Author Archives: zephoria

summer conferences/talks

I will (most likely) be speaking at four different events this summer, some of which may be relevant to folks:

Supernova – June 24-25, Santa Clara (CA, USA)

CMU Alumni Panel: “The New Phenomenon of Social Networks: Social, Commercial, and Political/Civic Implications” – July 22, Mountain View (CA, USA)

BlogOn: The Business of Social Media – July 23, Berkeley (CA, USA)

American Sociological Association – August 14-17, San Francisco (CA, USA)

[Note that staying in California thing!]

If you do the business thang and want to hear me discuss what’s relevant, Supernova is probably best. If you want to hear the academic side, ASA. If you want to hear me discuss with other thinkers, BlogOn. If you want to hear me discuss with business folks, CMU Alumni Event. If i drive you nuts, why are you still reading?

The Corporation – a must-see

I just got back from seeing The Corporation. It should be opening in a theatre-near-you this summer and you *must* see it. OMG. It’s a complete unpacking of the current corporation culture in which we reside. Coupled with getting to hear Lakoff speak again today, i’m in land of deep thought about the corporate/political regime.

The opening segment of the movie explains how a corporation is treated as a person in legal statute. Yet, by applying the DSM-IV to the corporate individual, a clear diagnosis emerges: psychopath. Consider these symptoms of a psychopath:
– Glibness/superficial charm
– Grandiose sense of self-worth
– Need for stimulation, with a proneness to boredom
– Pathological lying
– Conning and manipulating behaviors
– No sense of remorse or guilt
– A very shallow emotional affect – they display emotions they don’t really feel
– A lack of empathy for others
– They are parasitic – they live off of others
– They are impulsive, and show poor control over their behaviors
– They tend to be promiscuous
– Their behavior problems start early in life
– They cannot form long-term plans that are realistic
– They are impulsive, and irresponsible
– They do not accept responsibility for their actions – another caused it
– Marital relationships are short, and many
– They display juvenile delinquency
– They violate probation often
– Their criminality is diverse

friends with benefits

Damn, the NYTimes has been really compelling lately. And their apology about their coverage of the Iraq war makes me think i should re-acquire my subscription (i cancelled it because i was peeved with their coverage after 9/11).

Anyhow, over the weekend, the NYTimes ran an article on friends with benefits. It’s a fascinating article about teenage relationships and i really want to know how common the described practices are. I mean, if girls are really calling the shots about sex, what are the long-term implications? Damn that’s rad. If girls are calling the shots, will it help combat HIV? (Historically, male pressure to not use condoms has put women at great risk in hetero relationships.) And if a matter-of-fact attitude about sex is emerging, can we begin to be more serious about realizing that marriage is just a contract, not some hormone-driven fantasy about love? If this is actually true, what all falls out?

And is FaceTheJury facing the jury because of aiding and ebedding teens under the guise of an 18+ site?

I will speak until the death of gender inequality

My hair curled over a blog entry entitled Again with the “women and blogging” meme (in response to two entries). The tone is insulting, arguing that the topic of women and blogging has been done to death. It is precisely this kind of post that reminds me of how the blogosphere solidifies misogyny and prejudice rather than acknowledging that people are trying to process. Dismissing discussions about gender inequality permits the marginalized subjects to be dismissed.

There is no doubt that blogs can be clustered by gender, class, race and age simply by clustering based on subject or style. Guess what? Most knitting blogs are written by women and women make up the majority of personal blogs are written by women. Recognizing that style and topics are dividing factors, i’d still argue that the difference has more to do with audience relationships. How are people constructing expression for their audience? How are they seeking to attract/manage an audience?

Move away from the blogosphere. How many women do you know that seek to be heard concerning their political opinion ever anyhow? Proportionally fewer. Why? That’s a damn fine question. Men do not dominate the political arena; they dominate a certain aspect of the political sphere, and that’s often the most vocal. Go to Capitol Hill and you will see many fine women engaging in change. I remember asking my mother why she didn’t run for office; she told me that she wouldn’t want to put us through the ringer, having our past dredged up.

Marginalized populations have different issues at risk when they voice their opinion. And damn do you have to be strong when you have an audience who feels the need to berate you just because. That’s hard for anyone, but imagine how it feels when you look around and feel like you’re one of few, when you feel marginalized from the get-go.

Are women more protective of their stories than men? More protective of their voice? Do they have good reason to be? Cause damn it feels shitty to be told that your concerns are written to death.

[Also on Misbehaving]

voice recording device?

Does anyone have an MP3 voice recording device that they like? I was hoping to record into an iPod, but aside from my current pissyness with the iPod, i don’t think it can record using a standard microphone (which is essential for good quality interviews).

My needs are simple:
– good sound recording with microphone
– records at least 2.5 hours at a time, preferably much more
– straight to MP3 and easy to download onto Mac OSX
– compact and decent interface preferred

Anyone have something that they love and want to recommend?

