Daniel Pargman

Discussion: Issues when designing filters in messaging systems

The increasing size of messaging communities increases the risk of information overload, especially when group communication tools like mailing lists or asynchronous conferencing systems (like Usenet News) are used. Future messaging systems will require more capable filters to aid users in the selection of what to read. The increasing use of networks by non-computer professionals requires filters that are easier to use and manage than most filtering software today. Filters might use evaluations of messages made by certain users as an aid to filtering these messages for other users.

File-Sharing Relationships — conflicts of interest in online gift-giving

This paper suggests a relationship model for describing, analyzing and foreseeing conflicts of interest in file-sharing networks. The model includes levels of relationship ranging from the individual (ego), to the small group of close peers (micro), to a larger network of acquaintances (meso) to the anonymous larger network (macro). It is argued that an important focal point for analysis of cooperation and conflict is situated in the relations between these levels. Three examples of conflicts from a studied file-sharing network are presented. Finally, the relationship model is discussed in terms of applicability to other domains, recreational as well as professional.

Virtual community management as socialization and learning

How does a (virtual) community thrive and survive over time? From having studied a thirteen-year old Swedish-language adventure mud, I here suggest that our understanding of the answer has to be built on a social theory of learning that takes into account that learning has to do with community, practice, meaning and identity. Making a “career” in a community of practice can be regarded as a movement from the periphery to the core, a movement from being a novice to becoming an expert in the activities that are central to the community. On that journey, the individual is over time “configured” into learning how to act, reason and think about the community in the right way.

ICT4S Reaching Out: Making sustainability relevant in higher education

Many media technology and computer science engineering students suffer from the preconceived opinion that sustainability is at best peripheral, and at worst irrelevant to their education. In this paper we discuss our experiences of integrating sustainability and ICT4S into a media technology engineering programme. An overarching tension has been in finding a balance between teaching about sustainability in general, and teaching about ICT4S in particular. Furthermore, what aspects of the wide and interdisciplinary area of ICT4S are most relevant to teach to media technology students, and how can the connection between ICT and sustainability be “refined”, clarified and expressed We explicate how we have gone about to shape the course in such a way that it becomes both relevant and possible for these students to relate to it, and we exemplify with choices made, of which one had been the implementation and adaption of the GaSuCo board game. While the results presented here are primarily relevant to media technology and computer science educations, we also conclude with recommendations to the larger ICT4S community. We argue that the ICT4S community does not only need to take part in developing education in this area, but also needs to conduct research on how to educate students in ICT4S.

Means and Ends in Human-Computer Interaction: Sustainability through Disintermediation

There has been an increased interest in broader contexts from ecology and economics within the HCI community in recent years. These developments suggest that the HCI community should engage with and respond to concerns that are external to computing yet profoundly impact human society. In this paper we observe that taking these broader contexts into account yields a fundamentally different way to think about sustainable interaction design, one in which the designers focus must be on a) ecological limits, b) creating designs and artifacts that do not further a cornucopian paradigm, and c) fundamental human needs. It can be hard to be responsive to these contexts in practical HCI work. To address this, we propose that the design rubric of disintermediation can serve as a unifying approach for work that aims to meet the ecological and economic challenges outlined in the literature. After discussing the potential use and impact of disintermedation, we perform an analysis using this design rubric to several key application areas.

Refactoring society: systems complexity in an age of limits

Research in sociology, anthropology, and organizational theory indicates that most societies readily create increasingly complex societal systems. Over long periods of time, accumulated societal complexity bears costs in excess of benefits, and leads to a societal decline. In this paper we attempt to answer a fundamental question: what is the appropriate response to excessive sociotechnical complexity? We argue that the process of refactoring, which is commonplace in computing, is ideally suited to our circumstances today in a global industrial society replete with complex sociotechnical systems. We further consider future directions for computing research and sustainability research with the aim to understand and help decrease sociotechnical complexity.

The student, the private and the professional role: Students' social media use

Research has shown that students perceive a distinct divide between educational and private use of social media. The present study explores this divide by focusing on master students’ perception of roles when using social media in a higher education context. A qualitative method has been used, mainly comprising of analyses of home exams and interviews, which were conducted with students enrolled in the master’s course “Social media technologies”. Results support previous research stating that students perceived a distinct divide between educational and private use of social media, and furthermore provide a more detailed understanding of this divide. The results from the study also indicate that there is yet another type of use: social media as a tool for career-building purposes, or what is labeled as professional use. Implications of social media for use in higher education are described through the analysis of three roles as performed by the individual: the student role in educational settings, the professional role for career-building, and the private role.

HCI and UN's Sustainable Development Goals: Responsibilities, Barriers and Opportunities

Despite increasing interest, Sustainable HCI has been critiqued for doing too little, and perhaps also at times for doing the wrong things. Still, a field like Human-Computer Interaction should aim at being part of transforming our society into a more sustainable one. But how do we do that, and, what are we aiming for? With this workshop, we propose that HCI should start working with the new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that were formally adopted by the UN in September 2015. How can Sustainable HCI be inspired by, and contribute to these goals? What should we in the field of HCI do more of, and what should we perhaps do less of? In what areas should we form partnerships in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goals and with whom should we partner?

Five perspectives on computer game history

This column on computer game history, from the perspective of the gaming industry, complements the column from the last issue on the history of virtual worlds. I met Daniel Pargman, then a graduate student studying multiplayer games, exactly ten years ago. He told me that one day there would be a research field dedicated to online games, and he planned to be there. The field is indeed emerging, with Daniel as a major contributor.---Jonathan Grudin, column editor

Whose future is it anyway?: limits within policy modeling

In the age of Big Open Linked Data (BOLD), we inhabit a landscape where future scenarios are imagined, modeled, planned for and embedded in policy. Between the euphoric techno-utopian rhetoric of the boundless potential of BOLD innovations and the dystopian view of the dangers of such innovations (e.g. ubiquitous surveillance etc.), this paper offers a critical understanding of the boundaries that are traversed by the implementation of BOLD within policy modeling. We examine BOLD as a tool for imagining futures, for reducing uncertainties, for providing legitimacy and for concentrating power. In doing so we further develop the LIMITs communitys conceptualization of the societal limitations on computing, with specific reference to the assumptions, interpretations and trust that we place in these models when making socio-environmental policy decisions. We use an illustrative case of policy modeling, which provides a much-needed critical discussion of the inherent limitations and risks as well as the promises that are offered by BOLD.