The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 411 to 425.
Watson knows the Question
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/watson-knows
<b>Now that an algorithm has given humans a run for their money on a quiz show, it’s time to rethink the idea of a machine. A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. This article was published on March 6, 2011.</b>
<p>Quantum theory suggests that multiple universes exist where every possible alternative can come true. If this were the case, somewhere there must be a world filled with machines that are looking at human evolution and figuring out new and advanced human machine relationships. Or for those who are not very quantum minded, imagine a world where machines are the evolved species and they depend upon human technology — emotional connections, semantic learning, etc. — for their daily transactions and survival. I am not suggesting a futuristic dystopia, like the kind that science fiction specialises in. However, it would be interesting to imagine a world where technology is not only at the periphery of human civilisation but at the centre of it.</p>
<p>I am proposing this world view to revisit the idea of a digital native. We have, so far, in scholarship and practice, education and policy, only looked at digital natives as young human beings who interact in new and innovative ways with evolving technologies, to form human-machine networks and assemblages. However, as Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Augmentation develop to produce thinking technologies, it is time to start looking at being sapient as not necessarily a human condition.</p>
<p>Early last month, an artificially created super computing system called Watson (elementary, surely?) took the world by a storm as it competed against two human contestants on a popular American quiz show called Jeopardy! The trivia-based show provides answers clustered around a particular theme, and contestants have to ask the correct question to the answer, to win prize money. It is not a straightforward question-answer show because it relies on more than human memory and recollection. It gives cryptic clues (like the ones we are used to in a crossword), offers semantic relationships which need more than just a database memory, and relies on the contestants’ abilities to make creative connections between the clues in order to guess the right questions.</p>
<p>Watson, a product of seven years of research by IBM Research, works on an algorithm which simulates human language and cognitive patterns to make intelligent connections and deductions to understand the context of the clues and then provide answers. Powered by 2,800 super powered computers on a high-speed network, Watson competed against Jeopardy!’s biggest champions and made history as it showed extraordinary human learning and predictive powers. It has been one of the biggest achievements in advanced computing to develop an algorithm that mimics human learning and has changed the way in which we look at the human-machine relationship.</p>
<p>While much commentary on Watson revolves around what it means to be human, and subsequently, what it is to be a digital native, I have a different proposition to make. Perhaps, Watson’s debut on American television is not only about thinking what is human, but also about what it means to be a machine.</p>
<p>First, the Watson that appeared on TV was a sleek display screen that stood behind a lectern in the studio along with the human contestants. The original Watson was next door, being cooled by refrigeration units, but it appeared to the human audience (in and outside the studio) in its avatar. This was a radically new idea because we have always thought of the avatar as a technology based representation of human users. We find avatars on Facebook and in online role-playing games. To think of a machine appearing in a human form was radically new.</p>
<p>Second, Watson was not able to just make predictions by mining information. It was also able to display levels of confidence. If Watson was not confident about an answer, it did not push the buzzer to answer. In fact, once the information was harvested, it displayed its top three guesses to show that, like human contestants, it calculated risks of wrong answers.</p>
<p>Third, Watson was able to display or at least simulate human emotions. It took guesses even when in doubt. It showed a spirit of adventure and played big. It was disappointed when it lost or was happy when it got the answers. It was able to display its “emotions” through various displays in its form and could get the audience’s attention, applause and support.</p>
<p>What this experiment suggests to me is that Watson is perhaps a digital native. All our concentration has always been on human subjects, but synthetic life forms and technology-based intelligence, are blurring this distinction between humans and technologies. We should start thinking of a digital native as neither machine nor human being, but a combination of the two, residing simultaneously in both the realms of the physical and the digital. Watson is perhaps a new digital native, a technology that is growing and slowly learning from its interactions with the human world around it. One of these days, we might be living in the midst of computational devices, which, when we are flummoxed, might turn to us and say, “Elementary, my dear Sherlock!”</p>
<p>Contact: digitalnative@expressindia.com</p>
<p>Read the original in the Indian Express <a class="external-link" href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/watson-knows-the-question/757315/1">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/watson-knows'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/watson-knows</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCyberculturesResearchers at Work2015-05-14T12:24:38ZBlog EntryActivism: Unraveling the Term
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/activism-unraveling-the-term
<b>After discussing Blank Noise’s politics and ways of organizing, the current post explores whether activism is still a relevant concept to capture the involvement of people within the collective. I explore the questions from the vantage point of the youth actors, through conversations about how they relate with the very term of activism.</b>
<p></p>
<p class="Normalfirstparagraph"><strong><em>Youth's Popular Imagination of Activism</em></strong></p>
<p class="Normalfirstparagraph">As a start, I need to clarify
that ‘activism’ is not a concept that the participants are generally concerned
with. For a majority of them, the conversation we had was the first time they
thought of what the term means and reflect whether their engagement with Blank
Noise is activism. Regardless of whether one identifies Blank Noise as a form
of activism or not, all participants share a popular idea of what activism is.</p>
<p class="Normalfirstparagraph"> Generally speaking, at an abstract level all
participants saw activism as passionately caring about an injustice and taking
action to create social change. At a more tangible level, all participants
mentioned three elements as popular ideas about <em>doing </em>activism. The first is the existence of a concrete demands as
a solution to the identified problem, such as asking for service provision or
state regulations. Since these demands are structural, activism is also seen
dealing with formal authority figures in the traditional sense of politics, the
state. The second is the intensity and commitment required to be an activist,
for many participants being an activist means having prolonged engagement,
taking risks, and making the struggle a priority in one’s life. In other words,
being an activist means “<em>... being
neck-deep, spending most if not all of your time, energy, and resources for the
cause” </em>(Dev Sukumar, male, 34). The third element relates to the methods,
called by some as ‘old school’: shouting slogans, holding placards, and doing
marches on the streets – all enacted in the physical public space. This popular
imagination of activism becomes the orientation for participants in deciding whether
Blank Noise is a form of activism and whether they are activists for being
involved in it.</p>
<p><strong><em>Activism
as the Intention and Action</em></strong></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;"><em>“I have an idea of what activism is but not what it exactly
looks like.” </em></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;">(Apurva Mathad, male,
28).<em> </em></p>
<p>For
those who think that Blank Noise <em>is </em>a
form of activism, there was a differentiation between the idea at the abstract
level and how it is manifested at a more tangible level. The definition of
activism is the abstract one, while the popular ideas of doing activism do not
define the concept but present the most common out many possible courses of
actions. Blank Noise is fulfils all the elements in the abstract definition: a
passion about an injustice, having an aim for social change, and acting to
achieve the aim. Hence, Blank Noise is activism, but the way it manifests
itself does not adhere to the popular imagination of doing activism. The
distinction between Blank Noise’s methods with popular ones was emphasized,
along with the difference in articulating goals.</p>
<p>Interestingly,
not all participants who share this line of thinking called themselves as
activists for being involved in an activism. Again, it must be reiterated that
no participants ever really thought of giving a name to their engagement prior
to the interview. Instead of saying ‘I am an activist’, they said ‘I guess I
could be called an activist’ for the fact that they are sharing the passion and
being actively involved in a form of activism, albeit in an unconventional
manner.</p>
<p>Those
who would categorize Blank Noise as activism but not call themselves activists
related with a particular element on the popular idea of <em>doing </em>activism, which is getting “neck-deep”. They were helpers,
volunteers, idea spreaders, but not an activist because their lives are not dedicated
for the cause or their involvements were based on availability. On the other
hand, these participants all said that Jasmeen is an activist for being
completely dedicated to Blank Noise from its inception until today.</p>
<p><strong><em>Activism as Particular Ways of Doing and Being<br /></em></strong></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;"><em>“What are the repercussions if activism is so fluidly
defined? It can mean not questioning </em></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;"><em>privilege... not seeing the class divisions and still call
yourself activist.” </em></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;">(Hemangini Gupta,
female, 29).<em> </em></p>
<p class="Normalfirstparagraph">Most participants did not consider
Blank Noise as an activism. Generally, this can be explained by the
discrepancies between Blank Noise and the popular imagination on the tangible
ways of <em>doing </em>activism. Blank Noise
does not propose a concrete solution or make concrete demands to an established
formal structure nor did it march on the streets and make slogans. However, the
underlying attitude to this point of view is not of a younger generation
finding the ‘old’ ways of doing activism obsolete. Rather, there was an
acknowledgement that the issue itself causes the different ways of reading an
issue and taking actions to address it.</p>
<p>Furthermore,
there is an appreciation to the achievements and dedication of activists that
deterred them from calling themselves activists. These people referred to their
occasional participation and the fact that Blank Noise is not the main priority
in their lives as a student or young professional despite being a cause they
are passionate about. As reflected in the opening quote, being an activist for
some participants also means deeply reflecting on their self position in terms
of class, acknowledging their privileges, and putting themselves in a position
that will enable them to imagine the experience of people who are also affected
by the issue but has a different position in the society. In other words, being
an activist is not just about <em>doing </em>but
also about critically reflecting on one’s position in relation to the issue and
how it influences the way an issue is being pushed forward. Thinking that they
are not up to these standards, these youth choose to call themselves
‘volunteers’, ‘helpers’, or ‘supporters’.</p>
<h2><em>Youth: The Activist, the Apathetic, and the Everyday</em></h2>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;" class="Normalfirstparagraph"><em>“Blank Noise is a public
and community street arts collective that is volunteer-led and attempts to
create public dialogue on the issue of street sexual violence and eve teasing.”
</em></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;" class="Normalfirstparagraph"><em>(</em>Jasmeen Patheja)</p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;"><em>“... a
group of people against street sexual harassment and eve teasing.” </em></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;">(Kunal Ashok, men, 29)</p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;">“... <em>an
idea that really works.” </em></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: right;">(Neha Bhat, 19)</p>
<p class="Normalfirstparagraph">As clarified before, the
participants did not use the words ‘movement’ and very few used ‘activism’
during our conversations. Instead, the terms they used to describe Blank Noise
are represented in the quotes above: collective, community, group, project, and
even as an idea. These phrases do not carry the same political baggage that
‘movement’ or ‘activism’ would; they also do not conjure a particular
imagination that the other two terms would. These phrases are de-politicized
and informal; they imply fluidity, lack of hierarchy, and room for
manoeuvre. </p>
<p>The
implied meanings in the terms reflect the debates on the average youth and
political engagement. For the past decade, various youth scholars criticized
the dichotomy of youth as either activists or apathetic in explaining the
global trend of decreased youth participation in formal politics. The activists
are either politically active Digital Natives engaged in new forms of social
movements influenced heavily by new media or sub-cultural resistances, which
only account for a fraction of the youth population that are mostly completely
apathetic. This dichotomy ignored the ‘broad “mainstream” young people who are
neither deeply apathetic about politics on unconventionally engaged’ (Harris et
al, 2010).</p>
<p>These
mainstream young people actually are socially and politically engaged in
‘everyday activism’ (Bang, 2004; Harris et al, 2010). These are young people
who are personalizing politics by adopting causes in their daily behaviour and
lifestyle, for instance by purchasing only Fair Trade goods, or being very
involved in a short term concrete project but then stopping and moving on to
other activities. The emergence of these everyday activists are explained by
the dwindling authority of the state in the emergence of major corporations as
political powers (Castells, 2009) and youth’s decreased faith in formal
political structures which also resulted in decreased interest in collectivist,
hierarchical social movements in favour of a more individualized form of
activism (Harris et al, 2010). Internet and new media technologies are credited
as an enabling factor, being a space and a medium for young people to express
their everyday activism. </p>
<p>All
of the research participants, perhaps with the exception of Jasmeen as the only
one who has constantly been the driver Blank Noise its entire seven years, are
these everyday makers, people who were involved with the Blank Noise either on
a daily basis as a commentator, one-time project initiator and leader, or
people who were active when they are available but remain dormant at other
times. Blank Noise is a space where these individual forms of engagement could
be exercised while remaining as a collective. The facilitation is not only by
the flexibility of coming and going, but also the lack of rigid group rules and
the approach of allowing Blank Noise to be interpreted differently by
individuals. Considering that the mainstream urban youth are everyday makers
who would not find ‘old’ or ‘new’ social movements appealing, this can be the
reason why Blank Noise became so popular among youth; however, I would also
argue that the fact that Blank Noise is the first to systematically address eve
teasing is a determining cause.</p>
<p>The
implications of this finding, together with other concluding thoughts, will be
shared in the next and final post in the Beyond the Digital series.</p>
<p><em>This is the <strong>ninth</strong> post in the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-beyond-the-digital-directory" class="external-link"><strong>Beyond the Digital </strong>series,</a> a research project that aims to explore
new insights to understand youth digital activism conducted by Maesy Angelina
with Blank Noise Project under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge
Programme. </em></p>
<p><em>References:</em></p>
<p>Bang,
H.P. (2004) ‘Among everyday makers and expert citizens’. Accessed 21 September
2010. <a href="http://www.sam.kau.se/stv/ksspa/papers/bang.pdf">http://www.sam.kau.se/stv/ksspa/papers/bang.pdf</a></p>
<p>Castells,
M. (2009) <em>Communication Power. </em>New
York: Oxford University Press.</p>
<p>Harris,
A., Wyn, J., and Younes, S. (2010) ‘Beyond apathetic or activist youth: ‘Ordinary’
young people and contemporary forms of participaton’, <em>Young </em>Vol. 18:9, pp. 9-32</p>
<p><em>Image source:</em> <a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/2010/02/tweet-now-feb-17-27.html">http://blog.blanknoise.org/2010/02/tweet-now-feb-17-27.html</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/activism-unraveling-the-term'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/activism-unraveling-the-term</a>
</p>
No publishermaesyDigital ActivismDigital NativesBlank Noise ProjectBeyond the DigitalResearchers at Work2015-05-14T12:25:05ZBlog Entry"Digital Natives with a Cause?" newsletter Volume I
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-newsletter-volume-i
<b>For everyone who is interested in learning more about the Digital Natives who form part of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" community. The Newsletter includes opinion posts by participants from the three workshops, interview with them, comics and cartoons highlighting current issues affecting the community, as well as current news and discussions happening at the project website, www.digitalnatives.in</b>
<p>"Links in the Chain" is a bi-monthly publication which highlights the projects, ideas and news of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" community members. The first volume was introductory and experimental in nature. Here are the two issues of volume I:</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"> Links in The Chain - Volume I</a></p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/Links%20in%20the%20Chain-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20II.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I issue II">Links in The Chain - Volume I issue II</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>For more information on"Digital Natives with a Cause?" please check out www.digitalnatives.in</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-newsletter-volume-i'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-newsletter-volume-i</a>
</p>
No publishertettnerResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-05-15T11:44:19ZBlog EntryInternet, Society & Space in Indian Cities - A Call for Peer Review
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/internet-society-space-in-indian-cities-a-call-for-peer-review
<b>Pratyush Shankar's research project on "Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities" is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. His monograph explores the trajectories of transformation and perception of cities in India in context with the rise of Information Technologies for communication and presence of an active digital space.</b>
<div id="parent-fieldname-text" class="plain kssattr-atfieldname-text kssattr-templateId- kssattr-macro-text-field-view inlineEditable">
<p>There has been, in the fields of design and architecture, a close
link between the shape and imagination of the city spaces and the
dominant technologies of the time. The study of space (architecture,
public places and city form) can lead to very interesting insights into
the expression of the society with respect to the dominant technologies.