“what did danah boyd contribute to sociology?”

A friend of mine wrote me, bemused that upon looking at her logs, someone had found her page with the following Google search: “what did danah boyd contribute to sociology?”

I’m not quite sure how to take this. And i’m curious who is at fault for folks thinking that i’m a sociologist. (Barry – can i blame you?) As for being at a point in my career where i’m contributing to any intellectual community in a meaningful way, please be patient. I’m trying. But for goddess’ sake, i’m a bloody PhD student who once again jumped fields; i’m still trying to fill in the holes in my knowledge!

Word Wars

Last week, i went to see Word Wars – a documentary on Scrabble competitions. A friend of mine helped make this fabulous movie and it is well worth seeing, whether because you love Scrabble, you appreciate documentaries, or you identify with anyone who has a compulsion towards the thing that they love. Also, if you saw Spellbound, you’ll especially appreciate Word Wars because it’s like what happens when obsessive kids grow up.

San Franciscans: it’s playing through this week at the Roxie.
New Yorkers: it’s opening mid-June.
Everyone else: ask your local art theatre to bring it.

my iPod won’t unlock – help?

::grumble:: Mac won’t help me restart my iPod without paying them $60 so i’m hoping someone here might be able to help.

My iPod’s software thinks that it is on hold (even though the slider at the top says otherwise). It fell under this magical state in the first week of April. I web-searched and someone on the web said to let the battery die to nothingness. I did this. To no avail. Whenever i plug it back in to power, it’s still on hold.

There’s no way to do the restart via the three buttons because it’s on hold. Isn’t there a manual restart somehow? Like one where i can erase the whole disk and get it to restart?

I have to admit that i’m *really* cranky with Mac about this one. You’d think that a noticeable defect in the software (documented by others on the web) would mean that they’d support you in fixing it. I’m a bit resentful by being demanded to pay $60 to fix it when i was thinking of upgrading at the end of the summer. Now i’m just questioning whether or not it’s worth upgrading because my iPod has been broken for half the time that i’ve had it.

Vegas…

Oh, Vegas. I went to Vegas with a bunch of girlfriends to celebrate one’s birthday. It was a complete trip. I left LA on Friday with a plane full of wannabe-celebrities including far too many models. The guy behind me in the Southwest line was rattling on and on on his phone about getting limos for this and tickets for that and making himself sound really self-important for one of the models in hearing range. She realized this and was rolling her eyes at this guy the whole time. Finally, she started talking to a perfectly normal looking guy, much to his shock. It’s Southwest. What multi-millionnaire flies Southwest to look important? Anyhow…

Got on the plane. The guy next to me shared his goal: to get as inebriated as possible without getting incarcerated. Of course, he didn’t use 5 syllable words. I was amused. I practice yoga breathing to remember that i was going to Vegas for my friends, not because i liked Vegas. Of course, framing it as an anthropological exercise *really* helped.

So, i spent a lot of time people watching and talking to folks. I watched a woman try to pick up 4 different johns of exactly the same time. One gave her a room key. I was impressed. He was nervous. I watched a pimp-daddy wedding party and a lot of midwesterners on their big vacation. The best were the kids – they were sooo in awe of the dazzle of Vegas – big eyes, lots of pointing. I was staying in the Luxor and the deck outside of my room looked down on the whole scene. Great for people watching. Another one of our party was in the same zone, finding out about teen curfews and culture growing up here. Perfect, considering the recent NYTimes article on American Dreamers: the Lure of Las Vegas. It really is a good people-watching town.

And it really is where regular America comes together in weird ways. Although i was not on a specific voting mission, i had quite a few political conversations by engaging people about the Patriot Act and the various anecdotes i heard about all Vegas visitors from the holidays being considered terrorist suspects. I used that to launch into discussions about where the country is going, what it means to have freedom. This was particularly easy given that in the land of sin, people are all about maximizing their freedoms and even the local papers/news covering Reagan’s death were talking about how much more conservative the Republican party is now. I love getting reactions equivalent to: “Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way before…” Oh so much fun. Changing political views one person at a time.

kids, oppression and social tinkering

One more on Kellogg… two framings, in particular, really made me think:

Mimi Ito (whose work anyone in socialtech should follow) is an anthropologist and comes at digital kids with that perspective. Using an anthro framework, the key is to think about kids in their terms, not trying to project or assert an adult framework on kids. In other words, the goal is not to save kids, but to respect them on their terms. She points out that age is one of the most oppressive forces in society, even more naturalized than gender. Because kids grow into adults and we were all once kids, people tend to treat kids as young adults. The goal is to get them to adulthood, not to be valued on kid level.

We also talked about technological tinkering and how many kids learn to explore technology that way. Liz Keith pointed out that a lot of digital participation by kids is social tinkering.

I think that point is really key because we tend not to value the social tinkering or give kids the framework to value that, even though it’s such a key feature of their lives. [And there are nice parallels to my Etcon rant about social hacking vs. technological hacking.]