MAS.961 Techno-Identities

Final Project - Analysis of Second Life - Mirja & Pallavi

2006-06-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

Talked about as game, Second Life (SL) is really a completely new world, which does have similarities with the real world (RL).People live there, make friends, shop (a lot) do business, travel (teleport!), and change clothes. However, the powers the people have in SL is more than you can imagine and want and RL. It is interesting to see what kind of people join SL and why, what changes they make to their avatars, and what competitions and activities they engage in.

The Residents
Residents (users) of SL have a sense of belonging and ownership here and are very friendly to the newcomers, helping them become a part of this world. People I have interacted with this far are in SL to try it out because it is not really a game and you can do anything you want to. Most people are here to have fun and make friends. Most keep their RL and SL lives apart but some do a role playing and are “themselves” in SL as well. A few examples of the residents of SL--a mother of three who was conned into joining SL by a man she was cybering, two students of computer science (one of them looking for a job), and an IT admin by day and gamer by night.

Appearance & Avis
Almost everyone in SL dons fantasy clothes and appearances. The fact that you can control what your body shape and facial features are has a lot of power to give these people the ideal appearance they want. There are many that go beyond imagination in the RL and then there are those that look and dress like they do in RL save something like a beard or glasses. As an example, see the RL and SL images of Stormy Twilight, a friend Pal made in SL.

Of the residents I spoke to most of them looked similar to their real self except for some features. People seem to do a lot of shopping for new clothes and accessories. The women apparently like to change their clothes everyday, much like the fashion competition we see in RL. It seems that fashion, especially fashion in terms of clothing, appearance and lifestyle plays an important role in SL. When “Keira”, Mirja’s avatar walked around in SL at the beginning, she looked obviously too “basic”, and for experienced SLers it was obvious, that there was not enough time invested to personalize the avatar. As a consequence, a female SL fashionista came to talk to Keira, and after a very few small talk sentences, she recommended a good hairdresser – that Keira should teleport to. And some time later, Mirja, who’s behind Keira in RL, found an email in her mailbox, asking if the hair issues were solved. The costs for fashion are mostly very high in terms of time, used to permanently update your knowledge on latest trends, to re-dress your avatar, to go to your virtual hair-dresser, but also in terms of money, because nearly all fashionable objects or projects are virtual material ones that need to be refreshed periodically.

If you start building objects or virtual buildings, there is also an incredibly amount of time (or money if you do not have the skills) SLers invest to construct homes and shops. Decorated and refined with many details, most people we met were proud of their creative output and willing to show us their virtual bricks.

Still, fashion is not a very reliable way of signaling in SL, because even if someone seems very exclusive, you can’t make sure if this is a result of his or her own skills to shape the virtual body or the online environment, or if it is maybe a high investment of bought objects and behavior patterns. In RL, you have still the human being behind, and even if this maybe transformed through tanning, clothing or surgeries, there is a human channel left, which might help you to interprete fashion signals more reliable. In SL however, this “human channel” and the entire context are shaped and controlled by the person behind and therefore the point of reference is missing. Most residents change their profile but not their personality. It would be interesting to know which people prefer to keep their real appearances in SL and which do not. However, in both cases, the avatar has a kind of a mediator role, which is different from a text-based chat, where A communicates with B through text only. In SL, A communicates with his avatar, which again interacts with B’s avatar. The real people are one level further than each other and the role of the avatar is the decisive one.

Language is also a way to express fashion and style in SL. Especially in interaction between people, language can be a quite powerful indicator of who is behind the avatar. Similar to text based chats. In some cases, we supposed chat-bots behind some avatars, especially in commercial SL places, as casinos and gambling spots, where SLers try to encourage you to play.

Gift Giving
Residents are amazingly friendly and generous with gifts to newbies. Within the first few hours of really experiencing SL and making friends, Pal got an entire wardrobe. She tried to give some of those to Keira but the objects/clothes are controlled with a ‘no copy’ clause and if she gave them away she would loose them from her inventory.
When we were talking about gifts in terms of signaling, Camerer mentioned in his paper, that gifts are economically often inefficient, because the recipient doesn’t estimate the choice the gift giver has made. In SL we experienced that people are very likely to make gifts to strangers – as Pal experienced with her wardrobe. Why are people so friendly and generous in SL? Is there an economic advantage behind? In the example of clothes, gift giving is not related to high costs, but still increasing reputation. This is probably why people are very generous at the first sight.

Keira received a interactive book as a gift, a real book digitalized page per page, the single pages uploaded as textures and turned into a readable virtual book. The gift giver explained the way he created the book, and the fact that he invested a mentionable amount of time to build the object, made the book a valuable gift. The creator explained the way he build it – and even if it didn’t cost him a lot of Linden Dollars, it took him a long time to set it up – what makes the gift precious. In this specific case, the quality of the gift and the way it was (positively) perceived could be an indicator of a match of personal interests (similar to the online gifts in dating environments we discussed in class).

An interesting point to note in this generous world is that, much like RL if you try to sit and ride a vehicle you find, but is not yours and you don’t know who the owner is, you are ejected the minute you try to start the vehicle.
In SL in general, assessment signals are more popular to communicate status and reputation, probably due to the fact that conventions are not clearly established and understood, it is hard to distinguish between RL conventions and SL conventions and therefore the risk of misinterpretation is relatively high.

Competition
There is not a lot we could infer from the competition in SL. Residents compete with one another in context of how much land they have and who builds better objects, houses, boats, vehicles etc. There is competition in terms of fashion among the women, where people shop, and what they buy. There is also a “coolness” attributed to objects (especially freebies) that residents come across and share with other newbies. This kind of competition is also seen in RL signaling wealth and skill.

Reputation
There are four categories for rating people--behavior, appearance, building, and given. Ratings used to be free when it started and the rating system became a popularity contest. However, now there is a $25L to rate someone and the ratings are being taken more seriously and are more reliable. Most residents do care about what others think of them and this is afforded, probably, by the design of SL. In RL people care about what other think of them and those that do not are the natural troublemakers and this phenomenon exists in SL too. The fact that in SL, residents indulge in activities much like those seen in RL and thus the signals and cues associated with those activities are alike, it causes people to worry about social status and reputation.

Lying can be costly and decrease personal reputation or break relationships between each other – if the lie is detected. In SL, it is very hard to distinguish between lie, role, fiction and reality. One helpful function of the interface design is here the rating of people. Even if it is only a small hint, an opinion of others can at least give you an impression different from yours and eventually prevent you from further interaction or business with this suspicious person. It seems after interviewing a few avatars and according to business related articles, that reputation can be achieved especially through ownership of land and real estate. In this case the online reputation can even reflect in real life reputation – as it is the case with “Anshe Chung”, having a prospering virtual real estate business in real life and her avatar titled the RL’s Businessweek cover.

Merging of RL and SL
Most residents keep their RL and SL life apart but many use their discretion and keep private information out of SL but are willing to share other information about their RL. There are no real life barriers when meeting and interacting with people in SL even though they share a virtual physical space. Sharing a common space however seems beneficial and adding value to interaction in online environments. The notion of space is not as obvious in only text-based chat rooms for example.

In the broader sense of the merging, some activities in SL have a direct impact on RL. Social online communities turn into real life social networks and vice versa. Groups having the same interest create private islands in second life and explore, research and experiment in the online environment as a place for education, remote conferences, participative design and democratic communities. For instance an island, “live2Give”, started by Wilde Cunningham for physically challenged people who log into SL during the day and are able to do things and be the people they never can in RL. A group raised funds in SL and bought a PC for this group in RL so they could run SL.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School for example, pursues a research project in the virtual Berkman Center of Second Life, where they stream bi-weekly real lectures into the SL environment.
John Lester, another researcher from the Harvard Medical School operates a private island in SL, Brigadoon island, for people with Asperger's syndrome and their caregivers. People suffering from Asperger’s can exercise social interaction in the virtual space and transfer the learned skills into real life’s situations.

Assignment XII

2006-05-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

1.Turing…
The Imitation Game is far from being a good substitute for figuring out if machines can think because of the broad definition of the word ‘think’. Thinking, although intangible and does not require physical and voice representation, does require the ability to reason and understand, it is not merely giving answers to questions. Questions in an imitation game for computers are aimed at identifying if computers can think like men where reason and logic are required and it could be successfully used as a substitute in that regard. To imitate human conversation by following logic is not nearly as accurate as saying that the machine has intelligence or can think. The computer is given the logic by a human and so the reliability of using this game as a signal is lost there. If the signal of thinking and intelligence is restricted to questions and answers within the logic then yes, the game could be a reliable signal of intelligence, more like a reliable signal of whether the human is a good programmer and engineer! However, certainly we go by the definition that thinking and intelligence is way beyond just logical answers to consider the imitation game as a good signal of intelligence.

2.Weizenbaum…
The Rogerian or Person-centered therapy places the focus on the ‘client’ (not patient) to get him or her to talk about their ideas and feelings. Here, therapy and the role of the doctor is not to be prescriptive but let ting the patient talk about anything. Since Eliza is based on this theory, it does not require initiating a new chain of thought or generating ideas to give the client. ELIZA asks questions based on keywords in what the patient says and forming simple repetitive questions to hear the client’s point of view. Thus, people could communicate effectively with it knowing that it is substituting a therapist and so is not expected to have a normal social conversation with opinions, original thoughts, and retorts. This I think made people realize that ELIZA does not have intelligence of a human being because its responses are programmed.

I think that if a person does not know they are communicating with a chatbox, the conversation could be interesting and engaging but up to a certain point only, at which they may realize that the pattern of responses by the chatbot. Communicating with a chatbot whose model and structure is known, might have different results in a communication. The person communicating would know what responses/questions to expect and can direct the conversation the way he or she wants to get the desired outcome from the communication.

3.Donath…
Intelligence as defined by Webster is the ability to learn, understand, and reason all of which require mental ability. Because intelligence is intangible, communicating via typing and text is a sufficient way to identify intelligence (Assuming we go by the definition that intelligence is only logical question and answer). Use of visuals like video and photos of the people or listening to their voice should not really affect the intelligence of the person. Intelligence is not something that is depicted on a person’s face, however facial expressions might hamper or enhance signals of intelligence. I believe that expressions in a person’s eyes convey a state of mind and if the receiver is a good judge of signals can discount the obvious factors and read into the person’s expressions. If the receiver can tell that the person is being thoughtful or is distracted and/or does not really understand the conversation then video might be helpful. However, video and voice are ancillary, to identify intelligence textual communication will suffice. Assuming that certain types of communication is not meant for building social relationships, it might be that video and audio might actually hamper detection and reliability of signals of intelligence in those instances.

4.Paro…
Paro is an animal-robot and thus evokes reactions and feelings in people as they would when communicating with a real animal. Petting an animal is apparently therapeutic and relaxing. The article says that people with animals are in general happier or that strangers with animals are smiled at more. These theories are what makes Paro a success story when it comes to children and the ill. So the answer is yes, in this case deception is ok and in fact a good thing because it is improving the health and behavior of people. Using Paro for patients is a special case where deception is ok because the benefits of such deceptive signals outweighs the costs of deceiving. Given the condition of the people, I am not so sure it matters whether they know it is a robot or a real animal. Where children are concerned, many show as much love towards a stuffed dog as they do towards a real one, so using a robot dog should not be very different. In fact in children it might create more excitement. Adults depending on their mental state might not want to interact with something they know is not real but I think this number would be negligible.