Manuel Castells argues that space is not a mere photo¬copy (reflection)
of the society but it is an important expression (Castells, 2009).
Fredric Jameson, in his identification of the condition of
post-modernity demonstrates how the transition into new technologies is
perhaps first and most visibly reflected in the architecture, as
physical spaces get materially reconstructed, not only to house the
needs and peripheries of the emerging technologies but also to embody
their aesthetics in their design and built form (Jameson, 1991).</p>
<p>Earlier technologies have led to new understandings of the notions of
the public and commons. Jurgen Habermas argues on how the emergence of
print cultures and technologies led to a structural transformation of
the public sphere by creating new and novel forms of participation and
political engagement for the print readers. Within cinema studies in
India, Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Madhav Prasad have looked at the
'cinematic city' — how material conditions of the city transform to
house the cinema technologies, and how the imagination of certain cities
is affected by the cinematic representations of these spaces
(Rajadhyaksha, 2009). Mike Davis' formulations of an 'Ecology of
Fear'(Davis, 1999) and Sean Cubbit's idea of 'The Cinema Effect'
(Cubitt, 2005) also show the integral relationship that technologies
have with the imagination and materiality of urban spaces.</p>
<p>I wish to explore the trajectories of transformation and perception
of cities in India in context with the rise of Information Technologies
for communication and presence of an active digital space. The issue of
imagination is an important one here as much as the material realities
of our cities. However, to begin with one needs to look at the very idea
of cities in the Indian context. The fundamental idea of a city and
that of a space becomes important here and has been explored in the
chapter on cities. The issue of representation as related to ideas of
'social space' and 'abstract space' (Lefebvre, 1992) has been used as a
methodological framework while analyzing cities. The social space of a
city here refers to the production of space that is biomorphic and
anthropological. From this perspective people and history and memory
along with social economic processes play a strong role in its
definition. Hence, city spaces cannot be understood as a collection of
building and other material production alone but rather as an act of
social production involving people over a long period of time. The
appropriation and representation of cities is another important concern
as it creates an imagination structure and often justifies the material
transformation.</p>
<p>The research is primarily concerned with first creating an
understanding of the cities in Indian context from the point of view of
their social, technological and material productions. The ideas and
representations of space therefore, become critical issues of
exploration to understand the nature of imagination of space with
reference to Indian cities. An empirical study of issues of spatial
transformation was conducted in Bangalore and Gurgaon to find certain
patterns and its correlation with the present discourses on the
technology and the city. The issue of perception of lived in space,
cartography and myth became important issues to understand the nature of
the imagination of space and positioning of the digital space. The
contradiction of a networked geography with the present spatial
arrangement of cities that is the centre of a larger territory becomes
important shifts to be accounted for while understanding the new
geography. The patterns and possibilities in these new geographies of
information technologies have been understood by studying three building
programmes in the city. The question of transformation and future of
cities and the position of digital space in these times then became an
important one to answer. The initial study concerns with laying out a
framework for examining the techno-spatial discourses in cities in
general while establishing the key characteristics of its narration in
the Indian context.</p>
<p>The Researchers At Work Programme, at the Centre for Internet and
Society, advocates an Open and transparent process of knowledge
production. We recognise peer review as an essential and an extremely
important part of original research, and invite you, with the greatest
of pleasures, to participate in our research, and help us in making our
arguments and methods stronger. The first draft of the monograph is now
available for public review and feedback. Please click on the links
below to choose your own format for accessing the document.</p>
<ul><li><a title="Internet and City Word File" class="internal-link" href="http://cis-india.jail.kaeru.my:8090/website/research/cis-raw/internet-city.doc">Word</a></li><li><a title="Internet and City PDF file" class="internal-link" href="http://cis-india.jail.kaeru.my:8090/website/research/cis-raw/internet-city.pdf">PDF</a></li></ul>
<p>We appreciate your time, engagement and feedback that will help us to
bring out the monograph in a published form. Please send all comments
or feedback by April 5, 2011 to nishant@cis-india.org or you can use
your Open ID to login to the website and leave comments to this post.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/internet-society-space-in-indian-cities-a-call-for-peer-review'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/internet-society-space-in-indian-cities-a-call-for-peer-review</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaHistories of InternetResearchers at WorkInternet Histories2015-04-06T15:52:21ZBlog EntryDigital Natives with a Cause? - Workshop in Santiago FAQs
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-workshop-in-santiago
<b>The third and final workshop of the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project will take place in Santiago, Chile, from 8 to 10 February 2011. Below are some frequently asked questions. </b>
<p></p>
<p><strong>The Open call for participation can be found </strong><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-workshop-in-santiago-open-call" class="external-link"><strong>here</strong></a></p>
<p><strong>1.When and where is the workshop going to be held?</strong><br />
The workshop will take place over three days from 8 to 10 February 2011,
in Santiago, Chile.<br /><br />
<strong>2. Who should apply?</strong><br />
The organizers,<a href="http://rising.globalvoicesonline.org/">Rising Voices</a>,<a href="http://www.hivos.nl/english"> Hivos</a> and the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/">Centre for Internet and Society </a>are
interested in hearing from young people, who utilize digital technologies to
create social change in their societies or social circles.<br />
Further, the regional focus of the workshop is on Latin America and The
Caribbean, hence, only those citizens or those in that setting should apply. The event is not public in nature, only those who fit the criteria and are selected will be invited to participate. However, there might be a larger public event associated with the workshop. <br />
<strong><br />3. How can I apply?</strong><br />
You can fill an online<a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/fromfacetointerface"> application</a>.
Alternatively, you can email digitalnatives@cis-india.org and ask for an email
application.<br />
<strong><br />4. What is Digital Natives with a Cause?</strong><br />
"Digital Natives with a Cause?" is an international, collaborative
research project which aims to increase the current understanding of Digital
Natives (there is not one single definition, that’s why we’re doing this
project! – but it could be understood as people who interact naturally with
digital technologies) and their role in their particular societies.<br />
<strong><br />5. What are the objectives of Digital Natives
with a Cause? How does this workshop fit in?</strong><br />
"Digital Natives with a Cause?" aims to incorporate a first-person
narrative of the use of technology by youth for social change into the ongoing
dialogue. To do this, several case studies of varying cultural backgrounds and
diverse methodologies will be compiled into a book. The case studies will be
the result of three-day workshop conducted across the developing world. Last
summer the Asian workshop happened in Taipei, Taiwan, and last fall the African
workshop happened in Johannesburg, South Africa. <br />
"Digital Natives with a Cause?" also aims to incorporate the
participants into a broad network of Digital Natives from around the world,
with similar methodology and approach. Through this network, Digital
Natives will be able to express concerns, share resources, stay connected with
peers and learn from each other.<br />
You can read a report on "Digital Natives with a Cause?"<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/uploads/dnrep1"> here</a>.<br />
<strong><br />6. OK, so what can I expect from this workshop?</strong><br />
You can expect an informal setting where interactive methods of communication
help you gain a better understanding of the context of your project. For
example, you will get to meet and interact with the participants of the
previous workshop in Taipei and Johannesburg. You can expect to reflect about
your project: Your motivation, methodology, focus, and context, to name a few,
and to draw parallels into other projects in the region. You can expect to
interact with a varied and diverse group of young people from around Latin
America and the Caribbean who like you, use technology for social causes.
Overall, you can expect to gain a new perspective about yourself, and the
importance of your work.<br />
<strong><br />7. Will I learn any new skills in this workshop?</strong><br />
The short answer is no. The "Digital Natives with a Cause?" project
does not aim to train or to build existing capacities among youth users of
technology. That said, you will definitely gain a lot of perspective on
your individual project and you will learn how it relates to ongoing
development processes in the region. You will also meet, interact and hopefully
befriend other young users of technology like yourself, enlarging your scope
and enriching your experience.<br />
<strong><br />8. Are there any language requirements? </strong><br />
Yes. Even though the communication during the workshop will take place both in
Spanish and English, we really need the participants to have at least a working
proficiency of English to be able to interact both with the organizers who come
from India and the Netherlands, as well as with the participants from other
workshops, thus fully contribute to the project. <br />
<strong><br />9. Will expenses be covered?</strong><br />
Yes. Expenses associated with the workshop (travel and accommodation) will be
provided for those selected participants.<br />
<strong><br />10. When is the last date to apply?
</strong>
<br />
The last day to apply is Tuesday, 4 January 2010.<br />
<strong><br />11 Where can I get more information?</strong><br />
Do check out<a href="http://www.digitalnatives.in/"> www.digitalnatives.in</a>
for more information, and please email digitalnatives@cis-india.org for
questions and concerns. We would be pleased to answer them.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-workshop-in-santiago'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-workshop-in-santiago</a>
</p>
No publishertettnerRAW EventsDigital NativesWorkshopResearchers at WorkEvent2015-05-15T11:46:01ZBlog EntryThe Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem - An Inquiry into Technology and Governance: Call for Review
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/last-mile-problem
<b>Re-thinking the Last Mile Problem research project by Ashish Rajadhyaksha is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. The ‘last mile’ is a communications term which has a specific Indian variant, where technology has been mapped onto developmentalist–democratic priorities which have propelled communications technologies since at least the invention of radio in the 1940s. For at least 50 years now, the ‘last mile’ has become a mode of a techno-democracy, where connectivity has been directly translated into democratic citizenship. It has provided rationale for successive technological developments, and produced an assumption that the final frontier was just around the corner and that Internet technologies now carry the same burden of breaching that last major barrier to produce a techno-nation. The project has fed into many different activities in teaching, in examining processes of governance and in looking at user behaviour.
</b>
<p>The Researchers At Work Programme, at the Centre for Internet and Society, advocates an Open and transparent process of knowledge production. We recognise peer review as an essential and an extremely important part of original research, and invite you, with the greatest of pleasures, to participate in our research, and help us in making our arguments and methods stronger.</p>
<p>Laying out a theoretical review of the history of technologies of archiving in the country, the project aims at building case studies of public and private archives in the country and the needs for a local capacity building network of historians, archivists, technologists and state bodies which exploits the digital and Internet technologies for building new archives of Indian material.</p>
<p>The monograph has emerged out of the "Rethinking the Last Mile Problem" project that was initiated in September 2008. The first draft of the monograph is now available for public review and feedback.Please click on the links below to choose your own format for accessing the document:</p>
<ol>
<li> <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/leap-of-rhodes" class="internal-link" title="Last Mile Problem">PDF</a></li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rethinking-last" class="internal-link" title="Rethinking Last">Word</a></li></ol>
<p>We appreciate your time, engagement and feedback that will help us to bring out the monograph in a published form. Please send all comments or feedback by 30 December 2010 to nishant@cis-india.org or you can use your Open ID to login to the website and leave comments to this post.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/last-mile-problem'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/last-mile-problem</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaResearchers at WorkHistories of InternetInternet Studies2015-04-03T10:55:07ZBlog EntryDigital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/position-papers
<b>The Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon conference co-organised by Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society is being held from 6 to 8 December at the Hague Museum for Communication. The position papers are now available online.</b>
<p>The emergence of digital and Internet technologies have changed the world as we know it. Processes of interpersonal relationships, social communication, economic expansion, political protocols and governmental mediation are all undergoing a significant translation, across the world, in developed and emerging Information and Knowledge societies. These processes also affect the ways in which social transformation, political participation and interventions for development take place.</p>
<p>The Digital Natives with a Cause? research inquiry seeks to look at the potentials of social change and political participation through technology practices of people in emerging ICT contexts. It particularly aims to address knowledge gaps that exist in the scholarship, practice and popular discourse around an increasing usage, adoption and integration of digital and Internet technologies in social transformation processes.</p>
<p>The programme has three main components. The first is to incorporate the users (often young, but not always so) as stakeholders in the construction of policies and discourse which affect their lives in very material ways. The second is to capture, with a special emphasis on change, different relationships with and deployment of technologies in different parts of the world. The third is to further extend the network of knowledge stakeholders where scholars,practitioners, policy makers and the Digital Natives themselves, come together in dialogue to identify the needs and interventions in this field.</p>
<p>In the late summer of 2010 two workshops, in Taiwan and South Africa, brought together 50 Digital Natives from Asia and Africa to place their practice in larger social and political legacies and frameworks. The ‘<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/talkingback/?searchterm=talking%20back" class="external-link">Talking Back</a>’ workshop in Taiwan looked at the politics, implications and processes of talking back and being political and the ‘<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/my-bubble-my-space-my-voice-workshop-perspective-and-future" class="external-link">My Bubble, My Voice and My Space</a>’ workshop in Johannesburg looked at change, change processes and the role of Digital Natives in it.</p>
<p>For the Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon that will be held in The Hague, The Netherlands from 6 to 8 December 2010, Digital Natives from the workshops in Taipei and Johannesburg have provided us with their take on social change and political participation in the following position papers. They look at issues of: what does it mean to be a Digital Native? What is the relationship of people growing up with new technologies and change? What are the processes by which change is produced? Can you institutionalize Digital Natives with a Cause Activities? How do you make it sustainable in each context?</p>
<p>We hope you will find the Digital Natives with a Cause? position papers inspiring, thought-provoking and challenging.</p>
<p><img alt="" /> Download the position papers <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/position-papers.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Thinkathon Position Papers">here </a>[PDF, 1173 KB] <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/position-papers.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Thinkathon Position Papers"><br /></a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/position-papers'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/position-papers</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital ActivismRAW PublicationsDigital NativesFeaturedPublicationsResearchers at Work2015-05-15T11:34:35ZBlog EntryThe 'Beyond the Digital' Directory
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-beyond-the-digital-directory
<b>For the past few months, Maesy Angelina has been sharing the insights gained from her research with Blank Noise on the activism of digital natives. The ‘Beyond the Digital’ directory offers a list of the posts on the research based on the order of its publication.</b>
<p></p>
<p>Have you ever
wondered what is really “new” about the activism of digital natives? In May
2010, the Hivos-CIS ‘Digital Natives with a Cause?’ Knowledge Programme started
a collaboration The Blank Noise Project in India and Maesy Angelina, a
student-researcher from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam – International
