IR 11.0 and accomodations

Ted Copman has started collecting information for a wiki, with travel tips for Gothenburg and IR 11.0. Useful stuff indeed!

First day at school!

I have worked here a whole week now, but still feel a little awed by this high-tech building, still trying to get into being here. The place is empty and quiet during the holidays, and it's also opressively hot. So is all of Copenhagen though, it's really different for a poor Norwegian dumped here.

The reception was wonderful. Flowers, a grand tour with our appointed guides, and introductions all around. Another colleague started at the same time: Adriana Araujo de Souza e Silva. Coming from Brazil, I suspect she's more used to the weather here right now than I am. I'll have to show off my autumn survival skills later, I suspect.

I am slowly getting my head around some of all the things that needs to be set. So far it's running a lot more smoothly than when I went to Sweden, but that may be because I am more prepared for the difficulties of changing countries. The Danes seem more familiar though, than the Swedes - a bit more easy-going and less formal. I am sure I'll soon be clobbered over the head with differences any minute now, though. I have a new phone, a new account (no money yet though), a place to live and a vague map of the place in my head. For a woman who's used to navigating by "up" and "down" this "flat" is somewhat disturbing. I lose the sense of distance, and there apepar to be no limits the the sprawl of the city.

One thing is very different. I have managed to get a tan. Now, if you live in a place on the planet where most of the time is spent avoiding the sun, you have no idea how different this is. But for us who are more familiar with full-body rain wear than with sunblock, a tan is something to be desired and cherished, both for the variation (for once, not vampire wannabe) and for the health effects. Sunlight can not only cause cancer, but also protect against it. At the same time vitamin D is vital to protect against a lot of other cancers. This last article is interesting, by the way, as it's questioning one of the great dietary myths: That of the benefits of polyunsaturated fats.

Finally research is starting to see what Scandinavians have known for ever: sunlight is good for your health. And so you'll find us on the beaches, at the pools, at verandas, in gardens, stripped of as much clothing as we can for decency remove, and ready to soak up those rays.

Me, I am still trying to get some things in place before I hit the beach. I will though, believe me, I will.

Transition

I am not writing much these days. I wake up in the morning, and start sorting something. Everything goes into one of three categories: throw, give away, keep. Then the "keep" stack is split into pack, use, Copenhagen now.

The biggest challenge were the books. We have reduced 25 years of collecting books to one (full) book cabinet. There's no way I am throwing out the graphic novels, those are still stored here and there through the house. The books got split into keep, give away, and store in a secret location until we can't keep them there any more and need to do something about it.

I have gone through letters, clothes, drawings, several drafts to the greatest Norwegian novel in modern times, a million pictures (keep) and a seemingly endless amount of pens and pencils in the strangest places. The kids kept some of their toys, but I am keeping more... Like the little red and white cat, that had to get its head sewn back on. And the brown and grey puppy that saved the night so many times. That beautiful puzzle that was the advent gift one year. The red christmas dress she wore when she left the table to raid the bags of her aunt, eating bread with brown cheese under the table while the rest sat down for the Christmas evening dinner.

It's wonderful and sweet, and I keep letting go of so many things. The letters - it's incredible how many letters we used to write once. Ribbons, cheap jewelry, old glasses, ugly promotional mugs. When we sell the house and get rid of most of the furniture, we'll be where I planned: having reduced the clutter in my life by at least half. My husband eyes the beautiful glasses in the cabinet with an evil eye. I told him to pick one glass he could do without. He found two. When I showed him which I wanted to be without, he refused. Those were the ones he liked. He is as bad as me. I find him lost in old diaries, digging through old letters. He touches hand-knitted sweaters with a loving hand, muttering about how wonderful those were, once, how much pleasure we had from them. Old tickets, old passports, scraps saved in order to make a scrap book - he savours them, and I sneak in behind him and trash what he puts down for too long.

We are getting there, though. I have sorted out the plates and cups we don't want to keep, knives and forks, CDs and videos. We have even sorted coins. Today I packed my shoes: use, store, bring, thrash. The boy laughed, and shook his head when I tried on all the pairs. I managed to get rid of - mainly to the salvation army - 10 pairs. I didn't count how many I kept. I took pictures though, of the shoes lined up on the livingroom floor, looking like they were planning an escape through the door.

It's raining and cold. I think I'll be able to leave this place. But the roots have to be severed string by string, trashed, stored or to be brought with me.

It feels final

It isn't, really, because I have a two year leave, leaving myself the option to turn around and come back to this hideout between the mountains. This hole, my sister so lovingly describes Volda as, and she's right, it is a hole in which to hide, a sudden green spot in between black mountains. And I have been crawling back into it over and over again over the last 19 years, hiding in between my expeditions into the world.

