HASTAC Scholars

Sadly I was not able to attend the HASTAC conference, but I wanted to post some information about a current project of mine...

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) gave an amazing performance tonight at the opening reception for the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Competition. Here's some clips from the question and answer session that followed the performance:

Part one:

Part two:

Curators Braxton Soderman and Justin Katko discuss how their art show Inappropriate Covers traverses digital boundaries. They write, "Inappropriate Covers includes multi-media works by eleven established and emerging artists, chosen for the aesthetic tensions they generate through acts of appropriation, reconfiguration, and erasure." I'd also like to thank director Jo-Ann Conklin and the rest of the staff at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University for allowing me to film there.

HASTAC III.  "Traversing Digital Boundaries."
This blog is part of a series of blogs leading up to the third annual HASTAC
conference, which will be held April 19-21, 2009, at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign under the theme "Traversing Digital Boundaries." As the
theme suggests, the gathering will focus on the exploration of new territory
and on work that crosses, manipulates, or simply ignores traditional
boundaries. The conference program will include presentations of research,
performances, technology demonstrations, posters, panel discussions, and
"virtual" participation via telepresence technology.  For more
information, visit http://www.chass.uiuc.edu/Index/Entries/2009/1/26_HASTAC_III.html
or contact HASTAC3@ncsa.uiuc.edu.

HASTAC III.  “Traversing Digital Boundaries.”
This blog is part of a series of blogs leading up to the third annual HASTAC conference, which will be held April 19-21, 2009, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the theme “Traversing Digital Boundaries.” As the theme suggests, the gathering will focus on the exploration of new territory and on work that crosses, manipulates, or simply ignores traditional boundaries. The conference program will include presentations of research, performances, technology demonstrations, posters, panel discussions, and “virtual” participation via telepresence technology.  For more information, contact HASTAC3@ncsa.uiuc.edu.

When: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM

Where: John Hope Franklin Center 240

The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative have released the 2009 Horizon Report which “seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations.”

The 2009 report identifies six technologies to watch: mobile devices, cloud computing, geo-tagging, the “personal web,” “semantic-aware applications,” and “smart objects.”

The entire report can be accessed online; additionally, Steve Kolowich has summarized the report’s take on the technologies above over at the Wired Campus blog.

"I suggest that online fanfiction communities can be placed in this tradition of sponsorship -- that they function not only as Discourse communities (Gee, 1996) but also as culturally relevant sponsors of literacy in which participants are recruited, regulated, and suppressed.”

*HASTAC III.  "Traversing Digital Boundaries."*
/This blog is part of a series of blogs leading up to the third annual HASTAC
conference, which will be held April 19-21, 2009, at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign under the theme "Traversing Digital Boundaries." As the theme
suggests, the gathering will focus on the exploration of new territory and on work that
crosses, manipulates, or simply ignores traditional boundaries. The conference program
will include presentations of research, performances, technology demonstrations,
posters, panel discussions, and "virtual" participation via telepresence technology.
For more information, contact HASTAC3@ncsa.uiuc.edu <mailto:HASTAC3@ncsa.uiuc.edu>./

Reporting from the conference of the Modern Language Association. This is technically my December vlog!

Matthew K. Gold and John Jones appear in the video.

Song: http://allmyinternetfriends.com by Amanda French

There is a 40 minute video of the panel "Humanities 2.0: Participatory Learning in an Age of Technology" at http://j-l-r.org/media/MLAsmall.mov

One drawback of any academic conference is the constant feeling that you are missing something. Typically, multiple panels are scheduled at the same time, and it can be difficult to know what knowledge is being produced and exchanged in sessions you are unable to attend. Last week's MLA conference, where I was on a panel on microblogging with Brian Croxall, Matt Gold, and David Parry, was no exception.

Because of the quality of the discussion session following our presentations, however, we wanted to take a step toward rectifying this situation. We decided that we would do our best to provide the details of our talks and discussion--as well as the subsequent blogged conversations that have arisen out of the panel--for those who weren't there.

Since the event was initiated and then organized using different social and collaborative media (Twitter, Skype, Pageflakes, etc.), we created a Google Doc of our notes and the following conversation. If you were able to attend the panel and would like to edit and update the document to cover something that we missed, please email the panel chair, Brian Croxall at b.croxall [at] gmail [dot] com, and he will be glad to give you editing privileges on the Google Doc on which this post is based. Otherwise, please feel free to continue the discussion in the comments section below. What follows is our best attempt at a recreation of the panel based on our recollection and notes.