Institute of Social Studies in The Hague who is taking up the research agenda
for her final project to qualify for her Masters degree in International
Development with a specialization in Children and Youth Studies.</p>
<p>Maesy
has been blogging about the insights she gained from her field work in
Bangalore in the CIS website under the ‘Beyond the Digital’ series, which
consists of the following posts:</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst"> </p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst"><strong>1. <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/beyond-the-digital-understanding-digital-natives-with-a-cause/weblogentry_view" class="external-link">Beyond the Digital: Understanding
Digital Natives with a Cause</a></strong></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Digital
natives with a cause: the future of activism or slacktivism? Maesy Angelina
argues that the debate is premature given the obscured understanding on youth
digital activism and contends that an effort to understand this from the
contextualized perspectives of the digital natives themselves is a crucial
first step to make. This is the first out of a series of posts on her journey
to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism through a research
with Blank Noise under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge
Programme.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><strong>2. <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/first-thing-first/weblogentry_view" class="external-link">First Thing First</a></strong></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Studies
often focus on how digital natives do their activism in identifying the
characteristics of youth digital activism and dedicate little attention to what
the activism is about. The second blog post in the Beyond the Digital series
reverses this trend and explores how Blank Noise articulates the
issue it addresses: street sexual harassment.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/talking-back-without-talking-back" class="external-link"><strong>3. Talking Back without “Talking Back”</strong></a></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><span class="description">The activism of digital natives is often
considered different from previous generations because of the methods and tools
they use. However, reflecting on my conversations with Blank Noise
and my experience in the ‘Digital Natives Talking Back’ workshop in Taipei, the
difference goes beyond the method and can be spotted at the analytical level –
how young people today are <em>thinking</em>
about their activism. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"> </p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/taking-it-to-the-streets/" class="external-link">4. Taking It to the Streets</a></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">The previous posts in the Beyond the Digital series have discussed the distinct ways in which young people today are thinking about their activism. The fourth post elaborates further on how this is translated into practice by sharing the experience of a Blank Noise street intervention: Y ARE U LOOKING AT ME?</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"> </p>
<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-digital-tipping-point" class="external-link">5. The Digital Tipping Point</a>
<p> </p>
<span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable">Is
Web 2.0 really the only reason why youth digital activism is so
successful in mobilizing public engagement? A look into the
transformation of Blank Noise’s blog from a one-way communication medium
into a site of public dialogue and collaboration reveals the crucial
factors behind the success.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/diving-into-the-digita" class="external-link">6. Diving Into the Digital</a><br /></span>
<p> </p>
<p>Previous posts in the ‘Beyond the Digital’ series have discussed the non-virtual aspects and presence of Blank Noise. However, to understand the activism of digital natives also require a look into their online presence and activities. This post explores how Blank Noise’s engagement with the public in their digital realm.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-class-question" class="external-link">7. The Class Question</a></p>
<p><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable">Blank
Noise aims to be as inclusive as possible and therefore does not
identify any specific target groups. Yet, the spaces and the methods
they occupy do attract certain kinds of volunteers and public. This
raises the class question: what are the dilemmas around class on digital
interventions? Are they any different from the dilemmas on street
interventions? <br /></span></p>
<p><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable"><br /></span></p>
<p><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable"><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-many-faces-within" class="external-link">8. The Many Faces Within</a></span></p>
<p><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable">Blank
Noise, as many other digital native collectives, may seem to be
complete horizontal at first glance. But, a closer look reveals the many
different possibilities for involvement and a unique way the collective
organize itself. <br /></span></p>
<p><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/activism-unraveling-the-term" class="external-link">9. Activism: Unraveling the Term</a></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable">After
discussing Blank Noise’s politics and ways of organizing, the current
post explores whether activism is still a relevant concept to capture
the involvement of people within the collective. I explore the questions
from the vantage point of the youth actors, through conversations about
how they relate with the very term of activism. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"> </p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/reflecting-from-the-beyond" class="external-link">10. Reflecting from the Beyond</a></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable">After
going ‘beyond the digital’ with Blank Noise through the last nine
posts, the final post in the series reflects on the understanding gained
so far about youth digital activism and questions one needs to carry in
moving forward on researching, working with, and understanding digital
natives. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><br /><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable"></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable"></span>While the posts present bits and pieces of field research notes and reflections from data analysis, the full research products are:</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">- Angelina, M. (2010) '<a class="external-link" href="http://thesis.eur.nl/theses/law_culture_society/iss/cys/index/863849405/">Beyond the Digital: Understanding Contemporary Forms of Youth Activism - The Case of Blank Noise in Urban India</a>'. Unpublished thesis, graded with Distinction. The Hague: International Institute of Social Studies - Erasmus University of Rotterdam.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">- Angelina, M. (2010) '<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/position-paper/view?searchterm=position%20paper%20digital%20natives" class="external-link">Towards a New Relationship of Exchange</a>'. Position paper for the Digital Natives with a Cause Thinkathon. </p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-beyond-the-digital-directory'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-beyond-the-digital-directory</a>
</p>
No publishermaesyYouthDigital ActivismDigital NativesWeb PoliticsStreet sexual harassmentBlank Noise ProjectBeyond the DigitalCommunitiesart and interventionResearchers at Work2015-05-15T11:33:39ZBlog EntryDigital Natives with a Cause?— Workshop in South Africa—FAQs
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-workshop-faqs
<b>The second international Digital Natives Workshop "My Bubble, My Space, My Voice" will be held in Johannesburg from 7 to 9 November 2010. Some frequently asked questions regarding the upcoming workshop are answered in this blog entry.</b>
<p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><strong>1. </strong><strong>When and where is the workshop going to be
held? </strong></p>
<p>The workshop will take place over three days from 7 to 9 November 2010, in Johannesburg, South Africa.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><strong>2. </strong><strong>Who should apply? </strong></p>
<p>The organizers, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.africancommons.org/">The African Commons Project</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hivos.nl/english">Hivos</a> and the Centre for Internet and Society are interested in
hearing from <strong>young people</strong>, who
utilize <strong>digital technologies</strong> to
create <strong>social change </strong>in their
societies or social circles.</p>
<p>Further, the regional focus of the
workshop is on <strong>Africa</strong>, hence, only
African citizens or those in an African setting should apply.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><strong>3. </strong><strong>How can I apply? </strong></p>
<p>You can fill an online <a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KLNMXGW">application</a>. Alternatively,
you can email <a href="mailto:digitalnatives@cis-india.org">digitalnatives@cis-india.org</a>
and ask for an email application.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><strong>4. </strong><strong>What is Digital Natives with a Cause?</strong></p>
<p>"Digital Natives with a Cause?" is an international, collaborative research project which aims to increase the current understanding of Digital Natives (there is not one single definition, that’s why we’re doing this project! – but it could be understood as people who interact naturally with digital technologies) and their role in their particular societies.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><strong>5. </strong><strong>What are the objectives of Digital Natives
with a Cause? How does this workshop fit in?</strong></p>
<p>"Digital Natives with a Cause?" aims to incorporate a first-person narrative of the use of technology by youth for social change into the ongoing dialogue. To do this, several case studies of varying cultural backgrounds and diverse methodologies will be compiled into a book. The case studies will be the result of three-day workshop conducted across the developing world. Last summer the Asian workshop happened in Taiwan. Next spring the South American workshop will take place in Chile.</p>
<p>"Digital Natives with a Cause?" also aims to incorporate the participants into a broad network of Digital Natives from around the world, with similar methodology and approach. Through this network, Digital Natives will be able to express concerns, share resources, stay connected with peers and learn from each other.</p>
<p>You can read a report on "Digital
Natives with a Cause?" <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/uploads/dnrep1">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>6. OK, so what can I expect from this workshop?</strong></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst">You can expect an informal setting where interactive methods of communication help you gain a better understanding of the context of your project. For example, you will get to meet and interact with the participants of the previous workshop in Taipei. You can expect to reflect about your project: Your motivation, methodology, focus, and context, to name a few, and to draw parallels into other projects in the region. You can expect to interact with a varied and diverse group of young people from around Africa, who like you, use technology for social causes. Overall, you can expect to gain a new perspective about yourself, and the importance of your work.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><strong>7. </strong><strong>Will I learn any new skills in this
workshop?</strong></p>
<p>The short answer is no. The "Digital Natives with a Cause?" project does not aim to train or to build existing capacities among youth users of technology. That said, you will definitely gain a lot of perspective on your individual project and you will learn how it relates to ongoing development processes in the region. You will also meet, interact and hopefully befriend other young users of technology like yourself, enlarging your scope and enriching your experience.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><strong>8. </strong><strong>Will expenses be covered?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. Expenses associated with the workshop
(travel and accommodation) will be provided for selected participants.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst"><strong>9. </strong><strong>When is the last date to apply? </strong></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><strong> </strong>The last day to apply is Tuesday, 12 October 2010.</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><strong>10. </strong><strong>Where can I get more information?</strong></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> Do check out <a href="http://www.digitalnatives.in/">www.digitalnatives.in</a> for more
information, and please email <a href="mailto:digitalnatives@cis-india.org">digitalnatives@cis-india.org</a>
for questions and concerns.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-workshop-faqs'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-workshop-faqs</a>
</p>
No publishertettnerRAW EventsDigital NativesFeaturedWorkshopResearchers at WorkEvent2015-05-15T11:35:11ZBlog EntryAttentional Capital in Online Gaming : The Currency of Survival
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attentional-capital-online-gaming
<b>This blog post by Arun Menon discusses the concepts of production, labour and race in virtual worlds and their influence on the production of attention as a currency. An attempt is made to locate attentional capital, attentional repositories and attention currencies within gaming to examine 'attention currencies and its trade and transactions in virtual worlds. A minimal collection of attention currencies are placed as central and as a pre-requisite for survival in MMOs in much the same way that real currency become a necessity for survival. The approach is to locate attentional capital through different perspectives as well as examine a few concepts around virtual worlds.</b>
<p>Virtual Worlds<strong>1</strong> have been examined extensively for their capacities in creating simulated spaces for fun, play, and entertainment. Presently there is a trend in research studies worldwide to focus on examining questions of informational labour, production, ownership, racism, and the currencies of trade. By drawing examples from the published works of some of the leading writers in this field , I explore these questions and their connections with attention currency and the attention economy<strong>2</strong> in gaming. I posit attention currency as a third currency in addition to virtual and real currencies in the ability in which it operates as a currency. Through the concepts put forth, an attempt is made for a reading of attentional capital, attention currencies, attention repositories, trades in attention, and the functions of attention as a currency in gaming economies besides a reading of confluences in terminologies and application and to expand them to examine attention economies in gaming. The games examined for this purpose are wide ranging, such as Eternal Duel, Rising Era from the Fantasy RPG Genre, Travian, T.K.O from the RTS genre, and select and limited readings of and around WoW. All of these fall under the MMO genre.<strong>3</strong></p>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>Edward Castronova is a professor at Indiana University and has prolifically written on virtual economies. His most prominent works are 'Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games' and 'Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality' and has done extensive research and commentaries on the economies of virtual worlds and online games. His concept the 'Avatarial Capital' (Castronova 2005) is articulated in a similar manner as Human Capital<strong>4 </strong>, and Cultural Capital.<strong>5</strong> Castronova's Avatarial capital is approached as a set of non-material factors such as in-game knowledge, experience, growth, skills and other character related functions. Along the same lines as human capital and cultural capital, increases in the investments in Avatar Capital proportionally increases the power of the entity (p. 41 Castronova 2005 also refer p. 110-114).</p>
<p>What would be ideally termed, in a broader fashion, as 'attentional capital' is articulated by Castronova as Avatar Capital in a minimalist manner, such that it can be argued that avatar capital forms an essential and basic part of attentional capital in gaming. Some concepts that are accepted as exemptions (real world problems – race, class, and gender – devoid in Synthetic Worlds) are addressed by Nakamura when she engages with questions of human capital and cultural capital in fantasy warfare games such as World of Warcraft (WoW). By examining concepts of production and segregation of production processes as well as organic systems of production and designed systems of production, an attempt is made to read racialisation of informational labour within virtual worlds in light of designed races, rather than real races and posit that other forms of racism and racial warfare exist. This in contrast to Nakamura's examination dealing with racial stereotyping of informational labour, particularly of the fourth world labour, an attempt is made to posit that racial and/or class warfare (not similar in the manner that Nakamura addresses racial warfare) is present and inevitable in any designed world that has characteristics of Role Play. I posit that such forms of racial warfare need not necessarily be examined as a proxy warfare among leisure gamers and worker gamers but as inherent in any fantasy construct that places racial choices as essential to imagining certain types of roles within the game.</p>
<p>Lisa Nakamura is a professor in the Institute of Communications Research and Director of the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.aasp.illinois.edu/people/lnakamur">Asian American Studies program</a> at the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her work revolves around questioning race, ethnicity, and identity in Virtual Worlds. Robbie Cooper who has written expansively on Avatar Identities and their relation with the real identities of gamers (and thus relevant to locating any shifts in attention trades) has been approached through secondary readings, reviews and a partial (limited preview) reading of the text, due to the availability or lack thereof of the text in question. By addressing avatar identities and their links to real world identities, connections can be made in the way attentional capital and attention currency interacts with, and between, virtual, and real world currencies. Although questions of the Virtual - Real Binary6 arise through multiple tangents, it is only examined as a part of discussing the Earth - Synthetic binary that Castronova uses. An attempt is made to clarify some of the terms which are common to this field and place them in perspective. The terms, their limitations and some binaries are juxtaposed for discussion. This is not to imply that Castronova cannot be used to read virtual worlds (or rather their economies), on the contrary his narrative becomes more central as his predictions on exponential growth and impact<strong>7</strong> of virtual worlds (economies) are realized.<strong>8</strong></p>
