MetaFilter posts tagged with sociology and Internet

Still far from that digital democracy any utopian could hope for.

iamkimiam — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:01:52 -0800

7 (well, technically 6) myths of the digital divide.

2061

zarq — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:58:52 -0800

On November 22, 2011, TEDxBrussels held an all day event whose theme was: "A Day in the Deep Future." Speakers were asked to try and contemplate what life will be like for mankind in 50 years. Overview. The Talks: (Playlist) * Paddy Ashdown (British politician and diplomat): Why the world will never be the same & what we should do about it * Eileen Bartholomew (Senior Director Life Sciences at X PRIZE Foundation): The XPrize Foundation of 2061 * John Bohannon (Dancer, biologist and journalist): Dance Your PhD * Lorenz Bogaert (Online media entrepreneur): The European Dream * David Brin (Astrophysicist and science fiction author): Target 2061: Reinventing Civilization Across Half a Century * Kushal Chakrabarti (Founder of Vittana, turning global education into opportunity): Literacy is not enough * Leila Janah (Founder of Samasource, giving digital opportunity to impoverished people): The microwork revolution * Peter Cochrane (Futurologist, researcher and engineer): Not HAL9000 * David Cuartielles (Microchip inventor, co-founder of Arduino): Open Source Hardware * David Ewing Duncan (Journalist, Author, Medical Technologist): When I'm 164 * Sebastien de Halleux (Belgian engineer, Co-Founder of Playfish): Games the Next Billion will play * Alain De Taeye (Co-founder of Tele Atlas): Five Minutes into the Future * David Deutsch (Quantum Physicist): The Unknowable & how to prepare for it * Hasan Elahi (Interdisciplinary media activist, privacy artist): Hiding in Plain Sight * Peter Fenwick (Neuropsychiatrist): The Art of Dying Well * Carl Flink and Edward Oroyan (Choreographers and Artists): Black Label Movement - Zero Gravity Dance * Ken Haase (Engineer-scientist-philosopher): The Singularity is Here * Kaliya Hamlin (Identity Researcher): Identity, the Contexts of the Future * Charles Hazlewood (Conductor and advocate for access to orchestral music): Music of the Future * Andrew Hessel (Biologist and Author): Making Worlds * Peter Hinssen (Thought leader, the impact of technology on society): The Tiger and the Rock * Mikko H. Hypponen (Chief research officer at F-Secure Corporation in Finland): Defending the Net * Julie Meyer (Founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital, Founder - Entrepreneur Country, Managing Partner - Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund [ACE]): Entrepreneurs 2061 * Marc Millis (NASA deep space expert): Space Flight Predictions: After AI & Transhumanism * Raul Rojas (Specialist in artificial neural networks) Cars that Think * Rudy Rucker (Founder of the cyberpunk literary movement): Beyond Machines: The Year 3000 * Henrik Scharfe (Director at the Center for Computer-mediated Epistemology): Geminoid-DK * John Shirley (American fantasist, author of BioShock Rapture): False Singularities... * Rob Spence (Eyeborg and enhanced human): Eyeborg, the Enhanced Self * Luc Steels (Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory): The Robot Culture * Jack Tuszynski (Computational biophysician): From eDx to eRx The digital future of personalized diagnostics and pharmaceuticals * Jacques Vallee (Computer scientist and ufologist, Mars mapping for NASA): A Theory of Everything (else)...

"Social Science That Matters."

lauratheexplorer — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 18:19:31 -0800

The Society Pages is a collection of blogs based around sociology. Some have been mentioned here before, and they cover a range of topics within sociology such as sexuality, crime and race.

