Il Progetto Winston Smith, organizza a Firenze, presso Palazzo Vecchio, l’edizione 2008 del convegno e-privacy.il tema trattato quest' anno è “Comunità Digitali e Data Retention”. Venerdi 9 Maggio & Sabato 10 Maggio Firenze, presso Palazzo Vecchio (Sala Incontri)

Be sure to check out the special theme section on Social Network Sites, guest edited by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison! Volume 13, Issue 1, October 2007

Nato in Arizona, Rheingold (http://www.rheingold.com) ha cinquant'anni, e ha studiato psicologia della conoscenza al Reed College e alla State University of New York. Da sempre interessato al potere della mente umana, si è successivamente specializzato nell'esplorazione dello spazio laddove la mente incontra la tecnologia, analizzando l'uso dei computer considerati come amplificatori della mente. E' di questo periodo il libro Tools for Thought (1984) che rappresenta un esercizio di futurismo retrospettivo, come lo definisce lui stesso, e, scritto nei primi anni '80 tenta di prefigurare come sarà la seconda metà degli anni '90. Il libro è disponibile anche in rete (http://www.rheingold.com/texts/) Dal 1985 partecipa ad un sistema di conferenze on line, uno scambio tra persone all'interno di una comunità virtuale, sui temi più disparati: tecnologie, società, cultura, libri, futuro. Questo lo fa riflettere sul ruolo che assume Internet, che Rheingold descrive come un nuovo spazio comune di convivialità che è frutto di una società in trasformazione e che sostituisce i tradzionali luoghi di incontro. In rete chiunque può manifestare le proprie opinioni, dar voce ai propri pensieri, senza subire alcuna discriminazione, sia essa dovuta a classe sociale, a genere, o razza. Internet, sottolinea, crea un senso di comunità virtuale tra coloro che si esprimono attraverso la rete. Questa esperienza dà vita a numerosi scritti sulle implicazioni culturali e politiche del nuovo strumento di comunicazione. Virtual Reality e il successivo The Virtual Community (http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/index.html) hanno molto successo a livello internazionale e sono tradotti in diverse lingue, tra cui in italiano (pubblicati rispettivamente da Baskerville e da Sperling e Kupfer). Rheingold è stato redattore della rivista The Whole Earth Review, e redattore capo (http://www.well.net/mwec) di The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog. E' stato tra i fondatori nel 1994, e direttore esecutivo di HotWired (http://www.hotwired.com/), la pubblicazione in rete lanciata da Wired magazine. E' stato anche tra i fondatori di Electric Minds (http://www.minds.com), un website che il Time Magazine giudica tra i migliori 10 dell'anno 1996. E' allo stesso tempo osservatore e progettatore di nuove tecnologie, ed è stato definito un pioniere, un critico ed un prefiguratore dell'impatto delle tecnologie. Spesso invitato a parlare alla radio e alla televisione, Rheingold partecipa a conferenze internazionali, ed ha parlato dell'impatto sociale ed economico delle nuove tecnologie in diverse città del mondo tra cui San Francisco, Atlanta, Bangkok, Cambridge, Tokyo, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris, London. In numerose riviste ha pubblicato articoli e saggi sulla rete, su tecnologie e istruzione, su democrazia e tecnologia.

They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. And though I wasn't there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because it all happened right in the living room -- right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and the fireplace -- of a house I came later to think of as my second home.

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research.

The development of the World Wide Web into an active, visual social environment poses unique opportunities for the design professions. Multi-user Domains, social meeting places in cyberspace, are mostly text-based virtual realities which use spatial references to set the stage for social interaction.

The continuing difficulty of finding a solution to the physical return of the Palestinian Diaspora to the homeland is increasingly being addressed in the digital realm by the rise of virtual communities. PALESTA (Palestinian Scientists and Technologists Aboard) established at the end of 1997 in order to “harness the scientific and technological knowledge of expatriate professionals for the benefit of development efforts in Palestine”, has been one of the most important internet-based networks that have been developed to assist this process.

Many of the challenges presented by the information infrastructure are not readily amenable to legislative and other hierarchical solutions. They require gentler, community-based measures as an adjunct to, and even an alternative for, formal regulatory action. Communities in cyberspace need means of achieving cohesion and maintaining relationships, while avoiding unduly dysfunctional behaviour by community-members and outsiders. This paper's purpose is to investigate the means whereby such a 'cyberculture' can be brought about.

Dal punto di vista tecnologico Internet è una rete di reti che utilizza protocolli in comune per collegare migliaia di reti in tutto il mondo, ma dal punto di vista dell’arena socioculturale Internet costituisce anche un terreno di ricerca sociale praticamente illimitato per i cosiddetti etnografi del cyberspazio, paragonabile al "Nuovo Mondo" per l’estensione delle terre ancora inesplorate e per la novità dei suoi paesaggi antropici, come furono appunto le Americhe per cronisti viaggiatori al seguito dei Conquistadores…

This paper examines the use of an online forum for the discussion of laboratory science.

Increasing contribution in online communities using alternative displays of community activity levels. Our goal is to increase contributions to an online community by making information about the level of activity in the community salient to its members. We specifically focus on the LiveJournal web log community, where a user’s community is defined by their personal list of friends, and contributions are made by either posting new content to one’s own journal, or by commenting on existing journal entries.

Adapted from Life on the Screen by Sherry Turkle. Copyright 1995 by Sherry Turkle. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc.

What are community networks? What sorts of information and services can you find on these systems? What groups are starting and running community networks? How costly are the systems, and what are the sources of funding? This essay will discuss a number of current models for community networks, examine what impact they can have on the environment in which they grow, and make a few wild guesses about the future of such networks given the changes in computing and telecommunications technologies.

This article suggests a qualitative methodological framework and a holistic-historicistic epistemological perspective that balances the sociopsychological and cultural dimensions of IRC Virtual Communities. CMC cultural research should not be focused on intercultural collision phenomena alone, but also on cultural construction from inside the Net. An ethnographic strategy discovering cybercultures together with Gadamer's hermeneutics for the interpretation of systems of meanings are the proposed tools for understanding "virtual" life and cultural production within the Net.

The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychological and cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting and high interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study will consist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin communities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews.

This article begins with an analysis of virtuality and virtual culture as forms of social flow and build toward an analysis of the elements of micropolis, fractalized metropolis, as the setting for postmodern (sub)urban life.

A MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or, sometimes, Multi-User Dimension) is a network-accessible, multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose user interface is entirely textual. Participants (usually called players) have the appearance of being situated in an artificially-constructed place that also contains those other players who are connected at the same time. Players can communicate easily with each other in real time.