“Cyborgasms:” An Ethnography of Cybersex in AOL Chat Rooms

“Cybersex Amongst Multiple-Selves and Cyborgs in the

Narrow-Bandwidth Space of America Online Chat Rooms.” Robin Hamman’s 1996 master’s thesis in sociology from the University of Essex (UK). By the way, she requests: “Please link to this paper by linking to my homepage at: http://www.cybersoc.com/” .

Excited to learn from Lindsay Marshall’s weblog that Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels have been adapted for the screen and just telecast on BBC. This was one of my favorite fantasies as I cast about after a J.R.R. Tolkien phase in early adolescence. Unique, very atmospheric; this darkly gothic fantasy world is an entire kingdom in a sprawling labyrinthine, uncharted castle. It’s something I can’t wait to read aloud to my children. “(The show) was very good, though there some rather OTT performances which were

weak (Warren Mitchell and Spike Milligan were the worst offenders). I don’t know why people are saying it was a failure

because it was anything but. Whatever else it is a fantastic snapshot of the state of British acting at this time.”

While we’re on the topic of network maps, see this nifty Java-based interactive map “… of some of the players in the internet space along with a portion of the alliances they have

formed. This visualization demonstrates the forces that agents exhibit upon each other in a complex interconnected

system. The interactions amongst the nodes emerge from the pattern of direct, and indirect, ties throughout the network.” You can play with it, drag nodes around to change the scale and explore the network’s innards. Does this remind anyone else of the visualization and manipulation of similar data Gibson describes in “Neuromancer”?

Comments from the weblog lake effect about this week’s DoS attacks on prominent websites. I agree; we’re going to continue to see this happening, it’s so absurdly easy to do, it seems. “The big media are missing the key point on this DoS Hell Week. The

computer security of the sites attacked — Amazon, Yahoo, CNN, et cetera —

is not in question. The cause of these attacks is lax security on possibly as

many as 100,000 compromised sites where the hackers install their proxy

tools. These tools — which can be effective with as few as 100 compromised

sites — are the result of security research in the last year that turned up a

variety of Denial-of-Service Tools and techniques (here documented at

CERT). In short, this was a problem that was simmering quietly on the stove

while almost nobody paid attention — until this week, when the techniques

began to be used for the first time against high-profile sites. This problem

will only get worse, as the number of poorly-managed systems with 24/7 net

connections continues to rise. New products like Norton Internet Security (a

one-PC firewall) will help — except in this case, where the compromised

systems are Unix-based. I don’t know of one at this moment, but a Windows

client can’t be far behind.”

Arrest of Wisconsin man with mental illness quells public alarm about mysterious vials found taped to utility poles in several Wisconsin communities. The suspect told police they contained plain water and he’d taped them to utility poles because he was testing radio frequencies he believed were bombarding him, authorities said. When you reflect on it, it’s much more likely than the scenarios that were probably going through people’s minds about biological terrorist attacks, isn’t it? As a psychiatrist, I teach trainees that there is a way in which the distress we feel when we’re engaged with someone with mental illness is, in an initially mysterious way that has to begin to make sense to do this work, an inroads into the internal distress that the client feels. But I’ve never seen it illustrated in quite this way, or affecting an entire community. The story, it seems to me, isn’t over now that the mystery is solved and the “perp” arrested; the interesting part, I hope, might just start now. It could have a positive effect on the ongoing public misconceptions about and stigmatization of those with psychiatric illnesses if anyone speaks out, in a manner akin to my point above; or it could merely reinforce…

A Picture of Weblogs mapped onto a linkage space. I’m a peripheral participant in this weblog phenomenon but continue to be fascinated by its sociology. Somewhere down below, I said something about the incestuousness of the blog community, I think. This makes it graphical. Is there any comprehensible reason the weblog-space organizes itself this way? Something about the balance between momentum and gravity? “a picture of approximately 240 weblogs and the links connecting them. Weblogs are denoted by a box, a link is

denoted by a line. Clicking on a box will show the URL of the weblog that was scanned.” What the author of this mapping application needs to do is make it possible for the viewer to navigate to the sites by clicking on their loci, IMHO…

Ford’s Astoundingly Better Idea. Commentary from Jon Katz (Slashdot) on Ford’s announcement that it will be giving computers and net access to each of its 350,000 employees and their families. Other corporations are reportedly already following suit. Possibly good business sense and potentially socially transformative, when you think about it:

“If other American companies adopted Ford’s model, the technological gap looming between

the middle-class and underclass would begin to close. The United States workforce would

become the most technologically sophisticated in the world. The high-tech workforce would

expand dramatically, along with the educational, cultural, social and economic benefits of

computing still unavailable to more than half the American population.”

So You’ve Decided to be Evil Given the “banality of evil,” I knew there must be a DIY manual for this somewhere!