Healthy children, on the other hand will know whether they are interacting with a real animal or a robot and depending on how old they are or how much they understand, their behavior might change. There would be no comparison to a real pet, because a real pet would have a mind of its own. A robot would probably be considered a real cool toy. For healthy and older children a real pet would probably be more therapeutic than a robot and thus preferred, but for children and elders with certain medical conditions, a robot pet is preferred so that it can be programmed to elicit certain behaviors in the patients and negative effects of allergies and biting are avoided.

Assignment XI

2006-05-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

1.Fridlund…
I disagree that people should limit signaling to beneficial situations because that would bring in an element of superficiality and a deception of sorts. Signaling as we have talked about it is with intent to display a quality. It may or may not be costly and yields benefits if successful be it honest or not. If expressions of emotions are to be displayed for the same reason in addition to the emotion then it is not an entirely honest signal and it is not really about the emotion. There is no way to identify signals when people emote and express in solitude unless others happen upon them or spy. When people are discovered by others, the expressions are honest unintentional signals and convey the truth about the person’s qualities. Moreover, some emotions like becoming conscious of an audience, awkwardness, or nervousness are involuntary. These emotions do not always yield benefits but are hard to control. For instance, I would like so much for my stage fright not to show when am performing, but it is hard for me to control it, so my solution is to ‘not be’ in that situation at all. How is one supposed to control these or display them for an audience? Thus deciding to which emotions the theory should apply seems pointless. That said, it is true that people laugh and cry harder when in company they know will react to the emotion being displayed.

2.Ekman…
From the studies done and examples used in the readings, it might be safe to say that both Ekman and Fridlund are correct and there is no real reason for them to reconcile. That all emotions are involuntary is agreed upon by both. However, Fridlund says the expressions of emotions can be controlled. But the studies also show that there are some aspects in which controlled expressions of emotion fall short of honest expressions.

Fridlund’s view is that emotions are entities always associated with a social motive and thus expressions of the emotion can be controlled. Ekman, feels that emotions are involuntary firing of neurons, which in turn cause facial muscles to react and thus emotions are hard to control and if controlled can be identified in some cases.

Yes, I think Ekman does believe that facial expressions are signals although they are unintentional, unlike Dridlund who believes that they are signals and should be used as such with intent. Although unintentional, expressions of emotions can be toyed with and controlled, making them unreliable. Examples of these are of a thief who succeeds in convincing the police that they did not commit the theft or when laughing aloud at a joke you think is not funny, by using even your body to avoid focus on the face.

Another thought that occurred to me when reading about conversational signals in the paper was that triggers of emotions and their intensity is not the same in everyone. So how are assumptions made of signals due to facial and/or emotional expressions? For instance, some people do not react emotionally to talk of death, which does not mean that they are without feeling and cold hearted.

3.Zebrowitz…
According to Zebrowitz , overgeneralization happens when people start identifying traits with appearances and expressions based on an argument with no fundamental standing. One person’s experience may cause the person to draw baseless parallels but it does not take long for an irrational group to generalize this to be a cause-effect situation.

An example of a physical overgeneralization is assuming that women cannot compete with a man in sport. Many women do have the capacity to compete and beat men at sport. A cultural overgeneralization I have experienced here in the US (no extensively though) is people assuming that Asian-Indians who come to the US mid-career are misers when it comes to spending money and enjoying a relatively decent quality of life. A personal overgeneralization instance could be identifying a person as a pessimist based on one instance of a negative statement.

Zebrowitz is of the opinion that while it is very important to understand the accuracy of facial cues in identifying trait and personality, it is not deciphered as to whether it is accurate or used by people for the same. Most people watch facial expression and body language to draw inferences about a person’s character. However, it is not clear as to what expressions and cues indicate what traits.

A group of women in their mid-40s was eating dinner at the restaurant we went to. Each of them seemed friendly and gossipy (if there were such a word) by the look on their faces and the tone. Of them seemed disturbed. One lady was on the cell phone the entire time and seemed quite serious by the expression on her face. She was not very involved with the conversation the others were having.
The other three women had friendly countenances and were engaged in an active conversation. They seemed to show keen interest in the other’s stories and were oblivious to their surroundings. My impression of them was formed by their selection of the restaurant, their body language of leaning in towards the table as they spoke, what they did with their hands, and the expressions on their face as they spoke or listened. Looking at just the face they seemed to be friendly and but did not have a certain warmth. Yes, I think overgeneralization did play a role in my deduction, because of the stereotyping of women and their love for gossip.

4.Faces are very interesting and carry a wealth of information about the person. It can be observed how people gravitate towards digital communities that require photos or how people search for others who have photos uploaded. Thus, benefits of these functions to the signaler are those of making their faces known to others in his/her social network, allowing receivers to gauge the signaler’s personality and state of mind.

People can use photos, webcam, video conferencing, avatars, emoticons and other technology to create as real and human an environment as possible to get as close to real-time personal communication as possible. I am not so sure emotions are conveyed accurately in a photo as they are in reality or that video captures every nuance of the face. However, these are attempts towards achieving rich communication and have been successful to a certain degree. The benefits of choosing a technology to get real faces or its like are those of identity and emotion recognition. Signalers would like the receiver to understand their point of view and the kind of person they are. However, a caveat here is that photos and video cameras make the signaler conscious and may not actually be an honest depiction.

The costs they incur are those of selecting a good picture or staging the picture or installing the technology. Majority receivers are part of the big group that over generalize based on appearances and benefit by the assumptions and inferences they make about a person. A face tells the receivers whether they want to form a relationship with the person. They try to judge the nature of the person but it could be hard for people to figure out emotion unless it is not as explicit as laughing, smiling, crying, or some indication of anger. This could be possible using video conferencing or webcams.

Animated faces and even emoticons might be a good way to show emotion without revealing identity. Signalers can pick an emotion or character from a range and indicate accordingly to the receiver. On the contrary showing identity without character or emotion is something equivalent to a passport picture, where you are not asked to smile and do anything to disturb the full face image, cut according to size requirements.

In my opinion, it is hard to make a choice. There are some who want to see the signaler’s face before the next step and yet others want to first, get to know the person before forming any opinions about appearances. I personally go for the latter but know a few people who strongly support the former. So seeing a person’s face and at what stage of interaction really depends on the receiver’s beliefs. When the signaler and receiver are both ready to show and see a photo, there should be a series of them of the person in different settings to depict their lifestyle, which can lead to inferences about characteristics.

Videophones are used by people who have strong bonds and want to feel the physical presence of the person they are talking to. It is to be debated whether they will replace telephones, it might happen eventually starting with the number of people who live overseas away from their families.

Proposed project - Mirja & Pallavi

2006-05-02T07:36:00.000-07:00

Mirja and I want to explore the design and implications of second life. We are not experienced in the gaming arena and thus wanted to examine:
(1) the tools/parameters that allow you to shape your identity,
(2) the design of social spaces like cafes, bars, streets
(3) interaction of people, the quality of their signals and how it can be achieved.

Many topics we discussed in class like reputation, deception, conversation, fashion, and social identity have a fundamental importance in the design of this virtual environment and the behavior if its people.
Based on what our observations, we hope to propose some changes in design, which could improve signaling and communication.

Assignment X

2006-04-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

2.Many things are signaled in conversations. One is the relative status of the participants: this is indicated through the use of polite language, the choreography of interruptions, usef of formal or vernacular language, etc. Another is one's comprehension of the other's statements: this can be siganled through nods, rephrasing, etc. How are these indicated in electronic media such as IM? What could make this signal clearer? Does it need to be more reliable? If so, when - and how would it be made so?

Digital society has customized English when used in email, chat, or blogging. In these cases the differences in status is more about whether the person is a new user of the technology or an experienced one or what is the professional seniority of the communicator, or the geekyness of people. The language used in the digital world is kind of “hard-shelled”. Although the Internet does not block people from communicating, knowing and using the language people use in that society makes the communicator more welcome and part of the society. There is a sense of belonging. The background knowledge of the culture and communication style is known to all people communicating and so people can take interact without the formal niceties. Moreover, people especially teenagers in different parts of the world have some different jargon over the regular chat lingo that they use.

As an example, when I started using IM I took the pains to cross my Ts and dot my ‘I’s , but not for long because I picked up the lingo, chatting with others who had been communicating via IM longer than I had been. AIM was the official communication medium in my previous company. Many of us peers would chat using familiar chat lingo like ‘brb’ ( be right back), ‘pls’ (please) ‘gtg’ (got to go) . We would never capitalize and punctuate in a grammatically correct fashion. Typing in IM is the equivalent of talking. However, when I chatted with my boss, she used IM as written communication rather than a verbal one. All the managers would use grammatically correct sentences and form their thoughts and sentences. In such a case there could be a misunderstanding of tone and intent if the two people do not know each other very well.

Use of Emoticons is very popular and almost inherent to the chat language. Smileys are used in every kind of instant messenger and in email to depict the mood or feelings of the sender or if the sender wants to indicate that s/he is doing something else like drinking a cup of coffee, talking to someone on the phone, or thinking. These are actions that are identified only in face-to-face conversations and is quite cumbersome to type out in chat, the smileys work perfectly. When they first began there were very few, seeing how the language and practice of people when chatting evolved, more smileys were introduced.

These are however not reliable signals, because it is possible for the person to be feeling angry with the other person but will not want to be rude and let the person know. Someone I recently spoke to told me about how his mother, a developmental psychologist was very disturbed when she saw her daughter who was chatting with multiple people, with tears running down her cheeks but typing in ‘LOL’ (laugh out loud) into a chat window. When asked, the girl replied that she was really sad and upset about a conversation she was having with one friend, but was having a happy and funny conversation with another!!! This is quite an alarming situation considering the havoc multiple parallel emotions can play on someone’s mind.

One way to prevent deception could be to check deceivers according to whether they follow the communication rules and lingo of the sub-group with whom they are communicating. I am not so sure there is an efficient way to control the way people use emoticons. Maybe the graphical representations of chat rooms could indicate to others, the emotion and type of conversation in progress, based on keywords being used in the chat room. It might be more challenging to increase costs of deception in personal IM chats.

3. Comparing Fuzzmail, chat circles, comic chat, and regular messaging or email.
I am not sure any of the mediums of communication mentioned come close to physical representation. The aspects of physical representation are distributed across the different methods. IM, I think comes closest to a physical representation in the context of face-to-face communication because people use pictures to identify themselves and use language they would as in verbal communication. However, deception is relatively easy because you can have multiple conversations with multiple people while keeping each conversation hidden from the other. Instances like the one I mentioned above happen all the time when having multiple conversations. Expressing feelings using emoticons is easy and it gives “expressions” to the text being exchanged, at the same time it’s ease of use leads to deceitful signals as well. Letters, however, signal the true intentions and feelings to the receiver because of the costs involved in writing it. They have a personal quality to it because of the act of selecting the paper, pen, and spending the time writing it. People writing letters of congratulations or condolences put a lot of thought into them thus increasing cost and reliability.

