I realize that gaming is still a decidedly male-dominated pastime and industry, and I understand that mainstream culture is still deeply influenced by the notion that games are only for the stereotypical antisocial, tech-nerdy, teenage male. But I’ve been advocating games for years now, and playing them for longer, so I’m impatient for the change in popular perception that I’m sure is waiting right around the corner.

one purported use of the netbook is as a secondary computer, an ultralight portable for an affluent consumer who already owns a larger, more valuable, and full-featured machine. for such users, a netbook can offer a disposable, affordable alternative for their "mobile lifestyle," presuming, of course, a particular kind of mobile, middle-class, professional consumer (not coincidentally, the targeted demographic for many shiny new tech devices). but unlike an iPhone or a Blackberry, which remain expensive devices with pricey data services, a netbook is priced low relative to that of full-sized laptops. low-end PC notebooks in the same range ($300-600) are inevitably bulky, heavy, and impractical for taking on the go.

still, netbooks' inadequacies have been criticized by Techcrunch's Michael Arrington, who contends that their popularity will be limited: "Netbooks are designed to appeal to two very different markets - the price sensitive and the size sensitive. The two are really mutually exclusive." Arrington makes a good point, but at the same time, there are shifts in how people are using technology which will make netbooks more appealing. personal computers have become primarily networked devices, for messaging, web browsing, streaming music and video, and so on, where an earlier generation of computers were seen as "productivity" tools. WiFi and wireless data networks make it possible to connect to the internet from almost anywhere -- on campuses, in coffeeshops, at the airport. while smartphones have greatly improved their capacity to access the internet and social media services, they remain expensive compared to mobile phones without data plans, and are only used by a minority.

what's more, computers, like cell phones, have become highly personalized items -- for those as can afford it. no longer primarily a shared family or classroom device, laptops conform to a modern Western ideal of possessive individualism -- a sense of personhood as singular and individual, One Laptop Per Child. netbooks, precisely by virtue of their affordability, promise to make available the always-on, interconnected world of social networking sites, cloud computing, and streaming media to a wide audience. as personal computers go, they offer a highly portable, technologically sufficient device that provides access to popular media and services, in a market saturated by products overpowered for many everyday uses. moreover, the coming popularity of off-site "cloud" computing may make netbooks even more viable.

still, i suspect the netbook naysayers are correct in their dismay with netbooks' constrained capacities, and that most people won't prefer to have an undersized, underpowered device as their main computer. but for a growing generation of students, young people, and others of limited means, netbooks may offer the most cost-effective way of participating in a digitized, networked world of personal portable devices, regardless of preference. netbooks offer the promise of improving access to new media for many, but this comes at the cost of better performing, more expensive computers. technology use will remain marked by its economically and socially uneven terrain.

in addition, i've returned to blogging for Smart Mobs, so keep an eye out for me there.

i find myself updating my Facebook and checking my Myspace messages more often, as the iPhone apps are often quicker and cleaner than their web-based counterparts, and more fun to use. i'm titillated (and a little creeped out) by how Yelp and Google Maps can now figure out where i am, and deliver data specific to my location. i'm beginning to envision how devices like the iPhone and G1 might allow for more constant engagement and interactivity with peers -- as long as, of course, they also own the pricey equipment and pay for the data subscription (not to mention having a working wireless network, which neither AT&T nor T-Mobile consistently provide).

this brings me to my current question concerning increasing mobility -- whose mobility is at stake here? the "digital divide" between technological haves and have-nots may not be a foreign concept in tech circles, but it's not one that has been very well addressed either, as it's often chalked up to socio-economic inequities that must be solved separately. certainly it's not surprising that tricked-out web-capable smartphones are mostly available to consumers in the upper social strata (with devices starting at $179 and combined voice/data plans running $55/month and up). moreover, social and geographic mobility have often been the purview of the middle (and upper middle) classes, those who are more likely to leave home for college, take jobs in different cities, and establish themselves far away from their extended families.

