The title of Lori Bradley’s blog – ADD – another dissertation distraction has me cracking up and i felt the need to share for all y’all enmeshed in finals, writing, attention deficit and procrastination vices of all sorts. It’s a fantastic complement to PhD – Piled Higher and Deeper.

Mindtangle has a brilliant way of battling his fingers’ efforts to procrastinate:

I just added the following to my HOSTS file:

# The “law school finals productivity pack”

127.0.0.1 www.ifilm.com
127.0.0.1 ifilm.com
127.0.0.1 www.boingboing.net
127.0.0.1 boingboing.net
127.0.0.1 news.google.com
127.0.0.1 www.slashdot.org
127.0.0.1 slashdot.org
127.0.0.1 www.gamespot.com
127.0.0.1 gamespot.com
127.0.0.1 www.gizmodo.com
127.0.0.1 gizmodo.com

For those who don’t know what this does, it makes any attempt of my computer to connect to those domains to loop back to this computer so that no information is transferred.

I don’t often respond to comments even though i actually really appreciate them. I have to admit that i’m still overwhelmed that so many folks read this. How does my failure to respond affect whether or not you comment and what you do say when you comment?

When i first heard about “The Tipping Point” i have to admit that i was wary. I love pop-(social)science when it covers material that i’m not familiar with, but not when it’s work in my area, work that i know intimately. I didn’t connected Gladwell’s name with two of my favorite articles until much later. Still, i felt that i needed to read “The Tipping Point” in order to have conversations about my research with folks outside of the academy. So, i did. And i was really pleasantly surprised. Gladwell captured the essence of qualitative social networks, weaving together research and narrative to construct a truly compelling book. He unpacked research complexities with relative success and made social networks publicly accessible (although i’m not sure that i’m thrilled with this result, but still). It wasn’t a perfect book, but it was damn good and it let me engage with technologists, media and non-researchers in an entirely different way.

A few weeks ago, i started hearing about Gladwell’s upcoming book – “Blink.” I surfed to his site to find out that the book wont’ be released until January. Fine, i’ll wait. Two hours later, i received a lovely email from his press folks asking if i wanted to review “Blink” on my blog. ::bounce:: Of course! I wanted to reach out and hug my blog for giving me this opportunity. Yesterday, i received a review copy and i’m trying really hard not to read it until finals are over.

Now, for anyone who has heard me obsess over my books, review copies have particular significance. First, i *despise* hardcover books with a passion. I often don’t read really interesting books when they come out because i hate reading hardcovers. I genuinely hate hate hate hate hardcovers. I will happily pay hardcover price for a paperback of a really interesting book, but i just hate reading things that are so structurally rigid. Review copies, on the other hand, are like a treasure find. I often scour half.com looking for review copies that people (illegally) sell. Review copies are not only paperbacks from before the hardcover, *but* they have mistakes in them! Can i tell you how much i love errors in books??? It makes me feel like the book is real, like i’m seeing the process, that authors are imperfect. I admit – i’ve already scanned “Blink” – and i’m stoked to see things like “TK” which seems to indicate things that are to come later. It’s like me writing CITATION in my papers as markers for later insertion. Review copies make me think that one day, i’ll write a book and people will edit it. Review copies feel like they are part of the process, not some artificially and remotely constructed artifact of knowledge. Review copies are the antithesis of hardcover books… they make me drool.

Anyhow, i will review “Blink” properly shortly but in the meantime, i just wanted to share my utter joy in having a review copy in hand and my deep appreciation that blogging has let this happen without requiring me to scour half.com. And isn’t it damn cool that Gladwell’s press folks are reaching out to bloggers for reviews, not just mainstream media? Of course, i can’t help but wonder if i should take this opportunity to do a proper review that could be used elsewhere. Hmmm…

I was thinking about the last two entries that i posted and about the common practice by some bloggers and LJ/Xanga folks to post personality tests. Remember when we all used to get forwards from friends with questions your friends answered and questions that you should pass on to all of your friends? It was part of the forwarding blitz. The goal was to get to know your friends better through funny meme-spreading questions. Y’know… the things that resulted in the post-AOL phrase “the September that never ended”? Remember those?

These practices play an interesting and similar social role. In both cases, you share something that you find fun and interesting while simultaneously sharing something about yourself. You create mini-memes and hope your friends will follow in suit because you want to hear their answers. Of course, the suits don’t play along because they think that these mediums are far more professional than that. But when your friends do engage in the pyramid scheme, you smile at the minutia that they offer that tells so much about them.

Also, of course, both are ways of shouting out at your friends when you have no real content to share, just something that will make them think about you and smile. It’s a digital presence indicator, a way of remotely ::nuzzling:: It’s sooo not the professional web, but so critical to the way that social ties are maintained.

[Per Metamanda’s random shuffle]

• Infected Mushroom – My Mummy Said
• Concorde Music Club – Mein name ist Melville
• Rusted Root – Back to the Earth
• Johnny Cash – I Won’t Back Down
• Space Tribe – The Elixir of Life
• I Monster – Daydream
• Ani DiFranco – Out of Range
• Erykah Badu – See You Next Lifetime
• Massive Attack – Prayer for England
• Beth Orton – Where Do I Begin
• Infected Mushroom – The Messenger
• The Beloved – The Sun Rising
• Beastie Boys – Root Down
• Ween – Flutes of Chi

New Notional Slurry exercise: Read your signature on the scattered ashes. The exercise includes:

What items there in the room with you could be used to reconstruct or rediscover an aspect of your life? What of your possessions differentiate your life from that of others in your demographic?

