Waiting for the barbarians

I am writing on European culture, and it's still early in the process. Hence I am googling random phrases, looking for the words, the articles and the books that can push me further. And there it is, suddenly, a poem that grips me, makes me think and also laugh, at this Europe in which I live, this odd, ancient, and also new and raw place. I found it in the beginning of a book that is available as a PDF: David Morley and Kevin Robbins (1995): Spaces of identity; Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries, London: Routledge.

It is a poem by the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy: Waiting for the babarians. A snippet from the poem:

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

            Because the barbarians are coming today
            and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

I think we are, all over Europe, still expecting the barbarians. However, we have forgotten who they are.

Still Going Wrong

The main benefit of living in Copenhagen over Volda is the easy access to theatre, ballet, opera and whatnot. I know that sounds as if I am constantly off to some performance, while the truth is that most nights are spent falling asleep before I manage to finish the episode of CSI.

I do however get to see some of what is on, and last night I went with the husband, a sister and a friend of the family to a truly funny dance/performance/theatre "thing" which challenged the idea of "wrong". Still going wrong is performed by an ensemble of five dancing for just short of an hour in a very intimate stage. It explores "wrong" and turns odd, erroneous and ugly into a performance of surprising impact and humour. The dancers wear pink socks that lets them slide around the stage, they sweat through the casual wear they dance in, they bump into each other, look shy and akward, and run into the walls - just like your average distracted and introvert scholar.

I was unprepared for the experience, I just knew it would be pretty alternative compared to the classical ballet at the scene next door. Dansehallerne is  a center for dance built in the old soda factory of the brewing giant Carlsberg, and caters to a wide varity of dance styles with dancers and choreographers both Danish and international.

Unrepared was not a problem, though. Instead of coming out feeling elated after seeing a superb performance of exquisite style, Still going wrong had me coming out laughing and ready to explore the environment. After watching the dancers battle shyness, errors and akwardness, getting up on the playful installations waiting in the yard and jumping and moving in silly poses felt right and permitted. It was a performance more about the delight in flawed humanity than about the genius of perfection, and as such it spoke to us about what we could do ourselves.

Riding the bikes back home in a pack like serious bad-boy bikers (three women and one man, all between 50 and 64, crazy folks indeed) was the perfect way to end the evening, seeing Copenhagen in the sunset, soft warm light fading into fat drops of rain.

Transformed Play

Tomorrow the conference The Transformative Museum starts up in Roskilde, and I will be there together with two colleagues from ITU, Bjarki Valtysson and Nanna Holdgaard. Their contributions can be found, among many other objects, at the conference paper site. Go read them, they have put a lot more effort into their work than I have managed to make time for this spring. My presence there started out of a desire to look at and write about everyday culture, under the working title "Mundane and digital" at the ITU, and I have been cooperating with Bjarki and Nanna, as well as Susana Tosca and Lisbeth Klastrup. The paper for this conference is an attempt to catch still half-formed ideas, and it shows. Still, it feels like a useful direction to go, if I want to combine my very varied fields, those of strategic communication, social media and role-play games. And here it is, for those with special interests: limited time only, the latest edition of Transformed Play, written for The Transformative Museum, Roskilde 2012.

Copenhagen #8: Extreme traffic

Not everything is perfect in bicycle-land, and there have been a lot of complaints through 2011 and into 2012 about cyclists breaking traffic regulations. The police has had several campaigns in order to catch illegal cycling, and since 2012 the fines are doubled, something the police celebrated with giving out more fines.

I am still trying to learn the distinctions. In Norway a bicyclist either drives as if we're in a car, or on the sidewalk. Both are permitted, and driving on the sidewalk is recommended in heavily trafficked areas. You can imagine how well that works... But this means that I tend to take short-cuts when it gets me our of dangerous situations. There is, for instance, this one sidewalk on the way to work. There's no way I can cross the street right there, and it's perhaps 30 meters to the traffic light, where I can cross safely. So I roll slowly over a small bridge on the sidewalk, or get off the bike and walk if there are people there. In the heavy morning traffic I choose the safest, least trafficked route - which leads me to this little traffic transgression. And while I roll there, riddled by guilt, I see again and again examples of the Danish driver's interpretation of traffic-lights.

Traffic lights are supposedly very clear. It's green for go, yellow for wait, and red for stop. Yellow is for the transition between full speed and stop, for when you can't break without endangering traffic. Right? Yep, that's what I thought.

Now, if you are a bicyclist in Copenhagen, please realise that while you'll be fined by the police if you cross on yellow to red, Copenhagen yellow-light interpretations will kill you. Here's the Copenhagen car-drivers guide to stoplights.

While driving
Green: Go as hard and fast as you can.
Yellow: Keep going.
It's been yellow for a little while: Speed up, you can still make it across on the yellow light.
Red: It's only been red for 2 seconds, so it's still yellow.
Red for more than two seconds: Stop, preferably in the middle of the bike-path or the foot crossing.

While standing still
Red: It will be yellow any second, so I'd better keep prepared.
Red and yellow: Time to inch forwards.
Red and yellow if you are behind another car: Prepare to honk your horn.
Green: If you are behind a car pausing for some reason, honk.
Green: Full speed!

Now, if you combine this with the bicyclists reluctance to stop - if you stop you'll have to push off and get back on the bike, so you don't want that - what you get in Copenhagen are situations that makes me wonder why I haven't seen any serious accidents yet. On this one place on the path to work, the lights are synchronised. This means that if you keep a steady tempo, you'll reach the next light just as it turns green. However, if you're a little quicker than the mainstream biker, you reach the next light as it's still yellow and red! So, we have the Danish car-drivers' reluctance to stop until it's been red for a while, combined with the quickest bikers reluctance to stop or even pause on their way to work, sending cyclists at full speed in front of cars jumping lights.