Somehow, living in Volda, the distinction between "real" and "virtual" world feels meaningless. What's real about living here? It's so secluded, so filled with its own rules, concerns and moving by its own rythm that living in the flesh world of Volda is like living in a virtual world. The insane beauty of the place, combined with the ruthless weather, the heavy darkness and the dreariness of the third month of rain and sleet, it turns Volda into something on the flip-side of other flesh world realities. At the same time - this is it. This is the reality, because reality is made up of a million little spots like this, places of heartbreaking beauty and equally numbing mundaneity, spread like random handfuls of marbles all over the planet.

The distinction between places is more than anything, a state of mind, and somehow I suspect the Volda state of mind won't stay behind. There's a tale in Norway, about the man who got into a fight with his house "nisse", the otherworld power living on his farm, traditionally bound to the land. At the end he gave up, sold the farm and moved. Among his stuff, however, the nisse was happily singing "we're moving today."

There are parts of Volda I hope I'll never leave behind. The easy assumption that people care, the sudden closeness in times of need, the long-term strategies to protect and care for the community, those are all some of the best qualities of small-town life. And there is a nisse I really hope doesn't come with me: the pettiness, the lack of generousity towards that which is unknown, the selfish scheming, the xenophobia. Sadly, I suspect that I'll find that wherever I go, that part of human nature was there before me.

As for the college? I have loved and hated this place for 19 years. I really need to work somewhere else, at least for a while, if I want to stretch and develop beyond my own comfort zone. But I am not fleeing. I am making a strategic move, keeping the lines of retreat open. Yep, sounds much better that way.

And now the bookshelves are slowly emptying. As I write, I have barely finished F. I have quite a few boxes to go. I'll get there though, and then me and my boxes and my past will move from this early-70ies built-quickly-and-cheaply crooked box into the glass-and-steel high modernity of ITU. Oh my.

Games: Design and Research

Next week there's a small, but ambitious conference in Volda: Games: Design and Research. It's organised by Norwegian game researchers loosely connected, mainly Kristine Jørgensen (conference chair), Ragnhild Tronstad, Faltin Karlsen, Sara Brinch and me, and financed by Volda University College, University of Bergen, and the Norwegian Research Council.

If you are in the neighbourhood, feel free to drop by for a lecture or two. This conference can not accomodate more than the people participating, but the lectures are open.

Sustainability - Ph D comics style

The real, the unreal and the passing of time

In between semester end, student supervision, guest lecturers, seminars, exam preparation, conference papers (oh no I have more mails I need to send out about that), conference organising, moving to another country and changing jobs, I am a tad busy. However, when given a forced pause (sitting in one place, looking awake), I grabbed the chance to read Playing with one’s self: notions of subjectivity and agency in digital games, by Alec Charles in Eludamos.

I have been using Baudrillard to a certain extent in my own work, and have also read with interest Ragnhild Tronstad's very interesting Doctoral thesis Interpretation, Performance, Play, & Seduction: Textual Adventures in Tubmud.

This prepared me for the sense of going back in time I experienced reading this paper. Fifteen years ago I wrote about the pseudo-interactivity in games (in Norwegian, Charles is exused for not citing that). This was the introduction to meeting Espen Aarseth, and the many, many discussions about the real meaning of interactivity, of agency and power that followed through the years I worked with my doctorate.

And this brings me back to Alec Charles' interesting text, because this is an article which could have benefited quite a bit from going back 10 years in the references. It feels amazing to be able to say this, but the discussions of game texts, literature theory and interactivity were quite heated around the change of the milennium, and a central text is the now old, but not yet, obviously, dated: Cybertext by Aarseth.

Another valuable source is (after the last years of telling people "you don't need to cite that #¤¤%& debate all the time," I never thought I'd say this) the infamous and formative ludology vs narratology debate. Much of the discussion in that debate concerns itself with the question of interactivity.

This little stroll down memory lane made me reconsider some of the things that have annoyed me the last years. Time has actually passed, and there is now enough material that it is possible to have a decent literature list for an article and still miss some of the more relevant material. This is all good, so no, I am not goign to start whining about "these young academics who don't do their homework, and everythign was so much better just 15 years ago..." It does however give a perspective to game studies, and the people who once upon a time said:

2001 can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field. This year has seen the first international scholarly conference on computer games, in Copenhagen in March, and several others will follow. 01-02 may also be the academic year when regular graduate programs in computer game studies are offered for the first time in universities. And it might be the first time scholars and academics take computer games seriously, as a cultural field whose value is hard to overestimate.

It feels like 2001 was yesterday.

When I read this and look at the material being produced only 9 years later, it feels like the years must have been very long indeed.

IR 11.0 results

The results are almost done, I have a small stack of papers still waiting for reviews. However, more than 90% are now decided on, so the chance is very big that you will find that the result is already available in the conference organising system. Please check in if you are impatient, I need the afternoon to finish up the last reviews before I send out the notifications.

--- update -----

For some reason, the results are not available to people. The reviewing process was delayed, and at the absolutely final deadline on the 28th the last reviews were still not in, despite the heroic efforts of several extra special volunteers. This coincided with my teaching duties. I am stuck at present, unable to put in the 10 final hours of work needed to get this done.