Virtual Archaeology: Active Worlds Turns 15

Rhaomi — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 17:39:02 -0800

Fifteen years ago this week, programmer Ron Britvich launched version 1.0 of Active Worlds. Started as an autonomous project of Worlds, Inc. (a spinoff of educational gamesmaker Knowledge Adventure), Active Worlds was one of the first and most ambitious attempts to create a 3D virtual community on the web. Built on the architecture of Britvich's Worlds Chat beta, Active Worlds debuted in the form of Alphaworld, a sunny green infinite plane open to public building. In its opening years Alphaworld experienced a land rush of construction, resulting in an anarchic starfish sprawl larger than the state of California. A sister company, Circle of Fire, was soon founded to craft additional themed hubs, and once individual ownership of worlds became possible the AW community spawned a veritable universe of hundreds of worlds. Although the company has seen its ups and downs since those heady times and its fortunes have slowly dwindled, the Active Worlds platform survives to this day. Look inside for a simple guide on how to log in to the (free) service, rundowns of the best worlds, links to essays analyzing the program's legacy, and other content summing up its venerable community. Getting Started

Installation Active Worlds can be accessed by downloading and installing Active Worlds Browser 5.0 (direct link; Windows only). Because of the dated nature of the software, the system requirements are modest, allowing the browser to run relatively smoothly on laptops and low-end desktops. Compared to more recent virtual environments like Second Life, Active Worlds graphics are pretty simplistic and low-impact. A high-speed internet connection is best for loading your surroundings, though. Configuration On first startup, the browser should download a few updates. Once this is done, it will prompt a login. No registration is required -- just enter a username and a fake email address and you will be given access on a free tourist account. Tourists have some restrictions: they can't visit many of the private worlds, and anything they build can be replaced by other users. But since a full-featured citizenship account costs $70 per year, tourism is best if you just want to look around. You will begin at Ground Zero of AWGate, the default introductory world. There are usually a dozen or so users here chatting. Controls The controls are FPS-standard, with keys for walking forward, backward, and sideways. You can activate a mouse-based free-look mode by going to Options -> Settings -> General tab and checking the "Freelook mouse" option, then clicking the mouse icon in the toolbar at the top (exit by pressing Escape). You can jump by pressing + on the number pad, or fly if the world you're in allows it. Holding the Control key while moving will make you sprint, while holding shift will make you pass through solid objects. You can modify all of these functions using Options -> Configure Controls. A common change is mapping the forward/backward/strafe keys to WASD and the jump/fly key to the right mouse button. You may also want to tweak the download/cache/performance settings to fit your system and internet connection (Options -> Settings). Navigation You can view a list of worlds by opening the Tabs pane (Show -> Tabs) and clicking the "Worlds" tab. You can sort them by name or by population. Clicking a world will warp you to its Ground Zero (the central plaza at coordinates 0n 0w), or bounce you back to where you were if the world is restricted. Click here for a list of tourist-accessible worlds. When in a world, you can teleport to any location by clicking Teleport -> To... in the menu bar and typing in some coordinates. You can also teleport by entering portals (their exact appearance varies by world).

Recommended Worlds Note: Links to locations within Active Worlds posted below are underlined. If you open this post in the AW browser's web tab (press F7), clicking these links will teleport you to that location instantly. Also, keep in mind that the userbase of the service has declined substantially since its heyday. Even the most populous worlds rarely have more than 20 people online at once. The upshot is that the majority of worlds are eerily empty and have been for years. Bad if you want social chat, but perfect if you are intrigued at the thought of exploring vast fantastic virtual ruins that have been sitting untouched for over a decade.