“Cyborgasms:” An Ethnography of Cybersex in AOL Chat Rooms

“Cybersex Amongst Multiple-Selves and Cyborgs in the

Narrow-Bandwidth Space of America Online Chat Rooms.” Robin Hamman’s 1996 master’s thesis in sociology from the University of Essex (UK). By the way, she requests: “Please link to this paper by linking to my homepage at: http://www.cybersoc.com/” .

Excited to learn from Lindsay Marshall’s weblog that Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels have been adapted for the screen and just telecast on BBC. This was one of my favorite fantasies as I cast about after a J.R.R. Tolkien phase in early adolescence. Unique, very atmospheric; this darkly gothic fantasy world is an entire kingdom in a sprawling labyrinthine, uncharted castle. It’s something I can’t wait to read aloud to my children. “(The show) was very good, though there some rather OTT performances which were

weak (Warren Mitchell and Spike Milligan were the worst offenders). I don’t know why people are saying it was a failure

because it was anything but. Whatever else it is a fantastic snapshot of the state of British acting at this time.”

While we’re on the topic of network maps, see this nifty Java-based interactive map “… of some of the players in the internet space along with a portion of the alliances they have

formed. This visualization demonstrates the forces that agents exhibit upon each other in a complex interconnected

system. The interactions amongst the nodes emerge from the pattern of direct, and indirect, ties throughout the network.” You can play with it, drag nodes around to change the scale and explore the network’s innards. Does this remind anyone else of the visualization and manipulation of similar data Gibson describes in “Neuromancer”?

Comments from the weblog lake effect about this week’s DoS attacks on prominent websites. I agree; we’re going to continue to see this happening, it’s so absurdly easy to do, it seems. “The big media are missing the key point on this DoS Hell Week. The

computer security of the sites attacked — Amazon, Yahoo, CNN, et cetera —

is not in question. The cause of these attacks is lax security on possibly as

many as 100,000 compromised sites where the hackers install their proxy

tools. These tools — which can be effective with as few as 100 compromised

sites — are the result of security research in the last year that turned up a

variety of Denial-of-Service Tools and techniques (here documented at

CERT). In short, this was a problem that was simmering quietly on the stove

while almost nobody paid attention — until this week, when the techniques

began to be used for the first time against high-profile sites. This problem

will only get worse, as the number of poorly-managed systems with 24/7 net

connections continues to rise. New products like Norton Internet Security (a

one-PC firewall) will help — except in this case, where the compromised

systems are Unix-based. I don’t know of one at this moment, but a Windows

client can’t be far behind.”

Arrest of Wisconsin man with mental illness quells public alarm about mysterious vials found taped to utility poles in several Wisconsin communities. The suspect told police they contained plain water and he’d taped them to utility poles because he was testing radio frequencies he believed were bombarding him, authorities said. When you reflect on it, it’s much more likely than the scenarios that were probably going through people’s minds about biological terrorist attacks, isn’t it? As a psychiatrist, I teach trainees that there is a way in which the distress we feel when we’re engaged with someone with mental illness is, in an initially mysterious way that has to begin to make sense to do this work, an inroads into the internal distress that the client feels. But I’ve never seen it illustrated in quite this way, or affecting an entire community. The story, it seems to me, isn’t over now that the mystery is solved and the “perp” arrested; the interesting part, I hope, might just start now. It could have a positive effect on the ongoing public misconceptions about and stigmatization of those with psychiatric illnesses if anyone speaks out, in a manner akin to my point above; or it could merely reinforce…

A Picture of Weblogs mapped onto a linkage space. I’m a peripheral participant in this weblog phenomenon but continue to be fascinated by its sociology. Somewhere down below, I said something about the incestuousness of the blog community, I think. This makes it graphical. Is there any comprehensible reason the weblog-space organizes itself this way? Something about the balance between momentum and gravity? “a picture of approximately 240 weblogs and the links connecting them. Weblogs are denoted by a box, a link is

denoted by a line. Clicking on a box will show the URL of the weblog that was scanned.” What the author of this mapping application needs to do is make it possible for the viewer to navigate to the sites by clicking on their loci, IMHO…

Ford’s Astoundingly Better Idea. Commentary from Jon Katz (Slashdot) on Ford’s announcement that it will be giving computers and net access to each of its 350,000 employees and their families. Other corporations are reportedly already following suit. Possibly good business sense and potentially socially transformative, when you think about it:

“If other American companies adopted Ford’s model, the technological gap looming between

the middle-class and underclass would begin to close. The United States workforce would

become the most technologically sophisticated in the world. The high-tech workforce would

expand dramatically, along with the educational, cultural, social and economic benefits of

computing still unavailable to more than half the American population.”

So You’ve Decided to be Evil Given the “banality of evil,” I knew there must be a DIY manual for this somewhere!