I can't give a time, since a lot of the things that need to be cleared up does not entirely depend on me, but I will be working on it.

Cory Doctorow on Ipads and shared content

Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert.

Cory Doctorow points to the wonderful conenction between new technology and new content, in this careful explanation of why he doesn't want to buy an Ipad.

IR 11.0 chairs

No, we don't have a problem with seating for the Internet Research 11.0 conference. I just thought you'd like to see the conference chairs! Here we are, from the left to the right: conference co-chairs Ylva Hård af Segerstad, Ann-Sofie Axelsson, and me, the program chair, in Gothenburg discussing the work that needs to be done before we meet you all in October.

Gaining the upper hand

Another article hits the digital sphere. Training, sharing, cheating is now available to the subscribers of e-learning, the journal. In 18 months it will be free, but until then: Subscribe, or be satisfied with the abstract.

This article gathers a lot of the loose threads of my thoughts through the last years, particularly my experiences from playing in guilds that raid (although casually).

Savnevise - Knutsen & Ludvigsen

Norwegians woke up this morning to hear that "Ludvigsen" is dead. It was - surreal. Not only did Gustav Lorentzen appear to be one of those upbeat, happy people who never would let age touch him, he was in great shape and died as his heart stopped during a cross-country run.

Knutsen and Ludvigsen, the team Lorentzen was a part of, wrote texts that almost all Norwegians of a certain age know by heart. The one above is perhaps the most fitting of all for the occasion, as Øystein Dolmen AKA Knutsen sings about how much he misses Ludvigsen. It is almost too sad - and still wonderful - that they wrote the music that lets us express loss in such a clear and simple manner. Thank you, Ludvigsen, for being there with us. Say hello to the badger as you pass through the tunnel.

In the air

I love to travel. It doesn't matter how, but the process of being on the way somewhere is in itself desirable. When on a plane, train, bus or boat I relax in ways I otherwise never do. All my time is dedicated to one thing: getting there.

There's a saying in Norwegian "du har bare tida og veien," which means: All you have is the time and the road. What it means is that you can't delay, the time you have now is what you need to get where you are going. You'll also notice this in the response you'll get if you ask for a distance. "How far is it from Ørsta to Volda?" "It's about 15 minuts by car." We won't say how many kilometers, distance is measured in time. This has to do with an intimate understanding about how imprecise a measure distance is, when you want to indicate the effort it takes to travel somewhere. After all, if the distance you drive is 60 kilometers, but you spend half an hour being transported on a ferry, your travelling time isn't 1 hour at 60 kilometers pr hour, but 90 minutes - if you are lucky and get directly on the ferry.

And so the recent events which closed off the Norwegian airspace suddenly changed everything about travel. Rather than Brüssel being 5 hours away, as it was when I started planning and bought the tickets for the upcoming trip with students, it's now 36 hours away. I could have left Volda last night by bus. From there I could get onwards to Copenhagen by train, where I might have caught another train to Brüssel. It would get me there some time tomorrow evening. I should have already been on the way to Oslo to make it.

But while I was travelling, the winds might turn and the cloud of ashes might move. Also, while I could do this, as the college would cover it, my students can't afford it. And why should I sit in Belgium with no students? I have been there before, and while I would love to meet some of the people I have been communicating with this get the trip organised, for instance the wonderfully friendly Consul Géneral Baudouin Lagrange in Antwerp, me going to rub shoulders with people I'd like to see is really not what this trip is about.

Hence, no matter what happens, I'll sit tight here until tomorrow and see if we can get on some planes and out of here, preferably with all my students coming along. And suddenly travel is something other than relaxation, it has become oddly insecure, a responsibility and fraught with tension. While we may not be, our travel plans are - up in the air.

Brainwashed

There's a program on NRK these days called Hjernevask or "Brainwashing." It's creating quite a stir, as a Norwegian comedian is having it out with his old professors, particularly any who have been doing gender research and claimed that gender is cultural, not natural.

The program has caused a lot of good and interesting debate, and I don't really feel the need to expand on it here. But for those who have been following the debate, here's Evolutionary Psychology Bingo:


By way of TL - thanks!

Game of the future

The Norwegian University og Science and Technology NTNU celebrates its 100 year anniversary, and to celebrate they have designed the game Spillet om framtiden or "The game of the future". In this you can be the headmaster of the University, fighting some mysterious female evil bandit (I am not sure what she has done, but she is dressed in black and has short, white hair. Is she perhaps a representative of the humanist- or the social sciences, directions which are not prioritised in Trondheim?), solving several puzzles as (you) he zoomes around the Trondheim campus in his red coat.

Despite the language in the cut scenes (did I mention that this is a technical university, not one with a strong language department?), it's a very funny little game, and I am quite delighted with how it combines playfulness, science fiction, game clichés and information about what goes on at the campus.

