Crowdfunding platforms and the design of paying publics

Crowdfunding enables groups to self-fund the changes they want to make in the world. In other words, digital financial platforms are proving capable of supporting new relations between groups of people as well as offering new ways to organize money. Taking an HCI lens, we look at how some crowdfunding platform owners are approaching social innovation, not only at the level of supporting individual community initiatives, but at the broader level of using their platform to change societal behavior. Through four case studies, we show how crowdfunding has been chosen as a tool to redesign society by promoting environmental or social sustainability. We argue that the groups constituted through these interactions are not merely ‘crowds’, but deliberate constellations built round a thing of interest (or ‘paying publics’). Our interviews with managers and owners explore how interactions with and around platforms work to achieve these ends and we conclude with design considerations

Informating in a Demi-global World

What is the best strategy to pursue when introducing computing, to ???informate??? by creating and sharing as much information as possible, or to ???represent??? the social processes in question so they can be manipulated and more completely controlled? In what way does the greatly increased scale of many current social processes, referred to as ???globalization,??? affect the question of basic computing strategy? This paper argues that increasing scale makes the informating strategy even more relevant. This is done by 1) presenting the case for a particular way of characterizing contemporary social formation reproduction, as demi-global; 2), illustrating the value of this characterization through analysis of the current world economic crisis; 3), making the specific case that ???informating??? is crucial to coping with and resolving this crisis; 4), acknowledging some difficulties that informating typically encounters in the demi-global work; and 5) illustrating why informating should nonetheless demonstrate its superiority

Achieving the Intercalation of the Social and the Technical in Computing: The SREC (Socially Robust and Enduring Computing) Program

This Poster addresses the core issue of iSchool research: How to achieve adequate accounts of what happens when people and organizations use automated (that is, computer-based) information and communication technologies. It outlines the authors??? vision of how persuasive, balanced accounts that properly integrate social and technical perspectives on computing might be achieved, and a research program intended to make this vision real

Computing and the Crisis: The Significant Role of New Information Technologies in the Current Socio-economic Meltdown

There is good reason to be concerned about the long-term implications of the current crisis for the reproduction of contemporary social formations. Thus there is an urgent need to understand it character, especially its distinctive features. This article identifies profound ambiguities in valuing assets as new and key economic features of this crisis, ambiguities traceable to the dominant, “computationalist” computing used to develop new financial instruments. After some preliminaries, the article identifies four specific ways in which computerization of finance is generative of crisis. It then demonstrates how computationalist computing is linked to other efforts to extend commodification based on the ideology of so-called “intellectual property” (IP). Several other accounts for the crisis are considered and then demonstrated to have less explanatory value. After considering how some commons-oriented (e.g., Free/Libre and/or Opening Source Software development projects) forms of computing also undermine the IP project, the article concludes with a brief discussion of what research on Socially Robust and Enduring Computing might contribute to fostering alternative, non-crisis generative ways to compute

The Cyberspace Anthropology: A Foreword

"...[...]The volume is introduced with discussion of these mundane details not only because anthropologists are supposed to report context. We also wish to underline the role of AITs as enablers of the discussion of their cultural correlates that follows. While anthropologists have long encouraged global thinking, existing technologies allowed us to act on our thoughts with greater dispatch. We want this issue of JAI to have a similarly reverberating impact, broadening the issues on the agenda of both Indonesianist anthropology and cyberspace ethnography.

‘Non-Western’ Studies of Cyberspace Identity Formation

Artikel ini berupaya menyimpulkan implikasi terhadap penelitian-penelitian antropologi terkini tentang identitas di dunia cyberspace, di luar Barat. Penelitian-penelitian ini, sebagian besar di antaranya berfokus pada formasi sosial di luar Indonesia, dikelompokkan berdasarkan pada: yang relatif telah terbentuk, yang lebih marjinal atau dunia 'keempat', dan diaspora. Dinamika yang dilaporkan dalam penelitian-penelitian ini dibandingkan dan dipertentangkan dengan dinamika Barat dalam 'Introduction'. Ketidakhadiran identitas personal dalam penelitian identitas-cyber di dunia Barat juga ditampilkan, dengan beberapa kewaspadaan. Ditempatkan dalam konteks isu yang akhir-akhir ini diberi label 'globalization' dan 'manifesto' antropologi cyberspace dari Arturo Escobar, permasalahan teoritis ini kemudian dihubungkan dengan pemunculan penting open computing pada bangsa-bangsa di luar Barat seperti Indonesia

Recent Information Technology Events in the West: A Memorial for the Economy Formerly Known as ‘New’

Pembahasan informal ini ditujukan pada mereka yang tertarik untuk menerapkan perspektif antropologi ke dalam dunia cyberspace di Indonesia. Termasuk di antaranya adalah permasalahan praktis pembangunan mandiri mengenai hubungan ekonomi jangka panjang. Pembicaraan dilakukan dalam bentuk eulogi atau memorial yang ditujukan pada apa yang disebut 'ekonomi baru', yang sekarang dianggap mistis. Tema yang penting digarisbawahi adalah bahwa perkembangan ekonomi Amerika yang berdasarkan teknologi sesaat ini tampaknya tidak akan dapat memperlihatkan keperkasaannya dalam mencapai kebangkitannya kembali, baik dalam jangka waktu pendek maupun menengah. Pendapat ini kemudian dijabarkan dengan memperlihatkan hubungan antar 4 (empat) gejolak perekonomian baru yang muncul mendadak dalam perusahaan Internet, telekomunikasi, pendidikan online, dan sektor keuangan di perekonomian Amerika. Perhatian lebih ditujukan pada pertarungan antar para pemilik, serta pendekatan terbuka pada komputasi. Hal yang terakhir ini menawarkan basis bagi pendekatan berbeda untuk cyberspace, yang secara kuat menggunakan perspektif antropologi

An American at IRIS

Abstract not available