I tell you,  I get all the adrenaline thrills I need regularly from riding my bike to work. Add the police's habit of driving like they are all in a second-rate cop-movie that relies on the car chases to make money, this city keeps the inhabitants' pulse up.

In defense of Copenhagen drivers: They take the most gentle and considerate right turns of all drivers I have seen. Normally turning  right is the easiest thing to do in right-side traffic. But when there's a lane of bikers just to the right of you, turning right becomes a hazard, and you need to make certain all bikers have passed before turning. I have to give it to the local drivers: They wait patiently. This is totally at odds with the regular stop-light behaviour, but a life-saviour. Of course, Danish television regularly sends a really scary reminder for both bikers and drivers about the danger of turning right without carefully checking the blind zone. I had nightmares about that infomercial the first months I lived here, and have now developed a healthy survivor habit of making certain the cars waiting to turn right see me before I cross.

In general, I have developed a habit of being a lot more alert as a biker than I used to. It's not just the cars, it's the other bikers and making sure I don't pass another biker just as somebody were about to pass me, guessing how the pedestrians will move, and seeing from the ripple of movement through the people waiting at a bus-stop whether the bus is approaching. Bicyclists are supposed to yield for people getting on or getting off the bus, so I need to know if I am about to be overtaken by one. Years ago, a friend compared driving on a six-lane highway with playing a computer game. Now I am playing that game, only it's a lot more complex. I have to understand and deal with so many more factors in traffic, different speeds, different rules for different participants, and the sudden moments when the behaviour changes - it's Extreme Traffic; Copenhagen Rules. The game is on.

Wedding traditions in transition

What is a Norwegian wedding tradition? Currently, the idea of the "traditional wedding" is dominated by a mixture of American traditions gleaned from movies and "Bridezilla" programs, where we learn how they do things elsewhere. It's about white brides, bridal music of a certain kind, and church weddings where brides battle to the death to get the church they always wanted. But is this the traditional Norwegian wedding?

First: about half the weddings in Norway 2008-2010 were in a church, the other half was elsewhere. I am not counting the part abroad, as it's not registered whether those were church- weddings or not. So, if tradition is defined by what people do, church weddings are no longer the one, true way.

Next: white weddings. The white wedding dress was not common until between the first and second world war in the US, and was still not all that common until 1940-50 in Norway. Before that wedding dresses were all colours, with both red and black as much-used colours. If we are to look at the more recent traditions, as in four - five years old, like the weddings above, people get married in just about everything, and the strongly coloured national costumes are quite common, even in churches. Considering that only half the weddings happen in churches, where white seems to be the strongest tradition, and several of the church weddings see the bride in national costumes, I think there's a good chance that white isn't the most common (i. e. traditional) bride colour any more.

Third: Why did I write this at all? There is this beautiful article about two young women who are quite unhappy that they won't have their dream wedding, since they are early adaptors to a new law. The Norwegian church has not yet written a liturgy to include same-sex weddings, and so a church wedding will not be legally binding. They will have to marry twice if they want both a church wedding and a legally binding ceremony. While that is sad for two girls with conventional dreams, it is traditional for non-conventional weddings. Back when divorce was unheard of, only previously unmarried people or widows/widowers could marry in the church. Unless you were a king and changed the church in your country, of course. When divorce lost the taint of scandal, priests would still refuse to marry people who had been married before, and refuse them access to the church. In 1991, one of my relatives could not have a priest in her wedding in Norway, since she had been married before. This was quite common treatment of heterosexual divorcees.

What I am trying to say is, the traditional wedding for Norwegian couples that do not adhere to the norm of heterosexual, Christian, first-time marriage is an untraditional wedding. It's a wedding where the couples mix family traditions, local traditions, traditions from film and television, examples from royal weddings, made-up traditions and their own ideas about a good wedding.

So you go, girls, making your own interpretation of traditions. I suspect that is the most traditional tradition of all wedding traditions: To pick something here and something there, adjust, change and renew until you have a ceremony and party that fits with what you want. In that manner, you're traditional early adaptors. Thank you for sharing it with us. You are beautiful and brave.

Lego blondes

Almost two months ago, I wrote a blogpost about LEGO, and how the Friends series is problematic for a woman who is conscious about the gendering of toys. Since then the topic has made quite a splash in Denmark, and the Danish minister of - hmm - likestilling, what's the good English word for that? Minister of Equality? Anyway, Manu Sareen had to withdraw his criticism of LEGO Friends, because it became too problematic for the party. The argument used against his criticism was a classic rhetoric strategy to make criticism go away, as described by Benoit in his theory of image restoration. The public, very likely fueled by political opponents and the fact that LEGO is pretty much a holy cow in Denmark, told Manu Sareen that he had much more important questions to worry about.

I, however, am not elected to much, and I can disagree without losing any votes. That's why I went out and bought two little LEGO figures. I bought one regular one, that I put together from different bits, with very good help from the nice people working in the LEGO store in Copenhagen, the other part of a set of Friends LEGO. (I could buy a set with a girl baking and working as a waitress, or a set with a girl lounging at the pool. Yep. That's what girls can fantasize about when they play with girl-segment LEGO.)

I have claimed that the Friends LEGO figures don't fit with the others, but I have been a little uncomfortable with the claim, because I hadn't really studied them well enough to be absolutely certain. But let's look below:

 First, the Friends figure is taller. She will not fit into the cars, planes and many wondrous creations in the regular Lego series.

 Next, she can't actually sit in the brick cars, fit on the horses, or stick in the pilot seat of the planes. She is designed to not fit in with those objects.

She can stand on the brick sets, so building a city, for instance, she can stand on the street or in the houses.