Going to Denmark

When I started working in Volda in 1991, it meant moving towards where I grew up. The light, the air, the mountains, the language, it all resonated deeply with me, and I felt like coming home after years in Bergen. The kids would grow up with clean air and wonderful nature, in a small community where they had space to roam and where we felt safe about letting them take themselves about where they wanted - and where they knew where to find us, how, at all times of the day. It worked wonderfully for us all, but now they have moved out, my mother, who was an important reason to move to this area, is dead, and the only thing keeping us here is a too-big house and our jobs.

And now I am changing jobs. From the middle of July I will be at the ITU in Copenhagen, Denmark, working with so many wonderful people I have learned to know over the years. I will teach in a field more closely related with my research, and I will do my research around people who can both understand me and challenge me.

It's both a very sad and a very happy decision. I am leaving a place I have grown to know so well, taking the leap into the unknown, moving from the countryside to the city. At the same time I am going towards something I have wanted more and more over the last years, new challenges, new opportunities and, not the least, a change in problems. I am realistic enough to know that it won't be any easier to work in a new place, but I am looking forwards to some variety in my frustrations!

I still have some months left here in Volda, but the energy of the move is quite envigorating, and I am in some odd way both very much present here, and very preoccupied with the move.

Want to work in Volda?

There are currently two positions open at Volda University College for people interested in ICT, design and education:

Associate professor in Media, ICT and design and Associate professor in Digital tools in education.

The final date on both positions is 7th of April, and for more information, contact Dean Aud Folkestad at +47 7007 5310.

Life among the mountains

Living among the mountains dwarfs you, but also lifts your eye and your longing to the peaks, it makes you want to get up, above the valley and the fjord, up to where nothing hinders your vision.


In summer, it's a good life, the challenge is scaled to your ambition, and the reward is a sense of being on top of the world. During the winter, however...

After three avalanches caused considerable damage and closed off the roads leading in almost every direction from here, roads have been closed in most directions. On this list (it may expire) there are 18 closed roads today, closed due to avalanches or danger of avalanches. Four more are under consideration. After a winter of snow in several layers we suddenly have rain and a thaw. It's undermining the snowmasses and loosening that which so far has been stable. Spring does that - and this year more so than ever.

I am not planning to drive to Ålesund this week-end, and if I did, I'd go out towards the islands: Tunnel, bridge and ferry, to get around and away from the mountainsides. I don't want to get caught by anything like this.

In normal years there are always avalanches, or "ras" or "skred" as they are called here. This year however, in addition to the known spots of danger, new areas are hit. And so we lose buildings, and people are in danger, like this mother and her eight year old daughter, who outraced an avalanche by car.

If you were to fly above this area in a small plane, you'd notice that there is no immediate logic to the spread of buildings. There will be a few houses close together, then nothing for a while, even if there may be wide, nice fields there. Then perhaps, one house built prominently on a rock, and then nothing again, for miles. No, it's not like that just because people wanted to live close together or far apart, depending. It's the spots where a building stands the best chance of surviving the winter.

We learn to live with the danger, and there are even people who make a living from maintaining communication in the face of danger. Recently, one machine was taken by an avalanche while clearing the road of snow. The people in it were able to run clear. As I type, others are assessing the danger of avalanches along the roads, at great risk.

Standing on top of a mountain, it feels like you own the world. Buried beneath it though...

Home taping is killing music

This one was just too good to pass by. Thanks Nick!

Games and e-learning

Sometimes I just forget that I have done something, and then it pops up and I go "Oh, yeah, right, I did that." It sounds horribly arrogant, as if I don't care, and I don't like this part of myself. You see, I do care about the articles I write and the work I do. It's just that when I have finished something, I put it behind me and move on, and sometimes I put it a bit more behind me than I really planned, you know. And then, more times than not, I go: "Oh, I wrote this as well. Huh, I almost sound smart!"

One such item is the upcoming article in E-learning. Issue 7 is on Game Design Literacy Practices, and my article in it is "Training, Sharing or Cheating? Gamer Strategies to Get a Digital Upper Hand." Heavily inspired by Mia Consalvo, I write about theorycrafting and the use of specialised gamer sites, where gamers go to help each other learn or develop those mad skills they later use to impress each other with ingame.

Sustainability

Yes, I am part of organising a conference with a major buzzword in the title. Hence, imagine my delight when I found a nice visualisation of this and some other recent buzzwords in Academia:

IR 11.0 submission guidelines

As program chair for IR 11.0 I get several questions along the same lines. So, for those out there who might actually google me in order to find answers, here's the submission guidelines for IR 11.0 Sustainability, Participation, Action:

Submission guidelines for IR 11.0 Sustainability, Participation, Action

All contributions should be submitted to https://www.conftool.net/aoir-ir11/

Each individual is invited to submit a proposal for 1 paper or 1 presentation. A person may also propose a panel session, which may include a second paper that they are presenting. An individual may also submit a roundtable proposal. You may be listed as co-author on additional papers as long as you are not presenting them. This limits each participant to three presentations, all in different formats.

