Pretentious orthography is pretentious.

Did you have any opinions on, you know, her work? This paper? Any of the other linked papers?

#22 Your point is interesting how adults treat computers (especially public computers) like work-only machines. (“If you aren’t using it for homework, then get off!”)

Most tech savvy people switch between fun (blogs, FB, email) and work constantly throughout the day. Why wouldn’t we expect kids to do the same? For kids, half of growing up is learning how to interact with others successfully … and cutting off a major tool to do that is pretty socially debilitating.

I know some (wealthy) moms who refuse to let their kids have computer access at home cause they “waste” their time on FB or chatting. Or refuse to let them have cell phones, in some attempt to encourage them to have “real” social lives. It’s a very misguided effort, and research like this seems to be bringing this to light.

You might think that post #1 was unsubstantial, but the problem with punctuation prevented real appreciation of you post.

You can dismiss it all you want, the fact remains that not capitalizing someones name stands out like a sore thumb.

XOXO

Unfortunately, they’re not. A debate has been raging for months on the Wikipedia entry “Danah Boyd” over whether or not the article title should be capitalised.

More importantly, will she be “dr danah boyd” or “Dr danah boyd”?

Joke.

Anyway, congrats to danah boyd on her successful PhD – sounds like interesting work.

Oh God, let there please be a day when schools no longer use this awful system.

And to top it off, I’m faculty!

Having violated, through ignorance and carelessness, at least three of the cardinal rules in ELEMENTS OF STYLE in a mere two sentences, you’re uniquely poorly positioned to criticize someone else for her deliberate decision to violate some conventions on her own.

danah’s birth certificate reads “danah boyd.” If you don’t like it, take it up with her mother.

No email will be received by danah’s ornery INBOX between December 11 and January 19!
For those who are unaware of my approach to vacation… I believe that email eradicates any benefits gained from taking a vacation by collecting mold and spitting it back out at you the moment you return. As such, I’ve trained my beloved INBOX to reject all email during vacation. I give it a little help in the form of a .procmail file that sends everything directly to /dev/null. The effect is very simple. You cannot put anything in my queue while I’m away (however lovingly you intend it) and I come home to a clean INBOX. Don’t worry… if you forget, you’ll get a nice note from my INBOX telling you to shove off, respect danah’s deeply needed vacation time, and try again after January 19.

So now I can say “congrats” danah! ^_^

Here we have a fascinating PhD thesis representing years’ worth of work by a talented scholar under the tutelage of some of the field’s most fascinating academics, and all Man on Pink Corner can say about it is that he thinks she should spell her name differently.

Now, whether or not this is a legitimate beef, it’s not a substantive one. Of all the things you can say about this thesis, criticizing the spelling of the author’s name is probably the least insightful, least useful, least constructive, least *substantive* inputs you could give.

Not every thought that passes through someone’s head is worthy of public utterance (and not every utterance is worthy of publication). If #1 read the post, thought, “Huh, I don’t like the spelling of the author’s name,” a far more productive thing would be to pass on it altogether, without remark.

Because whatever you think about the spelling of the author’s name, it has no bearing whatsoever of the content of the thesis under discussion. And there’s every chance that people who read the thesis might want to pop in and talk about that, without getting bogged down in a stupid, trivial discussion of typography.

From “Taken Out of Context” – as is:
“danah michele boyd”

Yep, copied and pasted from the link provided by Cory. I wonder if you’all complained about ee cummings not knowing anything about the English language. Yeesh!

ps.: Thanks, Cory, looks like interesting reading.
pps.: Just now wondering if Cory is a Corrie fan.

And if you don’t have a weird name, you can always wear weird headgear or have a bizarre hairstyle. Both of which have apparently worked for danah and myself, so I celebrate this.

#12: Cory, I think that’s one of the most lucid comments I’ve seen on Boing Boing, and I agree to focus on what’s effective. In this case: actually reading the thesis, being useful, and not derailing the conversation in an unhelpful, possibly hurtful way.

while the low points include stuff like:

Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy by Arjun Appadurai is actually rather interesting as long as you know how to filter out the “required” Marxist/Academic rhetoric. It’s not unlike training your brain to read scientific research literature.

And not every utterance is worthy of rebuttal. It is a shame to see this thread get derailed, as I’m interested in knowing what the people here think of this work.

So for the latter purpose, teen-oriented summaries of these papers would be very helpful. Here’s how to avoid cyberbullying… Here’s the top three benefits/risks of current networked publics.

As they say in french, can someone vulgarize this for the grand public?

“I have a dream…..”? Content over character(s).

Her (her?) work is insightful and perceptive….a a pretty easy read considering the PDF is some 400+ (that’s “plus”…or for you very restrictive types “That is plus…) pages long….or short if you really dig the thesis.

Back to danah’s thesis, I’d say there aren’t that many pedos in real life either. It’s more a media construct designed to sell! sell! sell! Just as the war on drugs was a means through which to remove our liberties and gut the fourth amendment, the war on pedos will make sure we get surveillance cameras placed everywhere and bring an end to privacy. If it worked to turn the UK into the police state it now is it’ll work in the US too.

I GET it. Really. I apologize, OK?

I often do write out rather knee-jerk responses to posts online and almost always delete them after I re-read them. This time I didn’t, and it was a mistake.

In fact I just spent a few minutes reading danah’s 800 word reasoning behind her name change. It’s interesting and I’m beginning to appreciate another really unique person I could have only been introduced to by boingboing.net.

I work with marginalized teenagers (youth in group care) and I’m often fascinated with their ability to keep in touch with each other, even as they move from group home to street to group home – using things like facebook and piczo. It’s an interested sub culture, and social media has a significant impact on how they build and secure their identities.

It also creates new problems, i.e. they use the library computers (no home computers or cell phones) and the librarians complain because they’ve become a drop-in centre and aren’t set up to deal with the behaviours, etc.

They are also extremely creative and able to adapt and cause the environment to adapt in order to make their marginalized existence more meaningful. It’s survival of the fittest in group care, as much as I hate to admit it.

Anyway, like I said, I look forward to looking into this further…

I GET it. Really. I apologize, OK?

As do I. I didn’t mean to hijack the thread, and being the first poster, it’s safe to say I didn’t read a 400-page .PDF before commenting. I withdraw the remark.

The affectation just seemed like a cheap way for someone I’d never heard of to garner attention… but Cory and the others have a point, in that this judgment should be made after reading her work and not before.

Well I was in my late teens by the time myspace was around, so AIM was a bigger part of my social development. I think the immediate feedback and one-on-one communication from instant messaging have made myspace and facebook akward and foreign to me, especially when it comes to “invisible audiences” and “blurring of public and prviate”. Still, the internet certainly played a role in that time of flirting, finding my place socially, and just communicating in general.

Still, I wonder how much of an impact these have on social development. My parents embrace social networking sites more than I do, and they are mostly inept with technology.

It’s getting as bad as Business. Only replace Utilize with Leverage and you are halfway there. I can just make out the outline of a point, but it’s been buried.