She can't fit into the helmet, even if we remove her hair.

It belongs to the story that I had to costum build my space girl. I tried to buy the lovely little pink space-suited figure on display in the store, but it belongs to a special set that is no longer produced.

So what is going on here?

1: It's 2012. Do I really have to point out that the LEGO Friends character is slimmer and has budding boobs, while the old-fashioned one is a genderless brick figure? With the increased sexualisation of childhood, this is one more object cementing a feminine ideal of slim, tall women. Slim tall women who can't do what the small, squat, genderless figures can. The LEGO men have all the powerful options.

2: The structure of LEGO makes it impossible to use the Friends figures in as many ways as the regular ones. The version created for girls has, in game-structure language, less affordances and more restrictions. This is a game-changer, literally, as it means the girl toys offer a different game from the boy toys.

3: LEGO wants to make twice as much money off the consumers. I can understand that. Childhood is a big money machine in the western countries, and we already wade in LEGO. They have to do something if sales are to be increased. So by making certain that the figures don't match, parents of children of two genders have to buy both series if they want to offer equal opportunity building bricks to their kids.

Yes, there are other important topics out there for the Danish minister Manu Sareen to pay attention to. I am not certain if they are more important than the commercialisation and gendering of the childhood.

Life in Copenhagen part 7: health and understanding

It's been a while since I wrote, and it's because I have been sick. Being sick in a new place and particularly a new country is scary.

The first signs arrived almost a year ago, when I was all alone in Denmark. Over the months I had some rather unsettling experiences. I noticed a lump where there shouldn't be one (spoiler: no, not cancer and nothing life-threatening), but I carefully ignored it for months. I really didn't want to know. But then I got an infection, fever and pain, and I had to go see a doctor. I ended up on antibiotics, stranded in my one-room apartment for almost two weeks. Part of the time I had fever fantasies, and some of the few experiences I had with contact to the world around me were truly surreal. Such as when the Norwegian culture-minister called, and I wasn't sure if it was a joke, a fever-fantasy, or reality. I asked her to call back after the antibiotics had time to work. She did.

Anyway: what I really want to write about here, is the part of Denmark that Norwegians think exist, but which tends to be absent, or just not seen, when we start living here.

You see, compared to Norwegian, Danish (the language) sounds gentle and warm. Danes appear to be touchy-feely and friendly, seen from the distance Norwegians tend to keep people at. Then we move to Denmark and figure out that no, it's not that simple. As a Norwegian living here, not just shopping in the large stores on Strøget or drinking in Nyhavn, we get ridiculed, cut off, excluded and ignored; due to the language difference. I felt like Denmark really didn't want me, yet another annoying non-dane here to make their lives more complicated. No matter that I am exactly the kind of person the Danish State wants: highly educated specialist in a field Denmark has prioritized for years - Denmark felt as cold as the record winter around me, except from a few friends and colleagues.

So, here I was, alone, feverish and lost, in this realm of Scandinavian distance and cold manners. That's when I suddenly started seeing the Danes as I had believed they would be. It started with the doctor: When she realised that it wasn't just a regular infection, she raced to the phone to find a specialist to see me right away! And she did, all the while doing her best to comfort me without saying anything either way. The specialist was busy, but warm, friendly and just as easygoing and nice as I used to think Danes would be. At the lab for the tests, while insanely busy, people were gentle, polite and smiling. And when I came to see my wonderful hairdresser after this rather shattering day, he looked me over once, and started spoiling me above and beyond what I could have asked for.

Best of all, through all of this, I was suddenly understood! For some reason, me being sick trumphed all language problems. And it continued. When I went to get food in one of the really fashionable take-aways in this area, the normally snotty staff took one look at me and became nice and understanding. When I was well again, this treatment disappeared. Then I went to the hospital for surgery, and suddenly it was right back again! Professional, busy and quick, yes, but also friendly, warm, polite and smiling.

It was a really weird experience. I don't know if it's possible to generalise from this, but I drew some personal conclusions.

1: Danes are as nice as we think, when we (the strangers) become an individual to them.
2: Pain and illness is a strong way of revealing our common humanity, both through empathy and through strength; it also allows others to make your life a little better, and people everywhere like to do a good thing for others.
3: The rest of the time, Danes are as busy and impatient as everybody else. Coming to Copenhagen was like moving to Oslo as a very green student from the west-coast, only worse. Soft wovels and polite phrases do not make people nicer, even if they sound like butter, cream and smiles.

All in all, it was a good experience. I know now that Danes can, when they need to, make that vital effort to connect, and so my own efforts at communication aren't necessary wasted either. Also, the Danish health system may be in crisis due to the state of the world economy, but I hardly think I would have been treated better if I had stayed in between the fjords in Norway. It's the general state of health-care systems to not have enough money, and I was in the somewhat strained, but still firm grasp of a Scandinavian welfare state. It feels familiar. It feels a little like... home?

Design, nature and culture

The other day I picked up Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. I am not done with it yet, so this isn't a review. However, it triggered quite a few questions in, which highlight one of the main problems with design, a problem my mother pointed out 40-50 years ago. What she pointed out (in less words) was how the distribution of power in society influences design.

I love the main credo of Don Norman's book and approach to design. Rather than the top-down approach where "good design" is something recognized by the designer's peers and rarely truly appreciated by "regular people," Don Norman starts, like a true functionalist, with function, and claims that good design starts with good function. It has to work for the people who use it. I am almost ready to break out in hallelujahs here, I couldn't agree more. Then he goes through a whole stack of problems with design, listing several examples... and that's when I start seeing a different problem with how design is developed, based on the teachings of my mother.