For all participants: Please choose your topics of interest and expertise when you register for the conference. Also please indicate if you wish to review for the conference.

PAPERS (individual or multi-author) - submit abstract of 600-800 words. Please both cut and paste the abstract in, as well as upload one document either in .doc or .pdf format. The system does not accept other formats. Please indicate all co-authors, and nominate a main author, but be sure to remove all identifying information from the abstract itself. Be aware that you can only be the main author of one paper. Full references and formal citations are not required in abstracts, but please be aware that one main issue with papers not accepted to conferences is when they don't demonstrate a good working knowledge of other relevant research, discourses and corresponding authors. If you choose to not use formal citations and references, make certain to attribute ideas, thoughts and quotes to the correct sources in the text.

FULL PAPERS (OPTIONAL): For submitters requiring peer review of full papers, manuscripts of up to 8,000 words will be accepted for review. These will be reviewed and judged separately from abstract submissions. Please cut and paste the abstract in, and upload the papers either in .pdf or .doc format. The system does not accept other formats. Please indicate all co-authors, and nominate a main author. Be aware that you can only be the main author of one paper. Be sure to remove all identifying information from your paper.



PANEL PROPOSALS - submit a 600-800 word description of the panel theme, plus 250-500 word abstract for each paper or presentation. Indicate all participants on the submission site but not in the body of the proposal. Collect and upload the descriptions for all participants in one document, either in .pdf or .doc format. Finally, please cut and paste the submission into the system.

ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS - submit a statement indicating the nature of the roundtable discussion and interaction, in less than 800 words. Indicate all participants and their expertise in relation to the proposed topic. Upload the proposal in one document, either in .pdf or .doc format. Also cut and paste the submission into the system.

Papers, presentations and panels will be selected from the submitted proposals on the basis of multiple blind peer review, coordinated and overseen by the Program Chair.

Important dates, as of 19 February 2010:

Submissions Due 28 February 2010
Notifications of Acceptance 28 Apr 2010
Abstract Revisions Due 15 May 2010
Full Papers Due 21 August 2010
Pre-Conference Workshops 20 Oct 2010
Main Conference 21-23 Oct 2010

Moral panic goes horribly wrong

This extremely sad tale from China demonstrates only too well how dangerous extremes are - in either direction. While China already is the source of many of the horrible stories supporting the idea of internet-addiction in North America and Europe (such as the person who died after 20 hours of non-stop gaming), it is now becoming the source of the horror stories about what happens when a nation blames one object only for the cultural changes that are challenging the established order.

Deng Senshan was another victim to fear, lack of knowledge and massive propaganda.

Where do you work?

I don't mean, what company or what business or what country or what city, I mean: In what kind of space do you work?

I am quite sensitive to work spaces, and I need them to be controlled and comfortable in order to inspire a good working process. That does not mean they have to be overly organised. As long as I find what I am looking for, I am fine. Actually, I tend to use clutter as a way to remind me of tasks. Once in a while - normally at the end or the start of a term - I go through everything on the desk and on the most imemdiate shelves, and clear it. Then I move what I know I will be working with in the next 3-6 months closer to the central work space, so when I look up from a task, I am reminded of the rest of the stuff waiting. Immediate to-do stuff ends on top of my keyboard when I go home from work, and then there's a diminishing urgency as items move further from the computer monitor.

This makes it a lot easier to remember all those little tasks that I need to deal with repeatedly or immediately, but it does have one unpleasant side-effect. When I have to focus on larger, complicated tasks, I get distracted and stressed by looking at all the stuff I otherwise really don't want to forget. And so I pick up that note by the telephone, I respond to the letter by the keyboard, or I leaf through the article lurking just to the left, and the larger task that demands more focus remains untouched. That's when I have two options: To clean the desk again and remove all those to-do things (impossible, really) or to move myself, physically, away. The distance I go depends on the task.

For a focused reading up on material for teaching, going through literature for leactures or reading lists or similar tasks demanding focus but not really such a tough challenge, I change from the office computer to the lap-top, and move into the bean bag in the office. Yeah, I know, I am lucky to have an office which provides a secondary work space and to own a lap-top, but the principle can still apply elsewhere. Just move away from the "short-term-task" space and look in another direction where it's not as easy to pick up everything waiting to be fixed. Pick up the book and turn the chair around. Since I am still in the office I am available for colleagues, students and people who really need to reach me on the phone, but I am not getting all the visual clues I have planted on the desk.

For more complex tasks, I leave the office. When I write an article, I need to focus. I mean, really really focus. I need to empty out all the clutter in my mind that pulls my attention elsewhere, and get into the "zone" - a state of mind that just ignores distractions. When I am deeply focused I ignore time, space, hunger, family and cold. I have come out of writing rushes frozen to the bone and shivering because I just couldn't be bothered to stop writing and turn up the heating. In that state of mind it doesn't really matter where I am, but to get to that point I need to wind down slowly. It is like a cleansing process, perhaps similar to what monks do while meditating. To get there I find that physical work is the best. Working out is not one of my strategies, despite the studies pointing out the benefits, but I guess cleaning and tidying does much of the same as a light walk. It also helps me remove those visual clues that pull my attention away. And as things around me become more tidy, I think about the work I am supposed to do, and gradually I settle down. Once I am settled I don't care what it looks like around me, so no, I am not a superwife in a superclean house. But at least the dishes will be done.