migration, of course, is a reality for many working-class people in the US and abroad, whose ability to earn a living is often tied to the movement of global capital. the demands of the global market tend to drive mass labor migrations, as people must move to find jobs that can support them and their families -- often living far from home and working abroad illegally (from migrant Mexican and Central American laborers in the US, to domestic workers in Europe and the Gulf states who come from South Asia, the Phillipines, and elsewhere). mobility per se may not be limited to those with greater resources, but voluntary mobility is still a privilege.

yet by contrast, mobile communications technologies have precisely been adopted in places where more extensive infrastructure may not exist. in the US, for instance, mobile phones were adopted first by younger users, partly because they're less likely to have their own landline (or own a home), and also because cell phone carriers began offering pre-paid plans that made phones accessible to those without steady incomes (the Pew Internet Project has some interesting reports on cell phone and internet use among different American demographics, though their methodology is limited to phone interviews, and they appear to conflate race with regional ethnic identity). outside the industrialized world, furthermore, mobile phones increasingly provide communications access to low-income regions and neighborhoods where landlines are simply unavailable. according to this article on MobileActive.org, for example, Brazilians living in favelas (slums) have taken up cell phone use, as have low-income youth in South Africa. free incoming calls and text messaging make mobile phones useable where landlines aren't, and encourage different ways of engaging with mobile technologies. according to Jeffrey Juris' review, The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication, shows how mobile phones in Jamaica allow low-income users to intensify their social networks in beneficial ways.

what's clear is that mobile technologies are used differently by different groups, often in ways not intended or imagined by marketers or tech companies. marginalized populations are probably less likely to be targeted by companies like Apple or Google, but at the same time, new technologies do present novel possibilities for social interaction at multiple social strata. text messaging, as the New York Times anxiously warned last week, is on the rise, often over and against voice calls, while improved handheld devices might actually provide web access to those who can't afford more expensive computer equipment (though Apple and Google for now are both assuming their devices will be paired with a home computer and broadband connection). mobility may turn out to mean more than just the latest toys for those of us who can afford them, and perhaps suggests an emerging way to think about and analyze new patterns in technology practice.

all of which fits in nicely with the profusion of circus-freak perfomance art and vintage aesthetics proliferating on the margins of popular culture in places like new york and california, among others, and lovingly documented on artsy alt culture blog Coilhouse. nothing, however, sounds the death knell of a new subculture more than well-meaning bougie media attention:

Steampunk Brings Victorian Flair to the 21st Century

i'm enough of a bob siegel fan-girl to find the coverage entertaining, but i find suspect the theory that steampunk is somehow a response to the impersonal mass-produced consumerism of the information age.

i'm not entirely sure why this is news, but the Times reported last week that young middle-class women are increasingly close to and connected with their moms -- and that this constitues a trend worthy of social scientific study. i suspect that as communications technologies come to permeate our daily lives, our social and personal relationships will be transformed as a result -- but conversely, social organization can also affect the technologies we cultivate and develop.

but there's a certain shortsightedness in suggesting that it's a new development for daughters to stay emotionally close to their mothers. on the contrary, i think the unprecedented mobility of the middle classes in the past half century has separated adult children from their families to a degree that may be unusual compared to most other cultures and time periods. although traditional marriage practices have often taken young women away from their parents, closely knit extended families are historically more the norm than the highly mobile nuclear families of the postindustrial United States. perhaps the ubiquity of cellphones is reconnecting young women to their mothers, and permitting the kinds of close relationshops that are beneficial for many people, rather than somehow prolonging childhood in an unhealthy way.

to report this as newsworthy suggests more about American conceptions of maturity and adulthood, in which independence and individualism are valued over close family relationships. i think these underlying assumptions represent a much more interesting topic of study than the fact that daughters like to spend time on the phone with their mothers.

so via Broadsheet, i noticed the news that MySpace has partnered with a "background verificantion" firm (Sentinel Tech Holdings Corp) to create a database of convicted sex offenders, which MySpace then used to begin expunging users who were cross-listed. of course, not all sex offenders are pedophiles, and statutory rape laws still mean that sometimes consenting teen couples have sex across age lines, and the older partner is charged and becomes a registered offender. but fine, so MySpace is trying to keep convicted sex offenders off the site, as a way to respond to charges from both legislators, the press, parents and others that social networking sites are havens for predators seeking to lure naive children to their lairs (or wherever) and abuse them.