Alphaworld (aw): The oldest, largest, and most important world of all, Alphaworld is an unpredictable hodgepodge of mansions, streets, gardens, canals, arcades, mazes, rainbows, heavy machinery, model cities, impossible architecture, and everything else hundreds of thousands of people can collaboratively construct over the course of a decade and a half. The old Ground Zero (link) is the historic heart of the world, arguably the oldest continuously accessible virtual space still in existence. The world's entry point has since been moved to a slicker and more complex plaza at 2000n 7000e. Alphaworld supports special navigational tools that you can access by clicking the double-arrow icon in the bottom-right corner of the main window. The most important tool is the world map, a top-down satellite image of the world that you can use to scroll around and teleport to specific locations. You can also view this map online in a Google Maps-style interface at AlphaMapper if you want to browse Alphaworld without installing any of the software. See the wiki page for listings of cooperative building projects and model cities within Alphaworld, such as SW City (internal wiki, "trailer", guided tour, link) and Alpha Mechanics (link). You can also browse points of interest in AWPortal's Alphaworld places database. But since Alphaworld is 0.4% larger than California, teleporting to any random coordinates (especially near the center) will likely take you to some place interesting. Metatropolis (cofmeta): Modeled after the cyberpunk dystopia of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Metatropolis is a dark and foreboding science-fiction city. The most interesting location, the Global Biomechanics Consortium, is located at 129S 199E. It's a small city that serves as the headquarters for a fictional megacorporation, with plenty of secret interiors to explore within. There's also the Teleport Center at 16S 0E, with portals to many other points of interest in the world. Mars (mars): Like the name implies, Mars is a futuristic simulation of the Red Planet, complete with colonies, caverns, spaceports, and a massive model of Olympus Mons. See the Mars places database for more. Yellowstone (yellow): A naturalistic world based on Yellowstone National Park and built with the aid of the Dept. of the Interior. Recently underwent an acclaimed renovation that won multiple "Cy Awards" (think Oscars for worldbuilding). AWTeen (awteen): A youth-oriented public building world, notable for its many subcommunities, such as the futuristic Cobalt City (video). Van Gogh (vangogh): This world brings Van Gogh's town of Arles to life in his style, as if you'd stepped into a painting. In fact, several of his works are incorporated into the colorful small town landscape. Short video here. See also the associated AWPortal places database. Casablanca (rick's): A world with a moody black-and-white film noir theme. Canyon (canyon): A cheesy but well-built world full of interactive set pieces from famous fantasy and horror franchises (Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Tower, The Haunted Mansion, etc.) Dirt City (dirtcity): A gritty Matrix-esque slum.

Active Worlds Europe If you want more content, download and install the AW Europe browser (a multi-lingual spinoff affiliated with the main project). It uses the same interface, but has a different set of worlds on offer, including:

London: a large replica of Victorian-era London. Venezia: A world based on medieval Venice. Titanic: A scale model of the RMS Titanic. Future: A Jetsons-esque world of towering skyscrapers, automated factories, and floating walkways.

Extra links

An extensive interview series with the founders of Active Worlds Snapshots of Ron Britvich's original Active Worlds development notes Mapping a Virtual City Mapping Cyberspace gallery Reconstructing Art in a Virtual World [PDF] The homepage for AW Reunions (yearly meetups) The official Active Worlds Wiki AW Communities Portal River City educational project Stagecoach Island: A semi-active spinoff of Active Worlds maintained by Wells Fargo. Timeline of virtual world development (interactive scrollable timeline) Saving Virtual Worlds from Extinction Archive.org's "Archiving Virtual Worlds" project To Meet Without Actually Meeting: Cultural Models of Virtual Rituals in Cyberspace [PDF]

Isolation in America

digaman — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 08:34:22 -0800

Are we getting lonelier?

It's A Small World After All

jonp72 — Tue, 14 Jan 2003 20:03:11 -0800

Stanley Milgram invented the term "six degrees of separation" after discovering in an experiment how closely interconnected social networks can be. The "six degrees" concept also inspired a play, a film, and a party game. The original study has recently attracted criticism, but now sociologists at Columbia University are planning to re-do the study over the Internet, using e-mail forwarding. Volunteers can sign up here.

"If you like surfing the web, it is probably because you believe people are basically good."

mattpfeff — Tue, 08 Oct 2002 09:28:18 -0800

"If you like surfing the web, it is probably because you believe people are basically good." That's the Economist interpreting the results of a recent study by IBM researchers of how cultural characteristics apparently affect people's readiness to adopt new communications technologies.

We're not a bunch of internet-loners!

tomcosgrave — Fri, 18 Feb 2000 08:22:57 -0800

We're not a bunch of internet-loners! We're vindicated - new study shows that people who become reclusives though using the internet are in a minority.