Fuzzmail is almost scary, it gives a ghostly feeling of seeing my message play out. Being aware of this feature, the sender could very well use this medium to play pranks and send intentionally incorrect messages to others. I think it is more about being a fun tool than about being used for communication. Chat circles I think is less personal, but more useful in tracking information by reading into the size and distance of the circles. The use of circles and colors for all communicators removes a lot of information about the communicator’s personality, a lot of which can be retained in IM and even letters. Emails are more versatile; you can use IM language, formal/official language, or even a personal tone as in letters. Emails allow you the time to think about what you write and the control of the transaction is usually in the hands of the receivers based on when they reply.

In all these text-based communication methods, it is hard to read between the lines and judge the real tone and intent of the sender unless the receivers knows the sender very well and is familiar with their writing style and voacabulary. This aspect of digital communication or even letters for that matter does affect the reliability of the message. Honest communicators can use email and IM for business and personal conversations, because being dishonest could prove to be very costly.

Information of how many people one is in conversation with and the tone of the conversation (maybe tracked through keywords) if displayed to others online could help control deception by making the receiver aware. Thus, a combination of chat circles and IM could do something about controlling deception when interacting with others socially.

Assignment IX

2006-04-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

• Why do (some) lies fail? Which of these factors has to do with the beliefs and intentions of the sender? Of the receiver? What are some external factors?

Lies fail when they are discovered due to unusual behavior by the deceivers. These could be evident feelings of guilt or fear, or extra effort on part of the deceiver not to move his hands and body, or when what the deceiver is saying seems rehearsed. Factors like guilt and fear would give a deceiver away if they know or believe that lying is not good. On the other hand, if receivers know the senders of deception intimately then they can instantly tell when the sender is lying. Sometimes people find it harder to hide their real feelings on their face while being able to control their body language and that can be a giveaway. People when lying put in more effort, which can be obvious than when saying the truth because lies though relatively less detailed, are difficult to create. In addition, hesitation in the deceiver to respond or if s/he responds in monosyllables can be a giveaway. Another reason why lies fail would be that the receiver knows more about the topic than the deceiver does. Receivers with their experience might be skilled at picking out people who deceive. One example that comes to mind is that of a mother (at least the Indian ones), who always seems to know when the child is lying or hiding information. This probably comes from the fact that the more knows every nuance of the child and so can tell when something is amiss.

External factors could be the extent of knowledge the receiver has to know that the sender is lying, or the existence of a certain object or place, which the deceiver is denying. Timing of when the deceiver is stating a lie could also work against the attempt to deceive.

• Compare face to face communication, the telephone and email in terms of how easy it is to lie / detect lying. Would this vary depending on the seriousness of the lie?

Based on the readings, people lie the least in face-to-face communications and most in email. This is because nuances of face and body give away a lot about the people communicating. The tones and double meanings that are more direct and evident in a face-to-face are not so evident over the telephone and even less over email. In email, the tone one uses when writing is completely hidden and so are facial expressions, over the telephone people might be able to judge tone but certainly not facial expressions or body language. It is not at all costly to lie on email but it is to do so in person. The effort by the sender to deceive and by the receiver to identify whether the sender is lying or not is relatively higher. One point that makes it easy to lie on email could be that one does not have to reply immediately when asked a question, the sender can take time to think and construct and answer before replying to an email. In a face-to-face meeting, people do not have that time to come up with a false answer within seconds. Some skilled actors could, but the probability is low. Also once the person has taken time to reply to the email, the receiver does not have any easy and instant way to know if what is being read is a lie. The email receiver would have to spend a great deal of time to find sources that may contradict the email. The telephone is an easy deception tool in everyday lying. People always screen calls on their cell phones to chose who they want to speak to indicating to the caller that they are not available. I have been party to many occasions where a friend does not want to talk any further with the person on the phone and so gets the people around him/her to make a din and call out the person’s name so he/she ends the talk on the pretext of being wanted elsewhere.

Seriousness of the lie does not alter the ease of lying over the three mediums. No matter how serious it is still easy to lie on email and that much harder when face-to-face. However, the excitement of lying is probably not as much in an email as it is in person or over the phone because of the instant reaction characteristic those communication mediums have.

• Two cases of deception

Case 1

Deception in wars (military deceptions) is a serious one where both parties bear heavy costs and/or big benefits. War tactics by nature call for many deceptions and lies.

One such historical case is the Operation Fortitude South during World War II where the Allies wanted to convince Germany that the Normandy invasion was just a diversion and the main one was yet to come. They wanted to dissuade the Germans from strengthening their forces in Normandy. Operation Quicksilver was the most important element where the Germans were led to believe that the Allied forces consisted of two armed groups. The fictitious group was positioned at the French coast closest to England to deceive the German’s about the center of the invasion.
The costs for such an enormous deception was high, as it required buildings to be constructed, dummy crafts and vehicles to be stationed at various points in England where the Germans could see them, and a huge amount of radio waves to match the size of a huge army. Many organizations were involved in the construction of this deception--“MI5, MI6, SHAEF via ops B, and the armed services” (source: Wikipedia).

A tremendous amount of planning and organization would have gone into making the plan work. A highly costly deception, but one that had big benefits for the Allies. The Germans on the other hand bore heavy costs when the deception was detected and they were invaded.

Case 2

An everyday lie is that of telling telemarketers that you (the customer) are not at home when IT IS you answering the phone (assuming you do not have an answering machine). In this case, the deceiver’s (customer) intention is to avoid the time spent on the phone talking to a telemarketer and avoid wasting time. There are no costs to the deceiver in lying except a few seconds of talking and the pain of maybe crossing a room to get to the phone. If the number of such calls is very high then the receiver bears the cost of irritation. The costs of being caught are those of more irritation and frustration at having to spend more time on the phone but no serious consequences of lying to a telemarketer are known.

To the receiver (telemarketer), the costs would be of not meeting the numbers that need to be presented to a supervisor for the number of people that were reached. Sometimes telemarketers know very well that they are being deceived but cannot really call the deceiver’s bluff as they are not in a position to risk their jobs. In a society where consumerism prevails, customers can tell the company about the telemarketer or better still gets their names removed from the telemarketers list. On the other hand, a detection of deception would benefit the telemarketer by talking to the customer directly to perform his/her duties.

Assignment VIII - Analysis

2006-04-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

Part II : Analyzing car lovers’ forums

In my quest to find an online community that I am not too familiar with and that has not been talked about in class, I contacted a friend (Sam) who is a pro on cars and Formula I. I knew that he was part of the American Ferrari Club but luckily for me, he is also a member of two online communities--Jabba’s World and FerrariChat. This analysis will compare and contrast the two online networks based on our weekly discussions and also look at Sam’s point of view when I interviewed him as a member of the community.

The communities
Jabba’s World (Jabba) is a network of car lovers in general. People are part of this network simply for the love of cars, which is the common thought that connects the members. Members are general car enthusiasts from all over the world. They want to make friends with like-minded people and have fun. As my friend says if he talks to me for two hours about cars I would die out of boredom but with one of the friends he has made thru Jabba he could go on for hours and the enthusiasm would be reciprocated. Members of Jabba discuss all kinds of cars and issues related to them, they even have non-car related discussion groups.

FerrariChat on the other hand is an exclusive network for Ferrari fans and nothing other than that car is discussed by the members. The average age of the members is relatively higher, the members are more experienced, and are serious about the car discussions. All members either own a Ferrari or are serious future buyers. Just as a note, there is no correlation between the American Ferrari Club and the FerrariChat online community except for a few people who are members of both. Sam picked this online forum to be a receiver and learn about the car.

Sam picked these two communities after having looked at various others but did not find people as amiable as in these two. One does gravitate towards a community where you would meet and interact with like-minded people. He did check out some Porsche and Audi (Sam owns an Audi) communities but found them too mechanically oriented to not discuss a gamut of other interesting information and insights.

Jabba has members from about 30 – 40 countries with about 23000 members. Members are in the age range of 14 – 40 and the average age of members is around 25. The website gets about a million hits a month. The forums and discussions of the network have taken shape over the years based on what the members want out of this online community. In contrast, the FerrariChat community has not grown in terms of discussion groups and ideas -- in two years there have been no additions to the discussion forums.

People and signals
People in these communities are more dedicated to the focus on cars and there are not too many troublemakers around. However, there are the usual signals that online personas send across as car fanatics or being really cool and geeky about cars. There are people who are tough and aggressive online but are not so in real life. In Jabba, people do send signals to invest more than just a common interest in cars and communicate outside of the Jabba forums. Many people meet up with others and discuss cars sitting face-to-face for endless hours. Sam has met two people from the community, one who lives in the area and another who was visiting.

As receivers in Jabba some people want information on cars to learn more about them, some want updates on latest events or cars, newbies with a new-found interest in cars would find this a rich source of information, some come just to make friends with others who share their interest or car-related hobbies. For instance, Sam thought it juvenile and silly to continue to collect racecar models as an adult, but once he joined this forum and met others who had a similar interest and were collecting model racecars he did not think it so silly and is building his hobby by leaps and bounds. He actively participates in the hobbies sub-forum.

There are and have been cases where people join the group and are not proficient in cars but want to portray differently and have fun. Such people are almost instantly singled out because of their knowledge when they make posts and comments. They also ask questions that may not be relevant. This is especially seen in the FerrariChat, because people are older and more serious about the car, do not necessarily have the time to back up false claims right through. In Jabba, young kids pretend they own some important car or are going to buy something big but are almost, always identified as kids and/or novices.

People learn about others by the extent of knowledge they show in their posts and by pictures and/or videos of cars, they upload. Some youngsters in the community may not have much experience with cars, but have a unique skill for taking pictures of cars. They are identified as experts or novices whether they are among the elite who can afford certain cars, or whether they are technical gurus on engines. Some also post their pictures, images of cars or other, or animation clips indicating certain qualities of seriousness or sense of humor.

Reliability
These forums are relatively deception free because the troublemakers are not entertained. In Jabba, people are banned because their motive is not to contribute to the forum but to have fun. They make false claims and use bad language but are identified by moderators and other members and cast out of the network. Moderators on these sites do an excellent job in monitoring and administering the network. They do monitor communication that might be a potential case of harm. However, a certain extent of argument is allowed. For example, in Jabba there is a group of BMW fans and one of Audi and when people of these groups meet in a discussion forum they always say and indicate the other car is no good, but these lead to healthy arguments. If they do get out of hand, the moderator does jump in.

Attempts at keeping the network reliable, starts with registration where the user has to provide a valid email ID to complete registration. Both communities have rules that members need to know before entering discussion forums. In FerrariChat it is easy to miss or avoid reading the rules as the link is a sub-menu to a menu item. In Jabba, many forums have their own set of rules and that is usually the first posting in the form marked in red color and the message “PELASE READ BEFORE POSTING” written in caps so people do not miss it. Jabba also has general community rules. They also have a separate forum for site enhancement suggestions and bug reporting that seems to have a very good response time, thus keeping the community working and communicating efficiently.