According to CNN (via Reuters), MySpace worked out a legal way to hand over this information to government officials (a group of state attorney generals). So far, they've deleted about 7,000 profiles identified as belong to sex offenders (out of a total of about 180 million (that's about 0.00004% for the curious).

as usual, i think this raises some issues of privacy -- does being convicted of a sexual offense deprive you of your right to create online profiles, and is any profile you create subject to government surveillance? i imagine MySpace has some legal standing in denying accounts to sex offenders, but i think targeting all sex offenders so widely tends to conflate a range of offenses as equally dangerous, when they may not be.

but in my mind, the bigger question still revolves around the visibility of MySpace against the actual risk to young people who use the service. the Connecticut attorney general was quoted as saying "Social networking sites should not be playgrounds for predators." and yet, most children are still at much greater risk from people they know than strangers on the internet -- a risk which can be further minimized by basic safety practices around meeting new people online.

perhaps it makes sense for all minors with MySpace accounts to have private profiles, so only their friends can see their personal info -- but digital technologies tend to make it difficult to ascertain the real age of members. digital media require learning new habits for safety and protection, similar to being cautious with personal financial information. the danger of "predators" on MySpace is continually hyped in the media (even the usually critical blog Broadsheet jumping in), at the expense of the most common forms of abuse experienced by children. perhaps after we insure that all American children have health insurance and are free from violence or abuse at home, we can begin to concern ourselves with digital dangers. until then, though, we have to keep asking why sex offenders seem to capture the legal imagination and divert our attention away from the less sensationalistic violence of the everyday.

Sex-Crazed Co-Eds! - Nerve.com Screening Room

the author, Annsley Chapman, isn't exactly flawless in her logic (young women today are just unashamed of casual sex, and are too busy pursuing the opportunities furnished to them by feminists of yore to focus on establishing more longterm, committed relationships), but it's nice to hear a little dissent from actual college-aged women, over and against the tiresome clamor of older feminist and non-feminists alike (Ariel Levy and Caitlin Flanagan come to mind, and Chapman points to a number of others equally poorly poised to speak for young women).

Chapman's gloss of the current fruits of feminism remains a little thin, though -- i'm not remotely convinced that today's college women are graduating into a world of boundless gender equality and consequence-free casual sex (rates of HPV and HSV are still pretty high last time i looked, a reminder to be attentive to safer sex, not give up on sexual freedom altogether). and she explicitly emphasizes the lives of white, middle-class, straight girls, typically minimizing the visibility of women whose experiences and social positions often place them outside mainstream public debate.

but Chapman is right to call attention to both the tone of recent critics, and their tenuous claims to speak with authority about the lives of young women today. girls and not boys are still being held disproportionately accountable for changing attitudes towards sex, which only reinforces the reality of unequal gender relations that persist in our culture.

Caitlin Flanagan (about whom I have many reservations, thanks to reading Salon's Broadsheet too frequently) succeeds in resisting the tempting moral outrage over the news that young people are having oral sex, in particular, girls casually performing fellatio on their male acquaintances. but despite Flanagan's willingness to probe the topic of youthful hummers with some measure of sensitivity and introspection (including some meandering through Judy Blume and other young adult novels), she contributes to the distorted media contention that teens today are having disproportionate amounts of oral sex, in which young women have renegged on their own sexual desire in favor of performing a media-inspired, pornified sexuality for their peers.