This only works for intermediary focus though. Working at home will quickly draw me back to the need to declutter the house, if I am doing something really tough. That's when I need to get all the way out. That's when I have visited friends in Bergen, New York and Urbino, spent a year in Umeå or rented a cabin in the mountains.

Today, however, I found something interesting - shedworking. I don't really need a shed in which to work, I have a house too-large for two people and can have as big a home-office as I care to organise. It's not for lack of space I am currently tucked into a chair in the corner of a shared home office packed with books and electronic equipment. But walking out into a shed might be the mental journey I'd need to be at rest. And right now I am looking out of the window, considering where I'd like to put that shed.

You see, I need to start a new, very complicated article which I have delayed doing anything about for at least 6 months. I should have been in New York, not staring at my garden. I'll go do the dishes and think about how to pretend I am in Italy. Perhaps a cappucino will help.

Blogging the blogged Ph D about blogging

I just want to point you all towards Lilia Efimova's wonderful thesis Passion at work: blogging practices of knowledge workers, which was submitted last year. It is, of course, online, so: Enjoy!

IR 11.0 - Sustainability, Participation, Action

The conference website is up and running! It is still being built and tweeked, but even so it's infinitely better than no site at all! Add this website to your bookmarks, right along the URL for where to submit your paper!

Phishing

This arrived to an emailaddress which I have published online in order to be easily available for people up to the IR 11.0 conference. Since the mail address is openly out there, I am seeing a LOT more spam in the few months since publishing that address than I do in any other mailboxes. And so I also see some interesting phishing attempts, such as the following, supposedly sent from GMAIL. Despite the fancy colours in the original mail, all I can say to this is: Not even a good try, stranger!

----
Dear Member,

We are shutting down some email accounts and your account was automatically chosen to be deleted. If you are still interested in using our email service please fill in the space below for verification purpose by clicking the reply button. Learn more

Account:
Password:
Birth date:
Country:

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
Thank you for using Gmail !

The Gmail Team
GMAIL

Dear Amazon

You know I have loved you since I found you online. You have sated my reading lust and supported my academic struggles for years. I have browsed your pages and lusted for your offers, my wish-list is long and much larger than my bank-account, and in my shopping cart lurks desires I want to consume side by side with guilt about procrastination and lazyness.

But, dear Amazon - you are making life very difficult for me now. I was unhappy with you for a while, in Sweden, when you made me run around all of Umeå to figure out where you had sent my treasures. It was not a funny game, although it did make me ride my bike, through snow and wind, to new, remote places. Back home in Norway though, safely in Volda, I forgave you, because you delivered reliably again. I found my books in my mailbox or at the mail office, a healthy little walk away from home.

I think you know where this is going, though. Amazon, how could you? Suddenly, you are demanding that I take whole days off in order to receive that which I ask of you. You expect me to stay home, like a frustrated housewife, anxiously awaiting the pleasure of those who carry my books to me. Or, I have to ask that they are delivered to work, to be commented, studied and discussed by my peers. This is no longer what I thought it was to be! So, please remember this, my old love: Those are my books you are delaying. I have paid already as you send them, but you are slowing their trip to me through your poor choices of partners. I can change my mind, you know. I can take my wishlist elsewhere, directly to the publishers, or to competitors who deliver instantly.

I also haven't forgotten previous treachery. My patience is wearing thin, my passion is fading, but I still remember the love we shared in the past. You can still repent and return to better ways. Send my books by mail again, please? It is the best distribution system for private packages in Norway. The other systems are good for business transport, but I can't leave a lecture in order to sign for a box of science fiction books. I can't stay home a whole day just to indulge my taste for graphic novels. Please realise this, and give me the option to, perhaps, pay a little more for the transport I desire. It will be cheap compared to the inconvenience and the cost in work hours.

IR 11.0 submission site now open

To submit your papers for IR 11.0 - Sustainability, Participation, Action, please use the submission site to be found here.

The CFP can be found here, but the link to the conference organising site has not yet been added.

Knitting the revolution

When ever anybody makes a statement about gender in weblogs which indicates that women don't blog, I ask them to go start reading knitting blogs. It's one of my secret addictions, to surf knitting blogs, reading about all the things I could have made if I just put the computer away and picked up some yarn instead. Lucky for me, there are women out there who are both computer literate and knitting smart!

