register for Blogher 2006

Blogher 2005 was a complete blast and Blogher 2006 will be even better! Now two days long, Blogher 2006 will allow women bloggers around the world to gather, commune, socialize and revel in the fact that technology participation is more diverse than people think. Blogher 2006 will be held in San Jose, in a bigger location (although space is still limited so sign up now). This year, there will be two days of convening: July 28-29, 2006. Come one come all! Above everything else, REGISTER NOW!!!

a brilliant class

At the end of this semester, i will take my qualifying exams. This will be a brutal 3 hour oral examination of all things that i know in conjunction with my dissertation proposal. ::gulp:: As a result, i was not going to take any classes this semester. But then i heard that Jean Lave was teaching an STS-minded ethnography course using 3 of the books that are on my qualifying exam. So i had to check it out.

There are ?25? people in the class, but all of the attention is on Jean – she has one of those auras where all respect flows her way. She explains that this is her 40th year teaching at University of California and she will be retiring at the end of the semester. When a dear friend (my advisor) asked her to teach an ethnography course for him, she agreed both because she loves my advisor and because she loves ethnography. She decided to teach her favorite books and to try something new. She was concerned that as graduate students, we’ve been taught to read critically – to always tear apart everything we saw. We never learned to appreciate the values of what we read, only find its flaws and how we could do better.

So, she decided that we are going to read five of her favorite ethnographies. And then we are going to read them again. And then again. We are going to watch as the books evolve through reading. We are going to learn to discuss not to destroy but to appreciate. We are going to learn to read.

Something about her presence, her way of saying all of this, her way of swearing and yet being so proper just warmed my heart. I can’t say no to this class… it’s just too good. And such good practice. And thus, i am off to read about how Intuit children learn social boundaries by being offered challenging moral questions….

Update: For those who are interested in the ethnographies, they are:

Inuit Morality Play by Jean Briggs
Learning to Labor by Paul Willis
Beamtimes and Lifetimes by Sharon Traweek
Plans and Situated Actions by Lucy Suchman
Deadly Words by Jeanne Favret-Saada

sloppy speech acts

I was conversing with a friend on my Sidekick when we got into a discussion about speech acts. I was trying to explain Derrida and Searle’s seminal tiff over Austin when i got frustrated. It was not the actual topic that made me upset but my inability to convey the significance of their disagreement. She was on her computer typing at normal speed and i was trying to peck out shorthand on my Sidekick. I got frustrated that i couldn’t get across what i wanted to.

I’m fascinated by the kinds of speech that suit the Sidekick and which kinds don’t. Anything that requires debate or nuanced speech fails on the Sidekick because i try to type fast and end up with sloppy, shorthanded text that is easily misinterpreted. And then i get frustrated, type faster and thus more sloppy to try to correct the conversational path quickly. Spiral to uh-oh quickly ensues.

Today, i was writing an email to someone about something that was emotionally charged and i realized that i was using super staccato speech patterns. I took a look at some recent IM exchanges and saw more staccato – they had blurred… emotional speech had the same pattern. Yesterday, i ran across old zwrite debates from 1997 and when i looked back today, i realized there was a big difference in language patterns. No shorthand, more articulated speech. I was also thinking about how Tom Coate thought that his blogging speech had really changed when he switched from Blogger to MovableType. I was also noticing that i often fail to use complete sentences on my blog now.. just thought bursts with lots of ellipses. I wonder how much a switch to AIM and then to the Sidekick changed things.

And then i started thinking about how sloppy my speech has been lately. I speak like i IM on my Sidekick – short, curt, coded… My speech has gotten super sloppy in recent years and i use my hands even more when i’m talking. I use whatever word comes to mind even if it doesn’t fit well and i speak through impressions rather than using sound bites. I realize that my writing has gotten sloppier too and i find it far far far more painful to write now than before. I’m not particularly proud of either of these manifestations.

