In the questions entry, Ross jokingly asked for me to summarize the period in which i was gone. I actually think that everything about humanity can be summed up in the first event that i heard about upon returning.

On July 4th, a NASA projectile successfully intersected with a comet – a “smashing” success. A Russian astrologer became hysterical.

Can’t you just see it? A bunch of NASA boys sitting around stoned off the gourd imagining what they could do for fun. “Dude, i know! Let’s shoot the moon.” “No, dude. That’s too easy. We need to shoot something moving.” “Dude! I know dude! A comet! Let’s shoot a comet!” “Dude!!!”

The result? Probes and projectiles engaged in “deep impact” conveniently placed in the newspaper next to the latest news on “deep throat.” And really, probe or no probe, it’s basically an aiming mission, the million dollar version of the bulls-eye target practice in boys’ bathrooms. As my friend at NASA pointed out, the impact is equivalent to throwing a penny at a 16-wheeler. And can’t you just see the NASA dudes’ faces when a Russian woman started screaming about the deformation of her horoscope? “But can’t you seeeeeee? Nature is defenseless against your masculine ejaculations!”

Some things never change but they do continue to amuse.

In case you were curious, the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything is still 42.

Somehow, whenever finals come around, i find myself going through the bazillion lyrics corrections that people send me for the Ani DiFranco lyrics site. Usually, i’m much better at getting the new songs up but this semester has kicked my ass and i found myself putting up five new songs tonite, many of which have been out for a while. Still, thank you to everyone who has written with corrections and new lyrics! I really appreciate it!

The new songs are:
– All of Nothing
– Decree
– Millennium Theater
– Spade
– 78% Water

I’m particularly fond of the three political songs – Decree, Millenium Theater and Spade.

digital whiplash
so many formats so little time
while out in TV nation
under darkening skies
the resistance is just waiting
to be organized — Millennium Theater

On the way to school, i was listening to Eminem’s Hallie’s Song and it made me start thinking about the construction of celebrity, the management of frontstage/backstage and the identity crises that occurs around perception.

People make jokes, cuz they don’t understand me
They just don’t see my real side
Now you probly get this picture from my public persona
That I’m a pistol-packing drug-addict who bags on his momma,
But I wanna just take this time out to be perfectly honest
Cuz there’s a lot of shit I keep bottled that hurts deep inside o’ my soul

If you follow Goffman, everyone has a tension between the frontstage (that which they show publicly) and the backstage (that which is reserved). This is where a lot of the public/private persona negotiation comes into play. Yet, it is always assumed that access to the backstage is inherently privileged, deeply desirable. Of course, this gets magnified in celebrity culture.

What fascinates me about Eminem’s lyrics is a phrasing that i hear so often – the “you don’t understand.” When i was a kid, i used to scream this at my mother and she would roll her eyes at me and tell me that she did, that she was once a kid too and i would stomp off. I think about all of the bloggers that i’ve interviewed who have audiences larger than their friend groups and how they whine about being misinterpreted by their readers, about not being truly understood. The idea of not being understood is endemic and often comes out in the form of identity battle – this isn’t really who i am. It comes out when the mirror doesn’t match the internal image. This is inherently the tension in Ani DiFranco’s lyrics – the tension between how she is perceived and how she sees herself. It is a tension that i hear more and more but i don’t truly understand the root.

With both kids and celebrity, i think that the problem partially lies in the idea that the performance is being interpreted not in the performer’s terms but in the terms of the audience. Adults typically read youth as “young adults” – a population who has just not yet matured and will one day see the way. [Barrie Thorne does an amazing job of challenging this and arguing for conceptualizing kid/youth culture on kid/youth terms.] But in the typical American construction of both populations, there’s a deep desire to reread kids/celebrities from the perspective of the audience, as though they owe something to the audience – the future, entertainment, etc. The failure to own their own voice, to have their voices represent something larger than life alienates the individual, makes them feel nonexistent. When people speak about not being understood, their referencing how they feel objectified and othered.

There’s a tension in having a voice. On one hand, people want their opinions and thoughts to have agency, to speak to a broad set of issues, to represent groups of people. On the other, they want to be voicing their own stories, not just being an icon for a broader population. This tension is difficult to resolve because it’s simultaneously empowering and disempowering.

Warhol used to talk about how everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. The construction of fame requires that people will be the object of fascination to a large audience, the “masses.” Such fame means that the individual’s voice will begin to represent something, to be disembodied. People will have to struggle with being interpreted from a different perspective, having their words read in the terms of the audience not in terms of intention. Would such fame lead to an increase in the you don’t understand me crises? What does this mean on an individual and cultural level?

What is the value of this emotional state, this frustration over not being understood? Where does it come from? What do people gain from it or why do they let themselves get trapped in it? Certainly, audiences think that individuals are self-absorbed when they bitch about being misunderstood. This, of course, only magnifies the crises. So what does it mean?

i am not an angry girl
but it seems like i’ve got everyone fooled
every time i say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear – Ani, Not a Pretty Girl

life in the circus ain’t easy
but the folks on the outside don’t know
the tent goes up and the tent comes down
and all that they see is the show – Ani, Freakshow

Well, a decision came down on the the EFF / Apple blogging case and it’s a little disturbing. Basically, they ruled that no one (digital or paper) journalists have the privilege to protect their sources when trade secrets are involved. In other words, the rights of companies trump the First.