Update: Cathy Davidson blogged about the panel on HASTAC a few days ago. Here's a link to her post.

I will be participating in a panel on microblogging at MLA 2008 this weekend in San Francisco. To help promote our session, fellow panelist David Parry has created a page with the panel description and panel-related tweets as well as other information related to Twitter and MLA. If you're going to be at MLA this weekend, please think about attending the panel (it's at 8:30a Sunday at the Hilton). Otherwise, when you have a free moment this week, check out the site.

Jason B. Jones has posted an interesting response to Mark Bauerlein's comments concerning the role of social media in teen narcissism on his Chronicle.com blog.

In his post, Bauerlein cites recent psychological studies that indicate teens are more narcissistic now than they have been in the past. While Jones points out that these studies provide "multiple causes for this" narcissism, Bauerlein suggests that it can be attributed to the tools of social media. Jones counters

More generally, I think that this is a moment for education, not for condemnation. I’ve argued before that I don’t think students are as familiar with technology as grown-ups tend to think, and this is probably a good example. It may be the case that students turn to such tools as Twitter for endless self-validation or for mere self-expression--but I don’t think that’s the best use of such technologies. Merlin Mann gets at the crucial issue:

And, you know. Just since it bears repeating: If you think you know people from reading Twitter, you probably don’t get Twitter. Or people.

One of the things social media let us do is reflect in more sophisticated ways on self-presentation and on the differences, perhaps, between the self we present to the public and the self to whom all the meaningless events of a day happen. In other words, there’s no reason at all why Twitter, like everything else in a liberal education, can’t help us learn to get over our small shivering selves.

Of course, Bauerlein's comments are timely: in the U.S., the holidays are the traditional season in which we are reminded that adulthood is an alternating series of tragedies and disappointments which only serve to underline our ultimate insignificance. As Bauerlein notes, "maturity means outgrowing" the belief that "your life is, indeed, something special and different and unique and worth sharing." I, for one, agree, and the sooner are kids can be taught how little their thoughts will ever matter to anyone else, the better.

However, while I'm sure we can all support crushing the hopes and dreams of future generations, what I really wanted to comment on is the irony involved in Bauerlein's post. As a rhetorician, I would argue that all he has really demonstrated in this essay is that he is not a member of the target audience of teenaged bloggers, a fact that he then employs to criticize "MySpace page[s] and blog diar[ies]," all the while utilizing one of these very technologies to publicize said critiques. This merely serves to illustrate the paradox introduced by Walter Ong: critiques of high technology must always be made using that same technology.

I wonder if Bauerlein ever stopped to consider that, like those poor, narcissistic teenagers, he himself was composing a blog entry. Why did he think those thoughts were of more intrinsic merit than some teenager narrating his or her life to friends?

I, of course, have no access to Bauerlein's thoughts, but I imagine the reasons are these: he has a Ph.D. and is a Professor at Emory. He has published two books and numerous articles in respected newspapers. His blog isn't on MySpace, it's on Chronicle.com. In short, the (unstated) reasons underlying his assumption that his "opinion [is] just as valid as anyone else’s"--or, at least, more important than anything a teenager could possibly write on MySpace--is deeply dependent on centuries old publishing processes that have served for generations as gatekeepers of what information should be considered important or significant. Since its inception, the internet has destabilized these processes and brought into question the assumptions of quality which they support. To borrow Jones's phrasing, the technologies that Bauerlein is criticizing help us to reflect in more sophisticated ways on information and on the different ways that information is imbued with authority and meaning by technological and cultural forces. What's more, these technologies have demonstrated that in some cases they are able to produce superior versions of the products of the publishing culture they are replacing (cf. Wikipedia, The New York Times Online, etc.)

So, having read Bauerlein's post, I wonder what is better: the tools that allow for Wikipedia, even if they also serve to convince teenagers that they might possibly have something special to say, or the traditional publishing establishment that places the authority of determining what is important to others in the hands of the few?

Second, I'd like to know if any fellow Scholars will be attending the MLA conference? I will be putting in an appearance as a total neophyte (it's not really my field), so I thought I'd bring Peep the bunny along for some vlogging. I'd love to interview you if I can find you!

I'm also seeking pointers to interesting uses (or non-uses) of technology by/at the MLA. For example, Dave Parry blogged about a "'grassroots' funding" initiative.

Tamar Weinberg at Techpedia has posted an Ultimate Handbook to the etiquette of interactions on a number of social media sites. Here’s part of Weinberg’s description of the Handbook:

Would you do the following within real face-to-face relationships?

