User:Lassebosch/2ndyr/thesis
Lasse van den Bosch Christensen
SKELETON
TITLE: I, for one, welcome our new Overlords
QUESTIONS
What are the characteristics of relationships between a provider of a controlled, closed platform and its community?
Is such a relationship only biased towards the provider? Meaning that the provider hosts the platform, nourish and build up the community on the purpose to generate a monetary value.
How are feelings of both awe and frustration expressed towards the provider during critical periods within platform such as a program-retirement.
How does a community resist the provider?
INTRO:COMMUNITY PANIC
In may 2012 Google announces to sell it's popular 3D-modeling-software Google Sketchup. Within the ownership of Google, the software gained a lot of attention as a tool to populate Google Earth with models made in Google Sketchup. A strong community of so called 'geo-modelers' grew forth aided and supported by Google. On a voluntary basis these dedicated modelers would spend hours building models to be pushed to Google Earth, motivated by pride in having 'modeled your own town' and knowing that you would be part of a community that actually would build a virtual copy of the earth.
In this introductory chapter i will describe situation, setting and spirit withing the community of voluntary geo-modellers in the intimidate after-wake of the selling. How users panicked, showing their frustration by cutting their contributions, but also how others had immense faith in the new, as well as the old provider. They welcomed the new Overlords.
FOCUS: A traumatized community; uncertain future prospects.
<code> ...I deleted all my [...] models!
...I will also delete all my models!
...It is Over.
...People are starting to Jump!
...I, for one, welcome our new [...] Overlords.</code>
Shortly after Google officially announces the selling of it's popular 3D-software 'Google Sketchup', panic is spreading among it's huge 3d-modellers community. The users are split in two camps; one camp skeptical towards the unknown implications of an owner change, while the second camp tries to pour oil on the troubled waters attempting a more pragmatic, optimistic approach.
FURTHER: explain the purpose of the thesis - what will happen.
With the notion of 'crowdsourcing', and the current case as a vantage point this text seeks to cover the dynamics of user-provider relationships, looking critically at pitfalls and 'positives' of such symbiosis.
I: Another Case
(book: Uncovering Labour in Information Revolutions, 1750–2000, http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/regional-and-world-history-general-interest/uncovering-labour-information-revolutions-17502000-volume-11)
This chapter will see so-far discussed case in relation to the 'AOL Community Leader Program'. This case has quite strong parallels to the situation within the Sketchup community. Former community leaders describes their relationship with AOL "like a bad relationship", hard to get out of, while geo-modellers express similar 'bittersweet' frustrations. It will look at AOL's argument for using the community: 'This whole volunteerism community and the participants are what makes the Internet' and engage in the discussion of the Utopian visions of the internet and how it has been appropriated to accommodate a business model.
The 'AOL Community Leader Program' roots dates back to the use of online remote volunteer "guides" by AOL predecessor QuantumLink at its start in 1985. In the early 1990's 'The Community Leader Program' was officially established, running until its discontinuation in 2005. At the peak of the program, it is estimated that AOL had approximately 14,000 volunteers.(book:Aol by George) AOL customers could volunteer to become 'Community Leaders', carrying a wide range of responsibilities such as hosting chats, board-monitoring, providing customer service and managing forum content. "In exchange for their services, AOL provided free service to their volunteers. Community Leaders also received special accounts (Price Index 77 or Overhead Accounts) that allowed them to restrict disruptive chat, hide inappropriate message board postings, and access private areas on the AOL service, such as the Community Leader Headquarters (CLHQ)." (wiki)
"Although at times controversial, the Community Leader program arguably played a substantial role in the rapid growth and success of the America Online service in the mid-1990s. Because they were usually recruited from the more active users of a particular online forum, Community Leaders were often very passionate about the area for which they volunteered their time. This enthusiasm usually resulted in a greater sense of community and a higher level of professionalism in that forum. This in turn gave the AOL service more value over the less organized "frontier" of the Internet, at least in the eyes of users new to the online scene at the time. It also provided oversight with respect to forum content by knowledgeable individuals." (wiki)
In 1999 seven former community leaders "asked the Department of Labor to investigate whether AOL owes them back wages. On May 25, two of the seven filed a complaint against AOL in federal court in New York, the first volley in a class-action lawsuit that is expected to drag on for over a year. Their attorney Leon Greenberg contends that the arrangement amounts to an illegal "cyber-sweatshop." On July 22, AOL announced the elimination of its youth corps, 350 teenaged CLs. Scores of people have asked to join the lawsuit, say its filers. Meanwhile, the other 13,643-odd volunteers continue to report to "work" on AOL.
