The Cybergypsies : A True Tale of Lust, War, & Betrayal on the Electronic Frontier by Indra Sinha is yet another book about unusual experiences online but with several key points of interest. Many such books were written by over-excited US journalists who just dipped into that world. This was written by someone based in the UK who had a life outside the online world (a responsible job, wife and child) but who got very involved in online communities. It’s also of some historical interest because he was writing about the pre-Internet online world where being online 24/7 wouldn’t just cost you time but a considerable amount of money.

He gives an interesting, colourful and personal glimpse of what life online was like back then for some but though the book appears to be an autobiography it is written in a deliberately poetical/impressionistic style leaving the reader uncertain how much of what they’ve read they can believe.

If there is someone out there reading this blog who was around online in the UK back in the early to mid 90s, hung out on Shades or the Vortex, met ‘bear’ there and has read the book I would be interested in your comments (public or private). How was he seen in those communities after he published? I have a feeling I have met one or two people who were there…

“David Huffaker”:http://www.eyec.com/’s masters thesis, “Gender Similarities and Differences in Online Identity and Language Use among Teenage Bloggers”:http://cct.georgetown.edu/thesis/DavidHuffaker.pdf has received some attention from BBC news because of its findings that (surprise surprise) teens tended to reveal more personal details on blogs than in chatrooms and forums. This chimes immediately with the Daily Mail-reader paranoia about cyber-stalkers…

As a Canadian (generally big-housian) living in the UK (generally small-housian) I have been struck by the different attitudes toward space in different countries and (I believe) through that towards possessions. “Donella H. Meadows”:http://www.pcdf.org/meadows/ (now deceased) of the “Sustainability Institute”:http://www.sustainer.org/ wrote about a calendar showing the “lifestyles of people around the world”:http://www.menzelphoto.com/gallery/mw.htm including their homes. She notes that on the calendar the number of family members living together varies between 4 and 13 and the houses ranged in size from 200 square feet (a six person yurt in Mongolia) to 4850 sq ft for eight people (in Kuwait City).

Bhutanese family with all their possessions in front of their house from the book “Material World”:http://www.menzelphoto.com/gallery/mw.htm

Our ‘two bedroom’ flat is tiny by Canadian standards but a moderate size for Londoners (something like 600sq feet?). It has become apparent to me that we don’t have room for any more things (whether in storage or in active use) but it doesn’t bother me all that much yet – it helps us to keep our lives simple. Thank goodness I have almost limitless digital storage available at least!

Has anyone tried the experiment where you put a sticker on anything you use in the course of a year and at the end of the year you throw away anything without a sticker?

Here’s something truly hair-raising I’m glad I didn’t know about at the time. Remember in all those movies where the nuclear missiles require a top-secret code to launch? It turns out for about a decade in the US the secret code was 00000000. Apparently, ‘Strategic Air Command remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders.’

An academic study on “adult learners and how they search for information”:http://www.elearningeuropa.info/doc.php?lng=1&id=5075&doclng=1&p3=1 reveals much I could have guessed but some new things too.

Only in three out of the fifty scenarios performed, the participants (one different in each case) visited a second Web page of alternatives produced by the search engine. In no case did the participants check more than eight websites, and in twenty cases out of the total fifty they only checked one website.

It also backs up what I suspected/feared about search engine use – the illusion that it is easy causes most people not to bother to invest the time to learn how to do it well. As they said:

Computer programmes, like the use of search engines appear as something not worthy to make the effort of learning. An apparent intuitive handling encourages this way of thinking. However, intuition depends on what is known and with what analogies can be built. If the analogies are incorrect, then the use of software will inevitably lead to disorientation

The full report is at “SEEKS”:http://www.seeks-it.net/.

Thanks to Pandia for providing a link and a summary of the results

“David Wilcox”:http://partnerships.typepad.com/civic/2003/02/about_david_wil.html, consultant on ICT use by the community and voluntary sector, talks about a new review of the literature on community informatics in the UK by veteran UK academics Barry Loader and Leigh Keeble.

It makes disturbing (though not surprising) reading, indicating that despite the Government’s best efforts these programmes often don’t reach the most excluded and rarely increase civic engagement (except among the already engaged). Take a look at the “summary of the report”:http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/584.asp or “download it as a PDF”:http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/1859351980.pdf

In amongst the gloom and doom there are some suggestions for better practice in future – siting internet access centres in the community rather than in libraries or colleges and organizing training around people’s perceived needs rather than forcing them into formal courses for example – both designed to attract people who have had negative experiences with formal education.

Underlying my own research is a belief that ICT can have an emancipatory effect – for some at least – but that mere provision of the technology (closing the ‘access divide’) is not enough. Community informatics programmes must lean much more heavily towards the ‘community’ in their titles if they are to succeed.

