I try to get an HIV test annually, but i realized it had been far longer than that and i felt guilty. I wasn’t actually anxious or concerned as i haven’t really been dating. Yet, ever since i started doing AIDS education in the 9th grade, i’ve felt that it is my sexual duty to get this test annually, just as it’s my civic duty to vote. So, i phoned up the AIDS Health Project Service Center and scheduled an anonymous appointment.

The last test that i had was an oral swab; this test was a finger prick. The results come back in 20 minutes so you spend the time in between talking about why you got tested. I tried to tell the guy that i wasn’t worried and that i was only doing the test because i believed in doing the test. Annually. I told them that i believed in treating it like a ritual, something you did to protect you and those you love. I think i confused the poor guy. I realize that most of the people he deals with are not in that stage.

So, instead, we talked about the role of meth in SF, the increase in STDs, etc. We talked about what it meant to be a part of a community where testing was ritual, while risk was (relatively) low. I found out that the finger prick test was because Glide kept having people come in anonymously, get tested and the test would turn up positive but they would never return to get their results. They hoped that this would help them help people be more informed. I was quite thankful for it because i hate having to go back.

I wonder if younger people still have the philosophy that you should get tested annually. I’m very thankful that i grew up with that assumption. Besides, it brings relief to confirm that i’m still negative.

Eric Schmidt and Jimmy Carter

Originally uploaded by jasonshellen.

Former President Jimmy Carter spoke at Google today. He came to speak about The Carter Center, a non-governmental agency that does amazing work around the world to help the poor and suffering.

He spoke about human rights: the human right to be free, the human right to live in a good environment, the human right to be healthy, the human right to be alleviated from unnecessary suffering, the human right to live in peace. Human rights were the cornerstone of his presidency and he proudly boasted that during his four years, he focused on promoting peace – no guns were fired, no bombs were launched, no missiles were dropped. We saw a film of the great things that the Carter Center has done and he spoke of his work at Habitat for Humanity.

He answered questions from the audience. My favorite was when a Googler asked how he dealt with problematic or hostile governments – he responded with “their governments or ours? … it’s a lot easier to deal with their governments.” ROFL.

(For Joe.) One Googler asked him how to assure a democratic election this year. He spoke of how in Venezuela, they use digital election ballots but everyone got a paper ballot printed out that they then submitted in a paper system. Thus, people were assured that their vote was identical to the digital system and there was a backup to be counted in case of trouble. ::sigh:: It’s going to be an interesting election.

He spoke about how essential understanding other people were and encouraged Googlers to get involved in the poorer regions of their communities, to understand the people that provided services to them.

All and all, it was a bit odd. I got to shake his hand, i got to listen to amazing Democrat rhetoric with well constructed progressive framing. And yet, we all knew that he was there because Google(rs) have just made a lot of money and the Carter Center wants Google(rs) to donate.

[I posted this entry on Misbehaving and i would love to have folks comment over there.]

Pete, the author of the blog entry that i previously critiqued apologized in the thread. I was going to address him in that thread, but i decided that it belonged as a general discussion for all readers here.

In a sexist society, men and women do not have equal voices. Men acquires a level of auto-privilege; they don’t have to fight to be heard. Women, on the other hand, are often fighting to be heard or must play into the cultural norms dictated by men in order to have a voice.

Pete argued that he was just trying to express his exasperation. I believe that exasperation must be deconstructed. What does it mean for a privileged individual to express exasperation over issues of marginalization? I mean, we’ve all thought “wouldn’t it be great if inequality just went away?” Goddess knows i’ve felt more than enough exasperation in my lifetime, including the exasperation over constantly fighting to have a voice and still not being heard or being misunderstood as my voice is translated by normative culture into something unrecognizable.

With privilege comes responsibility. It is my belief that a feminist man has a responsibility to refrain from expressing exasperation over this topic because that expression is a dismissal, that expression is an execution of privilege with continues the power differential. I believe that a feminist man has a responsibility to be hyper-conscious about how he throws his voice around, knowing that his voice has undue power. In other words, i think that a feminist man needs to also take on the burden of fighting that women have inherently.

Disagree. Discuss. I want to hear what people think.

For the last month, a heated discussion has persisted on the mailing list of the Association of Internet Researchers. This list is comprised of researchers interested in studying internet behavior. The discussion began when someone asked about the ethics of data collection while lurking. There is no universally accepted answer on this one and the result was intense. The discussion is still going on and i’d strongly encourage anyone interested in issues of learning from behavior online (business people as well as researchers) to check out the May Archives.

