Sinéad

My current assignment for the Applied Cyberpsychology module is to develop a wiki. Which I finished working on last night. The criteria was that it had to in some way incorporate a topic in organisational or educational psychology. So I decided to create a wiki for students, that taught them about group work and also how to best use the Internet as a tool for collaborating online. I called it Project Spaces and you can find it here.

At first I was against the idea of creating a wiki by myself, and argued with the lecturer with regard to this. Part of this project involves asking the target audience (i.e. students) to view the wiki, and ask them about it’s usefulness. It was suggested that the individuals that were invited to view the wiki would naturally add content to it, and thus the wiki would mature. What I’ve actually found is that I might have done too much work and have been told that it reads like a complete wiki. I hadn’t expected that, but I guess I’ll just have to write that into my reflective essay.

Pat Phelan has been giving away some amazing prizes this week, has raised €1222.00 for the Cancer ward at Crumlins Childrens Hospital and has been busy encouraging the donation of old mobile phones to the Jack & Jill Foundation.

He also made Christmas come early for me yesterday with the delivery of the mystery “nice prize” I won. I had joked on his blog that “This could make the FIRST interesting unboxing video” but I was far too excited to do so. Considering that the mystery turned out to be a lovely little Flip video camera I decided I’d film a quick little video to say thank you. It really *IS* an easy little thing to use, and within 5 minutes of opening it I had the 1 minute .avi file on my computer and ready to upload to youtube (that was the part that took the longest!). You can find my cringe worthy video here (as always with youtube, best viewed in high quality mode).

Following on from Pat’s give-away, Damien Mulley has another competition, in association with a supporter of the foundation. Anyone that donates one or more phones will be entered into a draw to win some more gadgey goodness. Everyone has old mobile phones, so why not put them to some real use? There is even a freepost address you can send them to:

The Jack and Jill Mobile Appeal, Freepost, Ratoath Road, Finglas, Dublin 11.

Just put the phone and charger (if you have it) into a jiffy bag and pop in the post. It couldn’t be simplier. I asked everyone in the house to fish out their old phones (pictured above, along side the Flip camera on it’s tripod) and I’ll be posting them after Christmas.

Niall Kitson from PC Live! does a “Blogger in Profile” feature every month, Alexia Golez and Anthony McGuinness have gone before me and the December issue was my turn. So, here is an unedited (thus far longer, because I can’t shut my mouth) version of the Q&A.

You decided to study bloggers and their readerships for your post grad. What have you learned so far?

At the moment I’m still in the preparatory stage of my research. What this basically means is that I’m reading almost every single piece of literature already written about blogging, knowledge sharing and the social psychology on the internet. That last one is probably the one that stands out the most because blogging can be extremely social. Blogs have this amazing potential to offer social support, friendship and positive interactions through feedback from readers. Blogging has genuinely had a  positive impact on many bloggers lives, because feedback can serve as an acknowledgement of your thoughts, emotions and sense of self. Then of course there are the bloggers that blog to share their knowledge, instead of their lives. Sometimes this is done because of the positive effects upon reputation and sometimes it is a purely altruistic act. It’s fascinating.

Right now I’m looking at the possible cultural differences in blogging practices. The reason I’m looking at this is because I’m curious as to why blogging is huge in other countries and yet seemingly low profile here in Ireland. Though, I do believe in quality over quantity, that is to say that  the majority of Irish blogs are either very well written or incredibly entertaining. It has been suggested that poor broadband penetration is a key aspect as to why the adoption of blogging has been slow, but today over a million  Irish Internet users have access to a broadband connection, and we have become a nation of social networkers, photo-sharers and you-tube watchers It’s simply not a valid argument any more. I’m hoping my research can shed some light on the matter.

As a community what do you think of the Irish Blogosphere?

