Virtual Research, Real Suburbs, Wireless Freedom, and DUU

On to the next session - I got here late because the session was moved, but the current paper by Michael Nentwich is about the virtualisation of research and academic exchange. He discusses first the suitability of email for academic communication. Asynchronicity, speed, the written character, and the permanence are mentioned as useful characteristics in this context.

Five functions of traditional academic seminars, workshops and conferences: they contribute to quality control, the transmission of knowledge, serving as a node in the scientific network, social management, and ideas generation. In a virtual setting, these might continue to exist: this is certainly true for quality control, but the transmission of knowledge or the placement of nodes in scientific networks might work better face-to-face. Social management could work, but not in the same way as it does in offline contexts, and the same might be true for ideas generation.

Technical limits to this are network stability and bandwidth, bad software, and the learning curve with technology; organisational limits are the generation of traffic (e.g., the role of the moderator of academic panels and papers changes), institutional recognition, and similar issues. Also, are we talking about text- or multimedia-based communication here? Text is rather limited for most purposes; on the other hand, near-perfect real-time, high-resolution of video images might be feasible in the future.

For now, however, selectivity persists in communication - this means that mutual understanding is in danger, but could also concentrate viewers' attention as they are no longer distracted by accents, dress code, and other ancillary issues. In other words, how much communication is required in an academic context? Research is loaded with context. It is done in informal ways, and involves social exchange (gossip etc.) as well as work-related discussion (e.g. the difference between doing physics and talking physics - talking about one's work helps focus and sharpen one's understanding of the work).

The 'café' setting cannot be replaced - so can there be a virtual equivalent? e-Lists, groupware, brainstorming software and others might be able to do this, but for tacit knowledge transmission the real café may still necessary. In virtual environments, spontaneity (unscheduled meetings) are difficult; also, online e-lists may be too open and not ephemeral enough for informal discussions and gossipping to take place. Is there a sense of community possible in such virtual settings in an academic context?

Finally, also conference trips have a certain reward character, so they may need to persist to motivate academics. Virtualisation and digitisation remains a very strong trend, and economic and functional arguments support it; nonetheless, it is not ubiquitous, and might never be - there is much 'cyber' ahead, but with essential roots in the real world! (Michael's work is also available at http://www.oeaw.ac.at/ita/cyberscience.htm).

Clifford Tatum is next, speaking on Vancouver Chinatown and its online and offline spatiality. This was an urban revitalisation programme, with Clifford studying socially constructed boundaries. There were issues of social resistance online, cyberspatial grounding, and instances of network society to be examined here. Urban planning methods used here involved environmental observation, and follow-up interviews.

There was also a strategy of Websphere bounding and issue crawler network analysis. Socially constructed boundaries were centred around historical/heritage issues, neighbourhood (shared) borders, government spending and control, as well as cyberspatial characteristics of economic collaboration and competition, tourism/transportation, local/provincial goverment participation. Not found were issues around the relationship with the 'new' Richmond Chinatown, and issues within the Chinese community itself.

On socially constructed boundaries: in history and heritage, there were issues around community vs. commercial values, the ownership of historical buildings; in neighbourhoods and borders, there were troubled connections to neighbouring districts (Strathcona, the international village, and the greenway); and in relation to the Richmond district there was similarly competition amongst suburbs. As far as cyberspatial analysis went, the starting points of this analysis were the tropes of Chinatown and city planning; these were analysed using network tools (link analysis, co-link analysis (proximity of related links on pages), and centrality of specific pages in the overall network).

Clifford has a detailed map of Websites and their relationships and interlinkages. New questions emerge, then. Why is this negotiation of boundaries apparently isolated from the Chinese community - could it be related to levels of Internet use, or political issues? What exactly is meant here by community? What other Internet methods can be used to associate cyberspace with real space, and what are people's perceptions of cyberspatiality? In network analysis, how might the meaning of links facilitate a better understanding of cyberspatiality?

On now to Laura Forlano, speaking on wireless time, wireless space, and wireless freedom. She is interested in the role of communication in patterns of time use and of global/local mobility. How do such technologies help coordinate everyday life? The new patterns that they enable may conflict with more traditional ways of coordinating everyday life and living; there are generational and technological gaps here. Social norms may be adjusting to counteract the more dynamic changes in everyday life, too.

Laura notes that Innis suggested that there are time-bound and space-bound (especially portable) media. There is increasing global mobility, of course (at least in the developed world) and driven also by the increasing economic, social, and political integration through political and economic integration (EU, FTAs, etc.). It is easier also to spend time away from home due to ubiquitous communication (not if you're in Sussex, though), and greater communication may also lead to greater mobility as virtual communities might end up meeting in physical contexts.

