Academia

Virtual worlds and social interaction design

They have been busy in Umeå last week (read previous post) Mikael Jakobsson defended his PhD Virtual worlds and social interaction design (fulltext)

In his abstract he writes about his explorations of the virtual worlds:

I have found that participants in virtual worlds are not anonymous and bodiless actors on a level playing field. Participants construct everything needed to create social structures such as identities and status symbols. The qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds cannot be measured against physical interaction. Doing so conceals the qualities of virtual interaction. Through the concepts of levity and proximity, I offer an alternative measure that better captures the unique properties of the medium. Levity is related to the use of avatars and the displacement into a virtual context and manifests itself as a kind of lightness in the way participants approach the interaction. Proximity is my term for the transformation of social distances that takes place in virtual worlds. While participants perceive that they are in the same place despite being physically separated, the technology can also create barriers separating participants from their physical surroundings. The gap between the participant and her avatar is also of social significance.

This is important stuff since it goes beyond the simplified perceptions of the online world. It is particularly interesting for those who intend to create regulatory systems which effect these environments.

Posted on by mklang

Being-with Information Technology

Anna Croon Fors from Umeå University has defended her PhD thesis Being-with Information Technology: Critical explorations beyond use and design (fulltext here).

From the abstract:

In the thesis a theoretical exploration concerning the significance of information technology in everyday life is conducted. The main question advanced is how the reflexive nature of information technology can be envisionedâ?¦The framework being-with information technology emerges as a result of my insistence on grasping the relationship between information technology and human experience as a whole. Informed primarily by Martin Heideggerâ??s thinking on technology the framework ascribes primacy to meaning-making and sense-making processes. The framework also aspire to reach beyond notions of use and design by emphasizing the role and importance of the potential of information technology to transform human experience in new and significant ways…

It is suggested that a focus on aesthetic experiences entails the possibility to investigate ambiguous meanings of information technology, meanings that all are intrinsic to information technology, but so far has received little or no attention. This suggestion is also a move away from a view of information technology as an object, with certain features, qualities and properties, towards a view of information technology as a relation to the world, to itself, and towards being human.

It sounds exciting and scanning the table of contents confirms this. I am looking forward to reading it properly.

Posted on by mklang

The Way We Eat

Question Technology always recommends the great books. He has increased my library with some interesting choices. Now he pointed out that Peter Singer & James Mason have a new book out: The Way We Eat – Why our food choices matter. Prepare to be saddened, angered and hopefully goaded into action.

Excerpt via Animal Liberation Front:

Most Americans know little about how their eggs are produced. They don’t know that American egg-producers typically keep their hens in bare wire cages, often crammed eight or nine hens to a cage so small that they never have room to stretch even one wing, let along both. The space allocated per hen, in fact, is even less than broiler chickens get, ranging from 48 to 72 square inches. Even the higher of these figures is less than the size of a standard American sheet of typing paper. In such crowded conditions, stressed hens tend to peck each other — and the sharp beak of a hen can be a lethal weapon when used relentlessly against weaker birds unable to escape. To prevent this, producers routinely sear off the ends of the hens’ sensitive beaks with a hot blade — without an anesthetic.

Posted on by mklang

Plagiarism again!

Right â?? its official. Teaching students about plagiarism is absolutely pointless (see earlier post). Once again my university has sunk to a new low-point.

Background: At the department of business studies two students wrote their masters thesis. Their supervisor then took parts of the text and included it word for word in an article she presented at an international conference. The students were not acknowledged in any way. The head of department defended the supervisorâ??s actions in the student press â?? which is sad, but in a sense an understandable defence. Still sad and it shows a definite lack of backbone.

The errand was to pass through the research ethics committee (Rådet för ärenden om oredlighet i forskning) of the university. Great, honour will be served. A blow will be struck for academic integrity and also show that the stealing student work cannot be considered to be the praxis of our university.

But! I do not believe it. The majority of the research ethics committee found that while it was wrong that the supervisor did not ask the students, it was too far to say that the supervisor had cheated. This position was motivated that by calling the supervisor actions plagiarism would effectively be damage scientific research.

What?? The lack of backbone from the research ethics committee is what damages research. This weak, spineless position legitimises cheating by academics and drags our university through the mud.

Shame on you.
With any luck the students will take the supervisor/university to court and win easily in a copyright violation case. This is not a good development but one which the university has begged for through its spineless attitude.

Posted on by mklang

Bah, lazy hypocrites!

Its soon time for me to lecture on plagiarism again. I give this lecture every year to groups of students who are about to write their thesis. The idea is both to help them understand the boundaries between quote, citation, paraphrase & plagiarism and to get them to start thinking about the nature of property in relation to intellectual goods.