The Irish Blogosphere isn’t the first online community that I’ve interacted with. Over the years I’ve been a member of numerous web forums and long ago even usenet groups. The biggest difference, for me, was how quickly I began feeling like a member of the Irish blogging community. With other online groups it took months of interactions online before I started feeling like a member of the in-group. No heckling of the newbie occurs and there are no obvious exclusive cliques, though there are members that would be thought of more highly that others. Flaming is very rare. There are debates and discussions, but it rarely gets personal, which is something that can turn many people away from web forums – that fear of being ostracised. The thing that stands out for me about the Irish blogging community is their ability to offer support to one another without hesitation. Be it technical, informational, or even emotional.

Your writing demonstrates a real creative streak but you keep your content factual. Have you been tempted to post some fiction?

Any student of a Psychology will tell you that the biggest lesson you learn in college is to write objectively, and to always be able to back up any argument with valid and reliable facts. It can be difficult to separate my academic self from my writing, and if I post an article that in essence is my actual opinion on something, I will always back it up with solid facts. Maintaining a high level of quality and keeping with the theme of my blog is important to me, this is one of the reasons I don’t post articles on a daily basis. I have, however, tried to incorporate a few personally orientated posts, and I find this quite rewarding in itself. More recently I’ve been channelling my own creativeness into a separate blog project, related to poetry and photography. It’s not unnatural for bloggers to have more than one blog and I have done this to provide myself with a separate, non-serious vehicle online.

Are blogs really breaking the web?

Blogs might not be breaking the web, but I certainly don’t think they could be considered a replacement to websites or even wikis, as a source of information. The software behind blogging is temporal in nature, articles are displayed in reverse chronological order, so the first blog post an reader sees is the most recent one and navigation usually relies on moving backwards through these time-stamped entries. Blogs are great when used as a companion to a website, but relying on a blog to post articles that should or could be re-read, and would have context no matter what year or month they are written in, can mean that they don’t get re-read and instead get lost inside archives. However there are exceptions to this rule, and having a very well designed blog can counteract this. Relying on standard blog templates or free blogging websites such as Blogger.com is not the way to go, unless of course you’re planning on writing a diary style blog.

In the field of cyberpsychology whose work would you recommend to a friend?

The two subjects that are most interesting to me, that relate to the combined field of Psychology and Technology e.g. what is now referred to as Cyberpsychology, are the social Psychology of the Internet and Human Computer Interaction. The researcher who has had the most influence on me in both of these subjects is a Dr. Jennifer Preece from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Much of her work highlights the importance of good usability and design to facilitate the creation of successful online communities. She has also co-authored numerous books related to Human Computer Interaction, a subject that is concerned with making technology more usable and accessible to everyone – something I feel very passionate about.

For anyone interested in the field of Cyberpsychology I can also recommend the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, published online four times a year, many of the research pieces published can be freely accessed and offer many interesting insights into online behaviour.

IADT offers both a certificate in Cyberpsychology and an intensive Masters program. These courses are open to individuals with no background in Psychology, and cover areas ranging from e-learning, to online addictions and therapy. I can’t recommend the course enough, and think it would be great for anyone working in all aspects of the technology sector. It would also perfect for graduates of Psychology or Psychiatry that wish to learn how to apply these fields to our modern technologically bound world.

There’s a big emphasis on the importance of public speaking when you’re studying in college, despite the fact that you don’t often get the opportunity to speak in front of anyone else but your classmates. Which is something I had to do on Saturday morning to a mixed crowd of 1st and 2nd year M.Sc Cyberpsychology students, and lecturers who were there to grill and grade.

I don’t suffer from anxiety or panic when it comes to public speaking. Admittedly, I get nervous, palms do sweat and cue cards get shuffled compulsively. But after the point of introducing myself I often feel like I’m having an out of body experience, like I’ve no control over what’s happening, my mouth is a tap and words are dripping out, fast. On Saturday I felt this more acutely than ever before, despite the fact that I’ve presented at a conference to twice as many people and just recently presented a report to the managing director of a company (and his posse of suits) I was hoping to work with.