<p>By using these authors and their concepts, I posit that Attention can be read as a currency of transaction that enables the survival of the player in virtual gaming worlds and at most stages forms a pre-requisite often similar to real world currencies – a basic amount of which ensures human survival. Drawn from the concepts of Goldhaber who posits that attention is an essential pre-requisite to human survival, I extend his reading to virtual worlds to locate the transactions in attention and attentional capital and how they influence the flows of attention as a currency – making a collection of attention currency essential to survival in a virtual world.</p>
<p>In the following segments some of the terminologies, their dichotomies, and a commentary is made on the terms common to this area. The specific usage by these writers and the commentary is speculative, interpretative, and by no means a closed debate. I explore the terms and attempt to make connections with the attention economy in gaming and in the process explore the possibilities of expanding or broadening some of the terms.</p>
<h2>Synthetic Worlds</h2>
<p>Castronova (2005) describes Synthetic Worlds as[C]rafted places inside computers that are designed to accommodate large numbers of people. He goes on to describe Synthetic Worlds as the playgrounds of imagination being host to ordinary human activity. The only notable difference between simulated worlds in offline settings and online settings is that the latter can accommodate a large number of people. This definition basically stands for almost all online games, be they client-server, browser-based, persistent worlds,<strong>9</strong> text based (also MUDs<strong>10</strong>),and many more where multiple users can engage with each other in an online setting, but by focusing on MMORPGs and visual superiority. Castronova in this process isolates multiple genres of games that are capable of social, political, and economic activity similar to that of graphically constructed worlds.</p>
<p>On developing his thesis Castronova seems to suggest an undue emphasis on worlds that are graphically represented and superior (visually well defined and designed), and such games/worlds being viable synthetic worlds. Viability can be interpreted as the immersion of the player in the game as one factor. On the other hand the economic viability of the synthethic world could be another factor, economic in that there are active gold farming (termed secondary) markets in that game. In such a case synthetic worlds as a term is applicable to even non-graphical text based constructs that run online. Julian Dibbell's documentation of the LambdaMoo community reiterates a certain complexity in the textual construction of the synthetic world, even though it is not visually or graphically represented.</p>
<p>On a similar note, virtual economic activity is not restricted to graphical worlds either.<strong>11</strong> The economic activities and organizations that Castronova ascribes to these synthetic worlds are present in almost every virtual world (graphically or textually defined), where there is an aggregation of human activity and congregation of human avatars.<strong>12</strong></p>
<p>The possibilities of human economic activity both within the virtual world and the real world can be connected through an examination of gold farming. Depending on attentional capital (and the attentional repository of the entire virtual world) economic activity connects to real world trade as well. Here the popularity of the game and the ability of the secondary market to generate profits is paramount. Synthetic Worlds or in an expansive definition Virtual Worlds and the attentional capital and repositories of attention are examined that support basic forms of communication, social interaction and game play. </p>
<p>In 'what is a synthetic world' an essay in Space, Time, and Play, Castronova, et al uses the term 'Synthetic Worlds' interchangeably with virtual worlds, the difference being a focus on the 'interconnections' between the two worlds. A reading of Castronova (2005), would suggest that his usage limited what synthetic (or virtual) worlds are capable and constitute of. By using Synthetic Worlds and Virtual Worlds interchangeably throughout this article, I intend to broaden Synthetic Worlds beyond Castronova's imposed limitations.<strong>13</strong></p>
<p>When Castronova says that all synthetic worlds are MMORPGs, he has arguably limited the usage to only games that have an RPG element – furthermore, those with graphical clarity and representation. If say the Virtual World in question such as Eternal Duel were to be examined, it would not fall under what Castronova describes as a synthetic world largely because of its focus on a text based construction of Etheria. Interestingly, Etheria is not identified as a 'diasporic' homeland as much as the cities, the clans, or the game itself. In Eternal Duel, players tended towards their clans identity or the city they were based close to rather than 'Etheria' the Land itself. Unlike SL, WoW, and others where there is an identification towards the whole game 'land' such as a citizen of Lindenberg or Azeroth. Agreed that graphical constructions use visual aids to better connect with an imagined homeland, whereas the same immersive effect is restricted through text. Text based games such as these depend on the interpretative and subjective interpretations of the gamer to create, in the imagination, an idea of the homeland.</p>
<p>Even though Castronova (2005) states that virtual worlds as a conceptual term is closed and synthetic worlds are more open and interconnected (such that its not possible to read them as sealed and separate disconnected systems), it is possible that synthetic worlds are in fact limited in that they are applicable to certain graphically functional and visual worlds (MMORPGs according to Castronova) by express definition.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is relevant to look at MMORPGs as one among many other genres of online games, where there is a collection of avatars and a common synthetic world is constructed. Mizuko Ito in her documentation and usage of the 5thD project notes that the gamer and paired guide were able to construct 'micro-worlds' through narrative experiences of the real world in Simcity 2000, a city building simulation game. This construction of the micro-world was facilitated through a transfer of narrative experiences from the guide to the young gamer, through what is percieved as logical in the real world without actual knowledge of the scripts and algorithms behind the game that dictated its response. Reading micro-worlds as synthetic worlds has its own pitfalls and problems but such a reading is possible particularly when using the alone together phenomenon. Though an 'out of context' reading might be appropriate in an offline setting as well, where games have a sustainable<strong>14</strong> capacity for immersion, the only failure, if any, would be evolution which is a predominant characteristic of virtual worlds in a massive setting.</p>
<p>Whereas RPG games in an offline setting do not have any types of evolution that is sustainable, this feature is resultant of the 'massive' effect in online games, such that narratives of the game are constantly rewritten and brief, even short periods of disconnections leads to a narrative disjunct in the player, which may surface as a diasporic experience. Diasporic experiences here are similar to real world diasporic displacements in that there is a severance from the imagined 'homeland' of the avatar. A severance results in the displacement of the avatar. Evolution of the world is a prominent feature in any persistent or even a temporary time-bound world, where there is an aggregation of human interest. Constant human activity, economic, social, and political create narrative disjuncts in the timeline for those players who are removed from that particular community. MMORPGs have strong evolutionary elements drawn from and often ascribed to the massive element<strong>15</strong> such that any form of change within virtual synthetic worlds are resultant of the activities of thousands of people participating in that world including their organization, collective achievements in the achievement hierarchies and engagement in their virtual worlds.</p>
<p>There are often diasporic experiences faced by players on withdrawal from a community of gamers. The Uru Diaspora was one such – the diasporic effects were documented by Celia Pearce in Communities of Play. An extensive reading of identities, associations and severance of the homeland has been documented – examining concepts like the virtual homeland and association with the homeland such that there is a sense of rights and citizenship that arise out of this 'belonging', to eventually lead to a 'resurrection'. I would interpret diasporic experiences such as these as indicative of the immersive nature of the narrative architecture in an online game. Although the concept of the narrative architecture as one is largely applied to offline games, a confluence of human activity produces its own narrative, such that importing 'narrative architecture' to read into online spaces becomes possible.</p>
<p>Castronova's suggestion that there are possibilities of a thriving parallel economy in and through secondary markets<strong>16 </strong>makes it possible to locate avatar capital and by extension attentional capital more accurately. That is by terming avatar capital as a part of attentional capital, the outworld<strong>17</strong> relevance of avatar capital and the possibility of attention flows functioning as a currency within virtual worlds and between the real world is made.<strong>18</strong> It is possible to argue that Castronova implies certain attentional repositories when he posits that exploration, expansion, and advancement (p.110 Castronova 2005) are necessities to build up the player level, experience, and other intangible capital, which develops as the Avatar[ial] Capital, much in the same manner as Human Capital, Cultural Capital, and Gaming Capital (Pierre Bordieu's term 'Cultural Capital' is influential to both Castronova's 'Avatar[ial] Capital' and later Consalvo's 'Gaming Capital'). In the following sections, an attempt is made at approaching attention currency and its operations and positing attention as the currency of survival rather than the investments of either virtual or real world currencies.</p>
<h2>Avatarial Capital, Attentional Capital, and the Repositories of Attention</h2>
<p>Whereas Castronova places avatar skills and experience<strong>20</strong> as 'avatar capital'
alone is limiting, in that the focus is on one avatar rather than a
set of avatars. This limit also manifests in the set of resources
that the avatar has access to, particularly attention, which changes
the accesses to resources in-world and out-world and effects the
production of attention currency in its turn. Thus, it is almost
cyclical in that attentional capital in repositories ensure survival,
survival leads to greater activity and production in virtual worlds,
which in turn gives greater accesses to in-world resources and
avatarial capital and which then through the hierarchies of
achievement produces more attentional capital.</p>
<p>Even though Castronova articulates the avatarial capital as a necessity (along with physical capital) for survival, he leaves out the relevance of ranking systems (that Hamari and Lehdonvirta (2010) posit as the achievement hierarchy) that seemingly organize a massive amount of data into statistically and graphically available information in almost every virtual world and through this activity build channels of attention. Attention then flows in often unpredictable manners<strong>21</strong> and ensures the survival of the player or avatar character in that game. Every game has a system that organizes seemingly irrelevant information on avatars to provide a daily statistical representation on growth, (re-)investment, level, experience, amount of virtual gold, player vs player and non-player character 'kills' . In some hierarchies attemtpted attacks and successful kills are also recorded and made public with a ratio in percentage, the time aristocracy that lehdonvirta 2005, 2007 addresses can be located by this percentage represented in the achievement hierarchy, and so forth in a ranked hierarchy . Depending on the design and architecture of the game world (Synthetic Worlds), there may be detailed statistical data that provides for in-game information and players that are active, joined recently, completed a certain quest, requests assistance with another quest, etc., are news items that are filtered into general gameverse ranking, clan, community, alliance or group ranking.<strong>22</strong> Central to the attentional capital and its flows are these gameverse<strong>23</strong> ranking systems both internal to the game and external tools that pull data from the server to plot out potential targets for attacks, raids, and so forth.<strong>24</strong> Metagaming, or influences on the game from outside the game and its rules, affects every scenario of gaming in some manner. Metagaming most often than not, dictates the attention of individuals and their investments in time and labour.</p>
<p>For instance – Travian which is a popular MMORTS<strong>25</strong> has an array of scripts, tools, paid services, external data aggregators – i.e., external to the game - that assist in finding other players/alliances and groups for warfare. Although the game itself has sufficiently developed communication and social interaction systems<strong>26</strong>, players ranking 1-1500<strong>27</strong> most often use a variety
of external tools and IM programs to support their gameplay.<strong>28</strong> Skype or MSN<strong>29</strong> becomes preferred means of communication, coordination, and policy<strong>30</strong> discussion – and this is not limited to one game server (Travian) whose example I am citing. The number ranges that have been chosen select players whose achievements ranking is comparatively in the top 10 – 20 per cent in terms of activity, presence, and by extension, economic activity, in an international server this number would be a maximum of 1500-2000 whereas on regional servers which witness lower members the number ranges of active gamers with a reasonable growth rate are fixed at around 500-1000. These players have sufficient amount of attentional capital invested in their game to join larger groups based on common cultural symbols and perceived commonalities, which may amount to social commonalities.</p>
<p>Attentional Capital, though it draws from avatarial capital, is broader than just in-game related ranking.<strong>31 </strong>Attentional capital (and attentional repositories, which makes attention the basic currency of survival) would ideally encompass a larger sphere including real life associations as well as virtual world associations and experiences<strong>32</strong> Avatarial capital limits itself to the collection of intangible non-material capital within gaming worlds alone, there is very little discussion (by Castronova or Nakamura who uses avatarial capital) on the extent to which avatarial capital can be streched. If the term is indeed limited to single virtual worlds, a concept of consolidation of avatars (naturally avatarial capital), which occurs at multiple points should also be articulated in light of attentional repositories which allow for the aggregation of attention to reach the threshold required for survival (and thus trade, activity, and so forth). This is not constant but almost always in flux, a lack of investment for a short period would mean death gradual or instant, and depends entirely on the disposition and design of the game in question.</p>
<p>Advancement and progression of an avatar is addressed by Castronova (2005) as the accumulation of the various forms of avatar capital within a virtual world enabling the 'avatar' greater access to the virtual world and the systems of production within the virtual world, defined or rather limited by a requirement for progression. If the avatar grows, more accesses to the game's systems become available, stagnation on the other hand limits these accesses. In a collective sense the growth of a lot of avatars (in an MMORPG) collectively denotes the growth of a synthetic world. Thus, essential to the aggregation of Avatarial Capital as well as attentional capital is the evolution of a synthetic world. Evolution that may be incorporated into the design of the game but is also in a state of constant change and extremely dynamic. A stagnation in the growth of avatars (in a collective) has repurcussion s in the exchanges of attention, exchanges of virtual currencies as well as the collective attention that resides in a synthetic world.. Stagnation even in markets inflicts attrition that destabilizes the virtual world – a lack of attention could well mean the stagnation and eventual decay of the virtual world – this effect can be attributed to Illusory Attention and the decay of attention – for more refer Goldhaber (1997, and 2008). The evolution and advancement could be rapid such that a break from this world for even a short duration, may result in minor diasporic effects. A loss of contact with a community that has developed and evolved in absentia of the player-avatar and non-investment, either of time or resources by the player makes the narrative disjunct more pronounced.By narrative disjunct, I imply that the narrative of the player and the narrative of the community is not in tune, such that diasporic yearnings may be present even without the closure of the game world which is what transpired in Uru – The uru diaspora is documented very well by Celia Pearce and Artemesia in “Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in multiplayer games and virtual worlds”, 2009 MIT Press. This narrative growth and subsequent disjunct captures the essence of persistent worlds and evolution within them most appropriately. Thus, Synthetic Worlds as a conceptual term is limiting rather than liberating as Castronova (2003, 2005) implies, even with its conceptual failings at achieving a state of 'inter-connectedness'<strong>34</strong> with the Real World, Virtual World is a conceptually anchored term to articulate human activity in online gaming spaces, perhaps broader than synthetic worlds.</p>
<p>Avatar capital can locate the influences of attentional capital. Castronova (2005) describes “the accumulated experience points and skills and attributes [as] <em>avatar capital</em> ”, which is the advancement through specific actions resulting in the growth or increment of non-physical capital of the avatar. What are the non-physical capital of the avatar? Non-physical capital is dependent on the design and genre of the game or MMORPG oriented games will have forms of character development that as represented as levels and stages, which when attained allows for further progression in gameplay. Some of these include but are not limited to the attributes, the skills, experience points, all depending on the design and model of the game world concerned. Empire building games on the other hand would design a different set of avatarial capital altogether.</p>