in particular, Flanagan doesn't appear to have looked closely at the very study which supposedly bolsters the controversy over teen oral sex, writing "[a] huge report was issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. It covered the topic of teenage oral sex more extensively than any previous study, and the news was devastating: A quarter of girls aged fifteen had engaged in it, and more than half aged seventeen." interestingly, what the study actually reports (the pdf from the CDC can be found here) is that a third of all boys 15-17 have had vaginal intercourse, while slightly less (28%) have given oral sex and slightly more (40%) have received it, and of young men 18-19, two-thirds had had vaginal sex, 52% had performed oral sex on a woman, and 66% had received oral sex -- that is, the same percentage of men 18-19 had engaged in vaginal sex as had received oral sex. among teenage girls and young women, over one-third of 15-17 year olds had had vaginal sex (39%), 30% had given oral sex, and 38% had received it -- again, fewer had actually performed oral sex on a male partner than had engaged in vaginal sex, and the same percentage had received oral sex as had had intercourse. for older girls, the study repeats the findings, that as girls get older, most of those who are having vaginal sex are also engaging in oral activities. the study further explains that in each age group, about 10-14% of young men and boys who had had oral sex had not had intercourse, and about 9-11% of young women aged 15-19 had engaged in oral sex only. as the percentage of young men 15-24 increases who have had intercourse, the percent who have only tried oral sex declines to 3%.

these data, shockingly, suggest that sexually active teens who are engaging in vaginal intercourse are also likely to experiment with oral sex (giving and receiving), and that only a small proportion have had oral sex but not intercourse. over time, the majority of sexually active young people will be having intercourse as well as oral sex. and while slightly more men report receiving oral sex than giving it, of the young women surveyed, more actually reported receiving it than giving it (how this adds up remains to be seen).

so what gives? why is the media continuing to promote the myth that girl-on-boy oral sex is rampant amongst youth (in place of good old-fashioned intercourse), when the data indicate that young people begin experimenting with oral sex, but ultimately resort to the heteronormative standby? this report seems consistent with my own recollection of sexual exploration among my peers at that age -- perhaps attitudes toward oral sex have changed in the past 30 years, so that it's now considered an intermediate step between heavy making out and intercourse, but that doesn't remotely support the premise that scads of young women are suddenly going down on their male peers without reservation.

unfortunately, not only does Flanagan accept the media reports in place of reading the statistics for herself, she ultimately reduces female sexuality to women's delicate, emotional nature: "I am old-fashioned enough to believe that men and boys are not as likely to be wounded, emotionally and spiritually, by early sexual experience, or by sexual experience entered into without romantic commitment, as are women and girls." boys, of course, have unlimited sexual appetites whose bases are unquestionably biological and unemotional, whereas women are fragile flowers who need to be loved and cared for to protect them from the dangers of sexual pleasure. not only is this line of thinking offensive and demeaning to women, but it perpetuates the equally damaging idea that men don't bring emotional needs to sexual relationships.

finally, she comes to the sparkling conclusion that "...the forces of feminism have worked relentlessly to erode the patriarchy--which, despite its manifold evils, held that providing for the sexual safety of young girls was among its primary reasons for existence." yes, that's right, the systematic domination of women in Western society actually represents a safety net that protects the delicacy of youthful femininity from the ravages of early sexuality, and has nothing to do with controlling and exploiting female reproductive capacity. i think the prevalance of rape and domestic violence in Western societies offers an excellent testament to the protective role of the Patriarchy (TM). if anyone is going to challenge the media's portrayal of youthful sexual behavior, or investigate how sexual norms are changing and what implicatons that might entail, clearly it's not going to be Ms. Flanagan. parents, the media, and other public voices too often retain this prurient tone in which their fears over female sexual desire overshadow the ways in which teens are actually exploring and experimenting with their sexuality in a decade of abstinence-only education and abundant internet porn. perhaps instead of frothing over "rainbow parties" and other urban legends, we should be thinking through what kinds of positive messages about sexuality we actually want to be transmitting to young people.

still, clearly Wikipedia cannot offer a neutrally produced body of knowledge -- all knowledge is situated and specific to the contexts in which it emerged. Wikipedia is necessarily a result of the communities that collaborate on it -- particularly those that are technologically enabled, and often academically informed. establishing "Conservapedia" strikes me as a bit fruitless, since once you assert your political position openly, you've already marked your ideas in a particular way. i suspect that the original site will maintain its dominant ground as the unmarked, normative version which most people will prefer. it's bad enough when students try to use Wikipedia as an academic reference -- imagine those who try to support their arguments with an explicitly biased source!