Another practice to filter the dishonest signalers is to have members place their car keys and service manual on the hood of the car when taking a picture of what they drive to share with the community. This filters out that lot who could easily take pictures of any important and powerful cars parked in someone else’s driveway or at public parking places. FerrariChat does not have such a rule, but due to the member profiles, they do not bother with the time and effort to take deceptive photos or when talking about the car they say they have, usually goof up and are spotted. On one of the two sites, a kid posed as a philanthropist and real estate person, but was recognized by a member from a previous experience at another forum and was discovered.

Costs and benefits
The primary cost for members of this community is time. It is very addictive once you are logged in and so end up spending a lot of time going through different discussion forums, videos, and the photo gallery. There have been hundreds of people online all day and very actively posting. The site gives the latest status on who is logged in, how many posts were made in the day, who is the newest member to join etc. Some of the discussion threads seem to be taking place with the users logged in for a long stretch of time. There is a membership fee for both sites to get access to some additional features and videos but not much is lost by not taking on the paid membership and those who are serious about their contributions and benefits from the community do benefit by taking the membership.

The benefits, members’ receiver are created by what they want out of the community. People benefit by having fun (there seems to be a lot of wit and humor being exchanged), making friends, even meeting some people. The benefits of saving and viewing some very cool videos from all over the world is a big benefit to car lovers, but they do have to pay the cost of a minimum amount of contribution before they can download videos. Access to some videos is only with paid membership. They certainly benefit by all the free flowing and valuable information. Many members are experts in their own field of cars and share a wealth of knowledge with the community.

Gifts and reputation
This brings me to talking about gifts. The Jabba site has seen both digital and physical gift transactions. The digital gifts are in the way of information about how to take care of cars and what to do when something goes wrong. There is are technicians and others who make a living out of cars, but readily provide information which would otherwise cost a lot to people if they had to go to an authorized dealer or consultant. At Jabba, Sam creates a report of sorts on F1 racing for interested newbies, and as a receiver of a gift, he got advice on buying a good home theater system. There was also an instance where members contributed towards a limited edition Ferrari Model (cost: $500) gifted to a particularly hardworking moderator, who goes beyond the requirements to administer the site and post interesting pictures. He goes out on the streets with a camera and takes pictures of important cars that go by. Members did a similar thing for the founder of the site, Jabba. In the FerrariChat community, there are two or three expert service technicians, who log into specific forums to provide information and free consulting. In so doing they have developed a good reputation for themselves. Moreover, it is not just theoretical help, other members have gone to his company and have received service at reduced costs. When new members need information, they are directed to these experts thus continually building their reputation in return for the gift of knowledge and more.

Design
The homepage of both communities is simple and easy to understand. There are no unwanted ads, pop-ups, or subscriptions. Even the registration forms are kept very simple and to the point with an option to alter your profile later. FerrariChat homepage lists the forums right there and leaves other features within the website menu bar, whereas Jabba has a few options of viewing the photos, videos, taking a poll, a list of latest posts, list of people online, and seeing the photo and video of the month. It also has a menu giving more choices of what the member wants to do.

The basic UI design of the two sites is similar as far as the forums are concerned. The forums are arranged sequentially but are created based on different criteria. FerrariChat forums are divided based on age of car and region. The age-wise break up is for ease of people to discuss cars based on what they have or are interested in. The region-wise break-up is because the members are more inclined to meet up and discuss or go to events together. Thus members living or visiting an area would check what is happening for an opportunity to meet other members. Jabba, on the other hand is more about breadth, unlike FerrariChat, which goes into great depths about Ferraris, and so have a variety of discussion forums. Sometimes, the number and variety of forums can cause members to get lost amongst all the information. Members request for sub-forums and the moderators seeing the interests of the number of members have the final say in creating the forum. Indications of who started a forum or who made the last contribution helps members channel the time they spend in the community and what forums they participate in, thus avoiding a discussion started by someone with an infamous reputation.

Assignment VII

2006-04-04T06:16:00.000-07:00

Part I
• Using Camerer's writing as a foundation, describe the possible effects of public wish-lists on the signaling function of gifts.

Based on Camerer’s research on gift giving, there are many different ways to interpret gift giving and receiving. Inefficiency, cost, benefit, and symbolism are attached to all gifts with one or more taking priority depending on whether gifts are being exchanged by friends, partners, family, or business affiliates. In all instances giving gifts certainly send out signals. As Camerer noted, they signal wealth, intention, investment in relationships, feeling, care about the receiver, status, false ‘good-guy’ image to name a few. By publishing wish-lists many of these signals will be irrelevant and instead replaced by others.

Making your wish-list known to others is very common during Christmas or for weddings or letting your immediate family know what you want for a birthday. The signals in publicizing the wish-list are those of letting people know that you prefer to get meaningful and relevant gifts. Relevant gifts could be anything from a paper clip to a home, as long as it is something that the receiver indicates s/he wants. On the other hand, gift givers signal that they respect the receiver enough to give what is desired and not what they assume the receiver wants. Wish-lists are created because it is an easy and practical way to get things that you want, but may not be able to buy all the things within a limited time period. Christmas wish-lists are more for parents to know what their children want so that they don’t waste money getting them toys or games they never look at post Christmas. At weddings, the couples create wish-lists because they start a new life and conventionally need to start from scratch. This wish-list is dual purpose; it benefits the couple by not getting a 100 odd gifts that they may never use and benefits the givers by alleviating them from the effort of thinking what to give the couple.

However, in spite of all the practically good reasons for a wish-list it does remove the ‘sentimental’ and ‘special’ functions of gifts. Gifts from a wish-list to do not really signify an important quality about the giver or their meaning in the receivers life, although they can pick and choose according to their taste and meaningfulness from the list of items in the wish-list.

• Last week we looked at dating sites and identified some of the problems as people not knowing how others perceived them, not being able to sense "status" within the group (and thus not knowing who would be a reasonably likely match), deceptive self-presentation and lack of courtesy. Would any of these problems (or others) be adderssed by instituting a culture of gift giving within the site? If so, how and why would gifts help? How would you implement it? What would the disadvatages be?

My instinctive reply is negative. I do not think gifting should be made part of dating-websites because it might make deception easier. As of now, there is a lot of competition, if gifting is added as a feature competition might become so dominant it might weaken the chances of sincere people. In my opinion, the problems of deception would not be solved, instead it might open newer avenues for deception. Gifting does send out important signals but I think that a majority of gifts are given for superficial and formal reasons, because it is a convention to give gifts not because the giver really wants to. Not that genuine givers do not exist but it would be interesting to know if they are a majority and what situations or people prompt them to be genuine givers. People would get another chance to show off their wealth or ill-intentions by giving pervert gifts (if there are no restrictions). One situation could be where the giver buys the same item to give all the people s/he is communicating with, making the entire system quite meaningless. Some people love receiving costly gifts and might make a wrong selection based on the gift rather than the person.

People would spend more time, effort, and money in giving gifts to people, which may not return any benefits. Also, a few questions to be looked into are: how many people should the giver gift? what kind of gifts should one give? how much money should be spent? when should a gift be given? after how many rounds of communication should gifts be given? if the giver is talking to two or three people simultaneously to make the right choice should s/he invest in all of them? Should the gifts me efficient or inefficient ones? Etc. Another thought – are we talking about sending physical gifts to one another or digital ones. Digital gifts have even lesser meaning when it comes to the function of signals. It is devoid of personal touch although a good deal of thought might have gone into choosing the gift. That said, if the gifts are something like references or links to other informative websites that the receiver needs or digital videos or songs that the receiver wanted would be good ideas. Buying MP3s or subscribing to podcasts are not costly and can impress the receiver.

If gift giving had to be implemented, then it should be done only after the giver and receiver have decided to chose each other and see if they are the right match. Givers should not be allowed to give gifts to more than a certain number of people they are weighing. In addition, there should be a restriction as to what kind of gifts the giver gives. The receiver should certainly have the right to reject a gift if it is given too early in the relationship building process or is not an appropriate gift.

• Gifts often have a special presentation - the prototypical gift is wrapped and be-ribboned. What purpose does the wrapping serve? Is there a virtual equivalent? The "gifts" that Bergquist and Ljungberg describes are not specially demarcated as gifts - do you think that they are, indeed, gifts? Would clearly designating them as gifts change their function? How? How would you go about doing that?

Personally, I think wrapping is a waste of time for the giver when the receiver knows what the gift is or even expects a gift. However, unwrapping even the smallest of gifts gives the receiver a great feeling of surprise and something equivalent to the sweet pain of waiting. Some of us have no patience and rip out the wrapping, others of us recognize the labor and thought that went into the wrapping so open it carefully, and still others even save the wrapping. For instance, I never wrap gifts if I can avoid it, but a certain friend of mine always gives inexpensive and simple gifts with the most beautiful wrapping decorated with a tiny bunch of wild flowers or a small candy or something to make the gift look different and interesting. I treasure those wrappings even when the gifts are exhausted. This pleasure of wrapping or unwrapping maybe lost if the gift in question is a digital one.

Digital gifits are really more of help and information give out of the goodness of your heart and I think that many people participate in open source not because of the benefits it gives the others but because of their own benefits. Participating in open source systems boosts their own egos, they earn a name for themselves, it also enhances their own learning, and it is looked upon as a “cool” thing to do. Everyone uses Wikipedia, but the contributors pride themselves about being contributors. However, I am sure that there are people who contribute information for genuinely spreading correct information among others. A wrapping of sorts that these people probably use are those of gradually revealing their capabilities and providing information one piece at a time. Designing websites where the users have to navigate through interesting channels and consequentially gain information could be one sort of wrapping for digital gifts.

I am not so sure I think digital “gifts” should be demarcated as gifts. Who would you be giving the gift to? - the rest of the world or to some big corporation? It might not change the activities of contributing and providing information but might confuse the contributors about the goal of the endeavor, why they are doing it, how long or how much should they contribute, or if they have started contributing can they stop without facing any consequences.

Assignment VI

2006-03-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

Part I

a.What are the costs of writing a profile - terms of effort? money (here are some notes on how pay sites impose useful costs)?

After reading the papers and looking at information online, and having gone through some blurbs that online dating participants write, seems like one of the biggest costs is that of cognitive effort. People put a lot of thought into planning to go online and then creating a profile. Posting the right pictures and describing yourself as accurately to align with your purpose of being online is more effort than people take in regular dating. In addition, those who are sincere endure a relatively higher cost to stand apart from the deceptive profiles. A lot of thought goes into what kind of picture should I post and am sure there are people who take all too many pictures before they select one. As far as writing goes, the honest ones would have many of their friends and family read it before posting it. Going through reviews and edits of profile to make it sound honest and even include the receivers’ discount factor into it all requires a lot of thought and effort.

Regarding money, I think it’s a small cost in order to keep out the dishonest ones. It’s a good practice to channel all the honest people to one spot. It does have its disadvantages if your contract gets renewed or that by good luck a partner is found well before the contract end-date. However, this I feel is not as big a cost to the participants who have a serious intent to defraud or to find a partner.

b.What are the costs of including a photo? What is the function of the photo? Is physical appearance a signal or a quality - and is that different than its function in the face to face world?

As mentioned above, posting the right picture is a big component of the effort taken to participate in online dating. People want to see photographs of others to try and read many things about the person. For some it’s a purely skin-deep beauty and attraction and others try to judge character by looking at the person’s eyes or what they were wearing when the picture was taken. At the signaler’s end, a photo is a strong way to convey facts about one’s self again by choosing what to wear and where to take the picture.

