Comments on: I want my cyborg life

By: Matt Schofield

Matt Schofield — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 05:49:11 +0000

great to see that you have rewritten this piece, Danah. or maybe I just read it differently a year later.

We are adopting your approach to allow participants in our weekly seminars to twitter – I’ve written this up in our blog with a case study contrasting a couple of conferences we were involved in simultaneously http://blog.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/2010/10/citizen-journalists.html

but cut out the word “bitchslapping”. debate among peers SHOULD be fierce and free. violence against women should not be normalized by transposing the language of pimps to academic debate

By: Lawrie Hunter

Lawrie Hunter — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:03:20 +0000

Danah,
Coming into this posting very late. No excuse: I wasn’t twittering or facebooking or.
First: absolutely love your posting and ecstatic that we live in this time.
But: as an old presenter (claim thriller), I have relied on the following techniques for *overpowering* the backgrounding phenom: showing at least 3 slides per minute; making every slide cognitive demanding; making every slide background transparent; talking faster than my slides; never saying anything I’m absolutely sure of (else how to say ‘explore’?); repeatedly begging for participants to read my online stuff and THEN welcomely contacting me. I don’t believe in the instant GROK that goes with the just-in-time-informed approach. That wouldn’t make me a superficial person, would it?
best
Lawrie Hunter, out of the loop in remote Japan

By: x

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:53:21 +0000

It’s even worse for people like me who excel at multitasking. I am an exceptional musician who can play and sing complex lines at the same time. So, in social situations, I take personal offense when I am judged for not behaving like everyone else. To me, it’s bad as being insulted for my skin color, because really what the authority figure is expressing is a complete ignorance of what kind of person I am and a reflexive dismal of my way of culture. For this reason I limit interaction with others in the real world to the consumer realm. The singularity makes this the longest upcoming decade in history.

By: Myrna

Myrna — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:44:54 +0000

I’m lurking on you. Sounds weird I know coming from a 55 year old woman. The truth is I write a blog about teens. I live in Silicon Valley and I first saw you at the MacArthur research presentation at Stanford. You are one of the few people I know that has both in-depth computer experience AND a cultural/sociological background/viewpoint about how technology is used by youth. I was glad to see you on a panel this year at Blogher talking about technology use. You bring a vital and different perspective that I need in order to balance my “parenting” cap. I started my blog last year when it became painfully obvious to me that I wasn’t keeping up with my teens use of technology, especially social media and I wanted to understand the why of it. I continue to write my blog for parents to provide a bridge. Many parents are either too scared of social media to let their kids use it (they use it anyway) OR they are completely hands off and end up not keeping vital communication channels open. So,I’m glad to see you’re keeping your blog going – your viewpoint is so completely unique and different. You’ve taught me that young people process technology differently than adults who don’t integrate as “smoothly”. I seem to back channel pretty good though!

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:24:22 +0000

certainly can’t listen while I’m surfing, collector-solar.com reading wikipedia etc. My approach would be to make notes and look stuff up later. I guess I’m not as good at multi-tasking as I’m supposed to be (as a woman).

By: David Molnar

David Molnar — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:46:03 +0000

I’ve been playing with a pair of myvu “shades” plugged into an iPhone running an IRC client.
http://www.myvu.com/Myvu-Shades-personal-media-viewer-iPod-video-glasses-C25.aspx

Compared to looking down at the screen in my hand, I feel like I’m better able to pay attention to both the IRC channel and what’s in front of me at the same time. For example, I walk into fewer things while manuvering through the supermarket or walking around town. I can do this because the shades are organized to place the screen in the bottom of my vision (think bifocals), with the straight ahead portion of my vision free.

Works with real time maps, too — avoids the problem of missing a street sign because you were looking down at your device. Haven’t tried it while attending a talk yet but that would be a good test.

Talking back is still hard. The iPhone is actually much worse than the previous generation of smartphones for this because it is hard to make touch gestures without viewing the screen. My windows mobile phone or G1 is much better here.

May be visiting MSR cambridge to say hi to Henry Cohn this week. if by some random chance happen to run into you (I don’t believe we know each other) will be happy to show you.

By: Tad Suiter

Tad Suiter — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:31:33 +0000

Like Sherman, I was at THATCamp, and the Twittering there really did add a lot of value to the discussion. Twitter led to discussions, discussions led to tweets, and it really helped us all communicate our ideas better– not to mention that some people who couldn’t make it could actually follow the conference in real-time via Twitter, blog posts, and even a Wiki, all created on-site during the conference.

I’m also on Livejournal, and most of my friends there are grad students and professors. Weirdly, when I talked about how nicely twitter worked to augment conversation, I found I was facing a lot of resistance from my friends– from academics who blog, and even from a couple who work on New Media projects in the humanities.

I know that I can’t listen *AS CLOSELY* when I multitask, and I try to not overdo it, but at the same time, when was the last time you went to a lecture and actually paid attention to EVERY. SINGLE. WORD?

For me, it’s only ever happened a handful of times. Most of the time, lecturers gain and lose your attention many times in the course of a single lecture. Aren’t you even more engaged if you’re using your laptop to find supporting or conflicting data?

By: Warren Yoder

Warren Yoder — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:34:06 +0000

This experience of realizing you “want information at my fingertips now and always” contrasts with Aaron Swartz’s reflections after 30 days offline: “Normally I feel buffeted by events, a thousand tiny distractions nagging at the back of my head at all times. Offline, I felt in control of my own destiny. I felt, yes, serene.”

Are there other examples of people thinking through the self they have created to live in the online?

By: monika hardy

monika hardy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:42:02 +0000

high school teacher here.
gosh – i wish your confidence to seek out learning with zest on my students. i fear we’ve boxed them up too much – for them to feel that freedom in school.

By: M-H

M-H — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:33:58 +0000

Hmmm. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days. One the one hand, I like to knit while I listen. I can drop the knitting and pick up a pen if I want to make a note. Lots of people find knitting to be at least as ‘rude’ as clattering on a laptop while a talk is going on. OTOH, I certainly can’t listen while I’m surfing, reading wikipedia etc. My approach would be to make notes and look stuff up later. I guess I’m not as good at multi-tasking as I’m supposed to be (as a woman). As for people thinking that it’s rude to a speaker to knit or surf, my reply is that many many speakers over years have been very rude to me by presenting mumbling, incoherent, disorganised, rambling lectures or talks. If a speaker isn’t engaging an audience, it’s not the audience who need to look at themselves. In summary, the speaker has the power to engage us or not; the audience has the right to not be engaged, or to express their engagement as they choose.

And Matt Schofield, danah’s not posting what we write here, we are. Perhaps her fearsome reputation prevents people from disagreeing with her?