<p>Avatar capital enables further progression in the game world and makes accessible quest lines<strong>36</strong>, virtual goods linked to those quest lines, and higher growth, ability to gain more from attacks and so forth (The Sway of the stars as a Elvish<strong>37</strong> race weapon grants additional gold income and experience points with each kill – largely for NPC attacks, i.e., Non Player Character attacks, other weapons<strong>38</strong> are preferred for PvP {Player vs Player} attacks). At this stage the attempt is not to examine the 'real' value attached to the weapon in a fashion that Castronova et al (2008) does, but to locate the attentional capital that is generated by the possession of such a virtual good which enhances avatar capital. Thus, an almost cyclical progression, I extrapolate this further when examining production. So, its possible to articulate avatarial capital as a small part of attentional capital and its collection in what I would term as attentional repositories. </p>
<p>Whereas the Physical Capital is juxtaposed as the virtual money or goods/items and rewards that the avatar earns as part of gameplay (and subsequent reinvestment of rewards), and is the distinguishing link between real and virtual currencies. The time that is invested in production of virtual goods and the subsequent investment in attention (as a currency) and attentional capital (as the non material investments – such as expertise and the abstract concept called experience) can be located in the growth in what Castronova terms as the Avatar Capital.</p>
<p>Castronova et al (2009) examines the virtual world/synthetic world EverQuest and attempts a mapping of its economy. The authors attempt to read macroeconomic behaviours using real world definitions and attempt an economic mapping quite similar to how real world economies are mapped, the research concludes that real world patterns are present in virtual worlds and in the ways and means that virtual goods are traded. They examine the 'reality' of a virtual sword [Footnote: Please refer page 686, New media and society, 5, 11, 2009, the examination of the reality of the sword, similar to the painting 'this is not a pipe' points to reality of value associated with that object, an object that is considered unreal, non exitent in many terms, Michel Foucault also comments on issues of perception, reality, and the painting and its paradox of Rene` Magritte's painting “the Treachery of Images” 1929-30 – Foucault's focus on representation and simulcura is not necessary to interpreting castronova et al's reading of virtual reality and the real value associated with a virtual good. ] . Are they 'really real'? Castronova et al notes through their study that virtual goods often follow real world patterns and thus can be mapped with real world usages and affordances. Items are classified and graphically represented as furniture, food, clothing, accessories, collectibles and so forth. Castronova et al (2009) by noting that all virtual goods had certain real world categories, armour - clothing, food – what avatars ate and drank, furniture – solid items avatars kept in their huts (homes, etc), and so forth, locate the relevance and psychological value of virtual goods, even if they serve no 'real' purpose. They also noted that virtual worlds scarcely held items that had “no real world uses or affordances”. This is incidentally reiterated to some effect in the AVEA report, which also notes that the demand for virtual goods are a result of the designed spaces (Hamari and Lehdonvirta 2010). The attempt by Williamson et al (2010) and Castronova (2003, 2005) have been locating the shifts in 'Real Life' towards 'Avatar Life'. Castronova himself dictates that such a shift towards virtual worlds is inevitable and as discussed earlier, and although speculative, has materialized and noted by none other than Consalvo (2007) and Nakamura (2009).</p>
<p>Returning to the discussion, the authors note that currency is representational (The value of the paper currency we use is backed by gold from the treasury of the government), thus items and in-world currencies also serve the representational purpose and in trades against real currency indicate the investment of time and labour. Such that the value of a virtual good, or in some extreme gold farming cases the value of an avatar and character, are dependent on the time and effort that has been invested in its development and the level that it holds in the ranking statistics. A virtual good such as a sword may then indicate value associated with the time it would take to develop the sword. For instance: Race levels in the fantasy text-based browser game Eternal Duel require opals to gain race experience, Opals as a gem acts as any other gem in the game except that it cannot be traded and has to be earned through grinding, farming, mining, and similar other means that would require an investment in a great deal of time. Higher race levels bring higher access for each of the six races that are available in the game – the game in question is Eternal Duel [henceforth E.D.] and Rising Era. The elf<strong>39</strong> race gets a higher healing rate after each activity related to production such as mining and attacks, whereas the human race gets a higher gold bonus, increasing the chances of each race to develop in its own course. The higher the experience level, the higher the chances of earning opals in attacks. Race weapons and armour provide added advantage in that any other activity of production would return higher returns for the investment of time. Thus, in the end, the value that is assigned to virtual goods where real money trades come into effect are: </p>
<ul><li>That they denote an investment in time and labour which is saved in the means by which most virtual goods in gaming are acquired, and</li><li>The investment in the focused cognitive resources termed as attention transacts as real value and by extension as currency. This would be one method of locating attentional capital.</li></ul>
<p>Attentional capital when it performs the functions of a currency is also representational in that the value of the item (the virtual good – including any virtual item that can be traded including avatars) depends on the market listings, the time (invested in development of that virtual good) and associated 'illusory attention' (a term borrowed from Goldhaber to situate attention and its potential and capacity to act as a currency), which is traded against real money. This form of trade saves the time that is otherwise invested in the production of this item, thus saving the purchasing party a considerable amount of time, which is transacted for real currency. Such gold farming trades are also called as RMT (real money trades – noted by Nakamura p.5 who cites Consalvo p.149-150, also refer lehdonvirta 2005, lehdonvirta and hamari and lehdonvirta 2010), the AVEA report classifies MMORPGs as the first genre of RMT. Why is the representational aspect of currencies necessary? Very simply if real currencies are representational and 'acquires' (however, that may be interpreted) a certain amount of 'reality' such that value associated with the currency and the item can be balanced and traded. It is clearly possible to interpret attentional capital having similar potential to 'acquire' real value and then emulate the functions of a currency that can be transacted for goods. But is attentional capital the same as attention currency (or for that matter attentional repository)? </p>
<p>I posit that Attentional Capital and by extension Attentional Repositories are dependent on the construction (visual and textual) of the avatar, in-group or out-group racial, ethnic, cultural, and other means of identification, symbolic associations with a particular identity or group, or a perception of a common shared culture, this is similar to constructing communities and Derek Lomas (2008) uses Benedict Anderson's 'Imagined Community' to explore notions of associations (through self-representation) that can locate attentional capital in social networking.<strong>40</strong> Lomas (2008) examines attentional capital that is built and developed through the elaborate constructions (including self representation) of profiles, through which there is an accumulation of attention (which is what I posit as the attention repository – a collection of attentional capital). The attention repository can be construed of as independent – associated to a player, or as a complex network of repositories that feed into each other through association, expression, and representation – as in a collective or a small group. Thus, the known/recognizable group identification of a particular player would mean a larger repository of attentional capital than a player with little or a lesser known group identification, even though that player may have a higher level of avatarial capital and physical capital to match. The repositories of the group would then feed into the attentional capital of the player, making identification (in-group, out-group, and so forth) easier and granting a certain amount of attention to the profile, which later results in an increased activity (and therefore, survival) in the concerned virtual world. On the notion of survival Goldhaber (1997) states thus:</p>
<div class="pullquote">“[P]ractically everyone must have some money to survive, so attention in some quantities is pretty much a prerequisite for survival, and attention is actually far more basic.”</div>
<p>In a similar manner, Goldhaber locates the relevance of currency (money) as 'the' essential pre-requisite for survival and suggests that attention is as relevant (if not more), I posit that attention in gaming (in all its capacities discussed earlier) is required minimally, as a pre-requisite amount, or what I would articulate as a threshold in the repositories for ensuring survival. This is where I propose that a threshold exits, which can be achieved or realized by the collection of attentional capital when there is</p>
<ul><li>a certain amount built in the repository through what Castronova terms as Avatarial Capital<strong>42</strong>, and </li><li>the threshold limit is achieved through other associations or connections to other repositories. </li></ul>
<p>This is where the discussion earlier on the connections of attention repositories comes into clearer focus. These associations<strong>43</strong> have their own repositories (not necessarily unintended when represented in player profiles)<strong>44</strong> and often these associations are capable of feeding attention into the players own repository. </p>
<p>The repositories of attention that I have explored and mentioned here are situated outside of the player avatars in other synthetic worlds, which is to say that there are – in some instances – multiple points of consolidation of avatars (and their repositories) to result in this threshold of survival being realized earlier without the collection of Avatarial capital. This is complex to articulate as well as demonstrate largely because it requires an in depth analysis, the data for which is nearly inaccessible (although, it is true that Castronova and his team were granted full access by Sony into their EverQuest Databases).</p>
<p>The multiple points of consolidation of avatars implies the consolidation of their attentional repositories of multiple avatars in multiple similar or different (in terms of genre) virtual worlds. In gold farming practices most trades are dependent on this threshold for survival as well as trades, for the threshold limit in the attentional repositories also implies the point at which trade can take place.<strong>45 </strong></p>
<p>For instance, avatar A is present on server 1 <strong>46</strong> but has in earlier periods taken part in other servers 1-'n' and these avatars would be A1-A'n', where n is the identifiable version of the avatar in any synthetic world regardless of classification.<strong>47</strong> Server 1 being a new game, avatar A will have a very short threshold of attentional capital and avatarial capital – assuming that, as yet, there has been no or minimal investments of time and labour in the development of the avatar that results in avatarial or physical capital. </p>
<p>The repository of avatar A at this juncture will be minimal in that particular synthetic world. For transactions of A1 avatar (that is gold farming for that avatar as a 'virtual good') there has to be an aggregation of attentional repository, which should ideally realize a threshold. This is achieved either through association or inter-connectedness of social viral networks, such that there are higher chances of survival, and in the case of gold farming higher chances of trade. In the event that there is minimal avatarial capital aggregation in A1, the possibility of avatarial consolidation at multiple points still exist. The pre-requisite threshold is achieved not by investments in A, but the investments made earlier in A'n' which feeds into the repository of A1 and survival is ensured. The repositories A1-A'n' would have a consolidated repository that enables avatar A1 to either initiate trade (a real world trade) or equally ensure survival rests in this consolidated repository, which has achieved a certain threshold. Note that this theory of multiple points of consolidation of avatars is not a common occurrence and is largely noticed in successful gold farming trades, and prominent players in any game server that incorporates avatar self representation through profiles, much like social networking profiles. The consolidated repository would mean that the threshold is reached at an earlier stage, than if the normal route of game play were to be taken where avatarial and non physical capital are built up.</p>
<p>To substantiate with a real world example, SARSteam<strong>48</strong> is present on at least 2 of the 10 Travian international servers and is familiar with 8ag.<strong>49</strong> Both having served in common and prominent alliances in multiple Travian servers for a considerable period of time, such that each ensure the others protection, if and when, by chance, they are present in nearby strategic locations in any server. In any new server <strong>50</strong> a chance encounter would mean that either player would list a PNAP<strong>51</strong> in their profiles naming the other. This connection takes place regardless of actual contact and negotiation for a PNAP and ensures that the other multitudes of players planning an attack are made aware of strategic connections that the player possess to his advantage thus enabling a further exchange of attentional capital against illusory attention. Players viewing the PNAP and alliance markings, tags, and so forth will cease offensive strategies. As Goldhaber (1997) states there is always an exchange of illusory attention in such cases<strong>52</strong>, attention may be seen as flowing in both direction when in actuality attention flows are unidirectional compensated by Illusory attention. Lomas (2008) suggests that attention flows are regulated by self representation through profile pages and in the gaming context the same is true. Self representation is deliberative (also noted by Lomas 2008) and by representing selective information an attempt is made at controlling the attentional flows from that profile. For instance, in E. D. listing a mine's quality in the profile page might enable other players to invest their time and labour at mining so as to make a profit and to 'mine out' the mine and thus also make a profit for the owner.</p>
<p>In both the instances above, the focus is on one or two players and in such an out of context state, attention repositories and the threshold of trade and survival do not seem relevant, add to this the sheer numbers of an MMO and viral connections in an ever increasing spiral and attention repositories and the threshold becomes an essential part of survival in gaming and trade in gold farming.</p>
<h2>Markets and Synthetic Worlds</h2>
<p>In this section an attempt is made to read into trading and markets for virtual goods in synthetic worlds and outside of it thereby attempting to place secondary markets and their assumed or presumed legality and/or some form of incorporation into the regular internal market of the game. This would make reading production and segregation of production more accessible later on. Castronova (2003, 2005) does not directly engage with describing the secondary market in Synthetic Worlds, although the market activities that he points out – such as selling game goods on online auction sites (p.16), GNP of Norrath (the country in EverQuest – Sony) being higher than the per-capita income of India and China (p.19) – are activities that connect the internal game markets to the external ones, namely the secondary market, or more commonly known and accessible as the gold farming markets. Are gold farming markets the same as secondary (as external) markets , how are they different from the primary (internal) markets? Almost all secondary markets are external auction markets such as Ebay, or more formalized gold farming trade markets such as Virtualeconomies.net, agamegold.com, myMMOshop.com, gamegoldcentral.com and many others collectively form the external trading markets and economic organizations in the real world that profit from virtual labour and investment (in time and real money). Gold farming also takes place through listings in from forums to social networking sites and gold farming in India largely thrives through such listings. Dibbell (2006) notes the emergence of brokers, traders, and a multitude of intermediaries in the professional transactions of virtual game gold. The AVEA report corroborates thus:</p>
<p class="callout">[It is] now possible for any player, no matter how experienced or inexperienced, dedicated or casual, to obtain high-ranking avatars and possessions simply by purchasing them from a website. Virtual goods were commodified.</p>
<p align="left"><strong>- AVEA report 2010 p.11</strong></p>
<p>The core feature(s) of synthetic worlds as Castronova puts it would be applicable to any immersive environment such that his definition is applicable to most games particularly the ones recently released such that those functions are no longer limited in Online Gaming but contributes to the Alone Together phenomenon as well. Castronova states these worlds as "worlds—the fact that they are radically manufacturable places that can be shared by many people at once." The manner of sharing of worlds from a distanced perspective makes it possible to read some synthetic worlds as offline games that are shared in online spaces not directly with other players but as hinted earlier through the achievements hierarchy that is constructed online, even though actual gameplay is strictly offline. For instance, the recent release of games such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Witcher, and many more allow for a certain type of alone together phenomenon which takes place through forum posts, player profiles, and discussions. Note that although there is no online gameplay, similar effects of online gameplay are reflected in the statistics that appear online and create an achievement hierarchy regardless of online activity. Although attentional capital plays a role in such spaces, there is very little connections to survival and team play that it results in. </p>