One of these has the weblog Med pinner (with sticks, sticks meaning knitting-needles). On her weblog, which is full of really beautiful patterns and experiences with knitting (yes, it's legal to take a picture of clothes people are wearing while outside in a public place, no, it's not permitted to publish recognisable pictures of people without their permission unless they are part of a parade or a performance or something similar where it's obvious that they are there in order to be seen. This picture doesnt' show the face though, so it should be ok.), she has a button. The text says: The revolution is being hand made, and it links to an exhibition of crafted goods in Sweden.

I had to google that though, to see if I there might be a movement behind it, and what I found was:
An artists' collective named Handmade Revolution.
Two volunteers organising markets in the UK for handmade goods.
Canadian events for selling and buying handmade goods in the "Make It" fairs.
And an angry rant against the idea that the revolution can be hand made.

On the one hand: No, knitting does not remove the fact that my entire life is supported by unsustainable technology. The only times when I get anywhere close to sustainability is when I live in the cabin with simple technology, fishing and growing most of the food, and cooking on a fire made of wood we cut clearing the garden and land around the houses. But even then I am very aware that it's just a matter of days before I turn on the electricity, get into the car and go shopping.

Still, there's another way to think about a hand-made revolution.

If we are to have a systemic change, which is what we need, it will mean that everybody must expect lifestyle changes. We may for instance have to move back to the lifestyle of the fifties, giving up on twice-daily showers, and moving into areas which will allow us to walk or ride a bike or bus to work. We can't drive to malls, and the huge cities need to change very radically, in order to allow for local produce and local markets. And each and every step of the way will mean more direct, hands-on and personal engagement with the comforts of our lives.

One pair of hand-knitted mittens is just one less pair of mittens produced by Indian child slaves sold. But the knowledge and skill it takes to make those mittens can be the key to changing society, if it's used at all levels of life: Knowing how to cook your food from scratch, knowing how to grow it, knowing how to pick and find it, knowing how to use the resources that surround you, knowing how to build a house, row a boat, repair a bike, redress your furniture, repair your clothes and care for a well of fresh water - all this is knowledge that needs a hands-on approach. Technology may save us through some new, sustainable solution, but it's the hands-on knowledge of how our comforts are brought to be that can make us accept this as important.

So start knitting, now.

Invisible

My colleague Svein Brurås wrote about an extremely good piece of journalism in a Norwegian newspaper, and I just want to join him in pointing towards it. Good journalism is worth celebrating and sharing.

What it's about? Nothing really. Just a lonely man nobody noticed, who died from a stroke while he was out on his bike. The story the journalist uncovers through very careful and through investigation is nothing special either, it's just heartbreaking, and very, very good. It's in Norwegian, sorry, other-language-readers. Google Translate may help a little, but it won't give you the tone in which the story has been told.

Being Human

I have just recently discovered a television series which made me an instant fan. BBC's Being Human is the perfect mix for me, it has a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire, they live in a small town in England, and they are struggling to fit in. It's a mix of True Blood and East-Enders and contains buckets of the delightful humour that tends to be such an integrated part of the best British series. The harddisk has been cleared of several other dramas in order to make space for this one.

This made me consider why I like the monster theme so much. I love True Blood as well, despite its much more heavy handed story-telling, and am on principle a fan of dragons, cheering for the monster, not the knight.

I think the title of this series captures the reason for me. Being human is about a desire to belong to society. It's all about solving or at least dealing with the issues that arise when you're different, in order to be able to live in peace simply as a regular human being. The many stories of monsters confirm the value of humanity, whether the monsters try to live like us, they try to extinguish us, or they are us. The monster without or within, the unhuman or the inhuman, is what defines humanity, and makes being human something desirable. Or, perhaps a

Games and entertainment technology

IADIS - International Association for Development of the Information Society - are organising a conference in Freiburg, Germany, in July 2010. They have a call for papers, deadline is February 19th, and the conference is called GET - Games and Entertainment Technology. The CFP is very wide, generally, if you do something related to electronic games as a researcher, designer, programmer, teacher or artist, you'll fit. They also invite for very diverse types of presentations, from posters to full papers, as well as corporate exhibitions and showcases.

The end of the magic?

I have been playing World of Warcraft for almost five years now, and a lot of my research and writing has come out of that play. I am both fascinated with online games as a medium and cultural artifacts, and an enthusiastic happy player. Or, at least, I was the last until the new patch - 3.3.0. Now I have suddenly lost it.

In order to play WoW well at the high end - intense heroic grinding and raiding - you needed to have friends and connections. To function well as a gamer in World of Warcraft meant to function well as a friend to a large group of people. You had to be reliable, follow a certain set of rules and know your players in order to get good groups and easy "runs". After a while you had a friends list and was in enough such lists that you would be accepted, included and assisted. If you did a mistake, people would forgive, as they'd know it wasn't common, and you could play well and share generously the next time. In short: You invested social capital and it had value.

Now, not so much.

In order to advance now, you need to grind enormous amounts of emblems, and to grind those emblems you either have to have the above mentioned friend group already established, or you need to group with strangers who you will most likely never meet again. (Check Cross Realm Dungeon Finder and User Interface Section: Dungeon Finder.)