I’m not sure where all of the cause and effects are but i am definitely wondering if my always-on IM life is affecting my speech elsewhere. I certainly see this with students’ writing but i’d always dismissed it as them not having learned to write yet. But if my writing and speaking is starting to look all IM like, what does that mean? What if this is the root of my frustration with writing these days? How do i get back to being able to write 10 page papers in one night in a jam session? What on earth is going on???

mutants and post secret confessors

I’ve written before about the mutants who come back and visit my site on a daily basis, but recently, there’s a new group of folks coming to lone entries – the post secret confessors. Apparently, my page on post secret comes up pretty high in the searches so hundreds of folks have come to my site to leave their confessions in the comments. I have to admit that it makes me smile every day to read these and it makes me realize how much fun Frank Warren must be having going to his mailbox every day. For those who haven’t snagged a copy of the book, you totally should. I thought about getting it for a Christmas gift but i feared folks might find it disturbing.

gender representation on King Kong

I decided to see the new King Kong while i was in Hawaii and i have to say it was an unbelievable experience. First, there was something so utterly astounding to be in a theater with mostly ~~Hawaiians~~ Hawaiian residents while watching a film with an atrocious and offensive depiction of Islanders as a “savage” population incapable of hygiene with their eyes rolled back in their heads. Of course, the kids in the audience didn’t seem to mind – they happily talked their way through the entire film, more ecstatic at the action scenes than anything else.

Putting the problematic racial depiction aside, what really fascinated me was the representation of gender performances intertwined with the dichotomy between nature and technology. Kong is a stand-in for pure masculinity, pure nature while Jack (and crew) represent a technologically-aided masculinity. Ann on the other hand represents pure femininity in society, but her representation in the “wild” is a complicated mix of feminine beauty and stereotypically masculine strength and will. The masculine side of her tames the beast while the feminine side brings out his vulnerabilities and nurturing side. The crew’s masculinity comes out in trying to preserve the female while Kong’s masculinity is tamed by the female.

In the wild, neither Kong nor Ann represents a cleanly gendered split while their representations in human society are, by the very nature of that society, split into a clean binary (best represented by Kong and the fake Ann’s interaction on stage back in New York). Conversely, in society, Jack is a nice metrosexual but in the wild, he develops into a pure masculine energy, determined to heroically save the girl. The crew view Ann as a completely vulnerable individual who must be saved while Kong saves her for bringing out his vulnerabilities.

Juxtaposed against the monkey vs. robot narrative, the gendered aspect is intriguing. In the wild, there’s more flexibility for complicated gender performances but when technology evens the playing field, gender must be dichotomously maintained through performance.

What i found intriguing about Jackson’s representation of gender in King Kong was that it was so over the top caricatured that it was fascinating to watch unfold (while his racial representation was disturbing at best).

Anyhow… just some random thoughts. Mostly cuz i’d love to hear others’ thoughts on the representations in the film.

Amazon’s plastic response to phishing

So, i’m one of those obnoxious people who uses a unique email address on every single site and when i use a site where i put my credit card in, i use a string of odd letters and numbers at the end to make it less guessable. I’m very careful to not give out those email addresses outside of the company i’m dealing with and, because i use pine and a Mac, i’ve never worried about viruses. Plus, business emails go to a separate account that is removed from my primary email.

Over the holidays, i got a phishing message to my Amazon email address and i was quite upset. (I’m one of those people who has an Amazon credit card and gets the free shipping because i spend far too much money there – this is not an account i want to be fucked with.) Amazon has this whole thing about how phishing is important to them and thus they have a special reporting place. So, i write to them. What do i get back? It’s my fault, of course. In response, i get a link to learn more about how to protect myself from phishing with nothing addressing any of my specific concerns.

Fuck you very much, Amazon.

One of the things that i hate about the whole online vendors thing is that we’ve lost customer service completely. What happened to the customer is always right ethos? What happened to being really conscious of valued customers? ::sigh::

In the meantime, i’m really concerned about how the phishers got that email address and i have no idea how that might have happened. Did Amazon send the address to one of the used book people that i bought books from? How else might someone have gotten that address? Hrmfpt.

i’m baaaaack….

In the last episode, i told you i was off for the holidays. Somehow, when i got to New York, i just managed to stay offline. And then when i got to Hawaii, it seemed foolish to open the computer. Damn that felt nice. Here’s a recap of the loveliness for those of you who get a kick out of me having a life in the physical world.

I landed in NY just in time to witness the transit strike. The kid sitting next to me was also from Cal and we got to talking. He was going home to see parents and he volunteered his parents to drive me home. I was a bit unsure about this, but when they arrived, they talked about how hard getting around was because of the transit strike and _of course_ they’d drive me even though i was going to the Lower East Side and they were going to the Upper West Side. I love New Yorkers in a crises. During the first two days, i never made it past the Village. It was neat to walk around but so very strange. People on bicycles biking across the Williamsburg Bridge. But of course, it was New York and everyone was just buckling down and dealing. It was great to see some community actually standing up against the disintegration of social support in society.