The importance given to a photo here does not seem surprising or inapt at all. Cultures in which arranged marriages are still in practice lay a lot of importance on photos. The boy and girl get to see the other’s photo before deciding whether the family would pursue the alliance. In fact it is not only the person in question who decides by seeing the photo, the entire family puts a lot of importance on the photo. The photo is almost like the deciding straw if all else (like background, education, job etc) has already been verified. It serves the purpose of getting a general idea about the person’s physical features. It works as a signal if a lot of thought is gone into what you where and where you take the picture, this signaling your status or interests. It could also display quality if there are no noticeable efforts in making the picture look good with lighting and posture. Just as people know to discount description information of a profile, similarly they are aware that people would try some amount of manipulation to make the photo look good. However, there is only so much one can camouflage in a picture. There is a lot of importance given to people’s expressions and people derive meaning from the person in the photo’s eyes. It is said that the eyes cannot lie and I think that many look for that sincerity in the eyes of a person. The same is the case with photos in online dating.

c.What are the costs to the receivers? What are the assessment signals in these sites? What signals denote qualites mainly by convention?

The receivers undertake a gamble with this whole method of interaction, however what is important to remember is that in this case receivers are as much signalers as they are receivers. It’s a parallel process unlike in animals or in some human traditions where signaling and receiving could happen sequentially.
The entire concept of online dating I think of as an assessment signal about the people. The amounts of time people spend on the sites, how much and what they write in their description are all assessment signals. It could be hard for receivers to figure out how much time the signaler spent on creating his profile.

That said, receivers bear heavy costs in reading between the lines and making interpretations of the profiles. There is already a theme set among people who date online-- they all use a common language and are aware of the implicit rules. This increases the effort receivers need to put in. As we had discussed in class a while back the signaling process is costlier for a receiver than it is for a signaler. They need to have a lot of skill and understanding of people and signals to make the right choice.

d.What are some kinds of deception that could occur (if you can't think of any, trying searching for "online bad dates")? What mechanisms are in place now for minimizing this?

Deceptions of physical attributes, career, status, interests, wealth, intent, family or friend networks, age, to name a few could occur. In spite of the costs associated with creating profiles online, it is not hard to deceive especially if the intention is to do so. The receivers of deception do not bear very heavy costs of receiving dishonest signals and so the deceptions do not necessarily cause harm. People just stop communicating with those who deceive or block out the deceiver.
Online daters deceive by creating an image of who they aspire to be. It is hard to lie about physical attributes because if the date materializes then a meeting is inevitable at some point and one cannot really change skin tone or eye color that easily and maintain it for a long time. Things like career and status are easier to lie about and harder for the receiver to verify until meeting the person. Deception about age seems to be a common practice and to such an extent that everyone is aware of it and easily add or subtract a few years from the given age.

Some mechanisms currently in place to check deception are:
1. Monetary fee for joining online networks is a mechanism to filter out the trash. People who create profiles only to while away time and fool others may not want to pay to do the same. Caveat is that there are others who can afford to spend some money to be a menace in online networks if that is the intention.
2. Minimum length requirement for a description. To be able to create a description requiring at least 500 or 1000 words might discourage some to go ahead with the whole registration process
3. Dating sites reviewing the profile before accepting to post it online is a good way to screen for bad language or deceptive intentions. Not a fool proof method but again might discourage some if their profile does not get added immediately
4. Search filters can help narrow down the search based on different criterion
5. Use of middle-men to link people looking for each other can channel such connections and keep out those who deceive. The middle-men would have authentic information about online daters. Based on search criteria and the authenticity of the people they would connect people who could then interview and filter out until they find a right match.

Part II

a.Choose an attraction strategy discussed by Buss or Miller (e.g. creation of impressive artwork, denigrating rivals, etc. ). Can you find examples of this on an online site? If not, why not? How does the designof the site suport or make diffcult this strategy?

Miller’s theory of artwork as an indicator of fitness or social psychology is interesting though not unusual. Art and art forms have been around for centuries. People fall into social categories based on interests like painting, music, or theatre indicating social networks of people and what they like to do in their spare time.

I have come across some social networking sites where people post graphics or pictures of artwork instead of themselves. Not a very commonplace thing to do so but it tells a lot about the person’s interest. There is one site where a girl put up a very impressive teenage kind of art on her profile and requested that the art not be mimicked by others. In addition, there are chat forums for art and music where people who share the common interest could connect with each other and take the association beyond simple art discussion. Each person shows art that they are interested in or change according to their latest interest.

Most websites, blogs, chat rooms, online dating sites have the feature of being able to upload pictures and send files to one another so it is not too hard or costly to exchange art and impress people. There are many art forums online for people to discuss art and support fresh talent. These sites may not have the objective of dating, but people do connect and could chose to start dating.

b. Could information be shared among the participants? Would this be helpful? How could you redesign the system to allow for this? Think about the reputation systems we discussed in class. How would this impose costs on deception? What would make it reliable? What would motivate people to use it? http://www.dontdatehimgirl.com/ and http://www.greatboyfriends.com/ provide warnings and recommendations (respectively) - what motivates people here? are these reliable?

Information can certainly be shared among participants to help build a robust system. This would help people who are there for a purposeful cause to not waste time and effort on those who only want to have a good time by lying and bothering people. In fact a rating system like that adopted by eBay may prove helpful to avoid the deceivers out. Or the sites could have a mechanism to give feedback on others. For example, men could warn other men against a particular woman’s profile who is only looking to use a man’s money or women could warm others to watch out for the man who is a flake. This would make people who are deceiving think twice about their actions leading to an in famous reputation.
Websites like the one mentioned above would help people learn how to recognize bad or deceptive profiles saving them the time, effort, and feelings they would otherwise have invested. First time and novice users would find these sites very helpful until they are comfortable with digital interactions. I think help sites like these and to learn from other people’s experiences to prevent making mistakes is motivation enough for people to visit these sites. Also, such sites could actually end up being networks of the honest lot who time the attention and time to warn others

c.How is dating similar or different from other types of "people markets"? Any employment situation is potentially such a market, as is the market for tennis partners, book club members, etc. The costs of deception differ in these cases, as do the structure of the market (are there repeated interactions? is information likely to be shared? what is the relationship among competitors?

The underlying objective of dating always sets it apart from other people networks or markets. However, irrespective of the situation, people still look for honesty, sincerity, and try to avoid the deceptive signals in any network and even in the physical world. Other ’people networks’ centered around skill and talent would not really care about what people look like or where they work if that is irrelevant. For example, one would not care if an art fan worked at a mall or was the vice president of a company, although being affiliated in some capacity to the area of interest does give you a higher status and more credibility.

There is some form of competition in all these networks but the extent and type of competition is decided by the objective of the network. In forums based on information exchange like those for art and book clubs there is a competition of having read more books and visited more number of museums. People display information to be gaining an advantage over on each other. Game forums like chess rooms or tennis partners is all about finding the right match to challenge the intellect or skill. People want to know how many others out there they can beat. In dating sites there are so many fish in the ocean that competition is probably not that visible. Moreover, everyone on the site is aware that people evaluate more than one person before making a choice.

Assignment V

2006-03-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

Assignment I
• How do people display social networks in everyday life (that is, not online)? Give 2 concrete, specific examples. Why do they do this? Looking at this display as a signal, what is the quality it is inferring? What are the costs of making this signal? The benefits? Is there a cost to the receiver if it is not honest?

People display social networks in general by belonging to and associating with more than one group of people. Because human beings do not live in isolation, every person would, at minimum have at least two social networks of which they are a part. In addition, there is almost an implicit requirement to communicate to those around you the number of networks you belong to. There are I am sure multiple ways of communicating this idea, one such being that of carrying multiple cell phones. People carry one cell phone that works on a family phone plan, one given to them by their work place, and another for friends and other social networks. This signal depicts that the nature of the networks is important enough to be connected to each of them at all times. Another example could be that of wearing T-shirts with logos of the various groups that you belong to, for eg, a T-shirt with your company name and logo, one that identifies your school, and one for each volunteer, music, and/or sport organizations you belong to. Symbols of such kind communicate the focused nature of the organization and are a kind of advertising for the organization.

Communicating to others that you belong to multiple social networks helps build your reputation and status. The costs of making the signal are relative; it is quite easy to get T-shirts of organizations and so may not be a costly signal, but for someone to maintain multiple cell phones might be costly in terms of coordinating and the time and effort spent in juggling the three. The benefits of signaling about social networks give a message of how productive your time is and how popular you are. Yes, there could be a cost to the receiver if the signal is dishonest because the receiver would make an association or form a relationship based on the signal that the sender is connected to a particular network, which if not true, could harm the receiver in terms of trust and incorrect information about the person. In addition, if the received wanted to take the opportunity of knowing the signaler and connecting to his or her social network then bears the cost of that not happening.

• Identity in the real world is faceted: different aspects of our personality are expressed in different circumstances and around different people. For some of us, these differences are relatively minor, and bringing together people from different areas of our lives is not a problem. For others of us, these different facets are incompatible, and bringing them together is undesireable. How is this addressed in the design of today's SNSs? How might future designs address this?

Due to our multi-facetted identities, humans are able to build and maintain ties with different social groups. In the past it was harder to bring these different groups together due to social or geographical divides. The younger generations find it relatively easy to bridge their networks than to the adults. This could be due to the fact that youth is still not as worldly wise as adults and do not foster as much negativity about bringing people together and somehow they seem relatively more skilled and carefree at doing so. Another point of view is identifying the differences between the social networks to judge whether bringing them together is a good idea or not.

Social networks sites have the provisions of inviting people (e.g. Facebook) to be a part of their society or of allowing public access (e.g. Friendster) to information about the network thus, bringing together people of different networks. For example, the SNS, 43 Things brings together people of different networks based on their focus. The SNSs based on invitation might be more reliable in terms of connecting networks with similar focus and ties. However, there is no limitation on inviting people and an awkward situation of the schoolteacher and her student may arise. Most SNSs are open and anyone can become part of the network bringing with them their already existing network, thus increasing the size of the network through weak ties.
Digital social networking makes it easier for disparate networks to connect due to the theory that communicating online is easier than in person. This might be taken to an extreme level with all the Open SNSs and no real focus tying the people who join. Most of them are based on popularity and entertainment. Future SNSs could be more focused and invitation based working as true network bridges and not allowing all and sundry to be able to join the network. However, a question that connecting networks raises, is what are the implications of connecting networks like Facebook and LinkedIn? Connecting different networks with a similar focus will be easy through invitation, LinkedIn could invite a student who has been an intern in an organization, but the student in turn can bridge to the Facebook network and this might dilute the focus of LinkedIn. Do we want to create the bridges beyond similar focus to include various foci?

• Describe or sketch part of a social network known to you (e.g. your friends, family, acquaintances in classes, etc. - feel free to use pseudonyms or describe a network from your past, such as high school, for privacy). Networking sites use unnuanced and symmetrical links - in your description, what more nuanced description of these links would you include? For instance, there are different types of relationships - parent-child, friend-friend - and different strengths, and different flows of support and information. What of these more nuanced descriptions could be used in a publicly articulated space, and which could not?