The experience I had on Saturday consisted of my mind tricking myself into believing I had completely fucked up the presentation, that I’d skipped slides and mumbled incoherently. But on the outside, according to those who watched, I was cool, calm and collected. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have believed them but then I was reminded of the presentation we did last year. As with all our college presentations they are filmed for the external examiners. The video of last years presentation was shown in the Psychology lab a few weeks ago, watching it I felt like it was a different person on the screen. The girl on that video was an alternative universe me, knowledgeable, confident, calm and capable of handling the most difficult of questions.

I’m my biggest critic. I feel like I have to be, because I know that the people who love me could never point out my flaws for me. So despite my supposed calm exterior whilst presenting, afterwards I always feel like I could have done better, and that I should have been more in control. I think that’s an important thing to share, because I know so many people freak out over public speaking, especially when their time slot is straight after someone that seemed so confident and together.

No one is immune to the pressure that comes with public speaking, some people are just better at hiding it.

Epic landscapes have always captured my imagination, emphasis on the imagination. American movies often feature grand scenery, and having grown up on a diet of science fiction and fantasy movies I had always associated these incredible places as unnatural and purely cinematic. The documentary series Fry in America reprogrammed me, in more ways than one. Not only did it give me a broader understanding of the diversity that exisits in America culture, it also showcased the grand natural landscape of the American states, without the Hollywood lense distorting and overemphasising.

Lake Powell and Monument Valley, and the entire state of Utah is a fixation of mine since I watched the documentary series (and I’m already planning my visit in 2010). Scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Back to the Future were filmed here, and of course, many many westerns. The ethereal beauty of these spots, especially Lake Powell, remind me so much of a Martian landscape, the addition of the unnatural water (Lake Powell is a man made lake) bring to mind the science fiction concept of teraforming – taking an inhospitable planet and changing it’s atmosphere to make it more Earth like.

Putting a standard film crew, an English gentlemen and his taxicab into these scenes gave me perspective, and I can now understand why everything in America is so… big. The roads, the buildings, the personalities. Being surrounded by these incredibly huge, monstrous natural creations, it’s only human to attempt to fit into that landscape. I imagine the early European settlers felt quite small and insignificant here. I imagine, I will too.

Lee (a fellow Cyberpsychology student) and I visited the Science Gallery during Science Week to attend a lecture by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, the founder and director of the Personal Robots Group at MIT. She introduced the attendees to the topics of Social Robotics and Human Robot Interaction, followed by a brief Q&A session.

Social Robotics

Social learning theory proposes that people learn new information and behaviors by watching other people. This is especially prominent in children, as they are social learners. The Personal Robots Group at MIT are applying learning theories and developmental psychology theories towards building child like robots that will have natural learning capacities. They are developing socially intelligent robots that will interact with humans in human-centric terms, work as peers, and learn from people. Instead of having people learn how to communicate with robots or how to teach them, instead they are developing robots that will be able to learn from humans through natural social interactions in real world environments.

The first step towards social learning in robotics is social mimicking or mirroring, as highlighted very recently by the research of US robiticist David Hanson. The MIT robot Leonardo demonstrated this ability back in 2005, Leonardo is an advanced robot capable of social learning, self-motivated learning and logical problem solving. Another robot MIT are working on is the Huggable – a multifunctional teddy bear like robot designed to be an educator, a communication device and a therapeutic companion. Through Huggable the MIT group has explored the concept of “the educator as a peer” going back to the theory of social learning and children.

Human Robot Interaction – “Are these robots naked?”

One of the most fascinating studies Dr. Breazeal highlighted during the lecture was a long term study where participants interacted with either a computer or with an anthropomorphised robotic device (has human like features e.g. a face). Both devices were weight management aids, acting as a social support, with a form of patient-therapist dialogue and input options for calories consumed, exercise etc. They found that participants interacted more often and for longer periods of time with the robot, despite the computer running the same software. They found that people felt a stronger alliance with and trusted the robot more. People named and clothed the robot (they did not do this with the computer). This research, and many other studies, has indicated that screen agents (e.g. the paperclip in Microsoft Word) are never as effective, and that the physical properties of the device do matter.