Knowing you won't ever meet said strangers again makes people behave oddly. Suddenly old rules are thrown over board and people become greedy and cruel. The new group set up allow things like "vote to kick", which is extensively used to kick people who for instance have low dps. Low dps comes from bad gear, and in order to get good gear you need to do instances. However, if you get kicked from the groups you participate in due to bad gear, you can't get good gear. Further, it allows for rudeness and impatience. Healers and tanks are still hard to find, but you don't need to be polite to your tank or healer any more. Tanks run to rush through the instance as quickly as possible, then get angry with healers who don't keep up. If the tank is slow, the entire group goes ballistic, insisting on higher speed through the instance. It's all about grinding as many badges as quickly as possible. As for conversation: Why talk, why be polite and say hello or goodbye? It's not like we will meet again, after all. And so the "tip of the day" shown on log-in about "being polite in group may get you invited back" is put to shame. There's no way to pre-sort the group for the instance, no way to screen out the ninjas or the flaming idiots, and hence no reason to be nice. The 3.3.0 patch makes niceness a less efficient gaming strategy.

And then we come to looting. At one point the looting options are better. Blizzard has included a "disenchant" option, which lets a person choose "disenchant" if there is an enchanter in the group. This option is equal to "greed", and if three people choose greed while two choose disenchant, it will be a greed roll, and people receive enchanting materials or the object, depending on their preference. But there are still people who pick "need". And they pick "need" on all kind of weird things, most notably trade materials such as frozen orbs. Frozen orbs used to be rare but important, now they are plentyful due to the fact that there are other orbs replacing them in crafting (crusader orbs, for instance), and they can be had at a reasonable price at the AH. Normally people would pick "greed" for that kind of craft objects, but that has suddely changed. Now it's all about "need". And you get a particular type of "need" - people who avoid needing until the roll bar is almost gone, then they hit "need" after all others in the group have chosen the more politically correct and polite "greed".

So, why do people still use the automated cross-server group-finder? Because one of the vital emblems for buying new gear is most easily obtainable through using it. Hence, Blizzard forces the players into very uncomfortable, conflict-fraught situations where they can not utilise their social capital. Although there is one way around that. If you already have a group of good friends, you can make pre-set grinding groups and enter with healer, tank and three dps into the instance-finder system. Then you get to play with your friends.

So, the new instance finder is good for: People with experience and good gear. People with a well-established group of friends. People who don't care about social play, and have no qualms about abandoning a group, kicking a slow player or ninjaing loot. The new, unattached casual player has absolutely no chance at having fun in this system.

Shame on you, Blizzard. But, well, I guess you don't want more new players. Perhaps 11,5 million is enough, really?

Årsakssammenhenger og spill

I anledning VGs ualminnelig dårlige artikkel om sammenhengen mellom et drap på Kongsvinger og spilling av World of Warcraft og Counterstrike, vil jeg vise til en artikkel om skoleskytinger og moralske panikker. Denne artikkelen kritiserer den overforenklede ideen om at mennesker ikke er i stand til å skille mellom fantasi og virkelighet, og den like enkle forskningen som underbygger denne konklusjonen - blant annet ved å vise til et solid forskningsmateriale som gir andre/alternative svar. Samtidig viser den til FBIs funn når det gjelder drapsmenn som spiller spill (s 28 i C. J. Fergusons artikkel):

The FBI report appeared to focus on individuals who approved of hateful or destructive messages in the media, rather than merely enjoying the media for entertainment purposes. For instance, an individual who praised Mein Kampf and its message of racism and hatred would arguably be considered more ‘at risk’ than would someone who enjoyed playing the violent video game Medal of Honor because it was fun. Indeed, related to violent video games, the FBI report specifically stated, “The student spends inordinate amounts of time [although inordinate is never defined and is left subjective] playing video games with violent themes and seems more interested in the violent images than the game itself ” [italics added]. Thus, an overall interest in causing harm is potentially predictive of violence, not exposure to violent media in and of itself, a conclusion supported by the recent Savage, (2008) meta-analysis.

I følge FBI er altså ikke årsakssammenhengen mediebruk -> vold, men interesse for å bruke vold -> mediebruk. Altså, hvis du liker/ønsker å bruke vold er du interessert i medieuttrykk som inneholder vold. Videre påpeker de at voldsmenn som bruker spill er mer interessert i voldshandlinger enn å kose seg med å spille. De er altså fokusert på våpen og vold, uansett kontekst.

VG gjentar imidlertid et mantra som har kommet inn i mediene for en del år siden, og de gjentar det ved å ta kontakt med personer som har sagt akkurat det samme i årevis. De overser konsekvent all forskning som viser noe annet enn denne overforenklede årsakssammenhengen.

(The above is a public service research-reference directed at Norwegian readers who might be interested in alternatives to a piece of intense and single-minded journalism claiming that gaming leads to serious crime.)