being unable to become "linked in" to cyberspace is foreign to us. There are points that are less obvious, though. At the beginning of Chapter 3, Case "watched himself buy a flat plastic flask of Danish vodka at some kiosk, an hour before dawn." In that one sentence, which doesn't sound too out of the ordinary, especially knowing Case at the beginning of this book, there are a lot of things that simply feel off if one thinks about it.
1. I had to Google search "Danish vodka" to find out if there was such a thing. Granted, I'm not a connoisseur of alcohol by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think of the Danes when I think of vodka.
2. Case bought vodka at a kiosk. Hard liquor is kept behind a counter, generally, even in more liquor-friendly states than Texas. One tends to think of a liquor store as a place you go, not a booth you might stumble upon in the aisles of the mall or something like that.
3. What caught my eye about this sentence originally was the words "an hour before dawn." As dawn is the time just before sunrise, we generally think of dawn as one of the only times of day, with the exception of Sundays, that pretty much no one can purchase alcohol, and more especially liquor. After glancing quickly over Wikipedia, only in Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Atlantic City (NJ), and Cicero (IL) can one purchase alcohol 24 hours a day.

So why the digression into alcohol laws? This quick, short sentence, all by itself, brought up the fact that the laws where Case is purchasing Danish vodka at 4 or 5 a.m. must be quite different than the ones we're used to. I suspect that Neuromancer will be packed subtle suggestions like this, and I'm sure I will not catch them all, but this one really got me thinking. The world doesn't have to involve weird fake food and people with metal and plastic parts for it to be a very different setting than we're used to.

My high school is 112% Mexican

One other thing.

This week, I was messing around on Qwiki, trying to think of things to try that were well-known enough to have a page but sort of harder than cities and such to find (reliable) info on. So I looked up my high school. Now, it's funny: They got the "goose" from the name of the school district, but the mascot really is the "ganders". They also got some of the words to the alma mater, but I really wasn't expecting the thing to break into song. And most glaringly, I graduated in 2008, and while at the time the school is predominately hispanic (about 43%, according to Wikipedia), I'm not sure where they came up with "The school is 112% Mexican".

Qwiki is really neat, but it seems that (for now, at least) we have to take the things it says with a bit of skepticism and maybe do our own research to supplement what it says.

You mean you tell people where you are...all the time?

Over the past month, as I've been checking in everywhere I go (Jenna White is currently at the PCL with 4 other people. David C. is the Mayor), I've felt that if my friends really liked checking in wherever they go, this would sure be a lot of fun. Because of my relatively competitive nature, I've been enjoying it anyway, because stealing mayorships and earning badges is appealing to Competitive Jenna. On the other hand, though, I really can't see too many of my friends getting into this anytime soon.

One of my friends is a social media coordinator for a U.S. Senate candidate and has previously worked for a social media campaign coordinating company, and is the only person (not in our class) I know who checks in regularly on Foursquare. He also has his account linked to Twitter, all that jazz. At dinner with a group of friends, including my social media-loving friend, a few of the others started picking on him: "If you go on Twitter right now, you'll see that Josh is at Pei Wei"..."Yeah, Josh, aren't you the mayor of Thundercloud Subs yet? You eat there everyday." And so it went for a few minutes as they picked on him about (only) his check ins. There was no mention of the fact that he suddenly started tweeting (we understand that this is linked to his jobs) or that he tweets ALL THE TIME, often asking us to RT (retweet) links to his boss' website and such (a few of my friends do this. They "get paid for tweeting," as another friend said once). There's something different in the minds of my friends, it seems, about answering "What's happening?" and "Where are you?"

Why is this, do you think? Given, Josh really does check in at Thundercloud Subs on a pretty regular basis, but I think what they were really picking on him about was that he checks in anywhere. Maybe I'm wrong? As for my friends, they're relatively integrated into social networking sites. They nearly all use Twitter regularly for both telling the world what they're up to and to comment on politics (pretty much all of my friends are politically savvy and have worked for campaigns or in the Legislature). For this reason, I was surprised to see them find Foursquare check ins so foreign and laughable.