Back when my father built the house we sold last year, fashion demanded small, scientifically designed kitchens, largely designed after time-motion studies. The idea was a work-space where the housewife would be able to reach everything with as few steps as possible. That's when my mother put her foot down, with the pretty precise analysis of the situation: "That's designed by men."

The traditional Norwegian kitchen was and is, excluding a period lasting from 1945-1970, a large, social room, today frequently merged with the living room thanks to efficient vents and fans. It's an important place for work, socialising and enjoyment, a focus which is even more important in an active, two-provider family where the socialising time is limited. It's where children are taught how to cook and clean, it's where the family cooperates to create an important value of the family life, and it's where work and socialisation can mingle, as it offers a chance to be together, work, chat or open up to each other. You can't do that in a tiny kitchen designed for one person to stand in one spot; you need room, several working spaces, and light.

Don Norman and I don't really disagree here, but still, this is where he uses his examples oddly, without consideration for status and power. One of his examples is an Italian designed washing machine that can do one hundred things, but the couple owning it barely makes it do one. My mother had some funky washing machines in her lifetime, and despite her low level of education and absolute terror of computers, she always made them work the way she wanted. Why?

The example in Don Norman's book is an extremely educated couple. I am sure they can operate any kind of technology they need to get their work done. But do they even care about the process of laundry? My mother would recognize materials by touch, she knew the nature of different colours (blue bleeds more easily than red), she would distinguish between weaves and was deeply offended by blends that changed the properties of all materials included. She'd treat each piece of clothing belonging to a large family individually, and the washing disasters with mixed colours were normally the fault of her not-that-focused daughters. In many ways, my mother was like the Austrian bus driver in another of Don Norman's examples, who, when asked if it wasn't difficult to keep track of everything in his complex panel answered "it's all where it should be."

Now we're getting where I want to. Yes, to a certain extent design is bad because it invites error. However: to a certain extent design is bad because it assumes people are all the same. We believe doing laundry is a simple task, because we all have to do it. It's knowledge we aren't trained or certified for, and so it has to be easy. Driving a bus, on the other hand, includes rigorous training and strict certification. It has to be complex. A complex washing machine causes frustration with the design, a complex bus causes respect for the handler.

Next couple that with gender theory, and we start to see one of the reasons why telephone systems are allowed to be designed as such horribly impractical tools. Most professional phone operators are women. They work a tool which we all use, and so we believe it's simple. They have jobs they are not certified for and which require very little special training. Also, where the bus driver might kill his passengers if he didn't find everything right at hand, nobody dies from a missed call (unlike it's to an emergency call center, and I suspect their systems don't look much like the ones Don Normal describes).

My mother loved to be able to adjust her washing machine to do exactly what she wanted. The bus driver probably has the same feeling about his bus. I love the huge clunky windows machine that I use for gaming, because it lets me do the same thing. I am a lot more frustrated by the apple machine I have through work, because it treats me like an idiot, "simplifying" things I want to do by hand. I use it as a compromise between weight, size and certain functions, and grind my teeth when it calls me stupid by making so many decisions for me. If I was a different kind of user, I'd probably worship it by now, just like I want my car to be simple to drive, and I would not buy a washing machines with functions I didn't recognize the use for.

So: Good design of everyday things is user-centered and based on tests, I am all with Norman there. I would however like to see him question the many places where he says "natural", possibly exchanging several of those with "cultural." After all, most desicions which feel natural to us aren't. They are cultural. Another example from the book: He has tied a string around his closet door in able to open it. At that age, I'd have been down in my father's workshop, looking for a door-knob. That was the culturally logical, available solution to me, and since I thought all fathers had a fully equipped workshop, it also would seem natural. The string was a very clever idea though!

CPH p.2: So you think you can ride?

Moving to Copenhagen meant bringing my bike - of course. After all, Copenhagen has a strong bicycle culture and an eager biker population, with their special interest advocates, such as Mikael at Copenhagenize.com. I used to ride my bike to school in the summer half of high school, rushing past the stuck cars at home, I went biking around the fjords and mountains for fun (and love - strong motivator, that) during the summers, and I rode my bike to work down the steep Bergen hills - and back up, to regain strength after a car accident. When I went to Umeå as a visiting scholar, I brought my bike, riding through the winter on spiked tires. I thought I knew about riding a bicycle. It's a motor skill you don't really forget, right?

Well, Copenhagen has revealed several of my bad habits.

At first glance, it's extremely easy to ride a bike in Copenhagen. There are the famous Copenhagen lanes separating cars from bikes and pedestrians, and the cutest little traffic lights with red, yellow and green bikes to tell you when to go and when to pause. You go to the tourist information or your hotel or the parking authorithy, and you ask for a bicycle map to find all the best biking routes, and you have donned your helmet - preferably, since you're as vain as me, some fashionable version camouflaged as an elegant hat or a fancy cap, or a smooth helmet painted to match your bike or your outfit. After all, biking in the city, you want to look chic.

Now, off you go - and suddenly you discover the Copenhagen bikers' glare. Danes are pretty polite, and tolerant of tourists, but do mind that glare. Did you pause in the wrong side of the lane? There will be a tingling bell - and a glare. Did you forget to signal your slow-down and stop? There's that glare. Did you turn the wrong direction? A muttered "shit" and that glare, again. Slowly, you'll be getting it: you're doing something wrong, and it's time to figure out what before something happens.

First: signals. If you like me learned about traffic safety and biking in school, then you know about using your hands to signal right and left. However, Copenhagen has a third signal: stop. It's used for stopping at the curb, for turning off to the side to wait for the crossing light, for having reached your destination and stopping to park your bike. You lift a hand (optional which) and hold it straight up, either open or as a fist, doesn't matter. And you preferably do it early, or somebody will hit your from behind, and you'll get a lot more than a glare.