Who are these people who choose to personify the 800-pound gorilla of the online world, night after night, virtually for free? And what in the world did AOL do to anger this posse? As much as the lawsuit's outcome will set a precedent for compensating online labor in the future, it offers a window into the weird and wacky world of cyber-codependence - right at the intersection between corporate and personal identity.
"I'm torn by the lawsuit," says Nancy, who is typical of the dozen CLs interviewed for this story. On the one hand, she'd like to get paid for her work; on the other, she doesn't want to lose her volunteer position. Keep her talking, though, and Nancy starts to sound less like a disgruntled employee and more like a battered wife. "I love AOL even though they're really shitty to me," she laughs. "It's like a bad relationship I can't get out of."
(wired 1999: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.10/volunteers.html)
AOL and many other Internet companies have gone a step further, enlisting volunteers in a structured fashion to help control the traffic that can verge on chaos in the virtual world. The question raised now is whether such companies are riding to profitability on the backs of unpaid workers.
AOL defends the system, saying it's part of the culture of the Web.
This whole volunteerism community and the participants are what makes the Internet, said AOL spokeswoman Ann Brackbill.
Ms. Brackbill said volunteer work is coordinated by the company, since the company manages tens of thousands of chat rooms and needs to organize the services of its many volunteers.
But she said the tasks performed by the volunteers ``are very different from AOL employees, and we would make sure of that.
Ivillage.com, an Internet company where 1,100 volunteers outnumber staffers by more than five to one, issued a brief statement Wednesday defending its use of volunteers.
IVillage.com community leaders are true volunteers and not employees, the statement said. Our hope is that the Internet's participatory nature is not what's at issue here.
II: PRODUCTIVE USERS
FOCUS: How to harness the crowd to produce a desired output?
This chapter will extend the argument of exploitation of the "Internet's participatory nature" and look at more recent developments within this sphere. The idea of Crowdsourcing will be presented, as the key idea for shaping users who, essentially, will work for free. Here Jeff Hoeve's bible 'Crowd Sourcing - Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business' will be used as central source.
With this approach I will rewind to the case of Google Sketchup, and dig further into the reasons for google to provide such software, and subsequently selling it. Here's the official statement by the Google-team, on the acqqicition of Sketchup:
"...Already we’ve had hundreds of users create 3D content in SketchUp and place their models in Google Earth. (A free plug-in enables you to do this.) What will that virtual world look like when tens of thousands of users are doing the same?"
(http://googleblog.blogspot.nl/2006/03/new-home-for-last-software.html )
I will address the Google Educational program, which provided teaching for children/youth in the use of sketchup. Is this a sign of creating even more users, who are actually users; they are addicted to the software and very dependent on it.
I will address how world-wide competitions were set up by Google, such as 'Model your Town', as a mean to build up a troop of dedicated, spending hours producing models, competing, but also guiding and aiding each other. All for the sake of enriching a Google product.
III: More than a user?
FOCUS: Mutual dependence? Broaden the perspective of the second chapter. Bring back AOL but also GE-examples, look at the sweet in the bittersweet?
After having discussed the exploitation of the users in building up the virtual world for free, i will return to the community and address the fact that the users evolves strong emotional bonds towards the platform, each other as users, and the content they've produced. The provider plays a less 'dominant' role since the production is 'benefiting' the user it self. That is until this decides to shut down the platform.
- Enthusiasm among the users towards the provider but also towards each other.
- Welcoming the new Overlords
- Users benefit from genuine relationships with other users
- The provider, until a certain point, is dependent on content to be produced by the community. It actually has to invest time/energy/money in building up the community and spreading the program.
- While Google Earth is a product of Google, it's content has been created by real human-beings. It expresses a need for individuals to express themselves and build 'stuff' in participation with other individuals.