Do you all think it's really odd to check in everywhere you go? I sort of do, to be honest, but I feel like I shouldn't, as someone who has, in fact, been accused of over-tweeting.

The problem with "Funny"

In reading Brown's article, "Evil Bert Laden: ViRaL Texts, Community, and Collision," I thought his larger topics were very interesting: Can there be a planetary culture? What would one involve? How are we supposed to/can we interpret these ViRaL texts? All of these were well researched and even included input from Convergence Culture's Jenkins. But what struck me about this whole situation, though, was just how funny it is.

Like the picture we looked at in class Thursday, combining John Kerry and President Obama in a funny verge-of-political sort of way, the "Bert Laden" image is sort of funny and something that most Americans, if seeing it on their friends' facebook, for example, would have likely chuckled a little to themselves and moved on. In a different context (a rally people don't agree with), the image suddenly seemed to take on a new meaning. No longer was it remotely funny, it was a possible detriment to children, and on and on.

In a way this is an understandable reaction. I imagine people felt like something that is used for good (educating children) in the United States was tainted somehow by being put on a poster like these. All of this, to me, though, just make the situation seem even funnier. The evil Bert website and its accompanying photos are funny because though Bert is a puppet on a children's show, it's true that he's not really a nice guy. And a puppet from Sesame Street being caught in these compromising situations just seems clever.
Another layer of misunderstanding/hilarity was added when a foreign printing company didn't realize that an American children's puppet had made its way into a picture of Bin Laden. This brings up some questions about exactly how connected we really are to the rest of the world and how connected it wants to be to us, to be sure. But this sort of real life miscommunication seems like something that could only happen in a movie. And it's kind of funny.

On top of all this, apparently news stations and Sesame Street and parents were appalled by the idea that a character could be taken in a bad light. I don't think it would have affected my worldview as a child if someone had told me Bert was a terrorism activist on the side. I remember thinking he was mean and Ernie was nice. Kids learning their ABC's don't automatically go for worldwide implications. Terrorist = Mean Guy. And to take it a step further, why can't we teach kids that terrorist = mean guy? The threat of terrorism, since I was 11, has been a real part of my life, but on September 11th, 2001, I didn't understand who the terrorists were.

There are reasons that it's easy to define comedy and hard to define funny. To some people, certain things are funny, and to others, they're not. To me, this whole story of miscommunication is funny. A puppet in a compromising position on CNN is funny. A puppet making it onto a poster in support of Bin Laden is funny. And the guy's likely original motive for making the picture? A few laughs.

S/R 1: Convergence Culture

In his book, Convergence Culture, Professor Henry Jenkins postulates about the implications of a culture of convergence, “a paradigm shift … toward ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture” (254). As Jenkins explains throughout the book, this new, complex relationship has many implications. In the case of a devoted base of fan “spoilers,” the Producer of a television show, Survivor, was forced to try to stay just ahead of the group in order to keep the secrets of his show. He pushed back, though, planting fake evidence for spoilers to find and creating clues within the show (47). Jenkins notes that this new culture of the bottom-up pushing against more traditional forms of media can move from these niche communities toward politics. We can, he argues, be involved not only in communities of collective intelligence for purposes of entertainment, but also to “push back” and exert political power. He mentions and ponders Pierre Lévy and his ideas about democratization and the power of the people leading toward a sort of utopia (246). The idea that the meaning of “literacy” is changing is also a theme in Convergence Culture. In order to be an informed viewer of the movie The Matrix, one would have had to cross media platforms to anime, video games, and blogs in order get the whole story (96). This involves a new demand for participation by the consumer. In order to be involved in online chat rooms and in discussions, one is expected to know what they can say and do and how to find information that is collected online. In addition to all this, consumers are now being marketed to more efficiently than ever before, because in participating (and gaining power) through participation, we are also opening ourselves to easy access for those who would use our enthusiasm to advertise to us (60). This is all a part of the ebb and flow that comes with the “push back” from each group.