<h2>Immersion and Immersive Environments - A Different Perspective</h2>
<p>Immersive environments can be considered as emotionally invested spaces, spaces where there is a investment in the character as well as the synthetic world. Ethnographic interviews point to immersion being a key motivator for role playing games. Role Play or games that implemented certain elements of role play.</p>
<p>Immersive environments are often described as the emotional investments that the player makes in the character or the game environment. Turkle (1995) describes role play as the practice of pretending to be someone else within a fictional space.</p>
<p>The reinvestment of virtual physical and non physical capital enables the avatar better access to production and production capacities. This is manifested dependent on the design of the synthetic world and almost any item can be assigned a value. Castronova (2005) notes thus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The advancement system can be used to induce a player’s emotional investment in all kinds of actions. It can endow seemingly trivial and inconsequential acts—the slaying of a digital dragon—with significant personal and social consequences. Prestige shifts; alliances change; power and wealth flow in new channels; and, most important of all, people feel happier. In the historical record of MMORPGs, the willingness of people to acquire vast storehouses of truly arcane knowledge (the casting times of hundreds of spells; the order of birth of various gods; the number of iron ingots required to make a medium-quality dwarven hammer) has been demonstrated over and over. Advancement mechanisms turn the synthetic world into a place where value can be assigned to anything, and behaviour directed accordingly. ”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The emotional investment that Castronova notes through the investment of virtual and real resources in advancement, is probed into by Williamson et al. (2010, in print). Williamson et al suggest through their hypothesis that immersion may take on two (central) functions -</p>
<ul><li>that of a journey for the player to discover their 'true self', through a character constructed in role play as a space for role freedom, and <br /></li><li>as a means of escapism.</li></ul>
<p>On a superficial reading both hypotheses seem very similar, Williamson et al distinguishes these two features using an ethnographic approach. Players who engage in the first central element describe virtual worlds (refer Williamson et al 2010, in print) as a space where they can express which is otherwise socially constrained offline. To paraphrase a quoted comment, a player feels they can be anything they want in role-play whereas in real life they are who they are. Another player feels that their Avatar is similar to their real life but is capable of doing or being more (flirty, casual, and outgoing) than they are in their real lives. Williamson et al support their second hypotheses on immersion, namely as a means of escapism by using ethnographic studies. Players focus on the Virtual World as something to 'get away' from real life hassles, largely all comments that Williamson et al notes are positive, as such there is no indication if there were any connotations of addiction involved with immersion. Not an avoidance of real life situations but more in terms of relaxation, rest, a break and so forth. In fact Williamson et al seem to be moving away from such connotations by making this remark. Although I do not want to address questions of addictions and violence arising out of excessive gaming, these arise out of some of the discourses I point out. More can be found in the works of Florence Chee. The <a class="external-link" href="http://www.sfu.ca/cprost/docs/InteractiveConvergenceCheeSmithCh92005.pdf">article in particular</a> can be accessed <a class="external-link" href="http://florencechee.blogspot.com/">on her page</a>. Henry Jenkins and his stand on immersion has been addressed in an earlier blog post and would be relevant when addressing immersion in role play (and RPGs) in offline games.</p>
<h2>The Segregation of Production - Reading Nakamura and Racial Production</h2>
<p>Lisa Nakamura provides an insight into reading racial stereotypes in virtual worlds and posits that subjects carefully avoid real world racism, and racial references shifts into narratives of racial warfare in the imaginary world. Nakamura problematizes the informationalized capitalism that constructs Asian players as informational labourers and outsiders to the aesthetic integrity of the world of warcraft that the beauty of the game has somehow been polluted or tarnished by third world and fourth world informational labourers.</p>
<p>Nakamura addresses the informational dispossession of fourth world workers and gold farmers in particular and the real world racism that is inherently present in the caricaturisation that follows informational labour. She compares Consalvo and Castronova to discuss racialization, among other social evils, which as far as Castronova (2005) describes is ideally exempt from virtual worlds.</p>
<p>A strong focus on racialization in the real world being imported into virtual spaces and the connotations that accompany farming or for that matter how race becomes a derogatory insult in communities that have farming cultures is present. This takes the form of (almost) imagined racial warfare in virtual worlds and Nakamura attempts to locate this in light of Chinese (and Korean) informational labour and gold farming. The derogatory connotations associated with Chinese (and Korean) players as stereotypical farmers, and thus contaminated where the aesthetic integrity of MMO worlds are concerned (Nakamura substantiates using Consalvo, p. 6). Gold farming except for legally accepted modes are considered as cheating. Consalvo points out that cheating need not be approached as a flaw or weakness in the game design that is exploited or circumvented by players, rather cheating is an inherent part of gaming culture and is a necessary element that contributes to sustained immersion.</p>
<p>One problem would be the actual produsage of virtual goods that are dependent on racial factors that often separate production and consumption. This form of segregation of production on racial and accumulated avatarial terms would lead to a more nuanced reading of production on racial factors. Produsage is a term recently used in the New Media and Culture Journal to locate the production and simultaneous consumption on the Internet in the larger picture. In the virtual world produsage can stand for the production and consumption patterns of virtual worlds – a detailed report on the same has been recently published by the Advanced Virtual Economy Applications Project in conjunction with the Helsinki Institute of Information and Technology.</p>
<p>Is produsage similar to prosumption, the convergence of production and consumption in social media? Whereas produsage is limited to examining the dissemination of content and the engagement with creative, collaborative, and often adhoc content, prosumption is more applicable in the virality of that content through the networks that it flows through. I would interpret the former as being form and style specific and the latter architecturally informed in that the structures of technology through which content flows rather than the form of the content is given more weightage.</p>
<p>An examination of avatarial capital and its influences on racial production leads to the flows of attention that influence production processes. Influencing production in a systematic manner, attention as a currency dictates the prosumption of virtual goods. The AVEA report notes MMORPGs as the first genre in RMT (Real money trades). Although the AVEA reports literature focuses on 'Game Time' investments in grinding, mining, and farming – repetitive tasks that produce avatarial material and non material capital. A distinction should be made that the Game economy is not dependent on time factors alone, such that the investments of virtual and real money does not always translate into time spent in the acts of virtual production. Attention often mediates this process, such that the flow of attention would effectively enhance a player of low net worth (materially) and disenfranchise players who have invested time, effort, and money in the game and have a higher net worth in material functions. Virtual material wealth and non material wealth plays very little role in the enhancement and disenfranchisement of players and their respective investments in the virtual worlds. This is not to suggest that this is a common norm, production inevitably draws attentional capital in the automated ranking and listings that showcase this 'achievement', which also results in contest and conquest over command on virtual commodities. The AVEA report and works by Lehdonvirta (Ville) and Hamari (Juho) interpret the achievement hierarchy that those who have worked, deserve the fruit of their labour.</p>
<p>Avatar rights<strong>53</strong> and the Declaration of the rights of avatars are tied into the concepts of this achievement hierarchies that Hamari and Lehdonvirta uses and their materialization, if you will, in real value. Production and time are classically linked through labour and effort and to import that reading into a virtual space devoid of certain nuanced reformulations would be regressive. This is reflected in the AVEA report findings, although their trajectories are ideologically motivated. To posit that early MMORPGs had an achievement structure through which players steadily climbed the backbone of social and economic structure destabilized by the emergence of secondary markets is highly problematic. Firstly for it locates an evolutionary trajectory, the idyll (almost echoing of a Christian pre-lapsarian) state followed by the fall, so to speak, or destabilisation of the idyllic aesthetic beauty and 'integrity' by secondary markets or gold farming markets and resellers – Nakamura (2009) reiterates this perceived violation of 'western' aesthetics by eastern guest works and informational labourers. Secondly it locates all investments as a simple matter of time investment (which flows in either/both way), and to locate the connections between real and virtual currencies as simple matters of produsage or prosumption linked to time (whichever term seems more appropriate, i.e., depending on the form of content or the structure that enables its flow – naturally please read content also as virtual content, digital content, and so forth inclusive of virtual goods and services) is limiting and problematic. The problematics are not the input of time and effort but the flow of attention that dictates most gameplay formation<strong>54</strong> and strategy in any game that has a massive environment with a PvP structure. In intense-PvP-character focused MMORPGs such as Eternal Duel the avatarial capital are a) different parameters central to role play and character development and b) dependent on racial choices that allow for different progression pathways.</p>
<p>Nakamura notes that “China-men” are often equated with NPCs or non-player characters whose only role in the game is either grinding, or providing information and equipment. Grinding is a repetitive task, largely of killing monsters again and again to gain items, currencies, and experience in-game. By equating NPCs and Chinese players together, PvP attacks becomes nothing more than 'taking a stroll in the wilderness' and attacking 'monsters'. People who are profiled as Asian, either through their avatars or through their actions, mannerisms, associations and so forth (earlier I made an argument on in-group and out-group associations that facilitated certain forms of attentional capital flows, note that both negative and positive flows are possible). Such profiling along with informational labour dehumanizes the subjects as mere characters in a racial war. I posit that outworld racism, racist tendencies, and remarks such as that noted above and documented by Nakamura becomes only one half of racial production and game play in virtual worlds. Most fantasy genres are built on concepts of warfare with often racial connotations, such that survival, quest progression, and the accumulation of avatarial capital depends on the imaginary, constructed, and designed racial warfare in virtual worlds. All MMORPGs have some element of conflict, warfare which is often a part of design. Survival is not just a matter of survival in harsh game environment but also from other avatars. Survival also depends on the ability of the avatar to exercise command over other goods and services within the virtual world.</p>
<p>This ability to command better resources in the virtual world dictates the survival of the avatar and in cases of warfare (constant struggle is an element of MMORPGs and warfare is the eventual representation of that struggle) the more virtual goods that an avatar commands, the better its chances of survival. Although a commentary of Nakamura's text, an attempt is made to locate instances where attentional capital and its accumulation need not necessarily assist survival in the game.</p>
<p>Racial production or what I would posit as the production of virtual goods dependent on race in MMO Fantasy RPGs is dependent on the attentional shifts that are regulated by the games own internal market ranking systems. What the AVEA project report terms as the achievement hierarchies, for the hierarchy or ranking is not singular but varied and distributed across multiple aspects of development in a game. These hierarchies also facilitate shifts in attentional capital and its flows (other than self representation through profiles and avatars) and locate racial characteristics of an avatar and achievement hierarchies linked to race. For instance, ED ranks players based o their race choices, for all six races in the game with race trophies being awarded to the first three in the list. The trophies are much sought after for the bonus-benefits that they provide. This leads to a form of racial warfare, within the races - for the race trophy, and outside the races for higher achievement ranking. Quests which require the collection of one soul from each race for access to higher capability weapons have players in a constant state of warfare. Attentional capital here dictates the production, often racial production in that the high level weapons, armour, and other virtual goods that are produced are race specific. Often players tend to speculate and buy race weapons only to resell in the internal market after making enhancements to it, even though the weapon or armour itself is quite useless in terms of race compatibility. A look at the top seven race weapon internal market listings in ED and comparison with the players character profiles and race choice will show that four out of seven players have listed weapons they cannot use or equip. Race armour and other weapons have similar statistics in the internal markets in that most are not items of use by players but for speculation general compatibility armour on the other hand has very few players investing in major enhancements. Their efforts at producing these weapons and enhancing them is to speculate on the market and on possible players who will need them as they progress to level 300, and thus make a considerable profit by selling it, or renting it out through an in-game contract system.</p>
<p>In conclusion I also introduce the concept of class production and game world race production of virtual goods and items, such that character race plays a relevant part in imagined racial warfare but not so much in the production of virtual goods, which is driven by market demand and supply. Attentional capital and avatarial capital plays pivotal roles in the systems of production and I have made an attempt to locate them from different perspectives. I posit that attentional capital flows through the self representation in profiles and the ingroup and outgroup identitification along with associations to race, class, and identity which are not necessarily outworld alone. As Nakamura (2009) notes there are no real world races in virtual worlds but the image of the farmer has been associated with real world Chinese and Korean players such that it forms a basic dichotomy between leisure players and worker players, worker players who are dehumanized subjects similar to non player characters run by the artificial intelligence of the game. Attentional currency through many of these perspectives performs the role of a currency that facilitates or enables further progress and survival. Trading in race weapons and armour and virtual goods, that are of no other interest to the game character than pure profit, assists the collection and expansion of other forms of material and non material avatarial capital. </p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">References<br /></h3>
<ol><li>AVEA Project Report. (2010). The Advanced Virtual Economy Applications Project, Helsinki Institute of Information Technology, Accessed June 12th 2010. <http://virtual-economy.org/files/AVEA%20Project%20Final%20Report%208%20June%202010.pdf>.</li><li>Castronova, E. (2003). <em>On Virtual Economies</em>, in Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research. Vol 3. Issue 2.</li><li>Castronova, E. (2005). Synthetic worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago: <br /> University of Chicago Press. <br /></li><li>Castronova, E., James J. Cummings, Will Emigh, Michael Fatten, Nathan Mishler, Travis Ross and Will Ryan. (2007). <em>What is a Synthetic World?</em> In Space Time Play Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: the Next Level. Birkhäuser Basel (p. 174–177). <br /></li><li>Castronova, E., Dmitri Williams, Cuihua Shen, Rabindra Ratan, Li Xiong, Yun <br /> Huang, and Brian Keegan. (2009). <em>As real as real? Macroeconomic Behavior in a Large-scale Virtual World</em>. New Media & Society. 11. 685. Accessed 22 April 2010. <http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/11/5/685>.</li><li>Consalvo, M. (2007). Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games. Cambridge: The MIT Press. <br />Cooper, R. (2007). Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators. London: Chris Boot. <br /></li><li>Dibbell, J. (2006). Play Money. New York: Basic Books.</li><li>Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2000). Getting the attention you need. Harvard Business Review, 78(5), pp. 118-126. <br /></li><li>Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new currency of businesses. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. <br /></li><li>Goldhaber, M. (1997). The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net.</li><li>Hamari, J., and V. Lehdonvirta. (2010). Game Design as Marketing: How
Game Mechanics Create Demand for Virtual Goods, in Journal of
Business Science and Applied Management. Vol 5. Issue 1. Accessed 21
May 2010.