Conservapedia aside, i'm also not convinced that "bias" is the most pressing issue limiting Wikipedia's legitimacy. i'm interested more in its overall structure as a site of knowledge production -- in particular, what kinds of entries are created in the first place? i've noticed an increasing number of individual figures with their own Wikipedia page (especially those who are well-known online, like jwz, danah boyd, and howard rheingold), as well as night clubs, internet memes, and various contemporary yet transient topics. should every person, place, and concept ultimately have its own page? of course, entries on Wikipedia tend to reflect its users' predilections for all things digitally mediated, a tendency i think is more significant than any alleged "liberal bias."

generally, i accept the premise that Wikipedia's content is regulated by an interactive style of editing that allows users to continually tweak and rewrite entries according to their own level of engagement with a given topic, and i'm often impressed by the quality of articles on historical figures, terms from critical theory, and general knowledge of popular culture, all of which make the encyclopedia incredibly useful for general reference. but at what point does it become a promotional site for certain kinds of people and ideas, or an archive of internet fads? the open editing process of a wiki can't exercise much influence over what kinds of entries are useful or appropriate, something that more traditional editing might allow. interestingly, Wikipedia has been using "dis-ambiguation" pages recently to clarify related terms and redirect users to pages of interest. i think this highlights some of the possible drawbacks of an interactive, communally produced reference work. perhaps the proliferation of pages will be managed through user interest and will self-regulate in practice, but it's worth considering how interactive and collaborative sites of knowledge may privilege certain trends, ideas, and information over others. Wikipedia's conservative detractors are feeling nervous precisely because of that potential ability to dominate popular thought.

i was in graduate school at the University of Chicago when Vita Excolatur was first published (prompting me to write my own proposal for a more genderqueer magazine called "Cum Laude," but the demands of my thesis prevented anything from coming to, um, fruition). at the time, i was largely unimpressed by the amateur and somewhat pretentious forays into "polyamory" and "sadomasochism," neither of which appeared to have been informed by participants in those sexual subcultures (polyamory was imagined as a typical menage-a-trois, and the S&M surely would've disappointed Foucault).

still, the article alights on a number of themes which have been recurring in the media on the topics of youth, sex, exhibitionism, and social media. author alexandra jacobs repeats the popular notion that young people today are so saturated with "overt sexual imagery" even among the "educated elite" that "maybe it's not so strange that students are confronting their own sex lives so graphically and publicly." our culture, we are reminded, increasingly embraces fetishistic exhibitionism, especially for women, who attract inappropriate sexual attention through suggestive clothing and provocative pictures. jacobs stops short of concluding that young women today are proof that the patriarchy has won, subjecting them to its overarching ideology of female sexual display for masculine consumption.

but neither can jacobs resist the ubiquity of social networking sites in the lives of young people, such as Facebook and MySpace: "to attend college now means to participate in a culture of constant two-dimensional preening" where students can immediately check one another's online profiles, complete with revealing photos. but what, exactly, is so flat and superficial about online profiles? of course, these websites streamline individual interests into predetermined categories, producing identities which revolve around popular media and digital imagery. at the same time, digital spaces often reproduce the kinds of semiotic indicators we all deploy in the three-dimensional world of flesh to communicate social and cultural positions to each other, such as fashion, bodily comportment, brand labels, and consumer products. social networking sites may intensify these tendencies, but they also provide spaces for youth to engage in creative appropriation of popular media, reconfiguring music, words, and images in a semiotic assemblage of individual subject position.

