IE Home Page: Part One

Topical rainforest is one of the biomes on earth which covers 6% of the land surface. More than 50% of all the world's plant and animal species live there. On one tree in Peru Amazon, the number of ant species is 43, which is equivalent to the species of ants found in Britain. Tropical rainforests produce 40% of earth's oxygen, soak in carbon dioxide, and help to maintain global weather patterns and precipitation. However, due to human impact, tropical rainforest is disappearing at an astonishing speed. The most severe threat to the rainforest is human intervention for timber, grazing land and agriculture. From year 1990 to 2000, 142,000 km2　of tropical rainforests had been lost, which is equivalent to 5000-8000 m2 every minute of trees being cut. If this goes on, rainforests would disappear in 40 years. We have to stop destroying forests and depriving animal's home.

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I am working on making a series of posts on my IE homepage, Xanga. Due to over deforest, many animals have lost their places to live. Therefore my sticky message will begin with the presentation of a picture, titled "Where is our home?". I posted my research and visual picture on Xanga as above.

My Xanga home page URL is http://www.xanga.com/MichelleHu.

Social Software for IE

I am going to use Mixi, one of the SNS sites in Japan, for my IE homepage.

＜Explanation from Wikipedia＞
Users can send and receive messages, write in a diary, read and comment on others' diaries, organize and join communities and invite their friends.There are more than 4 million members and 490,000 communities. (May 2006)
・A community is a place for people to share their opinions through an online forum and a way to express tastes and hobbies.
・A footprint ashiato (足あと, ashiato) is a function that allows a user to see who has visited their page.
・mixi is an invitation-only service, meaning that one can only join via an invitation from a current member of the service. However, once invited, membership is free and open to anyone over 18.
・The word mixi is a combination of mix and I, referring to the idea that the user, "I", "mixes" with other users through the service.

Issue Entrepreneurship Framework

1. Identify developing issues

I will send out the message: “protect the environment.” Even though human has become the most powerful resident on earth, we are only one of 1.4 million identified animal species living on the planet. From invertebrate to vertebrate to homo sapience, various organisms coexisted for more than 20,000 years. But the balance among lives is being destroyed by the unstopping increase of human population and activity. In this IE, I will focus on the present state of tropical rain forest destruction to send an alarm on the environment crisis due to human impact. I will suggest saving paper to stop the destruction of forests.

2. Research and analyze issues
Topical rainforest is one of the biomes on earth which covers 6% of the land surface. More than 50% of all the world's plant and animal species live there. On one tree in Peru Amazon, the number of ant species is 43, which is equivalent to the species of ants found in Britain. Tropical rainforests produce 40% of earth's oxygen, soak in carbon dioxide, and help to maintain global weather patterns and precipitation. However, due to human impact, tropical rainforest is disappearing at an astonishing speed. The most severe threat to the rainforest is human intervention for timber, grazing land and agriculture. From year 1990 to 2000, 142,000 km2　of tropical rainforests had been lost, which is equivalent to 5000-8000 m2 every minute of trees being cut. If this goes on, rainforests would disappear in 40 years.

3. Stake out a public position - your sticky message
My sticky message is "Protect the Environment." My focus will be on saving and recycling paper. I spread the message targeting on young people especially students who are one of the biggest consumers of paper.

4. Build social network
My organizational base is my friends, classmates and relatives. I will send E-mail through both computer and cell phone to friends at ICU and friends from elementary to high school. I will send E-mail by computer to my relatives who live in different parts of the world. Therefore my message will be spread to five countries, Japan, China, USA, Canada and France, through four different languages. In addition SNS called Mixi and the class blog will be my organizational base, so that more people can receive my message.

5. IE homepage: Stake out a personal public presence
I will make a poster by Gliffy writing my message and background information. I will post this on the class blog and Mixi. Also, I will send the poster with my blog URL by computer email. I will send the URL of my Gliffy poster with the URL of my blog to cell phones through mailing list. In order to connect me and nodes, nodes to nodes, I will make a “commenting space” on my blog to invite the readers to react on this issue and to encourage their interaction with each other as well.

Revised: Summary and Personal Reaction to "Linked" (Barabasi p 1-8)

Summary

In the book, Barabasi mentions the importance and powerfulness of networks. He compares MafiaBoy, a fifteen-year-old boy who hacked the Internet, with Paul, a clergyman who spread Christianity to the Western world. Even though, the former being a destroyer and the latter a builder, there is one significant common feature in their actions: the effective use of networks. Their success in giving a large influence to the world was due to the existence of strong interconnectedness among people. Barabasi writes that all networks surprisingly have an underlying order and follow simple laws. Scientists are mapping networks in a wide range of scientific disciplines, proving that social networks, companies, and cells are more similar than they are different, and providing new insights into the interconnected world around us. Barabasi criticizes reductionism that divides the whole into combination of simple parts. Because everything is linked to everything else, nothing happens in isolation. In order to understand a phenomenon as a whole, we must pay attention to all the connection it has. Barabasi’s sticky message in this chapter is “think networks.”

Reaction

Barabasi writes, “The challenges doctors face when they attempt to cure a disease by focusing on a single molecule or gene, disregarding the complex interconnectedness of living matter."

According to Western medicine, human body is defined as a system consisted of different organs, which are composed of different tissues and cells. Western cure focuses on organ, tissue, cell, even a bio-molecule, which is the concept of dividing a whole into small pieces. The treatment policy is based on targeting directly at the point of disease by giving drugs or performing operation. Usually such treatments are harmful to other parts of body because of the ignorance of the fact that human body is a system just like a network.