The Value of Robotics Today

Dr. Breazeal discussed how Robots don’t have to be anthropomorphic. Cars are becoming more like robots every day, and she suggested that they are no longer a tool but are a partner. She described the value of robotics – exploration, capturing data, and closer to her own research: using robotics to study the theoretical models of social and cognitive abilities in humans. Social robots can be applied to the study of how we communicate and solve problems and can offer insights into psychology, neuroscience and interface design. We can learn a great deal about our own behavior when we try to apply these theoretical models to robots.

“Robot’s aren’t going to replace us, they’re going to help and empower us, with strengths and abilities to compliment people.”

Questions relating back to science fiction concepts of robots replacing humans or overthrowing humanity were of course brought up during the Q&A session. Dr. Breazeal argued that these were fears that were culturally based and weren’t apparent in Eastern culture, in countries such as Japan robotics have always been associated with good and advances in robotics have always been embraced and encouraged. She suggested that because robots will learn from humans, their behavior will depend on what we teach them.

The “Un-canny-valley” was also brought up, this is a hypothesis that says that when robots look and act almost like real humans it cause a response of revulsion amongst actual humans. Dr. Breazeal argued that this was based on conjecture and was unreliable, that personal values, preferences and culture had a bigger impact upon response to anthropomorphisim.

Overall I was very impressed with the lecture by Dr. Breazeal – she demonstrated a serious passion for her work. Finally, to sum up what most of the lecture was like… when questioned about whether robots will ever having feelings she replied “Robots will not have human emotions, but maybe they can have robot emotions”.

What did 12 year old me spend all their pocket money on? A massive tower of science fiction videos, magazines and comics. Clearly I’d yet to discover “dating” or figured out what was NOT going to get me beaten up. When I cleared out my old room I found some of these magazines and comics, some of them go back as far as 1995. I was seriously obsessed with anything remotely related to science fiction when I was younger. I honestly think that if it wasn’t for science fiction I would never have developed a love for computers and science. I have my Dad to thank for introducing me to Star Trek when I was very young, I can still remember being upset about missing episodes of The Next Generation when we went on holidays to Butlins when I was 7 years old. These days I indulge with the odd book, and watching the new Battlestar Galactica.

My favourite item that I kept from my sci-fi obsessed past is the Star Trek The Next Generation Interactive Video Boardgame – A Klingon Challenge.

“This interactive adventure actually lets you board the U.S.S. Enterprise and “star” in a special Star Trek: The Next Generation episode!” The whole aim of the game is to overthrow a Klingon (on the starboard bow?) who has taken over the Enterprise. Kavok, the Klingon in question, appears on your TV screen every few minutes, generally angry and screaming insults at you. Just like in any boardgame there are various cards you can collect that will randomise your game play.

This card reads “You consult with a holodeck image of Captain Picard and are reminded that members of the Federation always cooperate. EACH CREW MEMBER WILL NOW GIVE YOU THEIR NEXT TURN.” I just love the way they put that, how very 24th Century. Your reward at the end of the game is moving up the ranks to become Captain and/or “A medal of valour”.

How this was considered a fun way to spend an hour is beyond me, I honestly don’t think I ever managed to get the maximum 8 people to play this either. It’s a pity I have all the pieces but no instructions. Looks like it’s back to the Star Trek Drinking Games for me.

I’ve written before about how I like to de-clutter every once in awhile, and yesterday I was forced to  confront years of past hoarding. A massive collection of memories from my old childhood bedroom awaited me when I got home from work. Despite once being incredibly sentimental (the reason I had kept it all) these days I associate anything that holds no use as 100% expendable. This might seem callous, but I’ve learned that I can reduce my own stress when the space I occupy is kept tidy and I’m more efficient because of it. Also, sleep comes easier in a room that doesn’t need constant maintenance (i.e. tidying up crap I don’t use, all the time).