the world of college porn ultimately emerges as too diverse to summarize or criticize easily in a few words, when some of the magazines challenge gender norms, while the editor of Harvards' H-Bomb was quoted as saying "I don't think men and women are equal at all. I think we're different, and what's wrong with that?" clearly, she's never read Donna Haraway or Anne Fausto-Sterling on the social and cultural conditions under which sciences like biology are produced, including the biological construction of sex. but i remain suspicious of how young women today are frequently depicted as conflicted about sexuality, unhappy with the reality of their erotic encounters, and displacing personal desire onto performed sexuality, expressed in the emerging predilection for "slutty" and "sexy" costumes on Halloween (or just out at clubs and parties). without seeking to dismiss these concerns, it strikes me that there may be deeper currents beneath the surface of co-ed porn rags and risque MySpace profiles which deserve greater critical analysis and attention.

French philosopher and social theorist Jean Baudrillard dies

the video is pretty predictable -- new youth subculture poses risks to YOUR kids! be on the look out for skinny pants and tight sweaters in dark colors -- they might lead to suicidal ideation! but the best part appears to be the newscasters' misrecognition of internet humor sites as legitimate guides to emo culture. such as the "Insta Emo Kit" at Sykospark.net. they also report on a supposed "point" system, which they acknowledge may be more symbolic than literal -- and of course, youth subculture often does rely on schema of cultural capital (specialized knowledge of scene norms, taste preferences, and slang) to confer status and credibility.

but as usual, hyping fears of the internet, self harm, and youth subculture does little to address the real difficulties many young people face navigating the educational system, media, and consumerism in a postindustrial world where they are frequently targeted by mass media and corporate interests, and where "youth" has become a dominant symbol for what's new, hip, and desirable in mass culture.

I Must Be Emo - News Report

So You've Decided You Want To Become a Goth

the humor is mostly aimed at folks involved in the goth/industrial club scene (and fans of goth-comedy band the Gothsicles), and to some degree rehashes inside jokes about sp00ky pseudonyms and the fine line between pretentious and poseur. still, it's nice to see a bit of self-produced subcultural media rather than predictable sensationalizing accounts in the popular press.

(thanks to dougie for the link)

at the risk of tooting the same tinny horn all the time, this just clamors "social anxiety! social anxiety!" the study purports to have relied on the "Narcissistic Personality Inventory," in which over 16,000 college-age students were surveyed between 1982 and 2006 using this psychological evaluation survey. admittedly, i tend to be wary of this kind of quantitative data, largely due to my own investments in ethnography and qualitative methods. what does it really tell us that students are increasingly agreeing with statements like "I think I am a special person" and "I can live my life any way I want to?" could this represent a part of larger cultural shifts in how we conceive of ourselves in American society? does this index actually indicate anything about social and behavioral changes, and is it sufficient to assess such cognitive trends?

but now i'm confused, because only a few days ago, APA researchers were all worked up about the negative effects of media on girl's self-esteem -- so it self-esteem good, or bad? or are researchers just bandying the term about without careful definition? given the cultural specificity of Western conceptions of selfhood, some care and clarity would be welcomed here. still, lead author Jean Twenge seems to think that today's youth are less empathic and more self-centered, and cautions that this shift could have damaging ramifications for society generally. as i've said before, youth are often a site where social anxieties are expressed concerning social reproduction, and youth are frequently and vaguely blamed for social changes that many find threatening. but are youth initiating these changes, or products of them?

the best part of this morning's interview with Twenge was when she claimed to hold the media responsible first, then parents and schools. ah, of course. but which media? that's right, magazines and television, in particular those that pander to youth. at no time did she point out that those media are generated for the sake of attracting advertising revenues, and that corporate interests tend to shape the media through which they promote their products. lastly, of course, Twenge includes MySpace and YouTube as proof that media are increasingly capitalizing on the narcissistic tendencies of today's youth, sites which revolve around individual identity. but perhaps these websites embody the same kind of cultural shifts that lead students to respond differently to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. before asserting that changing attitudes signal dangerous trends in personal relationships, clearly closer research is needed to investigate how young people conceive of themselves, how they relate to others, and how they use (and produce) media.