Online Communities the Death of Qualitative Research?

Virtual worlds and online communities can be great tools for conducting experiments. It's not uncommon for an experiment that would be costly, unethical, or simply hard to manage in "real life" to find an easy transition into the digital world. In fact, sometimes even virtual mistakes and oversights can unintentionally cause situations of interest to the research world (I'm thinking particularly of the World of Warcraft epidemic of 2005, though there are other examples).

So what does this mean for the research community? A recent post to Terra Nova, a community blog about virtual worlds, recaps a discussion that took place in Second Life about the future of qualitative research. In short, the availability of virtual worlds and online communities for experimentation (with their increased ability to provide statistical and quantitative data), paired with the misconception that quantitative research will always trump qualitative research, could create a decrease in funding and interest in qualitative research. If a question can be answered both qualitatively and quantitatively, should the quantitative answer hold more merit? If a question can only be answered qualitatively, is it even worth asking?

The full transcript of the panel discussion is available in the article.

ACTA Fool

A proposed treaty, The Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, between various nations of the world raises several concerns in consumer privacy, the free flow of information on the Internet, and legitimate e-commerce, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

EFF argues that despite the agreement's obvious cracking-down on counterfeited physical goods, its scope has been broadened to include Internet distribution and information technologies. A few measures include the requirement of Internet Service Providers to monitor their customers' communications online and divulge- to local and federal government- the identities of alleged copyright infringers without warrant, disruption of fair use, and holding pharmaceutical manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients liable if those ingredients are used to make counterfeits.

I can see the benefit in a system that punishes illegal copyright infringement and rampant counterfeiting for profit, but is that fine line between protection of intellectual property and the warrant-less searching of the government being blurred?

What are your thoughts? Do you see an agreement like this stifling creativity under fear or would it bolster it with enhanced regulatory measures?

Google's Distributed Artificial Intelligence System Now Online

According to Google, the Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) was switched on at midnight and is now preforming initial functions. While Google cautions that there is a long and difficult road ahead, they were pleased to see CADIE deduce design principles, after a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web, from which CADIE produced its own home page

The Rutgers research community is planning for this next generation of computing resources, however it thought than until the price of such systems drop below the cost of maintaining an average graduate student that these systems will not be common place. Even so, OIRT is organizing a bake sale for Rutgers' Day on April 25th as well as possibility of using work-study students' donation of plasma, blood or little used organs to help meet this funding gap.