Next: attention. At the beginning you're happy to avoid being hit by cars. Then you start congratulating yourself that you don't hit any pedestrians. Then you discover all the bikers glaring at you, and you realise it's time to look out for other bikers. This is when you learn to look before you turn. You see, the lanes are not one-track lanes, but two and sometimes three or four-track lanes. It works just like with cars, slow to the right, faster to the left. Once you have passed your obstacle, you fall in to the right again. Unless you're chatting with your friend at your side. Danes can talk and bike at the same time. Astounding capacity. When you're at that level, you stop caring about the glare, because you're riding with that easy balanced arrogance that comes with knowing you're looking better and getting stronger and more healthy with every turn of the wheel. Yeah, they look good.

Anyway, about that attention. Don't let those good looks distract you. What you're looking for is traffic, and you need to learn how to anticipate it. See that group of people and the bus just pulling in? They will pass through the bike lane in a second. See those tourists messing around, waiting to cross? They don't know about the bike lane, and they will block you. And behind you - catch that faint hum? You're being overtaken, and you need to check for that if you plan to shift out to pass the biker in front of you. And DO mind the red lights. Biking like a maniac to the next light just to have to stop is a waste of energy. Ease up slowly, and hope it shifts to green before you have to stop. It's not like there's always a railing to hang on to. But you're learning.

Soon you'll discover the more subtle signs of Danish biking culture. Like the turned up or tucked in right pant-leg. In the summer half of the year it's mostly turned up, to avoid getting the pants into the chain. That's when you'll notice another little subtle thing: when you wear sandals and your pants are short or tucked up, your ankle tattoo will show! That is, of course, given that you have biked around in Christiania or downtown for long enough to decide you really want a nice little decoration on your right ankle. I have never before seen that many ankle tattoos as I saw this summer, tucked neatly between the shoe and the short or turned-up pants.

Now you're ready for another difficult biking exercize: finding a parking spot. I know people who don't bike in Copenhagen because it's such a hazzle to park. Yeah. But don't despair - despite the many angry glares you'll get if you put your bike in front of shop windows, there are thousands of designated parking spots all over town. And some of them are pretty damn good. Like the ITU basement, which is to a large extent dedicated to parking bicycles.

And yes, my bike is there, today as most days. Sometimes sore, sometimes soaked, sometimes just happy to have gotten here on time - but I live 10 minutes away by bike, and I love it.

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

All your typoes are belong to us

Have you typoed an url lately? Where did you land? The last times I have tried that, I have ended up in a site of mega religion cristian somethings, where the big news on the first site is something along the line that the bible is true. They now have testimonies proving that.

I have to admit that while this is great advertising, I am shocked by the way one organisation, this time a very fanatic religious one, has been able to hijack the Internet. There must be a mechanism somewhere that redirects all typoes that would otherwise lead to a "file not found" to this site. How has it happened? Have they bought the spot? Can it be bought? If so, what did it cost? Or have they hacked it, planted a bug that infiltrates your machine, and then sends you off to their site, rather than just google search site or something. Are there thousands of religious fanatics that keep creating websites with typoed versions of every website out there, which then redirects to this page? Have they taken over explorer? Did Bill Gates receive Jesus in his heart, and started preaching through the error messages?

It's quite scary. Fanatics are no more reassuring just because they are Christian.

And yes, I deliberately did not use exact phrasing or links in this post. They get more than enough hits out of me as it is.

I want electronic books!

I have started to look at electronic book readers, as I am one of those who like to write outside of the office, but the office is where my library is. Now, if I had a nice electronic book reader, that wouldn't be a problem, because I could just bring my books with me. Even if the limitation on the book reader was, let's say, 100 books, that meant I could empty it into an electronic library on a hard drive, and just bring the books I wanted. Or have them in an online bookshelf. It would really change my life. Why have nobody thought about this before?

Right.

Perhaps the best supported electronic book reader is the Amazon Kindle, . It can contain about 200 titles, is wireless on the satelite band and so is always connected if you want to update newspapers or download books, and there are 230 000 books available. The weight? 300 grams. It sounds like a dream come true! The price? Well, not as cheap as a book, but 260$ I'd definitely pay to have all the books I need available all the time. Now, just as I was getting exited, I checked if I could get this in Norway, and use it in Norway. No. I can't. Bummer.

Sony has a lovely reader though, and although it's a little bit more expensive than the Kindle, it looks very interesting. It's not as proprietary as the Kindle, reads more formats, which makes it a lot more available. My electronic journal access suddenly means I can download the relevant articles to the reader, and drag with me whole years of relevant publications to places where I'd never take a computer. What's that but major cool?

From the webpage: "You can also create annotations with a virtual keyboard, highlight text with a stylus pen, search for text in your digital book, and easily adjust the font size." Oh yes, I'll happily shell out 300$, even now that the Norwegian krone has dropped, for the opportunity to carry 2-300 texts with me in the backpack when I am off to work elsewhere. This has to have a downside. "Note: Use of companion eBook Store limited to U.S. and Canadian residents. Certain titles may not be available for download based on place of residence." Lovely. This is probably why this item doesn't show up at all on the Norwegian Sony site.

One should think that these days, with the tight economy, the enormous number of free hands and the need for cash flowing into the United States, buying things from abroad should be a tad easier. What are they afraid I'll read? Benjamin Franklin's autobiography?

That I could read, if I want to, though. Manybooks.net contains 22,900 free e-books, many of the same as Project Gutenberg. If I mainly wanted the reader in order to always have a great novel available, I wouldn't worry about the restrictions, and just buy one. Come to think of it, that's a great thing to have. Thousands of books available to be packed into a tiny space. Would save a world of searching for English book-stores when we're on vacations.

