Instead of following Steven Colbert and countless academics by asking what Wikipedia has done to reality, I ask: what have we done to Wikipedia in the name of reality?
Here are some papers I have written:
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Does Habermas Understand the Internet? The Algorithmic Construction of the Blogo/Public Sphere
Published in gnovis 10.1: Habermasians have been debating about the role of the Internet in the public sphere, but they have all taken for granted the highly-automated software infrastructures that mediate our knowledge of the blogosphere.
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The Work of Sustaining Order in Wikipedia: The Banning of a Vandal
Published in Proceedings of CSCW 2010: This paper traces out a heterogeneous network of humans and non-humans involved in the identification and banning of a single vandal in Wikipedia.
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The Social Roles of Bots and Assisted Editing Tools
Published in Proceedings of WikiSym 2009: A short paper showing the recent explosive growth of automated editors (or bots) in Wikipedia, which have taken on many new tasks in administrative spaces.
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The Wikipedian Discourse: A Foucauldian Archaeology of Power Relations
This paper is a Foucauldian account of power relations as expressed through discourse in the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia.
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There Is No Cabal: An Investigation into Wikipedia’s Legal Subculture
An investigation into the community formed by small number of Wikipedia contributors who care enough to decide how, at some level, Wikipedia is run. The work discusses identity, communication, and organizational hierarchy in this subculture.
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Senior Thesis: Democracy in Wikipedia
My thesis studied the legal culture of Wikipedia to examine the law through stories and histories, giving the reader a sense of not only what the Wikipedian legal system is, but also what fundamental assumptions the community makes in utilizing such a system.
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The Facticity of Art
This is a piece of web art or net art, with an included work of art criticism about the piece. The work makes the argument that while interactive digital art can be considered user-centered, this new style and medium is only centered around those possibilities that the creator wishes to make available to the user. You can see The Facticity of Art at http://stuartgeiger.com/art/art-intro.shtml.
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Notions of Identity Liberation in Virtual Gaming Communities
The vast worlds of MMORPGs seem close to postmodern theories of identity, as a player is able to radically constitute their on-line self at will. Despite this, these virtual gaming communities should not be seen as safe spaces in which a subject can realize their true (or ideal) self.
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Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response by Colonialism
Embracing Trobriand cricket as an instance in which domineering cultural empires were repelled is a flawed concept which masks the very forms of domination that it attempts to criticize.
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Open Source Software: The Newest Specter?
Corporate adoption of open source software should not be viewed as antithetical to capitalism; rather, it is an example of corporations co-opting Communism to become more capitalist.
Short Summary/Response papers on:
- Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Cyborg City by William Mitchell
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
- Patchwork Girl by Shelly Jackson
