Liveblogging HASTAC II: Trends in TechnoTravels/TeleMobility

Bite-size notes on our bite-size panel presentations:

Isaac Garcia, Central Desktop - The Obama campaign asked them for help in organizing their precinct managers throughout California. Anyone in the campaign allowed newcomers to go to the website for all necessary information to get started, in a wiki format. Would he institute online fireside chats if elected president, Isaac wonders? Keeping in mind that Howard Dean was the first presidential candidate noted for his use of the internet but didn't win the nomination, this may or may not be considered a notable moment in the tools of political campaigns.

Mizuko Ito, USC - In an experiment where urban residents track everything in their bag, every time they use it, and a diary of all mobile communication ever used. Themes revealed include: nomadic media (urban lives - particularly among people commuting on public transit - books, MP3 players, etc.), information capture (mobile phone photos becoming pervasive - I'm on that track with my blogs; modding photobooth photos; note-taking off of paper; serial novels written and read on cell phones; microtransactions (for public transit, convenience stores, kiosk purchases; "footprinting": using reward cards to track purchases/uses). These works show that folks are developing powerful new capacities for using these technologies within everyday life.

Jennifer Serventi, NEH - The Office of Digital Humanities at NEH offers, among other core programs, Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities, to increase the base of scholars knowledgeable on topics like visualization, GIS, and beyond. Another new program, which has been announced here on the HASTAC website, are NEH Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers, which will be launched this year. Centers apply for grants on behalf of a scholar interested in residency there, and funding is offered for both center and scholar. Another is a collaboration with the Department of Energy, on Humanities High Performance Computing, opening supercomputing capability at NERSC and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to humanities scholars undertaking HPC projects. Jennifer came to us today to offer these opportunities to scholars present at HASTAC II, but that also applies to anyone reading this blog! Go to www.neh.gov/odh for more information.

Fred Stutzman, UNC-CH - Here are three notable concepts in Fred's research of users of social networks: Closeness: Robert Scoble took issue with Facebook only allowing him to 5,000 friends, but having large friends lists on social networks can problematic. People are redefining privacy in response. Curation: The data and "news stories" can become overwhelming, especially if you aggregate them together with a tool like FriendFeed. New social networks are thus becoming different: like Muxtape (which consists only of mixtapes uploaded by others that you can listen to), Twitter, and so on. Putting less of your personal identity online and changing what you put there is a change in curation. Imagined Identity: Because of the credentials you have to give various online services, your identity can become universalized across sites and allow people to figure out quite a lot about you from the pieces they find in various online places. As a result, less is being put online, like the Twitter profile which can only accommodate 140 characters. These must be kept in mind for any designer of future social networks, because users may not follow online tools that broadcast personal information as a buy-in for use.