</li><li>Lehdonvirta, V. (2005) Real-Money Trade of Virtual Assets: Ten Different User Perceptions. In: Proceedings of Digital Arts and Culture (DAC 2005), 52-58. IT University of Copenhagen: Copenhagen. <br /></li><li>Lehdonvirta, V. (2007) MMORPG RMT and sumptuary laws. Virtual Economy Research Network. <http://virtual-economy.org/blog/ mmorpg_rmt_and_sumptuary_laws>. <br /></li><li>Lomas, D. (2008). Attentional Capital and the Ecology of Online Social Networks. In M. Tovey (Ed.), <em>Collective Intelligence</em>, (pp 163-172) Oakton: EIN Press. <br /></li><li>Nakamura, L. (2009). <em>Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft</em>, in Critical Studies in Media Communication. Vol 26. Issue 2. Accessed 12 Feb. 2010 <http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/15295030902860252 >.</li><li>Simon, H. A. (1971). Designing organizations for an information-rich world. In M. Greenberger (Ed.), Computers, communications and the public interest (pp.40-41). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press. <br /></li><li>Williams, D., T. Kennedy & R. Moore (2010, in press). Behind the Avatar: The Patterns, Practices and Functions of Role Playing in MMOs. <em>Games & Culture</em>.<br /></li></ol>
<p> </p>
<ol><li>
<p class="discreet">The Virtual Worlds Research Project {VWRP} has conducted extensive studies and workshops on defining virtual worlds – three main prominent characteristics of which are depiction, space and analogic – for more please refer their report published and<a class="external-link" href="http://worlds.ruc.dk/archives/2891"> freely available</a>.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">The Attention economy was first implied in the works of Simon H.A (1971) who focuses on the exchange of attention as a relevant factor in the information economy – that the resource that is made scarce is not information but attention expended in its consumption is one of the seminal points made by Simon H. A. The term although was popularized by the writings of Davenport and Beck 2000, 2001 and Goldhaber 1997, 2008. For more details for the “<a class="external-link" href="http://goldhaber.org/blog/?p=197">attention economy hypothesis in brief</a>”.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Three kingdoms online is a merger of MMORPG and MMORTS with a focus on Real Time Strategy similar to Travian. World of Warcraft is a classical Role Playing Game Set in the Massive Environment where millions of players can join in a game – Which is what is termed an MMORPG. Eternal Duel and Rising Era are Text Based MMORPGs that have a smaller base and depends entirely on textual and not graphical representation.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Although similar to Peirre bourdieu's (Bourdieu and Passeron 1973) concept of human capital, it involves the examination of non material gains that are linked to an avatar, such as in-game experience, in-game knowledge and so forth.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Refer Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron <strong>"Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" (1973)</strong>.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">The Virtual - Real Binary has been addressed in many disciplines in different capacities, concerning identity, presence, production, and labour. Here I skirt the actual binary but use it to lend credence to the virtual currency and by extention also the attention currency.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">What Castronova would like to term as part of 'the exodus'.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Nakamura and Consalvo note this limitation in different manners and points to the realization of Castronova's speculative predictions.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Either browser- or client-based.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">MUDs stands for Multi-user Domain.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">The term graphical worlds may be misleading, I use the term to denote the visually superior worlds that Castronova seems to imply as Synthetic Worlds, his main case study being Sony's EverQuest. Doing this I also posit that text based virtual worlds are active economically, even if not as much as graphical worlds, and the term synthetic worlds can be expanded to include the text based genre as well.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">As against NPCs or non player characters.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">And thus subjective in nature.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">By sustainable I suggest that immersion (emotional or otherwise) in the game world does not face massive disjuncts or breaks. A game that has a cohesive narrative architecture (please refer Jenkins works on narrative architectures) could be immersive.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">The 'massive element' is used to locate some central points of departures between RPGs and MMORPGs, evolution being one of them.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Also defined as gold farming markets, there are some questionable problems is definitions due to legality, concepts of cheating and so forth. Mia Consalvo (2007) approaches cheating as part of gaming culture and admits that even EULAs do not sufficiently address what activities and circumventions maybe regarded as cheating and how exactly that affects some players. Some players have the ability to pay for farming services, but that does not necessarily mean its cheating, since he is still investing labour (through a process of outsourcing of that labour) into the game.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">This term is not common, I use this term outworld synonymously with out-game, and as a antonym to in-game and inworld. The term implies activities within the game and its impact, influence, or some other variable that is outside of that game mostly in the real world. Thus, although technically, these terms are not synonymously cohesive - for the purposes here is used as such.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Although Castronova urges that there is an impact of synthetic economies on real world economies, I believe locating the attentional capital and its function as a currency within virtual worlds and its shifts and flows effected through real world stereotypes, uses, and affordances (as Castronova himself notes that there are very almost no virtual goods that do not have some form of real world categorization and uses and/or affordances), can be located through gold farming as a trade practice.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Can attentional capital also be read as linked to “all” non-material capital?</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Presuming that they are obtained within the game and not through metagaming, Castronova does not examine metagaming in this manner except to locate gold farming practices that he terms as secondary market activities.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Considering that social and viral networks and their effects can be often hinted at but rarely predicted beforehand. Without sufficient avatar capital, there may be very little attentional capital and trades in attentional capital that ensure survival in any game. As such predicting outcomes based on possible attentional capital can be unproductive.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Depending on how communities and groups are
organized in the game world. They could be limited to 60 as in
Travian, or above 200 as in Eternal Duel, depending on certain
circumstances membership is also often limited, a reason why
attentional capital of high performing groups stay well above the
threshold of survival. Almost all groups will have internal
communications, IGM – In-Game Mailing/Messaging, internal or
devised chat functionality – for instance Travian has a server
chat that accommodates players of the clan but is rarely used, Skype
is preferred and if not Gtalk and Msn is preferred means of
communication and strategizing as well. This is noticeable in
International .com servers and the English .in servers, as for other
servers this may not hold true. Eternal Duel also has chat
functionality but is not clan specific. Both games have their own
internal forums for the clan pages as well as game support forums
internationally and regionally.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Also termed Metaverse where factors external to the game influence the game – practices that are termed as metagaming.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Although at this juncture Bots and their usage should be explored, it might derail the argument on attentional capital flows. Automated programs are forms of circumventions that are often banned in the TOS and EULA of the game, but still used by many players. Multihunters or staff of the game working specifically on detecting circumvention arose out of modding and circumvention. Consalvo explores cheating to a fair amount and places cheating as a part of game culture, such that it allows players who are stuck at certain points to bypass the narrative requirement to complete a certain quest, do a certain activity and so forth. Therefore, she places cheating not so much as loopholes in design exploited by circumvention rather an essential part of a game in its ability to maintain, or sustain immersion.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy is a subdivision of games that focus on Empire building in a persistant or resetting massive environment.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Technologies that facilitate communication and interaction are necessary for any forms of trade and activity to develop online. An ingame messaging system, a contract system, in-game chat functionality make up for synergized communities that can strategize better in such games.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">This ranking range depends entirely on the server and the number of people playing the game. The range denotes the highest investors in the game, in terms of activity, presence, and production. These number ranges are applicable for the international .com travian servers. The numbers would be much lower compared to Indian or other regional servers. A report can be obtained on Travian World analyzer but is limited to server resets – every 300 days for normal servers. <a class="external-link" href="http://travian.ws/">http://travian.ws/</a> - note that this is not the original travian site or in any manner supported by travian or their staff, but an external site that aggregates travian data for assistive gameplay.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Gathered from the Travian Forums and Strategy guides. The exact tools are numerous including user scripts and is not elaborated further.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Both are Chat and Instant Messaging Clients.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Policy here implies in-game production - From basics such as War and Peace to profit sharing, production sharing, resource collection for common growth and so forth.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Avatar capital is largely represented in the player profile page or in the in-game ranking system or external tools that pull data off the server to provide ranking and player search functionalities. One such case would be the extensive in-game ranking systems in Eternal Duel a text-based fantasy MMORPG, another instance would be Travian Servers which run on time bound resets and has extensive external tools to locate, plan, and strategize ideal locations, attack maneuvers, defense, farm finders and so forth. These systems act in the ways attention flows from particular activities that avatars undertake.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Attentional currency as the currency of survival is part of the paper
currently in a draft version and will be linked on my personal blog
when published.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Avatrial death naturally.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Castronova suggests that the term is more
appropriate as it indicates an interconnected relationship that is
not part of the real- virtual binary.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Quest lines would be particular pathways that a player character/avatar can choose for development depending on racial attributes experience points and so forth. For example, the Sway of the stars in a High eld RW1 (Race weapon 1) which is available after crossing a certain level (indicated by experience points gathered). Note that all of this is dependent on the virtual world and the design and plot of the world concerned. The example is taken from Eternal Duel.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Quest lines would be particular pathways that a player character/avatar can choose for development depending on racial attributes experience points and so forth. For example, the Sway of the stars in a High eld RW1 (Race weapon 1) which is available after crossing a certain level (indicated by experience points gathered). Note that all of this is dependent on the virtual world and the design and plot of the world concerned. The example is taken from Eternal Duel. </p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">The game does not name the weapon as elvish, rather it is just termed as a high elf race weapon. The word Elvish is not particularly popular either for some reason.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Which are also virtual goods. In the paper macroeconomic behavior in large scale virtual worlds, the authors attempt to locate if the virtual 'sword' can be considered as having 'real' value.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">or the Elven Race, one of the race choices when building a character. Race choices in character building has benefits including race weapons, race specific growth benefits and so forth, all of which are tied into the production of avatarial capital and indirectly attentional capital.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">His study is on social networks, particularly Myspace.com, but can be used to read into attentional capital in gaming.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">And hints at the reduction of identities into interests where self representation is concerned.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">I would choose to expand this concept and make it broader so as to make it applicable to other social networks and is not limited to gaming.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Such as ethnic, cultural, racial, to form an in-group or out-group association, or through common cultural symbols and so forth as mentioned earlier.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">I quote a recent debate with a few colleagues who suggested that I seem to suggest through my writing that the formation of these repositories are resultant of vague unintended actions on part of players and argued that the associations noticeable in the profiles of players are not always unintended but in most cases calculated and placed with deliberative intent. Without going into too much detail, I should clarify that that there might be the influence of the smart cow syndrome (for the lack of a better term for articulating this), where prominent groups have players who game for attention so as to be able to enter these groups (again I suggest that this would be a tactic for survival) failure to be associated with the group and other high level players often imply certain death (virtual avatar death that is). In such a case arguably there is deliberation and contemplation before networking or creating associations through profiles. For instance, a low level player would choose group A or group B – Z dependent on their position and the assumed allegiance and loyalty of the group portrayed through their own profile pages and thus their own repositories (yes this is illusory attention at work), and capabilities of the group to ensure survival of the player – this is deliberative. To return to my point there are often other messages and profile tags that the player uses to denote either strategy or tactics employed by the player and this I posit is unintended, a Gual character posting a Roman slogan on the profile, or some message indicative of strategy. So many troops killed in the first few weeks, so many players farmed and so forth, are unintended but assists in the inter-connection of these repositories perhaps a little more than group identities which are in constant flux (in worlds like travian from which this example is sourced).</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">assuming that it is non coercive and profitable.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Thus represented as A1 avatar on server 2 would be A2 and n number of servers to indicate A'n'.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">For instance SARSteam on Travian interbational severs would be A1 and A2, and on ED servers would be A3 and so forth provided that avatar is linked or recognizable to SARSteam, or any of its members.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">SARSteam is a prominent avatar of a player in
Travian.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">The authors Travian Avatar.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Travian servers reset after approx 300 days, where the endgame is the successful completion of a Wonder of the World.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">A PNAP is a personal non aggression pact regardless of alliance affiliations, such that in the event that two players are in opposing and competitive alliances a PNAP would mean that either alliance would consider non aggression on the listed player regardless of alliance stand on other players. Applicable mostly unless in the event of war when PNAPs are suspended. The notion of the PNAP is similar to the NAPs forged between alliances, except its between a few players. Alone together phenomenon occurs to some extent in such cases.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Goldhaber (1997) places Illusory attention in
perspective with that of a speaker and an audience. Through a reading
of Lomas (2008) I posit that a similar situation is present in the
self representation in player profiles.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Avatar rights are interesting concepts that question notions of property and copyrights and ownership.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">By formation, I imply how game play progresses and forms dependent on attention flows towards a particular strategy in the game.</p>
</li></ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attentional-capital-online-gaming'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attentional-capital-online-gaming</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaGamingGaming EconomyInternet HistoriesHistories of InternetResearchers at Work2015-04-03T10:46:56ZBlog EntryDigital Natives : Talking Back
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/talkingback
<b>One of the most significant transitions in the landscape of social and political movements, is how younger users of technology, in their interaction with new and innovative technologised platforms have taken up responsibility to respond to crises in their local and immediate environments, relying upon their digital networks, virtual communities and platforms. In the last decade or so, the digital natives, in universities as well as in work spaces, as they experimented with the potentials of internet technologies, have launched successful socio-political campaigns which have worked unexpectedly and often without precedent, in the way they mobilised local contexts and global outreach to address issues of deep political and social concern. But what do we really know about this Digital Natives revolution? </b>
<p><strong>Press Release</strong></p>
<p> Youth are often seen as potential agents of change for reshaping
their own societies. By 2010, the global youth population is expected
reach almost 1.2 billion of which 85% reside in developing countries.
Unleashing the potential of even a part of this group in developing
countries promises a substantially impact on societies. Especially now
when youths thriving on digital technologies flood universities, work
forces, and governments and could facilitate radical restructuring of
the world we live in. So, it’s time we start listening to them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> Because of the age bias and the dependence of a large section of
Digital Natives around the world, on structures of authority, there has
always been a problem of power that has restricted or reduced the scope
of their practice and intervention. For younger Digital Natives,
Parental authority and the regulation from schools often becomes a
hindrance that thwarts their ambitions or ideas. Even when they take the
initiative towards change, they are often stopped and at other times
their practices are dismissed as insignificant. In other contexts,
because of existing laws and policies around Internet usage and freedom
of expression, the voices of Digital Natives get obliterated or
chastised by government authorities and legal apparatuses which monitor
and regulate their practices. The workshop organised at the Academia
Sinica brings in 28 participants from contested contexts – be it the
micro level of the family or the paradigmatic level of governance – to
discuss the politics, implications and processes of ‘Talking Back’.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> What does it mean to Talk Back? Who do we Talk Back against? Are we
alone in our attempts or a part of a larger community? How do we use
digital technologies to find other peers and stake-holders? What is the
language and vocabulary we use to successfully articulate our problems?
How do we negotiate with structures of power to fight for our rights?