• Jump on the friendship bandwagon without properly introducing yourself?

• Consistently talk about yourself and promote only yourself without regard for those around you?
• Randomly approach a friend you barely talk to and simply ask for favors — repeatedly?
• Introduce yourself to another person as “Pink House Gardening?”

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may need a refresher course on social media etiquette--and perhaps real-life etiquette also. Here are some egregious sins that you must not perform on social media sites. Avoid these violations and learn how to manage and maintain online relationships on a variety of popular social media sites.

At the very list least, this list of dos and don'ts is a great discussion piece for those interested in the evolving norms of online environments.

via LifeHacker

Flickr Image: 

The Center for Cultural Analysis welcomed Lee Siegel yesterday to discuss his contentious book, Against the Machine.  I had expected the discussion to be fun and contentious, and Siegel didn't disappoint.  Here's the blurb for the book: 

I'm sure many HASTAC readers have already heard this news, but it's worth repeating: Processing (the fantastic programming language and development environment born in the MIT Media Lab in 2001) finally left beta earlier this week.

I discovered this cool project called “Picturing to Learn” today while talking to a friend who works for Dr. Rachael Brady. (Dr. Brady is the founder and head of the Visualization Technology group as well as the faculty advisor to the interdisciplinary studies and information sciences program at Duke University.) (Read more about it at here.)

I ran across the following news story a couple weeks ago from PC World via washingtonpost.com:

Yesterday's New York Times profile of the work of James Pennebaker is just the latest evidence of a revival of interest in computational stylistics, and I'd be curious to hear other HASTAC Scholars' thoughts on the topic.

I'd be the first to admit that I have something of a counting fetish, and I'd love to see this kind of thing done well, but I can't help thinking that arguments like the following have a touch of the phrenological about them:

I've noticed that a number of people have mentioned that they use delicious for social bookmarking, and I was wondering if other HASTAC Scholars would find it useful to establish some simple way to flag things that you think might be of interest to other scholars in the group, even if you don't have time for a full blog post at the moment. If we had a shared tag, for example, we could use Yahoo! Pipes (or some similar tool) to aggregate all the content with that tag from delicious, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Flickr Image: 

Given financial and time considerations, Linz and Austria are almost impossibly remote from my current home in Berlin.  This is especially unfortunate since I have been looking for good new media art festivals and conferences to attend in Europe ever since last year's exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, V

For those of you in the NY/NJ/PA area, I encourage you to come participate/attend a conference on "Digital Humanities and the Disciplines," which begins the afternoon of Thurs. Oct. 2 and continues for most of the day on Friday, Oct. 3. 

http://cca.rutgers.edu/events/conferences/

I'll be attending and will most likely be posting up some stuff that I gather from it here come this weekend as it seems right up our alley.

A group of geographers have posted a reader on technoscience, called "Locating Technoscience".

From their 'cover':

Ok.  Now that  I have finally gotten settled into my school semester and have my schedule all mapped out, I can begin participating in things that are NOT required by my instructors.

Admittedly, I am not a gamer.  Lacking the patience and attention span, I probably will never be a gamer and am therefore less than qualified to write extensively about the subject.  However, it has captured my attention as of late, particularly due to the social nature of online gaming.  With the popularity and increased accessability of networks such as XBox Live, one can play with individuals across the globe.  This is an exciting way to share diverse cultural nuances through fun and games, right?

I was talking with another University of Illinois grad student today.  It turns out we both put in our undergrad time at Iowa State University.  Midwest, represent.  She mentioned a little project that was completed at the Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC) of ISU's Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Graduate Program.  

Flickr Image: 

Flickr photo is from mutantlog's stream and shows a small-scale atomic clock from NIST.

Yesterday Dartmouth College announced the appointment of Mary Flanagan as our first chair of Digital Humanities. I’m excited about this announcement and Dartmouth’s commitment to the digital humanities through the impressive endowment available for this position. I first encountered Mary’s work through her edited volume reload (MIT Press, 2002), which we used in a course examining postmodernism and postmodern theory from (among other critical positions) feminism.

The power, or more precisely, pouissance, of media and the arts to respond to injustice and to those in control is well-known, even if it must be continually reaffirmed and re-created due to moves by the establishment.  Tactical responses rely on the unexpected, at least the unexpected as seen by establishment, in order to be effective.  These types of situations proliferate as cheap media technologies enter into formerly repressive situations.  An example of this is Malaysia, where I spent some time this summer.  While the nation profiles itself as a developing place, with a variety