Links could use format nuances to show strong or weak ties or even geographical networks. Networks could be color-coded. In addition, the network symbols could dynamically depict the size of a growing network, either by increasing the size of the symbol depicting networks or a pulsating network when someone new joins it. Personal or secret networks could be hidden to public but shown only to those that are connected to it, some sort of a magic line connecting the secretly networked people.

• Feld proposes that people have particular interests, common friends and pursuits, etc. that function as "foci" - and that connections are made when people with common foci are brought together. Some foci are highly constraining (such as being in the same family or research group) while others are lightly constraining (sharing a neighborhood or a popular taste) . Re-examine the social network you described. Can you apply this model to explain some of the groupings?

The part-social network depicted connects PR and IC because they are part of the same school (lightly constraining focus), so the foci being more location or institute-specific at first and then develops into one based on character and quality, a highly constraining focus. This network is highly constraining as it includes a limited number of people but belongs to a larger network of alums, which is lightly constraining network.

IC, SP, and MR are connected due to the focus of management studies at the same school, a lightly constraining focus. IC connected PR with SP and MR based on a common focus of location. The tie between PR and MR was weak due to the removal of the initial focus, but the bond of PR and SP turned into a strong bond due to a highly constrained focus of interests and friendship.

• What are the benefits of making it more costly to add links in a social networking site?

Making the addition of links more costly to a SNS would maintain the authenticity of the links and keep the foci in tune with each other. Having people enter a form of identity that will be verified before they are given access to be part of a network or to verify an invitee before they join the network will require more effort and thus reduce the occurrences of cheats. The chance that people misuse the system would be less and the network links could be more meaningful. The use of SNSs as fashion competition would reduce and instead become more focused on helping each other.

Assignment II
• What is the significance of these experiments for understanding networks? Do Kleinberg's criticisms of the Milgram's work hold for Watts et al's work also? Why or why not? Why do you think they got better results for work based chains than acquaintance ones? What is the significance of the information people had about target?

The fact that Klienberg pointed out the abrupt ending of Milgram’s work seems to be reason enough to believe that the theory was a myth. Watt’s work reused Milgram’s algorithm and used it to experiment connections via email, so Klienberg’s criticism does hold good for watt’s work as well. Probably more so since networking in general is made easier by the Internet.

Work networks are better linked than acquaintance ones because of the meaningful and focused nature of the networks. Professionals have a many more connections in the professional world than to acquaintances in their weakly tied networks. People change jobs and keep in touch with previous colleagues, they form common SNSs based on the work they do and thus these networks are probably smaller than are those of acquaintances.

The information one gets about a target helps set the direction of the network. If the target person is a doctor, you could send the message to a doctor you know and make a connection with a network that shares a common focus with the target. Or if the Target is a teacher in Kingsville, TX, you could start by sending the message to your teacher who belongs to the American Teachers Association. Thus, information about profession and/or location of the target helps to jump to networks that are more appropriate.

• Why is the network search question interesting (or not)? When would one really want to know who is 1, 2, 3 degrees away? What are the implications of public displays of connections for our ability to find these people? What are the benefits of making this display?

The small world myth is something that people find interesting, amusing, and probably assuring in a world that is spatially quite big. I think that people would want to know how many degrees separate them from others as a nice-to-know trivia fact or in fact expand their network of acquaintances. Public displays of the ability to show connections to people around the world signal the extent of people’s networks and the range of their connections. This could also be a competition and a fashion among those into finding others. It could benefit the initiator by showing his or her popularity and connectedness. As you become part of more networks and get to know more people, maintaining relationships online will become easier because you will be known to more number of people.

Assignment IV

2006-03-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

Part 2
As mentioned above, one of the problematic cases of online identity is when a seemingly single identity is the work of numerous creators. What are the implications of such a situation? When is this a problem? When is it beneficial? Can you find an example?

An instance of multiple individuals with a single virtual identity is that of a human resources department of an organization, to which individuals send their resume and communicate, with no clue as to who will respond. Certainly, the dangers of sending information to such a group (with a physical representation) are far less if there is a known physical office building than to one, which has no physical contact information. For one there is no way of knowing how many people are at the other end of the communication stream and surely it is as good as impossible to find out who the people are.

It is very common today for one person to have multiple identities, and there is no limit as to the representation of the self, including gender switching, old people creating young identities, children posing as adults and the likes. However, many digital identities are the creation of more than one person. Such groups online are as easy to create and maintain as any other due to the inherent nature of the Internet as Kling suggested. We know that there is always a basic risk assigned to online communication; when digital personas, posing as experts spread incorrect information to the naïve user there is a high cost to be paid by the receiver. People have to interact for longer periods to try and identify the physical identity (ies) of the digital being. This would involve higher costs and risks for both parties going by signaling principles of probing.

Many heads together under the cover of a single virtual identity can be very destructive and detrimental to society when they undertake a suspicious business. These identities may upset many genuine virtual groups and can certainly take advantage of individuals whatever their virtual embodiment maybe. Cases of financial fraud, hacking, stolen identities, privacy issues etc, the list is endless could all be the work of multiple people working together making it easier to get away with fraudulent behavior. An example of such an identity could be the many emails from debt settlement IDs. These emails usually go into the junk folder of your email and many when explored do not link to any physical representation. Many a novice users fall into their trap and end up loosing money.

A similar identity created by a group of social workers or volunteers to help people who have been traumatized or victims of injustice may be apt in its own place. For example, drug abuse anonymous or rape survivors anonymous. The very nature of the communication needs that the individual at one end sees the helping hand as a single identity. These digital identities do good work by supporting victims and helping them deal with their trauma. However, a caveat here would be a case like that of Kim joining the mothers with premature babies group and causing the group to mistrust each other and split up.
Would online entities like eBay and BMG Music fit the bill? Another online identity could be the Wikipedia, not so much an identity but it is a digital entity, which is the evolving creation of millions, none of whom are known to the lay person.

Markers of identity include one's name, face, social security number, drivers's license (and other identity documentation), fingerprint, DNA (and other biometric measures). Take 3 such markers and analyze how they function as identity cues. Are they unintentional cues or signals? How costly are they to produce, assess, produce deceptively? How reliable are they?

People’s face and body language as a marker of identity has always intrigued me.
While, these markers are closely related to emotions and cultural experiences, we know that there is some level of theatrics in everyone. Is it as simple as when you hear remarks such as “you wear your heart on your face” or “poker face”? Facial expressions could be a vent to one’s own emotion or a message to society. More often than not social situations cause people to emote in turn causing a facial expression and/or body movement. Just as facial expression conveys an intentional or unintentional meaning, the human body is also expressive. In a recent seminar by Justine Cassell, I learned that people when presenting or lecturing, move their body when they change topic. It is questionable which is more reliable, since it is easier to control the component that you are most conscious of. So people aware of their facial expressive capacities might be able to control it better thus sending intentional signals. Expressions that are more spontaneous are the unintentional signals. Another caveat is that there is no way of knowing the intensity of the feeling. Also, identifying a spontaneous from a calculated facial or body expression is almost impossible. These may be costly to produce depending on the effort the signaler has to make. They are usually costly to receive if the receiver does not know the signaler well. Facial expressions and body language could very well be intentionally deceptive when the gain from the deception to the signaler is higher than the cost of signaling.

Online IDs make a very interesting study. The variety one sees in them in is quite amazing. From genuine and direct translations of their name into their ID to a fantasy ID that none would ever know, there is a whole range. The more interesting an ID, the more people want to learn about it and probe into the message being sent by the owner of the ID. Creative and wild IDs convey extreme identities; whereas sober and more regular ones convey stability and authenticity or that some interpret as boring. Creating online IDs is low risk and low cost since and easy to produce. They can very easily be deceptive as the process of verification online is a long-winded one. I would say that Online IDs are the lease reliable because the Internet makes it so easy to be deceptive.

Language used for online communication is another marker of identity. I can usually tell my friends apart when I chat with more than one of them in a room, from the language they use when chatting. Its almost the same as studying handwriting except that here its more the online nomenclature and jargon. There are those who take the extra couple of seconds to capitalize and punctuate and then there are those you type “u” for “you”. A lot can be read into whether the person is casual or formal, serious or joking, sad or angry, etc. However, the caveat as in all written communication is that the tone of communication is hidden, and this can lead to friction and deception. If the person sending the information wants to signal tone, (s)he can use specific words and grammar to indicate signals of authority, anger, happiness etc. Cultural experiences and background also makes a difference when communicating with digital personas.

Read some of the papers on ebay and reputation and Emler's gossip paper. What are the costs and benefits of participating in an ebay like reputation system - both for the raters and ratees? How does this explain the typically high ratings found on ebay? What is different about gossip? Contrast the costs and benefits to the participants in a gossiping community.

Benefits of such feedback systems to build or spoil reputation seems logically helpful in continuing business, the same way people do for stores and brand names. The way the system works in the two worlds is drastically different. In the physical world there are objects, stores, and people we interact with to build the system, which has been in place for decades and thus the emergence of trustworthy brand names. However, on the Internet communication happens between total strangers.
Transactions based on reputation depend on how much time and effort sellers or buyers are willing to spend to find the most reputed buyers and sellers. Keystrokes and spending time researching on the Web are both costly in terms of time and effort so there needs to be some form of motivation for raters to rate. One might think according to human reactions that raters unsatisfied with the service are more likely to rate negatively but those who are satisfied with the service may or may not rate. However, ebay has a high positive rating system probably due to the motivation factors of providing positive rating for good online salesmanship.
Benefits of rating to a rater is more in terms of doing good to society by warning about a bad seller/buyer or praising the good ones to help them do more business. If a seller has bad reputation, it will be known to sellers easily and quickly preventing them from entering into a transaction with the seller. In addition, the system is beneficial for those who are regular buyers or vendors. New ratees benefit by using the ratings as a guidance to choose a buyer and transact. The predominantly positive reputation system also helps build relationships between the buyers and sellers. Negative feedback is probably not as high because of a filtering system giving chances to buyers and sellers because if people see that eBay has more negative feedback then the system might collapse because of the trust invested in such a reputation system.

Both, online feedback and gossip share the backbone principle of building or breaking reputation. Information on the Internet is not always reliable but is structured and a faster means of spreading the word to a wider audience when compared to gossip among friends. Gossip is relatively minute in scale and has a big factor of human element in it. The purpose is (usually) to create social outcasts. The tone, body language, facial expressions, experience, age, and many other factors all work towards deciding the credibility of gossip. The percentage of people that can live in isolation is negligible and it is inherent human nature to be inquisitive, the level or intensity of which varies. We always want to find out more about people we do not know very well. But what constitutes as gossip during these interactions is quite subjective. As is known from the paper, humans spend a fair part of their day interacting with others. Gossip reputation is mostly undertaken by women and is set in informal situations. I would attribute this to the humanistic nature of gossip, which happens only face-to-face or over the telephone. People could also exchange letters with explicit details about others they know in common. Online reputation, on the other hand, has both men and women participants and is usually more formal in tone and meaning.