After chilling with a friend for a few days (including fun pub times), i was supposed to go to midtown to move into the Algonquin with another friend. I decided to grab a cab midday, hoping it wouldn’t be so bad. It took over 2.5 hours to get from Houston to Time Square. ::gulp:: But the Algonquin was wonderful and i felt like i was going back in history… Dorothy Parker… Harpo Marx… George Kaufman. Ahh. We went and saw a fantastic exhibit at the Met (Photography and the Occult) before doing lots and lots of Christmas shopping.

Off to Long Island for familia and then back to the city to whip through the Pixar exhibit at MOMA before seeing a *HYSTERICAL* Broadway musical called Avenue Q. OMG. I couldn’t stop laughing at the mockery of modern day PC-ness.

Next, i took a brutally long flight from JFK to Kauai (with a layover in Los Angeles) which i mostly spent playing Sudoku and reading about the history of Times Square (The Devil’s Playground). I actually did quite a bit of reading on vacation. I read A Million Little Pieces, Dharma Punx, Prep, and Teenage Wasteland. (Yeah, yeah… there’s a theme here.) The last one was based on Cameron’s recommendation and OMG, it was fantastic. It’s an ethnography of the burnouts in Bergenfield, New Jersey where four teenagers killed themselves in a suicide pact in 1987. The book does a brilliant job of covering class in America and the disappearance of notions of success for working class workers (death of unions, factory work). I will deal with it more specifically on alterity in a few days. But wow! Soooo good.

And then there was Hawaii…. Barb and i managed to get a Mustang convertible which made me think so much about Thelma and Louise (the friendship bonding part, not the suicide part). We drove all around the island, hiked the Waimea Canyon, saw pretty waterfalls, snorkeled, watched kite surfing in blissful obsession and flaked on the beach with joy. Soo good.

After Barb left for CES, both of my advisors arrived with their full families. Their friends arrived, my friends arrived and i realized at some point that i knew 16 people on the island who had nothing to do with the conference in addition to the 12 people i intended to see because of the conference. The workshop was a fascinating discussion of Pepys Diary and my talk went well (and Peter even came!). I ended up having brilliant conversations about social visualization while goofing around at beaches, hottubs and pools. I got to play with Mimi’s absolutely wonderful children (who i managed to get fascinated with hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes in a strange twist of conversations). I also got to play with another wonderful kid (Mimi’s brother’s girlfriend’s friend’s daughter) who didn’t speak of lick of English but loved talking to me in Japanese. And then, when i would speak back to her in English she would just repeat whatever i would say. “How are you?” “How are you?” It was utterly beyond adorable.

So, that was my vacation… it was lovely… I’m relaxed and calm and ready to dive deeply into my qualifying exams (yelp).

Hope everyone out there is doing well! And i promise some more thought-provoking entries soon.

tis holiday time…

I’m still not a big fan of Christmas because as best as i can tell, it’s just an excuse for mass consumption and gluttony. But still, i enjoy the family time and thus i’m headed to the east coast to spend time with relatives. I don’t know how much Internet access i will have between now and January 9. After family time, i will be running off to Hawaii for a mix of vacation (aka: reading time) and “conference” “attendance” (aka academic family outting).

In any case, i wish everyone the best in their consumption and celebratory efforts!

various conference bits

I wanted to share some exciting conference bits. First, i have four upcoming public conference speaking gigs that might be of interest to folks:

1. In January, at HICSS, i will be presenting a paper: “Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster.”

2. In February, at AAAS, i will be speaking about digital youth alongside Henry Jenkins, Justine Cassell, Amanda Lehnart, and Dave Huffaker. The panel is called “It’s 10 pm: Do You Know Where Your Children Are . . . On-line!”

3. In March, i will be giving a talk at Etech. The talk is called “G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide.” This will be a long talk, written explicitly for the Etech community, addressing the tensions between global and local that are emerging in social software. For all of you industry folks, this will be the most relevant talk i will give this season.

4. The next week in March, i will be organizing a panel at SXSW alongside Jane McGonigal, Irina Shklovski and Amanda Williams. SXSW will be full of many different fun panels and lots of good socialization.

In addition to my upcoming talks, i am also on the steering committee for BlogTalk Reloaded. The CFP was just released and is of particular relevance to many of you since the scope of the conference has expanded to think about social software more broadly. There are three separate tracks: academic, industry and practitioner. It’s a good opportunity to meet with all sorts of social technology minded folks.

danah boyd | apophenia

making connections where none previously existed