These are the kind of questions that the workshop poses. The workshop
focuses on uncovering the circuitous routes and ways by which Digital
Natives have managed to circumvent authorities in order to make
themselves heard. The workshop also dwells on what kind of support
structures need to be developed at global levels for Digital Natives to
engage more fruitfully, with their heads held high and minds without
fear, with their immediate environments.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The proceedings of the first workshop in Taipei, 16-18th August, 2010 are available at <a class="external-link" href="http://digitalnatives.in/">http://digitalnatives.in/</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/talkingback'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/talkingback</a>
</p>
No publishernishantDigital ActivismDigital NativesYouthFeaturedWorkshopDigital subjectivitiesResearchers at Work2015-05-15T11:50:19ZBlog EntryThe Attention Economy - A Brief Introduction
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attention-economy
<b>This post examines attention economy as a brief prelude to a paper and monograph to be published on it. It examines the current theses on attention economy and a few approaches to reading attention economy in gaming besides foregrounding the attention economy and its functions and influence in MMORPGs.</b>
<h3>What is attention economy?</h3>
<p>Attention economy was made prominent through the writings of Thomas Davenport<strong>1</strong>and Micheal Goldhaber<strong>2</strong>, who examine 'attention' as a scarce commodity in an information rich environment and divulge into examining exchanges and investments of attention and their results. Not particularly a new concept, attention economy focuses on the examination of attention as a scarce commodity in the information-rich societies influenced by the Internet and new digital technologies. The concept was first noted and written about by the political scientist Herbert Simon (1971), who notes “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients… [and thus arises] the need to allocate that attention efficiently among the over-abundance of information sources that might consume it.” In the abundance of information and access to information, the consumption or the ‘prosumption’ of information relies on the investment of attention, which becomes a scarce commodity – expended in the act of consumption. For the expended resource is no longer information or its scarcity in terms of availability – which has been the classical concerns in the industrialized market economy – but the amount of attention that is expended on the consumption of information. Economics is governed by what is scarce and the abundance of information is not a measurable function, rather what is expended in its consumption, namely human attention. From a cognitive science perspective, attention can be read as the investment of focused cognitive faculties in a particular ‘prioritized’ activity. In this way attention becomes an essential factor in capital production activities, in that the investment of attention generates capital through the direction of work (labour) and time in any particular activity. Derek Lomas (2008) and Peter Hughes<strong>3</strong> treat media objects as artificial organisms that need attention for sustenance and energy for reproduction, somewhat in the nature of a Darwinian struggle where the most ‘able’ and ‘fit’ organism survives. All media organisms need one crucial element to survival, sustenance and reproduction – ‘attention’. In viral spreads and reproduction of a media organism the possibility of its procreation and viral distribution is realized through the investment of attention – the amount which enables survival and reproduction. By extension, virtual products are essentially media (artificial) organisms, and by extrapolation virtual goods and (possibly) even identities are organisms that thrive on the attention it receives for survival and reproduction.</p>
<h3>The Economy and the Currency</h3>
<p>Goldhaber (1997) notes that attention economy does not indeed have a market and operates unlike post-industrial markets. Although there is considerable material influence in terms of the investments of labour, time, and real money, often there is no direct means to measure it. Concepts of property, dichotomies of production, work, leisure and play require reformulation in light of this economy thriving on attention and its monetization. Davenport and Beck (2001) reinforces a measure of Goldhaber's arguments by stating that telecommunications bandwidth is not a problem but human bandwidth is. Goldhaber proceeds to say that a transfer of information must always be accompanied by a transfer of attention – measurable by the amount of time that is invested in the process. Even though both Goldhaber and Davenport seem to agree that examining time investment is a poor measure of the attention that is expended.</p>
<p>Attention economics in earlier discourses and theses are connected with examining the failures and shortcomings of ‘the design’ of informational systems that locate, falsely, informational scarcity as the root of the problem leading to a deficit in attention, whereas the problem lies in the flow of attention itself and not information. The theories on ‘attention’ deal with a multitude of perspectives – from examining the psychological aspects, on the one hand, to economics, politics and sociology (including a measure of anthropology) of online networks on the other. A recent research on attention economy has largely been towards attention:</p>
<p>a) as a scarce resource that was incentivized [providing an incentive to invest]<strong>4</strong> in some manner and thus the attention currency – which is one reading of the attention currency; and</p>
<p>b) as non-material capital, termed most appropriately as attentional capital and as measurable as wealth is to income, assuming that income can be measured and wealth and holdings are diverse and often immeasurable. Other studies focus on incorporating attention into design such that it captures user’s attention and rewards the time spent on the consumption of that information – so that the prioritization is the gambit of the providers of information and the subsequent hierarchies (such as Google and Yahoo) rather than the users. Prioritization of avatar information is also prominent in the representations in the achievement hierarchy – a system common to how search engines prioritize information – only in gaming this system systematically categorizes information pertaining to the avatar and its achievements and growth. This is both internal to the game world in question as well as external in that external tools outside of the game gather and prioritize avatar information. Such practices have been termed as metagaming.<strong>5</strong></p>
<p>Defining metagaming becomes problematic in that it is not a concept peripheral to the absent centre of gaming rather – metagaming or activities and processes associated with metagaming become multiple centres by itself. Applying this to the secondary/goldfarming market may lead to interesting readings but here I digress. Attention and the flows of attention are connected to the ways in which information is structured into hierarchies and channelled, such that ranking systems and the achievement hierarchy moderates attention flows and shifts – players and gamers who grow in short spans of time through strategic and organizational excellence get more visibility in these hierarchies.</p>
<p>Attention economies are largely read and identified in online economies and ecosystems. Davenport and Beck (2001) switch this dichotomy around and attempt a reading of organizational systems and how the offline attention economy affects organization and concepts of productivity and production. However, for the purposes of this study – online gaming economies take a central focus and a generic reading of multiple MMORPG economies is attempted.</p>
<p>Before Castronova (2003), Castronova et al (2007), and much later Consalvo (2009) engaged with questions on Virtual Economies and Gaming Worlds (for the sake of argument – Castronova’s term, Synthetic Worlds is used interchangeably with Virtual Worlds), Goldhaber and his contemporaries engaged with questions of production of informational goods – those that would in a primitive fashion address virtual production, consumption and exchange of digital informational goods and the relevance of attention expended within these economies. A colloquial reading of attention is that it is always translated as the investment of labour and time in different measures. Furthermore, the investment of time and labour on the consumption of any particular information<strong>6</strong> is is incentivized and thus prioritized based on its position in the hierarchy. The higher its visibility, lower its incentives and vice versa. The writers on gaming cultures and economies do not directly engage with questions of attention flows and shifts but by using their concepts on the investment of time, activities of production, cultural, avatarial, and gaming capital, as well as virtual currencies – I engage with the concept of attention as a currency necessary to survival in virtual worlds particularly in MMORPGs, where there are elements of progress, exploration, conquest, warfare and constant struggle.</p>
<h3>Reciprocal Attention and Survival</h3>
<p>An investment in attention always ‘seeks’ a reciprocity in attention, such that an investment ensures a positive net gain either directly or indirectly owing to a growth in the attention repositories or collection of attention capital. This need not be manifest in the service–provider–user relationship but the user–user relationship. This enables reading the production of attention and the systematic means by which attention is channelled through a complex system of hierarchies in society as well as in the Virtual Gaming Worlds<strong>7</strong> more accessible.</p>
<p>Attention can also be approached as the necessity for survival in human society in much the same manner as human society is dependent on the flows of attention for the development of the individual or group in a society or community. It can be argued that attention inevitably forms a basic necessity that indirectly influences survival, sustenance, and reproduction. Production of attention, production of virtual goods, and the production of attentional capital<strong>8</strong> are dependent on the minimal and pre-requisite investment in attention. The focus of this paper is to pitch attention as a currency, a currency that can be examined as one only when certain thresholds of attention have been achieved and relevant to the survival in MMORPG gaming worlds— worlds that are capable of viable social and economic interaction.</p>
<p>Questions on the attention economy is inevitably connected to questions of production and consumption and more recently prod-usage and pro-sumption (hyphenated for emphasis) in digital technology mediated environments, whether graphically represented complex virtual worlds or text based MUDs.</p>
<p>Although irrelevant to this trajectory, attention economy has also been approached from a systems and organizational perspective, which is what Davenport and Beck (2001) focus on. Similar studies revolve around examining attention flows in Social Network Systems (SNS) – Lomas (2008) and maximizing user value – Huberman and Wu (2008).</p>
<ol><li>
<p class="discreet">Davenport has explored the implication so of the attention economy from an organizational perspective and the impact on human life – so to speak – particularly in Davenport and Beck 2001 – 'The Attention Economy', the primitive precursor of which was Davenport 1997 – 'Information Ecology'.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Micheal Goldhaber has written and spoken in considerable detail on The Attention Economy – most prominent and seminal of which is 'The Attention Economy – The Natural Economy of the Net' 1997 in the Journal First Monday.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">I quote directly from Peter Hughes who posits: “Artificial organisms might live on attention--they 'sleep' when no one is looking at them and gain energy (cycles) when someone is. Since energy could be used to reproduce, the most attention-grabbing forms would be selected.” - Italics imposed for Emphasis.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Some discourses focus on the means by which attention can be converted into currency – one of those means would be to provide incentives to invest attention in a particular action, this incentive then moves its priority higher in the informational hierarchy and in a limited focus, reading the achievement hierarchy.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">I believe the term to be conceptually unanchored and nearly meaningless in its vast array of usages and applications – but to locate some of these practices using metagaming might provide an interesting insight into the very nature of these practices and the way in which they are encapsulated and epitomized in other terms.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Informational goods and virtual goods are read side by side and are not differentiated in this article, for the purposes of this argument – 'informational goods' as a term is a larger concept of which virtual goods may form a subset.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Termed the Achievement Hierarchy – The Achievement Hierarchy represents the complex internal and metaverse rankings in an online game. This includes the game’s internal achievement ranking system that categorises players’ and gamers on different growth patterns and achievements as well as external tools not part of the game which assists in a detailed ranking system. Often players themselves subscribe to external ranking mechanisms, to keep track of others and their own progress. Wowprogress is one such external achievement hierarchy that ranks players in multiple realms. Travian World Analyzer, Traviandope and many other external resources support gameplay but are not in essence a part of intended gameplay. Metagaming can prove to be a usable and relevant term to define these practices. I have intentionally avoided linking them as some of these sites employ hostile scripts.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">I consistently use attentional capital as an extended concept which includes avatarial capital – avatar capital is a term proposed by Castronova (2005) and cited by Consalvo (2007).</p>
</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attention-economy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attention-economy</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaGamingGaming EconomyInternet HistoriesHistories of InternetResearchers at Work2015-04-03T10:48:21ZBlog EntryAn Artist's Hunt for Lost Stepwells
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hunt-for-lost-stepwells
<b>As part of the Maps for Making Change project, Kakoli Sen has brought to light some facts which she stumbled upon while mapping the stepwells in Vadodara. She mapped these and also discovered 14 such architectural heritage structures. The news was covered in the Times of India.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hunt-for-lost-stepwells'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hunt-for-lost-stepwells</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPracticeResearchers at WorkMaps for Making Change2015-10-05T15:05:26ZNews ItemMapping the Things that Affect Us
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/mapping-the-things
<b>'Map for making change' is a project using geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India</b>
<p>As we go around living our lives, living in a city that is transforming, it is interesting to know that there are people interested in mapping the changing face of, not just the city, but the changing country.</p>
<p>The invite read ‘Map for making change’, elaborating that the project explored the potential of geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India. Stepping inside the CIS workspace in Domlur, the large screens and tiny laptops projected maps of India, with dots that intrigue and piqued the onlooker. Maps that reflected pavement dwellers in Mumbai and problems of their eviction and rehabilitation, of mining areas from Goa to Madhya Pradesh, to the ‘hunted’ Chattisgarh, to maps that pointed heritage sites in Cochin and Ahmedabad you could explore using the GPRS on your mobile or demolished building in Kolkatta.</p>
<p>The idea was mapping the changing face of the country. The 25 participants were a mix of activists, researchers, artists and techies. The brain behind the project, researcher Anja Kovacs, explains the idea behind the project: “The idea took seed two years ago in 2007, when, as a trained sociologist I realised that anthropologists around the world were studying cyber-anthropology and I didn’t even know about social media sites like Facebook or Orkut.”</p>
<p>Hit by an idea, she says, “I realised that as activists, we tend to make a mistake by ignoring the technological changes happening around us, since technology, no doubt is transforming our lives.” More importantly, she made a connect: “I realised that we as activists could use it to our favour.”</p>
<p>Her first thoughts were maps. She explains her choice: “Maps were used in colonial times and maps affect the lives of those who do not use them the most.” She pointed out how “even to this day maps are used for governance and by policy makers. In that sense they can be really important”.</p>
<p>The map is a powerful medium to convey information in an innocent manner, she says. “When the land in a map is hid behind dots, one knows there is a problem,” she says matter-of-factly.</p>
<p>Currently a fellow with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), she co-coordinated and organised the project and says the last five months the selected participants have had several workshops, one of them she mentions was of them learning the “whole mapping exercise”.</p>
<p>A work-in-progress is what all these projects are, and Kovacs says, after an intense five months, they are also looking at answering the “what next”, for now, however, she is happy, “to have begun tracing the transformation”.</p>
<p>Read the original article in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_mapping-the-things-that-affect-bangalore_1377923">DNA</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/mapping-the-things'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/mapping-the-things</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPracticeResearchers at WorkMaps for Making Change2015-10-05T15:05:45ZNews ItemTheir India has No Borders
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/their-india-has-no-borders
<b>Bangalore felt far for them, they would mark it outside the country. India, for migrant labourers, is different from the India we know</b>
<p>To 30-year-old Shankar, a
migrant worker in Bangalore who came from Jharkhand, Mumbai is near
West Bengal and Bangalore is in the North-East. If someone were to
travel to Mumbai by Shankar’s map of India, he would land up in Kolkata.</p>
<p>Shankar’s map was part of an
installation art show that concluded in the city on Wednesday, showing
the maps of India as seen by migrant workers in Bangalore. The
installation was a 14ft-by-18ft space enclosed with asbestos sheets.
Wires crisscrossed the tiny room, and from the wires hung maps of
India, drawn according to the perceptions of the migrant workers.</p>
<p>Shankar
is only one among thousands of migrant workers in Bangalore who have a
very different perception of where the cities where they work are
located. Their India is a world away from the maps of India that
educated Indians know of. It has none of the directions, orientation or location of places as we know it.</p>
<p><strong>Start Thinking</strong></p>
<p>“We want Bangaloreans to stop
and think about migrant workers, who live amongst us,” says Ekta. Along
with Yashaswini and Paromita, she spoke to 70 migrant workers on Old
Madras Road before tracking their journeys on the maps. While Ekta has
founded Maraa, a collective that looks at art and culture in the public
domain, Yashaswini and Paromita are independent film makers.</p>
<p> “Our
perception of location is meaningless to migrant workers,” says Ekta.
For them, locations, distances and directions are all very different
from the true picture. Their ideas of places are all drawn from their
lives, as they travel from city to city to earn their livelihoods, she
adds.</p>
<p>For instance, if Assam was westwards from his home, a
migrant worker would mark it in West India. And if Bangalore felt far
for him, he would mark it outside the country. Borders hardly came in
the way and distances are measured by the time spent in a journey,
including train delays and stopovers at transit points, they say.</p>
<p>When
the workers say long distances or far way, they mean places such as
Jharkhand, Bihar, Nepal, Punjab, Andhra, and North Karnataka.</p>
<strong>India in a Room</strong>
<p> </p>
<p>While
they work here, their families are in villages back home, even as far
away as Nepal. Many workers live in asbestos shanties that are as small
as 10ft by 10ft. They live huddled within the small space, creating a
mini India right here in Bangalore, says Ekta. Spluttering rai (mustard
seeds) mingle with the smell of Andhra chutneys in a room adorned with
photos of Amritsar’s Golden Temple in the same tiny space.</p>
<p>As
the group spoke to the workers, the latter also shared their stories of
the weather, people, smells, cultures, personal, nostalgic and
fantastical, of places — by their memories of what they saw, felt and
remembered. They go beyond the geo-political maps of India and present
a new, spatial experience of places.</p>
<p>The project is part of a
workshop called Maps for Making Change, which was started by Centre for
Internet and Society, to examine ways of using maps to help social
causes.</p>
<p>Read the original in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bangaloremirror.com/index.aspx?Page=article&sectname=News%20-%20City&sectid=10&contentid=201004292010042904535369081298296">Bangalore Mirror</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/their-india-has-no-borders'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/their-india-has-no-borders</a>
</p>
No publisheranjaPracticeResearchers at WorkMaps for Making Change2015-10-05T15:08:36ZNews Item