The most interesting and widely applicable question Jenkins posed was about the democratization for which this “convergence culture” allows. He considered to what degree the powers-that-be could be using people and their imagined sense of power and to what degree participatory culture truly allows power to be had. In a way, Jenkins bought in, referring repeatedly to Pierre Lévy, whose idea of an “achievable utopia” seems to fascinate Jenkins and shape his thinking throughout the book. The idea is that we can achieve a sense of perfect participation that transcends not only from a niche talking to members of its own group about the chances of someone getting “kicked off the island,” but into the political realm, including both the governed and those who govern. A key example of why this would be beneficial (whether or not it’s what Lévy or Jenkins really mean by utopia) is the story of the “Snowman” from YouTube taking on political candidates. A human, a person who would be a constituent, of sorts, of the President of the United States, made this video, but if he had done the video in his normal voice, as himself, it would not have been nearly as successful. As it turned out, Snowman scared politicians to death. All of a sudden, in a political debate for all the world to see, they were having to answer questions directly from citizens -- not only questions posed by citizens, but those linked with a face (only in one case was it a snowman) and a voice, and a YouTube profile.
To me, this is an excellent example of convergence culture allowing the masses to “push-back,” as Jenkins mentions. A utopia is not when all citizens have information and then end up believing in and asking the government to do all the same thing. Rather, from what I can tell, convergence and participation work best when users bring in the information they have already gathered, take in a little of what the collective has to offer, and begin to engage in the conversation for themselves. Perfection, then, isn’t clear cut. It’s messy. But in a way, it’s beautiful. We haven’t achieved this utopia -- some groups and voices still aren’t part of the conversation -- but in a way (and I’m really glad of this) we’re much closer to this ending than to one of a homogenous, powerful citizenry.

Convergence: The final frontier?

Early in the conclusion, page 257, Jenkins asks what is meant to be a relatively simple question: "Have I gone too far? Am I granting too much power here to these consumption communities?" He gives a simple-sounding answer: "Perhaps." Except "perhaps" is hardly a simple answer to a question like this. What it makes me think he's really saying is "I don't really think so" or "We'll see...".
Well, as soon as I read that, I thought to myself: Hmm... Maybe we can answer this.

We've seen since the beginning of the book that 2007 was, believe it or not, sort of a long time ago. Jenkins calls himself an "early adapter" and mentions that his pile of black boxes includes a VCR, separate from his DVD player (rather than a Playstation 3 with blu-ray, combination VCR/DVD player, XBOX 360, iPhone...). He mentions that people have been relatively skeptical about texting, and today my grandma has learned to text (she actually just got unlimited texting) so that she can have an easy way to communicate with her grandchildren. And she's been telling her friends that it's a brilliant idea! Come to think of it, my grandma's a good example for another reason: She's an avid The Bachelor fan, and she reads the forums for the show online. I watch it so that we have a reason to chat every week or so, and for the past three or four seasons, she's ruined the ending for me by telling me what the forums say will happen. She's a rewinder and rewatcher, too. As far as I know, she doesn't contribute, yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if she started at some point.

So what does all this, and my little rant about Gma, have to do with convergence culture? Three years ago, Jenkins was right. His DVD player was cool, texting was something the cool kids did that people over the age of 40 didn't really understand, lots fewer people had Twitter, Facebook, and on and on.
But the question remains: Is he giving "consumption communities" too much power?
He says "Perhaps." I say "No."
Maybe that seems a little bold, but I'll explain.

I think Jenkins is right to say that this participatory culture is powerful.
These days, big media corporations aren't completely crumbling, but they're having to work to find ways to keep their audiences. Just today, I was watching CNN and was given the opportunity to text in my vote on the story, of three news stories, that they'd show later on in the hour. Now, we're not just demanding that we have access to all the news through the web, but we expect television news to respond to our demands. People on Twitter ranted Saturday that news stations were covering the Super Bowl when they could have been getting that news on ESPN. In a way, our participation forces outlets to be at once more general and more specific than ever before.