However, what I really want is the books we use, regularly, the ones standing in our bookshelves. The ones I have already shelled out thousands and thousands for, so I can have them close, and the ones I will pay as much for in the future. They are the books that stop me, when my colleague talks enthusiastically about a month in a remote village in Greece, to write articles. I would love the village, sure, but I'd not write much. This is why when I travel, I go somewhere with bookstores and libraries. I don't know exactly which books I'll need before I go, and the nature of my work makes it hard to write without a reference library. And it isn't available online.

Our books, the ones we want, the ones we read and use and cite and think about, they haven't been put online. No matter how savvy we feel, how updated on the cutting edge of net use - we publish on paper only. Yeah, dinosaurs. Lovable, useful, reassuring dinosaurs, which I don't want to be without, but still...

So, dear scholars, dear scholarly publishing houses: How about those electronic books? Wouldn't that be a great idea?

Journalism and research

One of the things journalists always want more time to do is investigative research. They want time to dig into the facts of a case. They want to study more than one or two sides of it. They want time to interview a lot of people. They want to go to the depths of the case and find the truth. Investigative research or "gravende journalistikk" in Norwegian is the holy grail, the justification for all the other work journalists do, the reason why we need those who find and spread the real truth about society.

As long as the investigations concern something OTHER than journalism.

My colleague Jan Fredrik Hovden has just finished his Dr. Polit. on journalism and the cultures of journalists: Profane and Sacred: A Study of the Norwegian Journalistic Field. In his work he interviews journalists in order to understand their practice in relation to the concept of "social fields" by Bourdieu:

The first objective of this thesis is thus to study the practices of Norwegian journalists (how troublesome this word is going to be!) as located in and structured by a social field, using the theoretical tools and empirical investigations Bourdieu has made of other social fields as guidelines. In this way, this thesis is a contribution to the debate on the role and function of journalism in the public sphere and the understanding of journalistic practice more generally.

With Pierre Bourdieu as his model, guide and inspiration, Jan Fredrik has embarked on a long and painful project, as ambitious as it is important: To understand how Norwegian journalists practice their job. He has spent more than four years on this, an amount of time no Norwegian journalist can afford to spend on understanding a case. He has collected the facts systematically and from a very large number of sources:

In contrast to what seems to be the case for most prosopographic
analyses of social fields, the field analysis in this thesis is not based on (secondary) data of known individuals (e.g. biography collections), but on anonymous data collected by a survey questionnaire to a sample of Norwegian journalists and editors in 2005 (cf. appendix 1 for more details). Such an anonymous/survey-approach to the construction of the field – if with its own share of methodological problems – has some compensations, making it possible to incorporate a large number of individuals and variables in the analysis, which for example makes it feasible to include both dominated and dominating agents in the same field analysis.

Jan Fredrik Hovden has not only done the work, but like a good sociologist (and he is good, no doubt about it when you read his work) he also opens his methods up for criticism by publishing those. When did a journalist tell you how they made the decision to use this source and not that? When is there a methodological discussion attached to the article you read? When do you hear about the phone-calls, the strategies, the discussions about how to find and confirm a "case"?

One of the few times you do that in Norwegian journalism is actually in the much despised and deputed book "En helt vanlig dag på jobben" by Håvard Melnæs, former journalist in Se og Hør, a weekly magasine concerned with the lives of Norwegian "stars" (in a very loose sense of the word). Without any comparison to the work of Jan Fredrik Hovden, "A Regular Day at Work" by Melnæs was received as a betrayal. Melnæs describes how he cultivated the father of princess Mette-Marit, the commoner and single mother wife of crown prince Håkon of Norway. In this work he also describes the culture among the journalists and editors, and the lengths to which they were willing to go for a "case", up to creating cases themselves by arranging weddings and parties and paying for vacations and other services offered the subjects of their journalism.

Jan Fredrik Hovden's work is specifically not a subjective one-person view on an extreme case, as Melnæs' biography is. Hovden comes out of a tradition where access to his material and methods is as important as the conclusions. Exept for the anonymity of his sources the material he builds on is available for his critics, and others may check if they want to draw the same conclusions. And while journalists have the desk to read through their material and check if it is worthy of publication, Jan Fredrik has had three professors read and think through and criticize each word of his thesis, not in 10 hurried minutes while more cases scream for attention, but after months of deliberation.

So, how do the journalists receive his work? By claiming that academics have no substance to their criticism. As Per Edgar Kokkvold, general secretary of the Norwegian press union, says:

– Det er all grunn for mediefolk å være åpne for kritikk, og å engasjere akademikere til å se på om rollen som den lille manns forsvarer tas alvorlig nok. Jeg har ikke noen kvalifiserte synspunkter på dette. Men denne avhandlingen og andre rapporter om hvordan mediene utøver sin makt, og hvordan de retter et kritisk søkelys på alle maktinstitusjoner, viser at vi må nærme oss akademia og kritikere med et åpent sinn. Det er imidlertid ikke alltid disse har noe å fare med, sier Kokkvold til Journalisten.

To translate and summarize: Journalists should be open to criticism, and engage academics to see if the role as defender of "the little man" is taken seriously. But this and other reports about how journalists use their power shows that we have to approach academia with an open mind. However, not all have any substance to their work. (My emphasis).

So, when a journalist writes about the practice of others, that's an important function for journalism, protection of the democracy and main goal of journalism. When a journalist writes about the practice of journalism it's a betrayal. When an academic writes about the practice of journalists, he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Interesting.

Found Stories

Where was craigslist.org all my life? Uuuhhh - I guess, hooking up people with things to sell and buy in the US?

Anyway, I have found craigslist AND I have found a source of stories of my favourite kind. You know, the kind of stories that are about what might have happened - if. Desperately seeking Susan stuff, right there at 'missed connections'.