Again, consider the objects you have received from other people, which carry some of their story. What proportion of their material possessions do those objects represent? Now consider your own possessions. What proportion of yours would connote anything at all to an ignorant but interested detective or anthropologist?

Although i could make a psychologist giddy with this exercise and expound for hours in a state of utter procrastination, i’ll refrain. Instead, i’ll use this exercise as a prompt to offer a few “observations” that one would have, all of which say very different things about me.

There’s a sewing machine upside down on top of the sweaters. Taped to it are hand-written labels and instructions in someone else’s handwriting, pointers to what particular dials are and what to do to make the machine work. The gift card for the sewing machine will be found under my bed, with a note wishing me luck on learning to sew. In a bin, one will find a stack of things needing mending and nothing in the room will be found with mends having been made.

700+ books scatter the room, many in topical piles. Most are not duplicates, but there are 7 copies of one book and 9 of another. Upon opening many books, random things are bound to fly out. There will be hundreds of transportation stubs, fliers from parties and receipts. Surfing through the books, random phone numbers and to-do lists will be found.

A box of Lego Mindstorms is stashed beneath a 4′ stuffed dog. Inside the box, there is a list of all Legos included with this set. All of those Legos are there, but so are many more. Many of the additional Legos cannot be found in any set now or ever on the market.

Under the bed, there is a large box containing mostly photos. There are thousands of photos, mostly Polaroids. That box also contains a hand-made collage, a poster, a handmade box containing paper butterflies, a Self magazine, a bottle of perfume, three unmarked postcards, a signed Ani Difranco stub, an earring, a broken bracelet and a pacifier. There are many more boxes with mementos, but this one is at the front and contains very few mementos compared to photos.

OK… i’ll stop because this is too much fun. It reminds me of the time when a couple broke up across the street and one threw all the others’ possessions into the street for trash day. What a story those items told. Or, of course, the I Found Some of Your Life blog….

Note: mucho appreciation for Danyel for giving me an opportunity to procrastinate. He rightfully knew that i would love this post in context of the CSCW workshop on Representations of Identity that Liz, Michele and i ran.

[From OM]

Consider a common housing-wanted ad on Craigslist:

I’m a mature woman who just moved to San Francisco. I’m friendly, considerate and pretty clean. I’m fairly quiet and am responsible about paying bills on time. I love arts and crafts, cooking and traveling.

In searching for housing or looking for a date, people often describe themselves in order to find others like them for a comfortable housing situation. People use the context of their search to help direct what aspects of themselves they share. When looking for housing, people are trying to be honest, direct and descriptive because the genuinely want to find a compatible roommate.

Yet, what does it mean to describe oneself as “neat”? What is the context in which this trait is being ascribed? It is very dependent on one’s experiences with other roommates. Compared to the roommates i’ve had in the past, perhaps i can describe myself as neat, but is that truly meaningful for future roommates? Traits like mature, neat, friendly, considerate, clean, etc. are only meaningful in context.

People seeking people online often express frustration over the self-depictions, irritated by what they perceive as deception. I would argue that most perceived deceptions are not lies, but moments where the presenter is trying to describe themselves as either 1) how they see themselves; 2) who they are working to be. I can describe myself as neat and you might see this as deceptive, but i see this as truth compared to my own experiences. I might describe myself as neat because i’m really trying to be neat and thus, i don’t see it as a lie so much as an attribute that i’ve not fully possessed. Of course, neither of these are particularly helpful to you who is looking for someone neat based on your calculation of what that term means. And thus, you see deception.

Trying to construct a portrait of myself requires a level of self-reflection that is not something that most people are comfortable or capable of doing. I must also assess the readers’ assumptions of ‘norm’ in order to build this depiction, yet how can i assess the norms of an unknown audience? I can’t. As such, i must first make a guess about these norms by constructing what i believe to be universals – universal conceptions of ‘clean.’ But who am i to construct a universal measurement of cleanliness with limited experience? And why should i expect you to have the same mental model?

Reading a profile of someone requires the reader to not read on their terms, but on the terms of the presenter. What is the presenter trying to say about themselves? What context are they in when describing themselves? How can you determine their sense of norms? Of course, this is not something that one can simply do by staring at a profile.

Most social tools center on profiles and while we’re becoming accustomed to reading and constructing these profiles, observing and developing productions of identity in mediated contexts is not a naturalized activity. So long as we’re building tools that rely on this, we must consider the complications that are being introduced by profiles instead of bodies.

Does anyone know of any good programs where you can travel to some place and spend a month or so doing intensive science learning as an adult while being out in the world where science is real? Think semester-at-sea for adults. Think learning geology while hiking in Peru. Thinking learning animal biology while in Africa. Think studying linguistics while working with people who speak a creole. Think adult Space Camp. A braniac vacation really.

Last week, i joined a friend and some of his friends to see a DJ spin. We ended up at the Rx Gallery which made me smile since i had last been there for the Urban Probes event. We both had the eerie feeling that we should know people in that room, given the music and the vibe, yet we did not know anyone other than those we went with. Upon penetrating the packed room, i found Brian Knep’s Healing installation which gave me a fantastic grin, remembering hours spent playing with Anya at SIGGRAPH (she was obsessed with Healing and i knew Brian from college). Another piece at Rx struck my fancy, as folks tried to dance in front of it for it to record their patterns. I forgot about this, but i was reading Caterina’s post where she referenced Scott Snibbe, another old Brown pal. I surfed to his site only to find an image of Deep Walls, the exhibit from Rx. The whole point of this project is to create cinematic memories and i couldn’t help but think about how reading this injected recursive memories into my headspace, as i spiraled into all directions brought on by finding these, bridging connections over time, place and intention. I love apopheniac moments.