Speaking of Twitter, that's where I get most of my news. I read the updates of BreakingNews, CNN, Time, BBCNews, etc, and I usually feel like I'm generally well informed. In fact sometimes, I'm one of the first to know certain bits of the news. I can also be one of the first to comment on a given news story if I happen to pick up on it in time.
Not only can I get my news and share the news and comment on the news on Twitter, but I can contact the people who write the stories, are famous for commenting on the news, and those whom the news references.
John Cornyn, a U.S. Senator from Texas often tweets and replies to tweets. Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, pretty much every CNN anchor, the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post all have Twitter accounts. Some celebrities, politicians, and pundits are known for saying TOO MUCH on their Twitter pages. And they're not kidding around about caring what you say, either. I've had a few interesting interactions with people on twitter, but a recent example:
I got an email from a politician I support (because I'm on his email list) saying to please RT his most recent tweet or to link his facebook page and put the tweet in my own words. I was about to go to my first class of the day, so I decided I'd do it later. When I got out of class, I had a text from a guy who's working as social media director for the campaign asking me to RT or paraphrase the tweet. Now, I thought about three of my friends actually cared (or pretended to care) about my Twitter, but apparently this guy had noticed that my tweets are often political and asked me for help. Friday, I woke up to find that I had been mentioned in this politician's list of "Follow Friday" Twitter pages. While he makes a lot of his own updates, I have a feeling that the media director guy included me in that tweet. Still, I felt I had come full circle. I'd been commenting on the news and the politics/politicians I observed. I'd been noticed, to a degree, and was encouraged to participate. I had a debate about this politician with a friend on Twitter because he disagreed. And finally, the politician responded to me by showing his appreciation that I helped him out.

I rambled again. But all of this is to say that I think we are democratizing the media, bit by bit, and that we're making opportunities for better political culture, as well. When information about what is happening in Washington or in the Capitol in Austin, or in Tahrir Square in Egypt is nearly instantly available to my black box of choice, day or night, politicians and higher-ups of that nature are forced to be responsive and accountable.

SNS: Public displays of connection

I thought the idea that a "public display of connection" was crucial to a SNS was sort of profound, if obvious when given a little thought. One of my first experiences with social networking was Myspace, and "Friends" there had a very important role. When I would have put someone in my "Top 8" but they didn't see me as someone who belonged in theirs, I got my (real world) feelings hurt. These days, someone knowing someone I know could be enough to "friend them" on facebook, if they give a little explanation of their request. And that's another thing. In the "real world," people don't ask to be your friend. And if they do, they don't ask to be your friend for no reason. Often on Facebook, I allow people to be my friend who I have no intention of ever speaking to.



I enjoyed reading the Boyd and Ellison piece on SNSs, partly because I'd really never thought about the origins of some of these sites until I started this class. I knew everyone was friends with Tom when I was on Myspace and they made a movie about how facebook started, but I've always just thought of it as a "some genius invented a website and made a bunch of money...and I'm glad they did" sort of thing. I was surprised to find that one of the initial reasons for a few of the sites was to connect friends-of-friends, for dating purposes and to simply make friends. I think of SNSs these days (that is, 10 years or so later) as a place to share things with people you know or to try to have some influence.



Under the "SNSs hit the mainstream" subtitle, Boyd and Ellison talk about Myspace, and I found it especially interesting knowing that I was one of the youngsters that got a Myspace. I had no idea that musicians and their fans had been such a huge part of the beginnings of Myspace.



Another thing that really hit me with this piece is the differences in popularity of sites in other countries and in the U.S. I generally think of these sites as "connecting the world," but it seems that just as B&E said that certain subgroups (educated, upper middle class; teenagers; old people, etc) tend to use the sites to segregate themselves, whole nationalities do the same thing. B&E mention at the beginning and throughout the piece that certain SNSs gain popularity in certain countries, something I had never considered. I think it would be intriguing to study what makes certain countries take hold of certain SNSs that completely fail in other countries.

A confession: I haven't seen the movie about facebook. I know, I know, it was an excellent film, but I haven't gotten a chance to see it yet. That being said, I had no idea that it's only been since 2004 that Facebook was created. Since then, college students, then business networks, and now anyone at all can join, and everyone DOES join. It's crazy to think that just six years after it was created to be used only by Harvard students, facebook is a necessity for running a big campaign, finding out about events on campus, staying connected to friends from high school, and on and on.