Green, Washington, Blond, Main Line, Boston, Washington, Flight, Grandma, Upper West, DUI, CA, JET B, Philly U, Delaware, not a good day, I know how it feels, time to change that..

What goes on here? It's parts of a conversation, I think. And how did he or she feel? And how can it change? Others are not as cryptic, but just as evokative, in their "almost touching" kind of way:

You got on at Atlantic and stood by the doors until Wall St. I'm pretty sure you noticed I was staring and I'm sorry about that – I just found you incredibly attractive. I was the brunette with short curly hair and a black v-neck sweater, sitting down. I tried to see if you were wearing a ring, because I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if you were taken. If you aren’t, drinks sometime? If you are, have a great day. ;)

It may just be my New York fetish that kicks in, that all these missed connections are a reminder about life happening, constantly, in such a huge mass of people. But I think it's the potential, all the things that could have been started if somebody had taken another step, asked the right question, left at the right station, forgot about propriety and given out the number:

Ok, so you asked for some 'advice" on something and then my phone number. Maybe I should have just gone for it. Would like to meet up for a beer or coffee - you were cute. Now the inevitable question - what did you ask about? ;)

But I am not the only 'missed connections' reader, and some think this is a good place to tell others how to behave:

Unbelievable. A guy has the courage to approach you and ask for your number in person, you reject him, and then you post a missed connection looking for him. Why? I'm asking a serious question, I can't understand this. Are you just hardwired to reject everyone and anyone, no matter what, if they display interest in you?

Ohhh, the drama, the nosyness, the humanity seeping through every post. It makes me want to go back to NY and then read this section every day after a trip on the subway. Perhaps I find something like:

You were lost in the book you were reading. Your glasses kept slipping down. I wanted to take them off you to see what colour your eyes were. But how could I, when you never looked up. You were wearing a red jacket, black jeans and hiking boots. Tell me which book you were reading, and I'll pay for the drinks.

I think perhaps the most interesting story with this kind of ads (I read them in the papers, when that's where they were to be found)is that people don't walk through life unseen. Even if it's the guy who helped you pick up the groceries after an accident, we're seen, remembered, looked out for. It is pretty romantic, really.

Spikning - as Luther did it

I was invited to two examples of the same event today, what the Swedes call "spikning", literally: nailing. A little concerned, I asked my office mate about it. "OK," she said, "let's start at the beginning."

It seems that since Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the church doors in Wittenberg in 1517, nailing your thesis to a wall - "spikning" - is the equivalent of making it public, in protestant Sweden.

The tradition lives on here following the example of Martin Luther, and today two doctorate theses in ethnology are made public here at the department of culture and media, and of course I had to go have a look. Also, there's "fika" afterwards. And that's something much more polite than it sounds in Norwegian - it's simply snacks and perhaps a drink. This, the Swedes do well, too.

Cormorants

During the morning's surfing trip, the tidbit that cormorant populations are picking up in the US, and that there is a colony in New York, leaped at me. One of the most interesting things about it is the perception of the birds in the culture:

Their arrival has drawn mixed reactions. Cormorants are big and black, with sharp curved bills and a habit of vomiting when threatened. When they stretch their wings out to dry, they seem to be wearing the black cloaks associated with vampires. They are also mercilessly efficient marine predators, with the ability to fly like ducks and dive like penguins, which has not endeared them to fishermen (or, for that matter, anchovies).

Dracula is the last thing I think about, when I see a cormorant in Norway. Here they are part of a magic uniquely connected to the land, and fairytales have them be mysterious sorceresses, wearing their black feathers when they fly to their secret skerries out towards the open sea. There they hoard treasures untold of, and lucky is the fisherman who is loved by a cormorant woman.

Parts of this is probably connected to what troubles the fishermen in New York: Cormorants are very efficient predators. This means that when cormorants return/arrive somewhere, it's because there is fish. So if you find out where the cormorants fish, you have found a good spot - your own secret skerry at the edge of the open ocean, where you can find wealth... a wealth if not of magical jewels and gold, then at least the silver of the ocean.

The Romance Princess

We learn at school that the feudal lords received their right to rule from higher powers. They were the chosen ones, the ones with extraordinary abilities. Well, it seems like this belief is alive and blooming in the Norwegian royal house. Princess Martha Louise has "come out" as a clairvoyant, healer and one who can see angels. She is starting a school, Astarte Education, where she teaches healing and whatnot.

Martha Louise is a well-loved figure in Norway, and people are quite tolerant of her many controversial (for a royal princess) impulses. Well, so they laugh a bit at her posturing husband and their wannabe bohemian lifestyle, but it's a rather indulgent laugh.

This time she may however have crossed some lines which are not as easily accepted. She is using her authorisation as a physiotherapist in combination with spiritual healing, something which crosses Norwegian legislation - she is flirting with "kvakksalverloven", which means she can risk becoming, legally, a quack. She has also always been quite well loved by the church, but in the Norwegian church there are no middlemen between man and God - the angels are not for conversation, if you have to talk to God, you go straight to him.

For a scholar with an interest in popular culture, this is however amazingly fascinating. Martha Louise is going - not eactly mainstream, but straight into the women's magazines. Her life is becoming a modern fairytale, or, more precisely, a romance novel. Consider this synopsis:

"Young princess who is mainly interested in horses and angry with the restrictions of her royal life, strives to overcome these restrictions and find meaning beyond her birth. She has several undesirable romances, but the family always manages to cover it up somehow and she remains in the cluthces of her position. Finally however the travelling, mediocre minstrel (journalist, writer, designer) shows up and sweeps her off her feet, convinces the parents that he truly loves the princess, and charms the nation with his devotion. His great gifts for public embarassments finally frees the princess from her burden of royal duties, as she renounces her title to be with him. With motherhood and no more public duty, tedium sets in, she is no longer in the public eye and also, there's the money issue. With the title, she also renounced the public support a royal princess is due. Used to a lifestyle no common physiotherapist can support, the princess needs a miracle, and lo and behold, just as she was getting too bored, angels come to her! She can heal, she can see, she can commune with great powers! And so, by the miracle of her exceptional birthright, she is lifted out of the dreariness of being a married mother and into her true vocation: A magically gifted healer. Peace at last for our much-tried princess."

