Imagining Twitter as an Imagined Community Gruzd, Anatoliy; Wellman, Barry; Takhteyev, Yuri
The American behavioral scientist (Beverly Hills),
10/2011, Letnik:
55, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The notion of “community” has often been caught between concrete social relationships and imagined sets of people perceived to be similar. The rise of the Internet has refocused our attention on this ...ongoing tension. The Internet has enabled people who know each other to use social media, from e-mail to Facebook, to interact without meeting physically. Into this mix came Twitter, an asymmetric microblogging service: If you follow me, I do not have to follow you. This means that connections on Twitter depend less on in-person contact, as many users have more followers than they know. Yet there is a possibility that Twitter can form the basis of interlinked personal communities—and even of a sense of community. This analysis of one person’s Twitter network shows that it is the basis for a real community, even though Twitter was not designed to support the development of online communities. Studying Twitter is useful for understanding how people use new communication technologies to form new social connections and maintain existing ones.
Geography of Twitter networks Takhteyev, Yuri; Gruzd, Anatoliy; Wellman, Barry
Social networks,
2012, 2012-1-00, 20120101, Letnik:
34, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
► We examine the influence of distance and related variables on Twitter ties. ► A substantial share of ties (39%) lies within the same metropolitan region. ► For non-local ties distance, borders, and ...language differences affect Twitter ties. ► The number of airline flights between the parties is the best predictor of ties.
The paper examines the influence of geographic distance, national boundaries, language, and frequency of air travel on the formation of social ties on Twitter, a popular micro-blogging website. Based on a large sample of publicly available Twitter data, our study shows that a substantial share of ties lies within the same metropolitan region, and that
between regional clusters, distance, national borders and language differences all predict Twitter ties. We find that the frequency of airline flights between the two parties is the best predictor of Twitter ties. This highlights the importance of looking at pre-existing ties between places and people.
We analyze two ways of thinking about ICTs in the production of space. One is what we call the “mimetic” view. This view focuses on ICTs’ ability to bring representations from one locale into ...another. Debates about ICTs and geography have historically been driven by this “mimetic” view and continue to be constrained by it. In contrast, we discuss what we call the “algorithmic” view of ICTs, which focuses on computational re-ordering of representations and subsequent reordering of real-world entities. Recently, scholars of ICTs, communication, and geography have increasingly drawn on examples that fall under the “algorithmic” view, yet the distinction between the two views has not been clearly articulated. This paper clarifies this distinction.
RIO IN THE GLOBAL WORLD OF SOFTWARE Takhteyev, Yuri
Revista eletrônica de sistemas de informação,
08/2014, Letnik:
13, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Embora meu livro Coding Places: Software Practice in a South American City (Lugares de desenvolvimento: a prática de software em uma cidade sul americana, en tradução livre), a que se refere este ...ensaio, dedique muitas páginas à linguagem Lua, ele não é sobre Lua e, seguramente, não é sobre uma “síndrome” da qual o Brasil precise se livrar. O livro é sobre globalização e a posição paradoxal de algumas cidades como o Rio de Janeiro no mundo global do software. Uma parte do paradoxo é que o Rio é uma cidade como muitas outras. Não é “estranho” – é absolutamente normal. O Vale do Silício é incomum – e muito afortunado. As pessoas que trabalham no Vale do Silício não precisam fazer as escolhas difíceis de quem mora no Rio (ou em muitas outras partes). O livro analisa essas escolhas e procura mostrar que elas ajudam a manter o status quo. Contudo, não é minha intenção condenar essas escolhas. Eu provavelmente também as realizaria. Na verdade, o faço com frequência (meu próprio livro está disponível apenas em inglês, não havendo uma edição em russo). Ainda assim, acho que vale a pena refletirmos sobre essas escolhas, considerando-as em toda a sua complexidade.
While the author's book (Coding Places: Software Practice in a South American City) dedicates many pages to Lua, it is not about Lua and certainly not about a syndrome from which Brazil needs to free ...itself. The book is about globalization and the paradoxical position cities such as Rio have in the global world of software. One part of that paradox is that Rio is a city like many others. It's not strange -- it's quite normal. Silicon Valley is unusual -- and quite lucky. People working in Silicon Valley do not have to make difficult choices that people in Rio (and many other places) need to make. The book analyses those choices and aims to show how those decisions help maintain the existing order, even as they tug on it from the edges. It is not his intention to condemn those choices, however. He would probably make the same choices himself. Yet, he think it's worth reflecting on those choices more, considering them in their complexity.
This paper discusses some of the difficulties involved in using the concepts of 'communities of practice' and 'networks of practice' when understanding the exchange of knowledge among globally ...dispersed communities of professionals. It proposes rethinking 'networks of practice' as heterogeneous networks in the sense used by the actor-network theory. The revised concept is illustrated with examples from the author's study of software developers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and their ties to global technology.
Purpose - The paper's aim is to describe the world of retrocomputing, a constellation of largely non-professional practices involving old computing technology. It seeks to show how retrocomputing ...serves the goals of collection and preservation, particularly in regards to historic software, and how retrocomputing practices challenge traditional notions of authenticity. It then seeks to propose an alternative conceptualization and suggest new avenues for collaboration between retrocomputing practitioners and memory institutions.Design methodology approach - The paper is based on extensive observation of retrocomputing projects, conducted primarily online.Findings - Retrocomputing includes many activities that can be seen as constituting collection and preservation. At the same time, it is often transformative, producing assemblages that "remix" fragments from the past with newer elements or joining together historic components that were never combined before. While such "remix" may seem to undermine preservation, it also allows for fragments of computing history to be reintegrated into a living, ongoing practice, contributing to preservation in a broader sense. The seemingly unorganized nature of retrocomputing assemblages also provides space for alternative "situated knowledges" and histories of computing, which can sometimes be quite sophisticated.Research limitations implications - Retrocomputing challenges established notions of collection and preservation. A "situated knowledges" perspective provides a possible resolution.Practical implications - Retrocomputing presents memory institutions (and libraries in particular) with an opportunity for new forms of collaboration in collection and preservation of software applications.Originality value - The paper puts at the center the ways in which retrocomputing challenges the established notions of collection and preservation. It offers alternative conceptualizations that suggest new forms of collaboration.
We argue that the intrinsic inefficiency of proprietary software has historically created a space for alternative institutions that provide software as a public good. We discuss several sources of ...such inefficiency, focusing on one that has not been described in the literature: the underinvestment due to fear of hold‐up. An inefficient hold‐up occurs when a user of software must make complementary investments, when the return on such investments depends on future cooperation of the software vendor, and when contracting about a future relationship with the software vendor is not feasible. We also consider how the nature of the production function of software makes software cheaper to develop when the code is open to the end users. Our framework explains why open source dominates certain sectors of the software industry (e.g., programming languages), while being almost non existent in some other sectors (e.g., computer games). We then use our discussion of efficiency to examine the history of institutions for provision of public software from the early collaborative projects of the 1950s to the modern “open source” software institutions. We look at how such institutions have created a sustainable coalition for provision of software as a public good by organizing diverse individual incentives, both altruistic and profit‐seeking, providing open source products of tremendous commercial importance, which have come to dominate certain segments of the software industry.
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