The threads of interest include: “ethnography and ethics”, “ethics of recording publicly observed interactions”, and “Google is watching !”.

Finals are brutal. Particularly when you were as foolish as i was about my semester organization. 6 weeks of travel is brutal on top of 3 intensive classes, TAing (and then grading) 30 students in a fun class about social networking, the bright idea to organize a conference during the weekend between finals and an outstanding CSCW application. ::smacking forehead:: And of course i’m fighting a cruel cold that seems to encourage my body to hold on to jetlag as well.

I vow to be unresponsive. I have uninstalled Shrook. This is my last blog post until i’m through. Must get through. Looking forward to wine and massages with my mother.

Topics on the brain: critical technical practice (Agre) as it applies to HCI’s construction of context; the rhetorical debate between Searle and Derrida over Austin (considerations for interdisciplinary research); ethnographic write-up on negotiating audience; design considerations for digital identity representation.

Go see Shrek 2 when it is released on May 19 – it is stunning.

I love movies and i often see them opening night. When given the opportunity, i love going to movie premiers. Of course, the only movie premiers that i’m ever invited to are the ones with computer graphics in them. This doesn’t bother me because i love an audience full of geeks and/or animators. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the geek premier of Shrek 2. I admit, i was a little worried because a sequel is often horrifying. But, omg, i was totally impressed.

Not only is the storyline better than the last round (deeper connections to fairie tales, more nuanced relationships, greater opportunity for multiple textual readings), but the graphics just took another leap forward. I’ve never seen hair look so good, the lighting in particular; it’s starting to look actually porous. Speaking of porous, the skin, oh the skin. It’s been nine years since the baby in Toy Story scared us all into thinking that CG and humans were not meant to go together. PDI really took that baton and the increased improvement in skin makes all the difference. The subtle details really come through. Take pupil dilation – there’s so much information in pupil dilation.

This is not to say that it’s perfect – there are definitely flaws and room for improvement. But i’m definitely impressed. Of course, i will never forget what Ed Catmull told me when i was starting to work in computer graphics, roughly: “The CG may be great, but without a good storyline, the CG doesn’t matter.” In Shrek 2, the graphics just fade into the background.

Anyhow, definitely go see it opening weekend. (Remember: opening weekend box office receipts are often what determines the duration of the movie and they’re a really important indicator of support to the creators.)

Shrek 2 Trailer

I’m avoiding the computer in Tokyo. But i have a few random notes… small things that have made me scratch my head.

Most tall buildings have little red triangles on certain windows. This bugged me until i learned that it was to indicate to firemen which windows were fire exits and ladders should be sent to them.

Most shops demarcate their entrance by a small step. Nothing in Tokyo is wheelchair accessible. Yet, every crossing is marked by bumps in the sidewalk to inform blind people of where to go.

Tampons are still in the back of the store.

If you think that the 80s fashion has returned in the States, you’re wrong. Tokyo kids know how to do retro-chique in a beyond-disturbing-as-all-hell way. I’m cringing even more than i ever cringed in LA.

I laughed when people told me that Tokyo would be expensive. Within 2 hours of landing, i took a $250 taxi. Dear god. And after spending $42 on a cover for a generic club, i will never bitch about a $10 cover ever again.

It is possible to engage in a full conversation where one party speaks one language and the other speaks a different language and neither of you understand the other’s words but information transmission happens. Especially when it involves a shopkeeper and me with the clear intention of purchasing something.

Baraka doesn’t even begin to capture Shibuya crossing. It is such a beautiful dance of chaos.

All of my city navigation skills are broken. The smells are foreign (there’s no urine). There are no straight lines or circles… especially in the roads. Along many streets, there’s a street level for cars, a catwalk for people and another highway above you.

Every train station in Tokyo is modeled after a different station around the world. There was some utterly traumatic about walking out of all day meetings and getting a flashback to Amsterdam because Tokyo Station is a near-replica of Central Station.

Advertising built on kleenexes somehow seems far more practical and valuable than fliers.

I love the phone chatchkas. I love the heated toilets. I love that caffeine drinks come with vitamins. Getting beer out of a vending machine is quite peculiar. Particularly when you can only see cows and the neon of the vending machine.

It’s utterly eerie to see people wearing sars-masks post-sars-crises. Some tell me it’s because people have colds. But my ex says that it just became habit for some people.

I love the transit system. The little holes in your ticket. The way people line up properly in waiting and then cram into each other as hard as possible once boarding the train. I even had some residents tell me how to scam the system and tried it out of curiousity. Sure enough, scamming option is confirmed.

