NY Times Sunday mag. article about Keith Hampton & associates' studies of behavior in public space. Building on Wm H Whyte's research http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/magazine/technology-is-not-driving-us-apart-after-all.html?from=magazine "Hampton thought he could answer major questions about our changing social lives, replacing vague theories with some hard data. Are we indeed socially hobbled by our little screens? If matters have gotten worse, how would we know? Worse than what? Using some old reels of film, Hampton decided that he could find out. "Tall and broad with a warm charm, unguarded in that Canadian way, Hampton has become a star in a subfield that lacks a proper name: He studies how digital technology changes our lives. Unlike many of his contemporaries in academia, Hampton is neither a reactionary about technology, innately skeptical of the new, nor a utopian, eager to trumpet every invention as revolutionary. He is instead a sanguine optimist — a position he says is backed up by his research." Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ NetLab FRSC INSNA Founder Faculty of Information (iSchool) 611 Bissell Building 140 St. George St. University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 3G6 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman twitter: @barrywellman NSA/CSEC: Canadian and American citizen NETWORKED:The New Social Operating System. Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman MIT Press http://amzn.to/zXZg39 Print $20 Kindle $16 Old/NewCyberTimes http://bit.ly/c8N9V8 ________________________________________________________________________