Given that, the cost of gossiping is not very high but to specifically make time to spread information in society could raise the cost of gossiping. That said, the protagonist of the gossip could suffer high costs if the gossip is baseless or outright lies created and spread due to a vengeance on part of the gossiper. Moreover, gossip, as we know it has a more negative connotation. People who are concerned about their public image have a lot to loose if they are involved in any incorrect or illegal transaction, that will be know to all through grapevine.
Benefits to the groups that participate in gossip could be those setting social norms and creating prototypes or to include or exclude certain people from their social circles. Gossip is always the work of a number of people in a chain and this filtering of information from one to the other makes it very unreliable.

3. Describe a situation where anonymity or pseudonymity are important (i.e. it is important not to be idenitified with one's physical self) and one where it is important that identity be established and verified. Use real examples that you can document - many can be found as current news stories. Why is it important? Where is the competition - who wishes to be or not to be identified? Show how the context can be redesigned (whether through technology, legal means, social mores, etc.) to make the desired level of identification feasible.

Anonimity ALWAYS
Case: Witness Protection Program (WITSEC). By law, identity of witnesses in high profile cases (Mob related) is never revealed Program
No only the witness himself or herself, but the Federal government also works towards keeping secret the identity of a witness. They get new identities and are relocated because of the risky nature of their role.

Anonimity OPTIONAL
Case: Whistleblowing. By definition, identity is anonymous. But later developments of the case may reveal the identity. Either by statue (Coleen Rowley case) or by will (Cynthia Cooper of Worldcom and Sherron Watkins of Enron)
Whislteblowers are a good example of individuals maintaining their anonymity. Coming clear with their organization’s illegal or fraudulent practices requires guts and the employee faces a risk of safety. People either praise whistleblowers as daring and a Robin Hood kind of figure, to endure risks for the good of society or, on the flip side, they could be seen as wanting the publicity and glory for self promotion. Either case the initiative of disclosing malpractices of their organization is a risky one for the whistleblower. During the time in which the case becomes public and is being tried, it is important that they maintain anonymity or pseudonymity for their own protection. Every country has laws in place for their protection once the case is out. One famous example is W.Mark Felt (a.k.a Deep Throat) who disclosed his identity very recently, was an informant in 1972 of President Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal.

Identity OPTIONAL in some states, to be REVELAED in a few
Case: Powerball. Identity HAS to be revealed in three states (DE, KS, ND); CAN be protected in SC unless it is requested under the First Information Act; OPTIONAL in other powerball states. ((http://www.powerball.com/pb_contact.asp)
Winners of mega lotteries like Powerball would ideally like to maintain anonymity for security reasons because they have become millionaires overnight, but this does not hold true for all states. Powerball is run by a non-profit government association, Multi-state Lottery Association (MUSL) and is legal. The member states of MUSL can take part in the lottery.

I think in all three cases technology, could help by creating secure websites where these people can give information without disclosing their identities and work under an alias. Then witnesses may not have to be uprooted and made to change their identities. A special corporate feedback system could be used for whistleblowers to warn the company of misdoings before going public. If this is too dangerous then a special web space could be created with high security for communicating with the law. As far as the Powerball is concerned I think the winners of those select states should be able to keep their identities a secret for protection and use a legal option or a digital identity to communicate with authorities.

Assignment III

2006-02-28T08:10:00.000-08:00

How does fashion function as a signal? What does it indicate? What are the costs and benfits associated with it? Is it reliable? Why or why not? what is the function of continuous change? How does Veblen's view of fashion fit with a signaling model of fashion?

The archaic meaning of ‘fashion’ according to Merriam-Webster’s is ‘to make or form something’, ‘a peculiar or habitual manner’, ‘a prevailing custom, usage, or style’ ..’in a particular time’ and in its most general usage is to do with behaving or doing things in a favorable way at a time. Davis agrees with these and adds that fashion is to set a trend. All these meanings in one way or another depict the temporary nature of the meaning and yet it speaks of inherent characteristics.

The signals of fashion are twofold, one as a signal of belonging to a ‘different’ society and the other a more personal signal of inherent characteristics. In the readings, fashion whether of music or clothes signals culture, a statement of uniqueness in society. These are statements of identity that are probably best not conveyed explicitly. We see people everywhere giving out subtle signs of their public persona and social status. Before I think about fashion as a purposeful signal, I would observe the way people dressed to read into their character. I like many others believed that you could tell a man by the shoes he wears. People watch what brand, the condition, whether it matches, and the style to tell whether the person is formal, casual, sporty, has style, is rich, poor, or just does not care about how he looks, and many other points. Fashion signals to people that you are different from the rest. A predominant signal of fashion is the prevailing culture of your society.

Depending on what part of society one hails from and signaling intentions, using fashion to signal could prove very costly. People who are not worried about sending out signals about their status and identity may not have to bear costs of sending the signal but might have to for receiving them. Fashion is costly in terms of time and money for most people. However, there is a part of society where replicating fashion statements are easy, for instance someone skilled at tailoring could mimic a designer-wear. According to Simmel “imitation gives to the individual the satisfaction of not standing alone in his action.” The same could be seen as costly if it is hard to get resources, but some people would invest the effort, time, and money to send out the signal of belonging to the elite or being hip. How one gets to know if fashion to imitate is the function of media, which will be discussed in the next part of the essay. This fashion as a signal of status could be reliable, but as a signal of inherent character, it could be unreliable due to the “public image” people depict. The benefits of fashion, like those of belonging to an elite minority, or to a hip group of music culture, to be looked upon in society as a trendsetter and received media attention to name a few, are relatively high to endure the costs of signaling.

Addressing the issue of the transitory nature of fashion, Veblen seems to think that there is always unrest among people to start something new to appeal to the aesthetic sense. While, I think this is true for again, a certain part of society that take it upon them to be trendsetters. People also want to stand apart from the rest and so if once a fashion is now commonplace, (for example, the start of women’s riding pants or women wearing a mini skirt for tennis) certain individuals want to change and make another radical statement. This process of change and moving from one time to another is not necessarily a gradual progression, they are unstructured and random. The pace of fashion has certainly picked up since the 19the century and today fashion statements spring in all parts of society in different areas. Once the originality of the idea is lost and the fashion is adopted by others, it is no longer a fashion and its time for a new one to be set.

From time immemorial and not just specific to the Western world, women have ruled the roost in fashion. Even in ancient India, no one was allowed to dress like the princesses and queens, only royalty were really allowed to wear gold anklets. I am very intrigued by Veblen’s theory that women’s fashion almost directly sends out a signal to society about the monetary status of her husband and in turn making the husband feel good about his duties and skills at looking after his wife and family. This is still prevalent in a subtle way among the crème de la crème of Indian and I am sure, of other western societies as well. I enjoyed reading Veblen’s point on the impracticality of a lot of women’s clothing and yet they will go out of their way to have such clothing as part of their wardrobe, but that is a whole other point of discussion.

Looking at blogs (from the Adar paper and your own observations), music (from Thornton and your observations), clothing (from Davis, Suzuki, and your observations) and one other domain of your choosing, describe how fashion signals function in each domain, discussing the common features and differences between them. What are the features of the medium that affect fashions within it? Are changes arbitrary or are they driven by other forces in addition to fashion? How does that affect how we interpret it as a signal?

All four categories of clothes, music, blogs, and pocket digital devices (another domain of fashion) are temporal and trend setting. Every individual is trying to outdo the other in depicting the public image of being “hip”. There was a time when writing blogs and using a cell phone with a camera was a novelty. Today these have become an established code of society with individuals trying to get the edge on how they write and design their blogs and what kind of camera phone they use.

On a broad level, the functions of fashion are similar in the categories in question. Fashion depicts societal status, monetary status, career, rebellion against society, to name a few. Another common thread running through the four domains is competition to be a trendsetter and be recognized for it. The structure of the three domains is different, with Blogs probably having the most complex of structures due to the non-linear and interactive nature of the Internet. Clothes and music on the other hand have relatively easy structures. The cost of signaling through music and clothes fashion is higher than that of blogging. The Internet is free, and easy to use for anyone, and thus blogging has a very low cost associated with it. Although, a point to remember here is that people who prioritize blogging and sharing information, spend many hours at it making the signal costly. Another difference among the domains is that of function. Blogs are written and read to spread information, whereas clothes, music, and pocket digital devices are more for style, individualism, and societal status. Digital devices I think also have the added function of communication and conveying the important nature of one’s profession, for example, using a blue tooth could imply a profession dependant almost wholly on communication and almost, all doctors carry pagers and cell phones due to the nature of work.

How do people set these trends? How does one know that acid wash jeans and iPods are hip? I agree with McCracken in that a big part of signaling through fashion is done for us by media. Who decides what is a trend and fashion? There are times when it is word of mouth and just seeing people around you, like the spread of blogging, but most fashion trends are stated in some medium--news papers, TV, Internet, etc. Thornton covers a variety of medium that helped in forming music subcultures in the UK --TV, Newspapers, Magazines, Flyers, and even email. McCracken also talks about advertising of fashion (iPod). The kind of medium chosen to communicate fashion and its culture says a lot about the fashion domain. For instance, youth magazines and MTV are used to spread the word about raves and music genres and Fashion TV and women’s magazines communicate the latest trends in clothes. Another medium of communicating fashion is that of giving gifts as is mentioned in the readings. People give gifts according to fashion they follow and thus spread the word getting more people to join the race. A caveat here would be that a lot of fashion comes with preset meanings but individuals have the freedom in receiving and understanding the signals and then choosing to adopt or reject it.

All communication media has an inherent quality of being fast paced and evolving. Television and magazines have a sequential and chronological structure to it that ensures that there is new fashion for each instance on the timeline. This would invoke new clothes and music fashion. Television is faster paced than the print media and its audio and video features induce the music industry to come out with unique and more complicated albums and videos. Newspapers are usually not the most used media for communicating fashion, at least it is not the only media, because they are associated with changes at a broader level encompassing society as a whole and the nation. Flyers work well for local areas and a more personal touch. Word-of-mouth medium works for very specific trends in society addressing and/or affecting a relatively smaller group. The culture of a society also plays a role in what medium is used according to the most preferred channel of communication in that society.

Changes in society are caused primarily by fashions but also by external factors like economic and political changes. Changes in government give or withhold people’s expression and economic changes like inflation, also affect fashion changes in society. External influence on fashion affect the way we interpret fashion signals because of the underlying assumptions that go with it. When costs rise, people stop buying and thus the adopting of fashion may slow down falsely indicating a rejection of fashion. Banning of rave clubs and certain underground subcultures by governmental authority does not indicate the spread of the culture. Mandatory use of ‘burkhas’ by women in some Muslim countries falsely or does not indicate the change in fashion in that society. Conventions of society may also hurdle or help the spread of fashion. A country like India, where many religions and casts co-exist, is a perfect example of society hampering or enhancing fashion. Certain religions do not allow wearing certain kinds of clothes or listening to certain music. Changes in societies that are based on religion or economic status are often more explicit than those caused by fashion.

Assignment II

2006-02-21T08:45:00.000-08:00

Part I

1. In “Prestige and intimacy” what are the costs to the women of incorrectly interpreting the men’s signals? Of believing deceptive signals? What are the benefits to the women of signaling deceptively? The costs?