Mobile phones especially allow for the micro-coordination of everyday life. What technologies are used isn't really that important for the case at hand, of course - it's the total combination of mobile and wireless communication that is a driver of changes here. Laura has a number of nice images of mobile technology use especially from Japan (and I wonder if she's come across the presentation on mobile phone use at ISEA2004?).

The proposed Japanese term for ubiquity is Jiku Jizai - kanji for time, space and freedom - and serves as a nice reminder that people, not technology, are at the centre here. The use of mobile devices is increasingly necessary in complex and unknown urban spaces; it is useful for navigation and retrieving of localised information. New applications are emerging which enable us to inform our social network of our minute-to-minute movements (Dodgeball (US) and Ima Hima (Japan) are key technologies here).

This could also be merged with other technologies such as Friendster or blogs, of course. There is a kind of 'approximating' (Plant) in which schedules are always approximated and everything remains virtual until the time of the actual meeting. Laura now notes Woolgar's five rules of virtuality:

1. Technology uptake depends on social context;
2. Fears and risks associated with new technologies are unevenly distributed;
3. New technologies supplement rather than substitute old ones;
4. The more virtual the more real;
5. The more global the more local.

Hypotheses, then: there may be no change - things will remain the same; there may be extreme microcoordination leading to a major increase in efficiency and a major change in urban movement; social norms may adjust to counteract efficiency gains - lateness could be the new norm as it can be managed better through mobile communication (you have to be in touch but you don’t have to be present); or, perhaps most likely, a mixed model might emerge - different groups might use technology differently according to their different needs.

Finally, then, on to Tau Ulv Lenskjold, Nicolas Cederstrøm, and Ruve Huvenduick Jensen, speaking on digital unitary urbanism. Their field of interest combines the city, technology, and human actors, and they're aiming to grasp the complexity of this triangle; specifically, what is the role of the Internet in the social dynamics of the city?

Individuals and groups are able to appropriate and (collaboratively) co-create urban space; ubiquitous technology adds to this as we move from ubiquitous 'access' to ubiquitous technology as an intrinsic condition of everyday human life. The Internet as an infrastructural backbone provides a kind of remote access to urban space, while previously we have mainly considered in situ access to urban space. How does remote access constitute the appropriation and co-creation of urban space?

Two case studies: Urban Tapestries in London is a location-based system which annotates urban locations (this can be done by users either at a specific location or from their home PCs); such annotations can be retrieved for example through mobile telephony. Mogi in Tokyo is a location-based game in which online and location-based players interact and cooperate to collect and exchange digital items placed in urban space.

Urban Tapestries is asynchronous, remotely annotates urban space, uses physical space as context, shares social knowledge, and is inclusive (in the public domain); Mogi is synchronous (played in real time), features cross-locational cooperation in urban space, uses physical space as a gameboard, involves gaming communities, and is exclusive (requiring participants to subscribe). They suggest a preliminary topology of remote access to urban space: as appropriation of physical space (through augmentation), and as co-creation of social space (through (cross-locational) collaboration).

Finally, then, on to Jeremy Shapiro, Linda Crafts, and Richard Daniels, speaking on multiple realities, multiple identities, and multiple selves. The idea of 'reality' is becoming increasingly complex, of course - we can't speak of real or non-real experiences very easily any more. As we navigate our lives, it is possible to speak of multiple realities for a person, or of that person having multiple identities or selves depending on the context. Their research, then, focusses on how such lives are lived, and how communications technology is involved here.

Themes emerging are the features and issues of subjectivity in multiple communication channels with multiple ICTs in/from multiple places; what continua emerge (comfort<->stress in multiple communication, with phone communication as a normative model and questions of people's performance as multitaskers); self-related differences in/with different media or ICT tools; and other issues (intrusiveness of media and technologies, differences in communicatory adeptness in different forms, etc.

The focus of this project is particularly on simultaneous communication amongst multiple people and across multiple channels. In interviews, some themes emerge: communication collapses different places as communicative availability is the same independent of one's location; parallel processing vs. time-slicing in communication (focussing on one communication or switching between multiples). Overall, identities and realities which emerge are idiosyncratic and depend on a multitude of contexts. Lessons learned so far: these are to do with research techniques (i.e. introducing the aims of the research project might skew the responses from interviewees, and conversation may not be the best way to gather data in the first place).