- Google Earth as 'a huge piece of craftsmanship and art' full of inconsistencies reflecting on all the various people around the world involved.
unordered notes/clippings
[...] As long as "WE" still have control over editing and the model information we uploaded remains the same, I won't care about anything else (that I can think of right now anyway). Furthermore, as long as the models still identify the Modeler .... so that "WE" are still recognized for each of our works, I think I'll be satisfied.
People are starting to Jump, personally I've started to remove models on a graduated basis. Regards,
We're doing our best. Please be patient and again, try not to react harshly (like removing models) until all the information is published.
All I can say is "Beware of Greeks Baring Gifts" Be very careful what you ask for as one day it just might come true and unfortunately, just when you least expect it and if you think a "overlord" is welcoming just look at history.
Crowdsourcing theory...: Main critique
//game-theory: design systems which generate outcome for the provider but enables 'freedom' for the individual. --> leads to next chapter
Provider/Workers-relationship
<code>- game-theory - crowd-control - self-constrainment - design systems which generate outcome for the provider but enables 'freedom' for the individual. - holmes/cybernetics - regulation/law/lessig - Latour: </code>
'Between a car driver that slows down near a school because she has seen the ‘30 MPH’ yellow sign and a car driver that slows down because he wants to protect the suspension of his car threatened by the bump of a ‘speed trap’, is the difference big or small? Big, since the obedience of the first has gone through morality, symbols, sign posts, yellow paint, while the other has passed through the same list to which has been added a carefully designed concrete slab. But it is small since they both have obeyed something: the first driver to a rarely manifested altruism—if she had not slowed down, her heart would have been broken by the moral law; the second driver to a largely distributed selfishness—if he had not slowed down his suspension would have been broken by the concrete slab. Should we say that only the first connection is social, moral and symbolic, and that the second is objective and material? No. But, if we say that both are social, how are we going to justify the difference between moral conduct and suspension springs? They might not be social all the way through, but they certainly are collected or associated together by the very work of road designers. One cannot call oneself a social scientist and pursue only some links—the moral, legal, and symbolic ones—and stop as soon as there is some physical relation interspersed in between the others. That would render any enquiry impossible.' p.77-78
<code>- a biased game?</code>
I, for one, welcome our new Trimble Overlords - Something more than just exploitation
<code>- the symbiosis (also forth coming in the source material - we are the gold farmers - the 'whatever'</code>
Links
http://www.mastersketchup.com/why-google-doesnt-need-sketchup-anymore/ http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/03/14/google.acquires.sketchup/ http://www.jonathansblog.net/google_earth_sketchup_plugin http://www.constructech.com/news/articles/article.aspx?article_id=9248&SECTION=1 http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2059388/Google-Buys-SketchUp-Google-To-Map-The-World-in-3D http://googlesystem.blogspot.nl/2006/03/google-acquires-sketchup-3d-sketching.html
http://news.cnet.com/Google-acquires-Last-Software/2100-1030_3-6049511.html
official blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.nl/2006/03/new-home-for-last-software.html
Upload to google earth:
http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/57057 https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/earth/BQ3Icb6N5Po
GREAT GROUPS:
examples of new mesh: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/3dwh/Cm_e8-f2EiM
"appeal a model" https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/3dwh/CKEFcdYVQeg
applause for craig d https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sketchup-pro/fS73Zo0kTHU
craig d thanks the community http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5465
alternative solutions open source (search matthiasbasler): https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum%2F3dwh&showsearch=true&showpopout=true&parenturl=http%3A%2F%2Fsketchup.google.com%2F3dwarehouse%2Fforum&hl=da#!topic/3dwh/epXUQA2bJ2s%5B1-25-false%5D
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/3dwh/-GQj7OlZshA%5B151-175-false%5D https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/3dwh&showsearch=true&showpopout=true&parenturl=http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/forum&hl=da#!searchin/3dwh/beryl$20reid/3dwh/12RpDeu4Z0M/5JF_3efZ8zYJ
LINKS
http://google-latlong.blogspot.no/2012/06/take-flight-through-new-3d-cities-on.html http://googleblog.blogspot.no/2012/06/never-ending-quest-for-perfect-map.html https://plus.google.com/+GoogleEarth/posts/RCTTNn6kcbA