Posted on March 17th, 2009 in of interest, project news and tagged architecture, research, social media, web
I don’t have the energy for Twitter. Or rather, I don’t wish to expend the energy Twitter requires proportional to any value my use of it might return. However, I will continue to keep a regular presence on Twitter without any effort on my part whatsoever! With the help of a server-side cron job and a PHP script adapted from the Booktwo Swotter Project, I will “perform” my dusty ol’ graduate thesis (in real time!) on Twitter. Every two hours, an approximately 140-character fragment of the text will be broadcast for the benefit of any twit — er, tweetie, er twot, er, how’s that? — so why not follow me and enjoy a little piece of Meaning Building: Aldo Rossi and the Practice of Memory throughout the course of your twittiful day?
Posted on February 7th, 2009 in activism, collaboration, project news and tagged action mill, activism, civil discourse, democracy, public sphere, research, social media, uarts, web
I’ve just begun working on a design research project with my colleagues and great friends, Jethro and Nick, of the Action Mill and three undergraduate students at the University of the Arts. The project, Social Media for Social Change, investigates how networked technologies and social media may be used to create hybrid public spaces where civic discourse and meaningful participation are facilitated, organized, and nurtured at a grass-roots level. We see this work as vital if we are to harness the potential of networked communications in creating spaces for discussion, disagreement, and community, especially when so many of our everyday interactions with others are circumscribed by social media. I invite you, readers, to follow along at the project blog and join the conversation.