Buying clothes of the “opposite” sex is near impossible. The shopkeepers steer you into the proper gender performance. While (fe)male bodies are far closer to one another in Japan as compared to Europe/America, the gender performance is far more divisive.

What an adventure.

There’s this amazing trend that happens. At the beginning of every semester, i come out from hiding, participate in public life, conferences, etc. I meet people. But i’m on a different cycle than other people because as soon as i meet people, finals come around again and stealth mode is on and all of those new ties fade away unless they make sense post-stealth mode.

For those who don’t realize, i made the foolishly naive mistake of thinking that i could balance 6 weeks of travel, 3 hardcore grad classes, TAing, help organize two different intellectual gatherings, etc. Social life does not exist. And much of digital life will be on pause for a bit.

From now until June, please realize that my response rate will be arbitrary at best. In fact, there’s a high probability that i won’t touch most of my email until June. I’m already too far behind to catch up. I am traveling for all of April and will be finals-ing in May (feeling the pain for my stupidity). I will not be attending social events or group gatherings, except for ASSA.

My apologies. I don’t know how to better handle this situation right now.

I hate having a backlog of things that i intend to post to my blog. And of course, me being me, i start thinking meta about that backlog. So, who am i posting things for? It used to be solely for me, but that’s just too haphazard right now… i feel like things need comments, not simply links. Of course, is that me thinking about how you might perceive me? Am i self-inducing my own neurotic state because of my wacked readings of the unknown audience?

Or am i writing because i should share the backlog because it may be of interest to you? But most of you already know half of what my backlog is… You all know about Orkut. And while i have interesting things to say on the matter, i’m still waiting for it to pop back up since i went offline only hours after it came up. You all know about Clay Shirky’s brilliant writings. You all know about Many-To-Many (and if you don’t, you don’t care about that segment of my posts anyhow).

So then am i feeling self-induced pressure to post links that you already know about simply to prove my own status within the blogging community, to show appreciation of others’ brilliant writings? Am i trying to be validated by validating? Even worse, by being untimely, am i only showing my lack of fashionability, my inability to keep up with the times (otherwise known as my decision to go offline for 4 days)?

God, it’s a neurotic day in the life of danah. Or, since i’m back in classes, let’s just call it a reflexive one.

Lately, most of my (de)constructive thoughts have been focused at friends and myself (i.e. not my research). This has been soooo energizing. One on one, back and forth (de)constructive conversation. Critical feedback that is pushed directly and returned.

Plus, i’ve been talking to Fernanda frequently about blogging audiences.

This made me think about my own audience. I, better than most, have a deep understanding that my blog is a public presentation of self. And i have an understanding that while the content of this blog is not nearly as focused as my professional blog, my readership overlaps. But, even i, still foolishly imagine a certain level of security through obscurity.

I forget that people might care about my opinion (particularly those who don’t agree with me). It’s terribly odd to me that people might get upset when i take a week off of my opinion rants on Friendster, et. al. I don’t see myself as a public figure and i still view my blog as a space to put out half-chewed ideas and get feedback. Unfortunately, my audience doesn’t seem to agree. ::sigh::

So, my blogs have weirded me out lately. Even this note feeds oddly constructed… i have no idea who the hell is reading this, but i know it will be part of my public archive. And that’s particularly strange since i deconstruct my own blog entries as though they are just another piece of text and i imagine what i must be like from these entries and what an odd picture…

And then there’s interaction. I created the blog for my own records, but i put it out there publicly to engage folks to challenge me or provide me with better resources. Unfortunately, most commenting comes from spam. And the majority of non-spam comes from extreme opinons (or my beloved roommie) so i know that my audience is not represented in commenting land.

So who is my audience? Now? 10 years from now?

Whenever i go into these introspective moods, or try to go meta on myself, i find myself returning to the one-on-one. I always wonder what someone might think of my email archives. All of those highly directed musings, intended for an audience of one. Those interactions are so rich, so full of my confused head, my critical thinking skills, my philosophies, my religious views. I look back to the IMs and emails from this week and i see a reflection of myself. I look to my blog and i’m bored.

But this begs the question. What is it about this medium that doesn’t let me to play through those thoughts? Certainly, there’s the confusion about who my audience is. And the feeling of interactivity. But there’s also the beauty of truly intimate interactions, the feeling of getting to know someone better, of jumping into their psyche, of saying things that no one else hears, of reaching new depths. We’re all vulnerable at those depths.

But blogs do not provide safety for vulnerability. And thus i find myself going meta long before i dive down into the uncertainties that mark a contemplative mind.

Thoughts to chew on… ’cause this blog is still about the innane, the random and the irrelevant.