(Sorry about getting carried away with some sarcasm at the end there - there are reasons I don't write romance novels.)

I think I have read that story already - over and over and over again, in exactly the kind of magazines that are filled with pictures of royalty, the magazines that have followed Martha Louise since her birth. That reader segment comprises her most loyal supporters, and accidentally also the most likely customer or "students" to her school. Now, if I were mean, I might suggest that this is an incredibly well-conceived scam, where the princess ruthlessly abuses her birth, her publicity and the dreams of the many who have watched, loved and celebrated her all her life, to make money off the suffering and unhappiness of those with uncurable ailments and unfullfillable dreams. I am not a mean woman though, so I suggest rather that Princess Martha Louise has come to believe in the story about herself. May the story lead to a happy ever after, for the sake of the many who share that belief.

Axes and consoles

In Trondheim a young man asked, with much righteous indignation, what use we have of 8 million gamers. Can't all that energy be spent in better ways? I didn't answer directly, because I saw it could lead into a lecture far too long for the already overflowing timeframes of the meeting. I just talked about how society is full of surplus activities, and gaming is just one of those.

This is, however, the point. Gaming is a surplus activity, a leisure activity. If you are cold and out in the rain, you want an axe. A carpenter can build a house with an axe, and this is a smart skill to have. But once you have the house, you have the car, you have the fridge filled from the store, you have clothing, you have safety and what you need to maintain this in a reasonable future - once you have this, what are you to do with your axe? Go build another house? This is what we are doing today, filling up the planet with more and more of what is considered "real values", objects originally needed to cover immediate needs are turning into objects of status and pawns in social games.

It is at this point that human society turns to other questions, other challenges and other past-times. We read and write fiction, we listen to music, we sit together and drink and exchange ideas, tell jokes and hang out. We watch movies, we go on vacations, we apply make-up and we knit pretty new gloves. What's the point? Why do we need the leisure time of billions? How many trees could we have cut down in the hours spent watching television? How many fields could we have planted? How many mountains could we have moved? How much medicine could we have produced if we could harness this wasted energy going into watching television and singing in choirs? Playing instruments badly, or growing orchids where they should never grow?

If we could harness this energy which goes into the leisure time, there would be no progress. While progress can be made through hardship and hard work, it also demands a certain level of slack. A society which has no slack may come up with some desperate measures for survival, but at the cost of other things we take for granted, like freedom, democracy, the right to make your own decisions. The moment everything must go into approved production, free choice is lost.

So, what are 8 million gamers good for? Nothing much. Just the same as writers, readers, philosophers, painters, gallery guests, dancers, athletes, sportsfans, filmmakers and cinemavisitors, chefs and gourmets or the fishermen patiently waiting for a fish to bite at the beach in Hudson River. They are here to spend some time doing something other than what is expected of them, to make room for new thoughts, ideas and opinions, to create diversity.

All we really need is an axe, and the skill to use it. The rest is luxury. I approve of such luxury.

Boys will be boys...

In one of the large Norwegian newspapers there was recently an article about game addiction, and how Norwegian hospitals are now treating young people who can't deal with their game addiction. They describe gaming and the feeling of mastery that you get from games as a high, comparable with using drugs or alcohol.

Yes, games are designed to give a feeling of control and mastery. We all like it. It's what drives research, athletes, artists. It's what gives us reliable, competent people in all kind of positions. It's not a bad thing.

The problem appears when a game is the only place where a human being can feel like they do anything good, where they have any kind of self-worth and are important to others.

Recently (but long before WoW) the performance of boys has dropped dramatically in schools not only in Norway, but all over the western world. Girls outperform them in many ways, mastering the education system, taking control of their futures. The educational systems have been adjusted to foster this, and it has been successful. Girls get better grades, girls continue for higher education. So far the professors are still men, but if nothing happens the gender gap will soon go the other way, as girls master the system of education, and boys fall by the side.

Education is the most important thing a person does from they are 6 years old until they are 25. If they can't perform well in this field, they are failures. Failures in the eyes of family, friends and the society in general. They know they will never get the job they want, they know a million little decisions are taken away from them.

I think this is very, very wrong.

People are individuals. Not all are cut out for 19 years of school, and they shouldn't be. There are so many other types of tasks, tasks which ask for other skills than the ability to control your physical and mental urges for hours and hours, while paying attention and processing information you are being fed. The society needs to change, to aknowledge the importance of all tasks which keeps the world moving towards a balanced and sustainable future. While we need a big stack of researchers and we need them NOW, that doesn't mean we don't need the other potential in a population. Knowing things are going down the drain isn't enough, if nobody can actually do the work to get us out of that sewer.

As for the boys? They shouldn't need to play WoW to feel appreciated. They shouldn't need to be a brilliant warlock in order to feel they have something they can actually be good at. Being young is hard, and society doesn't make it easier through rewarding only some types of expertize, while severely punishing the pursuit of many different interests. When I was in high-school, these boys skipped class to work the boats (work farms, do other types of unskilled seasonal labour which still existed and was still available to youngsters), trumping their lack of success at school with the thick wad of cash in their pockets. What is there for the 16 year old who needs to feel he does something that matters? Robots stole his job. Then we designed mobs to keep him occupied and off the streets.

The irony is overwhelming.