Pictures of Traces...of People, Places and Things

Marc Smith from a sociological point of view...Microsoft Research is all over the world. The Community Technologies group. Why are we able to engage in ordered behavior--and when are we not? And why?

Everywhere you go, you leave footprints in computational media. They are aggregatable.

William White? Data Collection aggregation.

Scaffolds for collective action:
E-mail, chat, buddy lists, IM, usenet, web boards, forums, ebay, blogs, wikis, MUDs, MOOs, Graphical Worlds, MMORPGs, Mapster, Kazaa, Gnutella

MoSoSo: Mobile Social Software. Everything is available, in your pocket. it's thing that has sensors. It's based on collective action.

Computer-Mediated Collective Action: it's hard to get things done with multiple people. (MS Word by yourself, you get some goodness. eBay by yourself--don't get much out of it!)

Variety of systems to make collective action in public. (Delicious, Digg, Slashdot)

Wikimapia--Annotating everything. You stood there for awhile. Your computer noticed, for you. (You were not aware of this...)
Books:
Evolution of Cooperation. Bob Axelrod.
Governing the Commons. Elanor Osterman.
Study of How We Present Ourselves in the Physical World. Goffman.
The Bible of Social Network Theory.
Tufte's Visual Explanations
(His own book,.)
Garret Harden, Wellman.

Information foraging and what's left behind...(ants at work by Deborah Gordan.) "What do ants do in their spare time?" Ants leave trails.

Relationships for usenet communities. usenet still not dead yet--good place to look for relationship spaces, traces.

Social networks: not new. Reciprosity--networks and and association. Largely available because of computational ability.
Social Network theory is not Social Network Service.
*Ties* are as old as the internet. You can have lots of flavors of ties. "me too" is okay to say, now.

SNA Resources: INSNA.

We can see patterns of behaviors over time...answers and answer person. Footprints in cyberspace...we're leaving the artifacts behind and analyzable.

Egos, Alters, Out Degrees.
Answer person signatures (only replies), Discussion People (starts conversations).
We can see the patterns people leave behind--and can be correlated with how important the information/information quality is.

Pervasive Inscription Revolution: "We are all authors now" phenomenon. Each of us will leave behind 3-5 terabytes behind. Silt up and storing information.

We are building digital mirrors back for digital lifestyles.
SNARF: Social relationship and Network Finder. (Unread mail, the people you've replied to...the patterns. The computer already knows who your friends are. It can tell, by who you've replied to.)

Information visualizations: tree map.

Mobile Social Networks. No longer temple/warehouse of information. No it's easier to get information OUTSIDE the temple. The temple is a part of every street corner. (Alice note: What does that do for a library? Makes me think my kiosk idea is not as corny as it sounded...)

Spotme.com and you can register, you carry a device in your pocket.
Ntag.com beams information about you to others--and writes your report for you.

YOu can scan barcodes on objects and then. Working with King County library system. YOu're in a bookstore, you click the barcode and you've reserved the book and they'll mail it to you.

Slam can watch you roller-blade in the park. And next it can tell you your heart rate and how fast you were going. Annotate, rank and review.

Libraries are not necessarily Librarians. He mentioned "warehouses of dead trees."
The future of libraries may be in doubt.
But the future of librarians should be clear: the need for information guides is ever greater.

Made the comparison to professional photographer.

QUESTIONS.
Q. SNARC in production?
A. In release to Web form. (In other words, no.)

Q. Could he speak to the community of internet users?
A. Tools show practical advantages, patterns. Relevance. Recency is not Relevance and that's ADD when you mistake the two.

Q. Issues of Privacy and Surveillance?
A. Accelerate our rendez-vous with regret. He wants his team to bleed instead of users. But software can be domesticated...and the Model T Ford did not have a cupholder. We do have choices about exposure and control. the walls have melted away--people who are not in this room, are in this room. Social order and rules are in flux. But we'll live through it.

Tag Cloud shows who is in the room. (I took a photo and will post it ASAP. We'll link to the Office of Research Tag Cloud generator soon.)