In the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), human body is considered to be a part of nature based on a number of philosophical frameworks including the theory of yin-yang and the five elements refering to wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Therefore, diagnosis and treatment are conducted with reference to the above concepts, and interrelationship beteen human body and environment are emphasyzed. Chinese medicine focuses on the balance and connection among organs and tissues. A dose of Chinese medicine is usually composed of more than 20 herbs, which contains hundreds even thousands of chemical components. Even though most of the components are unknown, the Chinese medicine is proved to be effective by the practice of more than 2000 years and by the modern technology of sciences.

In conclusion, the two medical systems, Western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine, have a different view on human body. The former focuses on parts of body, whereas the latter focuses on the network linking human body and natural environments.

Testing

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Answer to Questions: Agre, p. 201, pp. 211-214

1. What is the central problem for citizens in democracies?

The central problem is finding out in what ways can a citizen's voice be heard among millions of people and participate successfully in a society .

2. What skills do citizens need?
The skills needed are to build social capital and participate in collective production and circulation of political arguments. Also it is important for citizens to associate themselves with issues.

3. What term does the author use to describe the process citizens use to promote their concerns about an issue?
The author writes that citizens could make it in "entrepreneurial fashion by identifying issues that are coming to prominence, researching and analyzing them, staking out public positions on them, and building social networks of other citizens who have associated themselves with related issues, especially those whose positions are ideologically compatible."

4. What steps are the four steps in this process?

The process has four dimensions which are

・Vertical dimension: a person staking out an issue on the national level will connect with people who stake out the same issue on global or the regional level

・Geographic dimension: a person staking out issue in a given geographic jurisdiction will connect with their counterparts in other jurisdictions

・Institutional dimension: a person staking out an issue within one institutional context will connect with those who stake out the same issue in other institutions

・Ideological dimension: a person staking out ideologically related positions on different issues in similar institutional locations will connect with on another

The four dimensions are definite network stucture and requires a large number of particular negotiations and a great deal of issue-by-issue coalition- building stabilized by ideology.

Write two of your own questions on the ideas and issues raised in this section. Lead a class discussion next session.

5. By making what kind of attempt do you think your voice can be heard in the society?

6. The author wrote that "individuals can stake out issues and build political networks with in their professions, their churches, their unions, their industries, or their political organizations." Where will you begin with to build your networks and how will you do that?

7. Based on the ideas and issues raised on these pages, what additions, deletions, or modifications suggest themselves to you in planning and implementing your Issue Entrepreneurship? Tell about your ideas.

As the author stated in the last paragraph, "democratic republicanism is a stroy not of perfection but of progess" reminded me that the attempt to spread an issue through my network is taking a part in the democratic community and offer some influence even if it is just a little bit of change I can make. Therefore, I will try to propagate my message by as much ways as I can think of and through as much net work as I can make.

Mapping My IE Network

I have decided my sticky message to be "Protect the Environment." My focus will be on saving and recycling paper. I will spread this idea in the slogan of "Save one piece of paper from you and me!"

I will try to spread the message to as many people as possible, especially targeting on young people. Therefore, I have chosen several major pathways to propagate my idea by the means of E-mail, cell phone, and oral.

・Spread the message to ICU students beginning by using the mailing list of ELP section, Karate club, Social dance club, and biology major, and ask them to spread to their friends by the network they have

・ Spread the message to my friends from elementary, junior high, and high school, by sending e-mail to elementary friends, posting on the junior high school homepage we have, sending e-mail to high school classmates by mailing list

・Ask my parents, who are teachers in university, to spread the message to their students

・Ask my grandfather, who is a professor in China, to spread the message to his graduate students

・Ask　my aunt, who is a teacher in college in Beijing, to spread the message to her students and colleagues

・Ask my cousins, who are university students in France, Canada, US, and China, respectively, to spread the message to their friends

・Post the message on SNS called Mixi and ask my friends to access to my blog and if possible post the slogan on their homepages as well.

Finally, because I will use 3 languages to propagate my message and my relatives will use the language of the country they live in, the message will be spread in 4 different languages (Japanese, Chinese, French, and English ) that hopefully will have impact on many people around the world.

Summary of Kahn and Kellner (p.183-185, p.190-198)

The book talks about how online communities can promote democracy and social justice on local and global scale. For example, during the Iraq War, political groups such as MoveOn and A.N.S.W.E.R used Internet to circulate antiwar information and promoted a global antiwar activities. The public demonstration of millions of people calling for peace on February15, 2003 awakened us to realize that the Internet has become a new tool for democracy.
The online community has enabled people who are interested in politics and culture to participate and exchange ideas. The development of this new media is reconfiguring politics and culture and promoting participatory democratic politics in everyday life.

Answers to Barabasi: The Sixth Link pp25-35

1.What is the principle of six degrees of separation? What number of social links does any one person need to be connected to global society?

The principle of six degrees of separation is that despite our society's enormous size, it can easily be navigate by following social links from one person to another. Being connected to global society requires barely more than one social link per person.


2.How is the fabric of society today different from pre-internet society?

It is different in that we can get more information and get them quicker.


3. How many more links separate any pair of web pages compared to people in society? What can explain the difference?

Web pages are separated by nineteen links whereas people are separated by six links. This is because web pages have access to links connected to the same topic.


4. So far, what ranges of separation have network scientists discovered in different kinds of networks?

They have discovered that species in food webs are two links away from each other, molecules in the cells are separated on three chemical reactions, scientists in different fields of science are separated by four to six co authorship links and that the neurons in the brain of the C. elegans worm are separated by fourteen synapses.


5. What does research suggest about the fundamentals of networks?

The research used mathematical formula to suggest that average separation is very sort in most networks.


6. What is your estimate of your personal number of connections to society? What connections are your strongest?

My strongest connection would be with university students. Most of my friends are students, including people in other countries as well.