As I mentioned, I do have a sentimental streak. So, instead of being ruthless and throwing it all out without a second thought, I went through it all and took photos to retain some evidence. In doing so I took a journey backwards many many years, to the person I used to be and the person I hope I can be again.

I am a Creative Person

The biggest part of this haul was a collection of sketches and paintings from school. I had once been very passionate about art, taking honours art for the Junior Certificate. I honestly can’t believe how many hours all of these pieces must have taken me. I don’t know what changed inside me and stopped me from continuing. Lack of confidence? A mature realisation that I wasn’t really an artist? I instead perused History, Biology and Business Studies. Choosing these subjects out of desire to have a well rounded education, and to keep my options open for whatever college subject I would choose. I wonder what would have happened if I had have kept doing art? After I dropped art I would channel some of my artistic creativity into Photoshop projects, having always been equally interested in computers in my youth, but then I didn’t take that path either. I’m certainly no graphic designer. These days I try to photograph the beautiful things I see, and yet, this frustrates me because what I really see, never seems to translate onto picture.

I am a Writer

English had always been my favourite subject and I had considered, quite seriously, studying this in college. “To Sinéad, an Editor, Author and Poet – and all before you left school.” this is part of a goodbye message written by a teacher, written inside the cover of the school magazine. This is something I worked long and hard on. I edited the magazine when I was in 6th year and from the age of 14 up until I left school at 18 I would write and write and write. Short stories, random articles for the school magazine and (as embarrassed as I am to admit it now) mountains of poetry. The school magazine was a serious creative outlet for me. I can’t imagine being that brave today, putting myself out there like that, creating something of my own and sharing it with strangers. This is why I’m writing this now, in an effort to be more courageous with my writing. I don’t know why I stopped being myself and starting holding my real self back. “Excellent short story, you’re a talented writer Sinead!” I found pages, upon pages of handwritten short stories, many which gained me A’s and A+’s from my English teacher.  I don’t gloat, I am simply shocked. Reading them now, I can’t believe these are mine.

“Most people take their time for granted. Most do not take into consideration that many things can happen in a few short seconds. A heart can discontinue beating, discoveries can be made, the human mind can process and file thoughts and memories into single cells.”

Most of my short stories are incredibly long, with many “Keep your essays brief!” “Wonderful, but not exam material.” notes left by teachers in the margins. “Excellent detail, very well expressed. Time Limit?” At 16 and 17 years of age I had no restraints, I was as creative as I wanted to be with my words. I didn’t care about fitting the exam mould and never reigned in my creative self. Poetry was something very dear to me at that time too. I had so much of it published in the school magazine. I personally think this took guts. Or maybe I was just naive? But, how is it that I was stronger and more confident with myself then, than I am now?

No more.

I blog. Yes. But I don’t utilise it the same way that others do. At the moment as part of my college research I am studying why people blog, and it sounds more wonderful the way it is described there. Millions of people blog to express themselves, as an outlet, in an cathartic effort. There are writers like Darragh Doyle that take my breath away with his openness, his honesty and it is courageous, and beautiful. I’ve spoken to my girlfriend, Jen, on many occasions about how I wish I could be just like Darragh. But I blog too seriously. I would rather been seen as an academic, because the reality is I’m terribly insecure about being seen as anything else, because I’m stuck in a job that I dislike, that has no connection to who I am or what I’m passionate about today and I am desperate to be taken seriously. But why? It’s not making ME feel more serious. It’s not helping me with the goals I thought it would help me succeed in.

This blog post is my attempt at connecting with my past self and this, new blog project, is an attempt to be creative, a writer and ME again. And I’m terrified.

Let’s be terrified together? Who did YOU used to be? What parts of yourself do you wish you could connect with again? Write that post. Take that photo. Create that art.

It’s not about whether you are creative enough, but whether you will free yourself to express it.