Male/female relations have always been the focal point of society, making them prototypical and taken-for-granted. One such standard is that of women believing that men who are considerate and chivalrous towards them are attention worthy. Women, largely control the progress of the relationship to deeper levels by receiving and understanding signals from men. Misunderstanding these signals prove costly to women in terms of emotional, physical, and even material costs. Women suffer emotionally with, for example, heartbreaks, low self-esteem, erroneous self-image, humiliation, among others that women bear within themselves. There could also be physical costs of ill-treatment and abuse by the male. In addition, costs like time spent on interacting and emotionally investing in the male is incurred.

On the other hand, women benefit men’s attention and prestige among their peers by sending out false signals to men. Women signal falsely either to portray a more attractive image of themselves to a man more attractive then themselves or possibly to find out the true image of a man. A woman can signal that she is an easy-going person to test how grounded the man is in morals or whether he belongs to the playboy prototype. If this kind of signal succeeds in the women receiving the information they seek, it could be advantageous ending in a good relationship or advantageous in them avoiding a bad relationship. There are women who do not necessarily make a good first impression because they are shy or timid and so they may take extra efforts in sending out costly signals (maybe even with the help of friends) to attain the attention of the man they are interested in. These could be beneficial if the man successfully sees the qualities of the woman sending such signals. Women also send signals to their peers (women and men) of how acceptable they are in society by dressing “cool” and behaving so and benefit by moving among and being accepted in a prestigious and attractive society thus gaining more access to men more prestigious then themselves.

Costs of signaling deceptively I think would be the same to men and women of time and effort and maybe even monetary costs. One could also loose their reputation among peers by signaling falsely. A question to think about is how much is a person willing to invest in continuing the charade. Do women signal deceptively consistently or is it done in moderation? In an extreme case, one lie leads to another and when it eventually explodes, it is too late to make amends.

2. It is easy to conclude that all signals online are purely conventional – but is this too simple an interpretation? Examine some of the examples in Jacobson’s article – are the signs purely conventional or are there assessment aspects to them also? What are they?

Signals sent across the internet are all conventional signals because there is no cost extra cost to producing them honestly or dishonestly. There may or may not be an inherent connection with the underlying quality. People online are in fact prompted and inspired to send deceptive signals to make their virtual life exciting and different from whom they really are. For instance, people who are by nature shy may find this platform apt to experiment and take risks without being humiliated. Others, who have quirks causing them not to have friends, use this platform to make some. However, certain norms and conventions of communicating online have given some aspects an assessment signal quality. For instance, the virtual name a person chooses could be linked to his or her quality of being creative or to some hidden desires or fantasies.

The receivers usually pay assessment costs because they try to form the right image of the person with whom they are communicating. If they find a person interesting, they spend more time communicating and probing to find out more about the person thus investing time and effort in assessing the signal. People may chat and communicate with others online for years and still have erroneous impressions about them. Receivers assess based on the prototypical knowledge they have of people who communicate online. In addition, they never completely believe the signals being sent virtually due to prior knowledge and convention and it is in fact their imagination, and understanding of the signal, which could be faulty. Moreover, I think receivers take pleasure in their imagination of the person they are communicating with; it is like reading a book and forming the physical characters except that there is the risk of confirming the imagination or destroying it by meeting the person.

Part II

1. Observation of a person in a public space
Mirja, Malte, and I went to Au bon pain at 10:00 a.m. and chose to observe a pair of girls apparently meeting for a project/paper discussion. One of them we named ‘Pink’ due to the pink shirt she was wearing and the other ‘white’ sporting a while sporty jacket. They way each dressed, their tone of voice, and body language was cues about their character.

Pink seemed more crisp and business like in a jacket and trousers and White seemed more sporty. Pink seemed like she cared about her appearance and wore matching ear rings and had a stylish bag and long coat. According to my prototype, college girls who can dress up for a 9 a.m. class take the effort to look good anytime and every time. White on the other hand was a typical college girl with backpack and water bottle. She seemed to belong to that lot of college students who were very dedicated to their work and not overly concerned about looking ‘cool’. She had a simple innocent look that indicated being a good student.

Looking at the accessories and objects each girl carried, Pink according to me was more well-to-do with her long coat and stylish bag. White on the other hand although not financially low-status, might have been a student who possibly had a part time job. She had a Toshiba laptop that indicated her need as purely functional, because my prototype of people with technical knowledge and interest are those who have Macs or other higher-end laptops. In addition, she did not eat or dink anything, which could also be indicative of her monetary status.

According to their tone and gestures, Pink seemed to be in control of the meeting by being the one with maximum to say while White was typing. Pink was also very animated and spoke in a loud firm tone that spoke of confidence and a business like approach, yet casual. She was very interested and seemed knowledgeable. She had her elbows on the table and her palms locked in front of her face for the most part but am not quite sure what it meant, since it’s usually a defensive position but she seemed quite confident. She seemed to be a very ambitious young girl. White on the other hand was more child-like and responsible, a studios college girl. Since she was typing out notes and speaking little she seemed like the recipient of information. I felt from her facial expressions that, at times she did not quiet agree with Pink but let it pass.

The kind of observations we made and cues we looked for were different. Mirja and mine were more similar probably because of being girls. Malte observed other cues and signals that we were not particularly looking for. The prototypes I was comparing them to were made over the last two years that I spent as a student in America. Moreover, my prototypes are still forming because of learning and unlearning information being a student in Cambridge versus being one in Corpus Christi, Texas. When comparing our cues and their understanding our varied cultural (German and India) background perspective had a role to play. We drew examples from our past to compare and contrast the subjects to prototypes.

2. Observation of a person online
We decided to interpret the image ‘Eric’ from myspace.com. is sending out to the virtual community.

Eric seems an average American with a 9 – 5 job who likes to go out drinking with friends in the weekend. Using his own name as his virtual alias gives me the impression that he is not necessarily creative or in want for a fantasy or virtual image of himself. He is conveying the real person and not building an image.
His picture is one taken after work at a bar, he seems to have a sense of humor and certainly wants to convey that. A straightforward person looking for dates but someone responsible. Overall, I think he is being honest.

From his mention of beer and just from the way he looks I figure he watches all game nights on TV or in a bar with friends, something he would not miss. His school information confirms that he was always into sports. He admits thought that he is a little out of shape (excess baggage) , an honest confession I would think and form the picture it does not look like he is underplaying or lying about the lbs.

Given that he does not have a very big list of friends or very many blog postings could mean that he is not a very active blogger or internet person and that he has a close group of friends he hangs out with regularly. May or may not have been married but is certainly attached to his child and by adding the word “Proud” probably wants to let people know that, that is an important part of his life. Seems to me he keeps his office and personal life apart. He keeps himself updated with current affairs and watches informational television. I also think that he watches a lot of TV. I picture him turning on the TV first thing when he gets home from work. I don’t think he is a very exciting or daring person.

Assignment I - Signals

2006-02-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

Why are there deceptive signals? Why are they a problem - and to whom?
Signaling is associated with inherent qualities of the being and deceptive signals exist because the signaler wants to depict a quality it does not have. Also, the signaler can do this at a lower cost of sending the signal in relation to the benefits of the results making deceptive signaling more common in conventional signaling, for example, glorifying your job/skills to make a positive impression on friends.

Dishonest signals are a problem to both the signaler and the receiver because the former would need to expend more energy to compete with contenders and the latter pay a higher cost to receive the signal and evaluate it. An honest signaler can suffer to the extent that if a dishonest signaler does not have to pay any costs for signaling and wins, then the honest signaler is at a loss.

How reliable must a signal be for a signaling system to function? 100%? 51%
The communication system via signaling exists due to the trade-offs between costs and benefits of signaling, the goal obviously being to reduce costs and increase benefits. I believe that for any system to function there needs to be a mix of the reliable and unreliable variables because unreliable signals also communicate information of a certain kind and save on cost for both the sender and receiver. According to Dawkins and Guilford, both signalers and receivers aim at reducing costs, and thus, would accept less reliable, conventional signals. An excess of conventional reliable signals makes it easy for unreliable signalers, a surplus of unreliable signals is kept under check by probing on the receiver-end, and if revealed, a dishonest signaler would pay a higher cost for competing with a genuine signaler.

How do signals become correlated with a quality? What happens when the signaler receiver interpret the signal differently?
As mentioned earlier, signals are associated with inherent qualities like strength, skill, feelings, status to name a few. When one wants to impress upon another, the former does or says things to indicate those qualities. It is easier to observe these signals among animals than it is among humans. For example, signals of fear depicted by a lower species when it sees a lion, or a quiet student signaling his/her timidity.
As I understand it, when signals are misinterpreted it brings about the same issues as miscommunication among human beings. The receiver and signaler, both bear the cost of misinterpretation. The receiver not being able to understand the signal, would bear high costs of time spent in trying to understand the signal and in the animal kingdom could bear a risk to life. The signaler also invests a great deal of energy in vain when his/her signal is misunderstood and the qualities attempted at being signaled would remain hidden.

3. 1 Example of an Assessment Signal A possible example of assessment signal is what an interviewee depicts in an interview. Body language, words used, answers to interviewers questions are all signals of inner qualities the interviewee wants to portray. The interviewer is assessing the interviewee for a set of skills that are needed for the job position being offered. Signals of body language could be directly related to inherent qualities, while those like words used when answering questions could be indirectly related. The signal is a costly one as the interviewee needs to put in a lot of effort to do and say the right things especially due to competition. The signals could be reliable or unreliable. Interviewees practice and consciously go over the right things to say and do to depict qualities like team work and diligence that they might not possess. There are people who are better at working alone, but when interviewing for a team leader position will try their best to depict how much of a people’s person they are.

This signal has high costs to the interviewee and relatively low costs to the interviewer if there are a decent number of candidates who have applied for the job. If there are very few candidates who have applied then the costs for the interviewer also become higher in assessing the candidate and identifying the honest signals. Yes, there is a high chance of there being a mismatch between the signaler’s intent and the receiver’s impression. For example, a person may really be very good with people but not have the ability to articulate instances of this quality or the interviewer may read into the body language of the candidate incorrectly leading to an erroneous hire, which could turn into an early termination!

3.2 Example for a Conventional signal
A conventional signal could be people’s dress sense indicating life style. The signal is directly related to people’s lifestyles and characteristics. For example, people in Texas take pride their cowboy boots, guns, and pick-up trucks and New Yorkers sashay along in their Armani suits and Gucci shoes. This is conventional signaling is widespread but location-specific on a geographical scale. These signals are unreliable because people could be tourists who dress like locals or some who dress and behave alike just to fit in. Also, based on the brand name of clothes and accessories used, there could be individual distinctions and similar dress sense as the others signal belonging to a group. There is usually no sanction against it, but subtle differences (southerners versus northerners) may become obvious and could at times be politically incorrect.

There is very low or no cost to either the signaler or the receiver due to the vast number on both sides. The receiver avoids cost by not assessing every person dressed in boots and a hat to find an honest Texan. However, the receiver could probe further thus increasing cost of receiving the signal. The likelihood of a mismatch is probably lower because people who want to depict themselves as having a particular lifestyle could do so by altering their wardrobe and receivers not probing further could be in agreement with the signal being given about the signaler’s life style.