When discussing the idea of "impression management and friendship performance," the idea that people will push their online profiles to be more like who they want to be rather than who they are seems reasonable, but it hasn't been my experience. Personally, I think I could say things on pages where I have "Friends" or "followers" who know me in real life and get a few "LOL"s if I posted something or had pictures that didn't reflect who I am (or who I seem to be) in person. Also, if I say something that sounds off, I might get a message or two from concerned friends saying they're worried I've been hacked. Given, the research that B&E points to seems to mainly be from 2007, and as we've seen just from a few days in this class, three years has made a lot of difference.
I guess the big question is how these sites are changing our "real" lives. These days, I'm always saying, "the other day my friend was talking about," when I'm referring to something they posted online. Perhaps these sites aren't separate from our "real" lives at all.

Foursquare vs. Flickr

For our comparison project I've decided to engage in/study Foursquare and Flickr. They're both sites that I have never participated in that I've heard of and have seen linked to Twitter and Facebook, sites that I have been participating in.

I think, so far, that these sites allow users to project specific (and different) images of one's true self through their site. The use of pictures is shared, in different ways, between the two sites and there seems to be a sense of competition, too.

I've joined, and if you're on Foursquare, I need friends! On flickr, I'm flickr.com/jennaawhite.

Testing the waters - Where could collective intelligence get us?

"Collective Intelligence"...
I probably could have imagined what one would mean by the term - some way for people to collect their knowledge and share it with others, so that, if all the members in a group were a piece of a machine, the machine could do practically anything. Something like that.

When I said something like "could do anything," though, I would probably be considering things like solving scientific and human relations issues, connecting people from all parts of the world, and providing information like Wikipedia does, on any number of subjects, all at once. Something like I get the impression companies like IBM are doing. What I would not have seen, though, is this sort of "machine" working in ways that seem less important (Survivor spoiling) and much, much more important (translating to political power).

I'm going to go ahead and get this out of the way: Yes, I did just make a value judgment in using the term "important". No, I am not ashamed that I'm doing this. I watch the Bachelor. Every season. Occasionally I read forums that are similar to what Jenkins describes: they predict what the ending will be based on information that has been gathered and spoil the end of the show (he gives her a rose and she walks away, he calls his ex-girlfriend while he's on camera...and so on). While I acknowledge that the Bachelor is unimportant, I choose to spend my time on it.

What I found even more interesting than the ability to make these fun, unimportant parts of our life more entertaining, if we enjoy spoiling the ending and sticking it to the man, so to speak, was that theorists consider how this could mean political power for those involved. The ability to "push back" can be interpreted in any number of ways, but what fascinates me about the idea is that this means politics might not really be so personal as we often think. Now, no one really debates that unions and big companies can exert a lot of power, but we generally think of their people as an extension of the money that they're willing to spend.
These groups of collective intelligence, knowledge communities, are formed of members who choose, with nothing other than their personal pleasure and satisfaction as payment, to remain pieces of the group.
Political power seems like a really good reason to want to be in a group like this, but the questions then would be to what extent the group could maintain its power, how only those who contribute to the knowledge of the community would have that power, and on and on.
But back to what I was trying to get to with this altering how we think of politics. I feel like I've rambled a little, but I think I may have a point.

When we vote, we value the ability to have a secret ballot. We want to have as much direct access to our representatives as possible, and we really do, especially at the state and local levels. If our representatives don't listen, we can raise money and run against them or find someone else who can. We put up yard signs, wear buttons, and put bumper stickers on our cars. Unless we start considering how much our vote really fits into the nationwide popular vote or something like that, we generally can see our individual impact on politics. Every once in a while this is reinforced when we have a State Rep. win an election by twelve votes, like Rep. Howard did last November.

The idea that we can do a lot together isn't new. But the idea that some of these things, based on a combination of knowledge, can be swayed by a group seems sort of profound. PACs and parties could be examples of political groups with common ideologies, but I think the idea of knowledge communities is a little more than that. I'm not sure exactly what this means, going forward, if anything, for our political system, but it sure seems like it would change things. Any ideas?

"Hello World!"

I like "Hello World" as a place to begin. It's the first thing I forced a computer to say when I "learned" Java in high school Computer Science. system.out.println("Hello World")