Giving this lecture today is aided by the current discussion on copyright and file sharing. In my IT & ethics course I regularly attempt to discuss the problem of file sharing and ask my students what they believe is the moral position of the person who illegally downloads music or films. Usually among my students 80-90% of those who download music do not consider there actions to be morally wrong and nor do they consider themselves to be stealing. The most often used legitimisation of their actions:
1. that they are not depriving anyone of use.
2. the entertainment industry is rich enough.
3. they would not buy that which they download and therefore there is no loss to the industry.

Considering these points it is interesting to attempt to raise awareness about plagiarism. In one way it is pretty easy: if you get caught you will be punished and it is humiliating. But this is not a good starting point since the stress is on not getting caught as opposed to building awareness.

Attempting to discuss student plagiarism is made more difficult recently when two professors have been accused (correctly) of plagiarising others work in their books. One is a professor at the University College of BorÃ¥s who has been sloppy when quoting others his/her own defence other are harsher and call it plagiarism (DN 29/4 â?? 2006)

The second is a professor at the University of Göteborg who has stolen other peopleâ??s works and included them in his work. The excuses for this theft was that the book was written under a very short deadline and the works from which he borrowed material are included in the bibliography.

We would never accept these excuses from our own students then why would these professors even think that the excuses would work for them?

Posted on by mklang

The sod-off day

Since I am approaching the date for my PhD defence the question of what I intend to do afterwards is being asked more often. I dont really understand the problem – the lists of stuff I want to complete once this project is finished is seemingly endless.

For example today I came across (I know I’m late!) the Creative Commons “Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution” wiki. Its a great idea except for the fact that it is based on US law so simply translating it and adapting it to Swedish conditions would be a worthwhile project.

Since I have a faculty position the US (?) problem of post-PhD tenure chasing is not an issue. While speaking to a colleague in Stockholm yesterday we both agreed that under the Swedish system the PhD defence is the big â??sod-offâ?? day, since once the PhD is accepted the shiny new PhD is no longer dependent upon currying favour among senior faculty.

After PhD you can say â??sod-offâ?? to many of the unpleasant tasks that you have been carrying out due to office politics and political correctness.

Which of course reminds me of a quote from Blackadder III where Backadder has promised to fight a duel for Prince George:

Prince George : Ah Blackadder. It has been a wild afternoon full of strange omens. I dreamt that a large eagle circled the room three times and then got into bed with me and took all the blankets. And then I saw that it wasn’t an eagle at all but a large black snake. And also Duncan’s horses did turn up and eat each other. As usual. Good portents for your duel do you think.
Blackadder : Not very good sir. I’m afraid the duel is off.
Prince George : OFF?
Blackadder : As in sod. I’m not doing it.

Posted on by mklang

Giddens & greener grass

While at Stockholm University I noticed these signs advertising a seminar with Anthony Giddens on May 9.

Wow! Is the grass always greener somewhere else? I wish he was going to give a seminar at my university.

Posted on by mklang

Extreme Blogging

Chrisrine Hurt & Tung Yin have written a paper intriguingly entitled â??Blogging While Untenured and Other Extreme Sportsâ?? for the Bloggership: How Blogs are Transforming Legal Scholarship Symposium at the Berkman Center. April 28, Agenda here. The papers are available via SSRN.

The extreme sport sort of blogging is something which this site keeps coming back to – last visited here.

Hurt & Yin Write in their conclusion:

â?¦we believe that the benefits of pretenured blogging outweigh the costs in our individual situationsâ?¦ Unfortunately, this analysis must be done with an unflinching look at oneâ??s own ability to self-monitor, self-discipline, and manage oneâ??s own time.

Considering the venue it is unsurprising that the authors come out on the side of the blogs but it is precisely this that concerns me. Are they preaching to the choir? The position of untenured (and to a lesser degree those with tenure) academics can be both enhanced and threatened by the blog so a degree of self-criticism and caution may be a good thing.

Posted on by mklang

Plagiarism & Excuses

Plagiarism is not a new problem but it is getting more serious with easy access to material and the ability to cut and paste. In part the problem also is with the student attitude to plagiarism which is not discussed enough.

Students tend to have either really bad excuses for why they plagiarise or they are simply in denial. One of the best excuses I have seen was posted on Bitch. Ph.D.

â??Itâ??s not my fault the guy I bought the paper from copied it!â??

!!!! Now tell me this is not an attitude problem.

Posted on by mklang

Thesis peer review

Today at 1pm is the second seminar for my thesis. This seminar gives all the Phd students a chance to discuss my work and give me feedback.

This is usually an interesting session with some good discussions. Lots of notetaking from my part. If you happen to be in the area the session is at the IT University at Göteborg room “Grace Hopper” “Vin Cerf” and the work is online here.

Posted on by mklang