“Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

It saddens me that you are ignorant of the fact that your state is the home of one of the best anthropology programs out there. That said, I think you should really do that thing we anthropologists call “research” before you make statements that you’re not prepared to defend.

Here, some University of South Florida students have given you a head start:
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Lastly, I would like to state for the record that I am an anthropologist. I not only have a job, but a very good paying job. Additionally, I do research in everything from Open Source Software development to User Experience Design. I have conducted research for companies such as Microsoft, Motorola, General Motors, Red Hat, and am currently working on research for yet another tech company. Last I checked these all represent aspects of technology, one of those subjects that seems to be tremendously valued by you. Please learn more about my discipline before saying it’s useless.

Sorry to keep it short, but I have to get back to work.

Fast Company reports: Google Execs are found guilty by an Italian court for privacy violations.

LA Times reports: China will require individuals seeking to establish personal websites to verify their identities with regulators and have their photographs taken.

FCC Reports: 93 Million Americans Disconnected From Broadband Opportunities. (PDF found here) Here is an additional press release on broadband.gov.

Big news today:

Google says: Sorry China, we will not be kowtowing to you any more.

Good question posed by FastCompany:

And there’s also the issue that Google’s pull-out of China might make the overall human rights situation slightly worse. Because whether or not you approve of Google, while it was operating in China it was pushing for relaxations of censorship–using its size as a global giant to try to lever open some cracks in the censorship wall. And if it leaves the country, then what’s to stop the Chinese government running roughshod over any other players in the Internet tech game–likely far smaller ones than mighty Google–and forcing them to comply?

Rockstar San Diego Wive’s do as the EA Spouse did and post a letter to the Internet calling for better working conditions.

The WSJ reports that the US Court of Appeals reinstated an antitrust lawsuit against the major record labels over alleged price-fixing of Internet music downloads.

Ars Technica reports that Comcast wants clarity from the FCC even if it means Net Neutrality.

Have one to add? Leave a comment!

Barack Obama has made history again, this time as the first presidential candidate ever to advertise in video games. If you are in one of the following swing states, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin, and you play games such as Madden NFL 09 or Burnout Paradise then you will have the opportunity to see this for yourself.

I’d be interested to see what the opinions of gamers who witnessed these in their games before all the media hoopla thought of them. Personally I think it’s rather ingenious, I only wonder if they are truly hitting the demographic they are after with them and if there is any way to see if they made an impact or not.

Now that Livejournal is owned by SUP, a company based in Russia, there are a few rumblings as to how the company will handle possible and rumored pressure to stifle the voices speaking to either side of the conflict. The Russian public has had issue with the current owners since before they took over as to what their true intentions for Livejournal’s future were.

I’m very interested to see how this turns out.

It was an oral presentation, but I’ll be happy to post my more in-depth notes if anyone is interested.

Some notes from the slides that didn’t make it into the PDF:
This PowerPoint is part of an oral and written presentation for 5021 Thought and Praxis II as a part of the Masters in Anthropology program an the University of North Texas taken during the Spring semester of 2008.

All candidates are listed in alphabetical order.
All analysis was done on comments available Tuesday May 6th between the hours of 5pm and 7:30pm CST. This was the day of the primaries in North Carolina and Indiana.
Specifically wanted to chose YouTube because it can be used off of the YouTube site and on both of the other sites
Problem – not everyone actually views the videos on YouTube’s site!

Notes on analysis of the YouTube comments:
Chose the ‘most watched video’ of each candidate in order to objectively select the videos for the study.
The comments were: Mainly Critical of the Video
The For/Against had to be explicit to be counted – hence the ‘vaguely’ denotation. These referred to songs that were suggested in a negative tone rather than a positive one – but this was a matter of perspective and thus could not be judged objectively as explicitly for or against the candidate and therefore are not marked as a part of the for/against criteria above.

Notes on analysis of the MySpace comments:
The comments were: Mainly Supportive in Nature
More Spam Comments on MySpace than other Services
Clinton had more Spam (unsubstantial ) comments than either of the others – as a result those viewed as spam were not counted as part of the 20 analyzed.

Notes on analysis of FaceBook:
The comments were: Mainly Conversational in Nature
There was more of an actual discourse on Facebook than there was on YouTube or MySpace.

Average word count: 55

Notes on using YouTube as a research tool:
Took about five minutes to make and post video.
Was posted to all of my social networking sites including the three above and Twitter. Could not be posted to Twitter in video form so it is not counted in the above.

Notes on Interview Highlights:
Answers presented rang true with most interviewees.

As far as the second highlight goes I’d like to make a special note in my participant observation exercise where I participated in a political race online there were several entries that were not very serious but due to their nature of not being serious they accumulated votes very quickly. This was an interesting phenomenon to watch happen. Neither the people or the race seemed to be taken very seriously by the community at large in the beginning. It wasn’t until the second round (which occurred after this presentation was given) that some seriousness was given to the occasion.

On the Participant Observation part itself:
1st bullet though I knew I’d be a good candidate and had several ideas as to why – it was hard to put these ideas into words, especially without sounding contrite
2nd bullet Word of mouth, friends of friends, all through social networking online it caught on and spread, status messages on Ims and profiles as well as posts to friends lists and communities

A conclusion not presented in the slides: even if the same people are participating in the commentary on each social network they are doing so in different ways. YouTube is about the content, MySpace is about the Politician, and FaceBook is discourse with each other.

If you are interested in obtaining the actual slide presentation please let me know!

I would be most interested in talking to the participants after it is all over. I’d love to see what they thought of the experience!

Midterm question:
Write on your proposal for a term project utilizing theories and experience.

My Answer:
Theoretically I intend to take a structuralism approach to symbolic/interpretative anthropology to uncover the underlying structure of how people view the Internet in politically symbolic terms. Also, to understand how people give meaning to the cyber-political world around them as well as how they then express this meaning through their own cultural symbols within online communities. To do this I propose to do a short quantitative and qualitative study investigating how people view the Internet in politically symbolic terms, what meaning they give those terms, and how they use those terms within the online communities they participate in.

Because there is so much going on and I’m super busy these days this will be just a quick rundown of the top three things on my list of interesting happenings.

• First is the really neat mashup between Google and Twitter for Super Tuesday, go check it out.
• Second is the Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google exchange going on.
• Third are the Internet outages affecting India and the toll it’s taking on business there.

Here are two articles I’ve read recently that I found to be very interesting. First is Wired’s Students On How Social Networking Is Transforming Politics, second is a post that was made to Tera Nova on the governance of cyber worlds.

If you’ve seen anything else interesting as of late please pass it my way!