Also see “this earlier blog posting”:https://blog.org/archives/000990.html on similar research. Some there suggest that while library access may not be a good way for new people to access online resources long term it may have a useful role in introducing people to online resources. I still have my doubts but take a look at the two reports cited there and let me know what you think…

I wish I had the time to do a proper write-up of the NotCon session I attended featuring Brewster Kahle, the man behind the Internet Archive whose mission is nothing less than to provide universal access to all human knowledge. Here is some stuff I noted instead.

Some interesting factoids from his presentation:

* There are 150,000 people using the Internet Archive per day. It stores 3-400Tb of data and recently upgraded to 1Gbps bandwidth.
* There were 300,000 to 600,000 scrolls in the Library at Alexandria. Only around eight of them are left.
* You can store the contents of the Library of Congress as plaintext (if you had scanned it all) on a machine costing $60,000.
* The bookmobile he produced that is connected to the Internet via satellite, travels the world and produces complete bound books from a collection of 20,000 public domain works cost just $15,000 – and that includes the van itself.
* He says that it costs him $1 to print and bind a public domain book – I assumed the books produced would be very rough and ready but he brought some along and they were almost as good as the kind you’d buy in a shop. I suspect he may be stretching the truth a bit – I believe the $1 a book cost he quotes is for an 100 page black and white printed booklet. It’s still impressive though especially as:
* He notes it costs US libraries $2 to issue a book. He suggests they could give people copies of public domain books for $1 instead and pay another $1 to the author to compensate them.

Like many geniuses he just doesn’t know when to stop and thankfully he has a private income from a dotcom or two he was involved with that enables him to try out lots of projects. Aside from archiving the web, movies, books and music he’s:

* taking the US to court to try to get their boneheaded copyright laws changed
* working on mirrors of his San Francisco-based archive in Alexandria and Amsterdam (hosted there by XS4all)
* encouraging anyone to upload anything to his archive (copyright permitting) offering unlimited bandwidth indefinitely (though the site doesn’t make it very easy to figure out how you are supposed to take advantage of this generous offer) including performance recordings of bands that have given their permission.
* Trying to collect and save old software (he got special dispensation from the US copyright office to do this for the next three years but can’t make it available). He does want your old software however so if you’ve got some he would like you to send it to him – in physical form with manuals where available. He’s even
* Trying to provide fast, free wifi across all of San Francisco.

He’s so hyperactive my fingers get sore just typing in all of the projects he is involved with! I worry that he’s taking on too much and that some of it may fall by the wayside if something happens to him. But his enthusiasm and his optimism are infectious. I am pleased to have been able to shake his hand.

P.S. Ironically, I recorded his presentation and have it in MP3 format but because it was 21Mb I can’t serve it myself and so far nobody has stepped forward to host the file. I finally found how to upload it but then discovered I deleted the original file once I passed it on to someone else to upload! So I hope someone still has them – if it does get posted I’ll tell you where.

The Guardian has a new weekly “Improbable Research column”:http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/improbable which is introduced by the hyper-active editor of the “AIR”:http://www.improbable.com/, Marc Abrahams (he gives a potted history of his involvement in the first column). So now there’s a “paper magazine”:http://www.improbable.com/navstrip/subscribe.html a “website”:http://www.improbable.com/ the “Guardian column”:http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/improbable and, of course, a “weblog”:http://improbable.typepad.com/, all dedicated to the discussion of amusing stories to do with the stranger reaches of the pursuit of science.

And if you like that you might also take a look at “Feedback”:http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opfeedback.jsp;jsessionid=DJEHNEAGEIKH?id=ns244999 from a fine magazine I used to work on – “New Scientist”:http://www.newscientist.com/.

US radio show “The Connection”:http://www.theconnection.org/ had an hour-long “show recently”:http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/05/20040517_b_main.asp about gun violence in the US which kills more Americans than the war in Iraq. The main guest was a middle-class black guy who chose to remain in the wrong neighborhood and whose son (who wasn’t involved with gangs) was senselessly killed by one. An LA Times reporter who covered the incident was also on the programme – the story she wrote about it is here.

She revealed some interesting facts on the programme (though without references it is difficult to vouch for their accuracy).
* The homicide rate for white women across the US is 2-3/100,000 but for young black men in LA it is 275/100,000.
* For all the concern about gun violence generally in the US, white people there are as safe as Europeans – it’s predominantly black people in poor neighborhoods who are dying.
* It isn’t just about teens killing teens either – black men in their 40s have a higher homicide rate than under-18s.
* Deaths due to gang violence are predominantly a problem for blacks – not nearly so much of a problem for whites or latinos even when they are in gangs.

Picking two facts at random from the April index – only 3% of Afghans have registered to vote and when the president was asked questions about his tax cut proposals on Meet the Press in 2003 none of the questions related to their inequality.