This sidesteps the blogger vs. journalist question entirely. Which is partially good because, like i said, it’s the wrong question. But, it’s partially bad, because people didn’t declare it to be the wrong question, just one worth sidestepping.

As far as the case is concerned, i’m concerned. On one hand, i understand that people shouldn’t have the right to leak information that they know is private and expect protection. On the other, the reason that the First exists is to protect powerful systems from oppressing the people under their structure. In other words, it’s OK when information from inside the government is leaked because it’s a matter of checks and balances. But there are no checks and balances for corporations right? What constitutes a trade secret? How can you tell? Now we have two loopholes to allow for continuous oppression – trade secrets and government security. And you can’t even actually check this. It may be true in a few cases, but there’s so much room to be abusive.

Goodbye dear freedoms… it was nice knowing you…

The best part about moving is that you get to try to start new habits and ritualize them before going back to your old bad ones. This semester, i need to do a lot of reading. A lot a lot of reading. I also moved to my new home to be near cafes. As a result, i’m spending a lot more time in cafes and a lot less time online. As a result of both of these, i’m neither surfing nor blogging a lot. It should be interesting to see what comes out of this.

I’m actually giving two talks in the next week in case anyone is interested.

At Stanford’s HCI seminar, i will be giving my longer Friendster talk. [February 4, 12:30PM]

At BayCHI, i will be giving my autistic social software talk. [February 8, 7PM]

These will both be based on talks that i’ve given before (and uploaded to danah.org but i’m sure other things will come up.

Also, generally this semester, i will be talking at the following:
– SXSW – social networks panel
– CHI on backchannels (paper accepted!!)
– CFP – moderating a panel on youth and privacy

Every year during undergraduate, i would race to University Hall to pick up a copy of the latest course catalogue as soon as it was released. My best friend and i would sit in couch covered coffee shops over tea/juice and circle classes that looked interesting. The classes were ordered by departments with cross-references made. Each class had a full description under the title and professor. There was this glorious rush of all the things that we could learn and we obsessed over that book. The beginning of each semester was filled with the enthusiasm of rushing around on campus seeing if the classes lived up to their description.

Inevitably, some of the classes would be cancelled, change times or otherwise not match the promise of their description. Because of this and the cost of publishing those catalogues, most schools went digital.

There is nothing nearly as delectable about surfing terribly organized webpages looking for classes by title/professor only, having to click twice to find a description that is never there, a syllabus that is never submitted on a website that is often unavailable for this or that reason. Not only has searching for classes lost its joy, it’s outright irritating. I automatically skip over surfing the disciplines that don’t seem at all related – things like French or geography or art. And thus, as i learned last semester, i miss critical classes that would have been beyond interesting. But to find them in the sea of titles would never work. It takes 1 scroll-down bar, and at least 1 click to get to each discipline. You have to scroll down to grad-level classes (or click to next pages). And then click on every class whose inane title might actually be relevant. That’s a hell of a lot of clicks for nothing. After looking at 50 or so classes, i’ve given up.

But i found a new method! Of course, it will drive all of the pro-digital folks crazy because it’s just as flawed as the original tree-killing one. Now, instead of dealing with the hellish page, i go to the bookstore the day before classes. I take a notepad and walk through each aisle of textbooks. I don’t pay any attention to what discipline i’m in – i just look for things whose titles look interesting or whose authors i know i should read. Ooh – 3 Bourdieus, must be good, write down class number. I came out of the bookstore with 10 potential classes and then looked those up on the hellish website. They were in departments i never would’ve guessed (and some that i would’ve). I cut out all the classes that took place before 11AM or have 3 meeting times cause i know better. At this stage, it’s seminars all the way. And voila, i have class choices.

The funny thing is that this route is in theory far more unpredictable. There are inevitably classes with readers instead of books or where the professor forgot to order the books. But i found more interesting classes this way in 30 minutes in the bookstore than i did with probably 1 hour spent in online frustration. And i feel as though i have a general understanding of the topology of classes.

Now, this doesn’t mean that online course catalogues can’t work, but they need to be improved. Desperately. First off, it should be hyper simple for professors to upload their course books. In fact, they should upload it to the same system that orders it and puts it online. The course readers people should also connect all items there to the class because you know they have to document it somewhere since they call for copyright on all of those items. Given complete data, I should be able to search for authors that I want to read, not just professor’s names. I should have a little interactive system that shows what classes I’ve taken and shows me the topology of classes available, including a recommendation system. I should be able to surf the classes by similar content, across disciplines. I should be able to see the whole landscape, not just the terrible hierarchy of departments and numbers and navigate without a bazillion clicks. And dammit, i want a PDF that i can download and print out incomplete. Let me kill my own tree so that i can have the joy of sitting in cozy couches with a friend and cider, surfing all of the possible things i could take. Make the digital do more than my paper version ever could, but let me have my paper joy too.