{"id":2061,"date":"2014-06-20T15:23:57","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T15:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/memetechnology.org\/?p=3127"},"modified":"2014-06-20T15:23:57","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T15:23:57","slug":"dis-connected-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2014\/06\/20\/dis-connected-life\/","title":{"rendered":"(dis-)Connected Life?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I attended Connected Life, a one day conference at Balliol College Oxford, the home of the Oxford Internet Institute.<\/p>\n

Manchester Poly was never like this! #CL14<\/a> http:\/\/t.co\/K3NK51ZPgr<\/a>—
Matthew Tyler-Jones (@MTylerJones) June 12, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s an extensive photo gallery of the event here<\/a>, and I’m sure it will be joined by more content as time progresses.<\/p>\n

One thing we’re promised is the transcript of Dr Nick Anstead’s keynote, which was a compelling challenge to the idea of Connectedness, asking whether we in fact find ourselves in an age of disconnect. Acknowledging that the recent success of “more right wing” parties across Europe isn’t necessarily about the rise of right wing voters, but more about disenfranchised voters across the political spectrum he didn’t paint an optimistic picture. The political class seek to be more nimble and responsive by leveraging “big data”, but won’t that make them appear more managerial? Will the connection between government and the the needs of the population be apparent? Do the disenfranchised contribute less data to the the Big Data, and so are we in danger of “data apartheid”? All of this\u00a0resonated with my thoughts on the Playful Aristocracy and the trolling Leviathan<\/a> last year. \u00a0He tried to end on a more optimistic note, but I share his fear that it may push politics and citizenship even further apart.<\/p>\n

Now this is what I call a breakout room! #OxCL14<\/a> http:\/\/t.co\/Jb7nDmJPqe<\/a>—
Matthew Tyler-Jones (@MTylerJones) June 12, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then we split into smaller groups and I enjoyed \u00a0a session on Culture and Identity, which kicked off with Stephanie Duguay talking about how the dating app Tinder insists on using your Facebook profile to populate your tinder profile, as though Facebook is the most “authentic” on-line version of you. And for dating of course this policy is interesting, given Facebook’s recent move to 50-odd gender and sexuality descriptions, which Tinder currently parses into more binary “Male or Female interested in Males or Females” type classifications.<\/p>\n

The Taiwanese student Chen-Ta Sung asked “Why do Asians take photos of food?” discussing geotagged selfies from restaurants, and Leo Mercer explored the internet at poetry, capturing my agreement when he said that a “a poem is a meme machine.” It sent me off looking for twitter poetry.<\/p>\n