A web-writer is dead

Tron Øgrim, internet enthusiast and eager contributor to the Norwegian Wikipedia, died 23rd of May 2007. It was very sudden, most likely a stroke.

Tron Øgrim was a politically controversial person, ideologist of the communist movement through the seventies, and important to many better known Norwegian authors, politicians and visible contributors to the Norwegian public debate. He himself wrote what he talked of as the first Norwegian weblogg: Under en stein i skogen (under a rock in the woods).

Tron Øgrim did not grow old, but compared to the teenagers who today feel they have just discovered this terra incognita, the unknown land their parents know nothing about, he was of another generation. Perhaps almost two generations apart. But he was an active user, one of those where the border line between user and developer blurs, one who understood the net and its structure, not just its immediate use.

Time is always, in the end, measured by the individuals in relation to human lives; the length of a lifetime, the age of a child, the length of a human cycle. And now the internet culture in Norway has reached a point of no return: one of the early, the active and the visible is gone. It's time to realise that the net is larger and longer lasting than a single human life.

Prepare for a mess

I am testing out the new blogger interface tools, and have discovered that although there are several annoying features it can do much of what I want to. This should get rid of the broken frame the heading has in certain browsers, and it can also give me more flexibility in general. I am not entirely happy with the pre-set options, but as I have found ways to work around them/override them, the blog will be redone in the not-too-far future. When the time comes, many things I really like may disappear for a while, as they are being worked into the new template. Don't panic, that's my privilege.

ORLY?

It's been a while since I complained here about the "quality reform" in Norwegian education. The Norwegian education system was altered: 3 year bachelor degree instead of 4 year cand mag, master degree after 5 years instead of hovedfag after 6-7 years, more teaching and supervision, less time for reflection and independent research for the student and also less time for research for the faculty.

Imagine the surprise when it turns out that less time to study, more pressure towards keeping the schedule, less qualified and updated teachers and less resources for testing and assessing the students led to less knowledgeable students.
*insert sharp tone of voice, desillusioned sarcasm shining through*

Thankfully we still have people who remember how to do research in this country, and at the University of Oslo some of them did exactly that, they checked if students learned the same in three years as they used to do in four. The answer was no, they don't.

The paper "Morgenbladet", one of the few papers where they still read research reports and 100 page evaluations (or at least the press releases about them), calls the syndrome "kunnskapsfallet" - the fall of knowledge. The evaluation of students at the University of Oslo confirms what people in colleges and universities have been saying from the beginning. There is very, very little in the "quality reform" that makes for better students.

It is a quality reform though. That much is true.

Thanks to Jon for the links and the reminder.

---
For non-MMORPG addicts: ORLY is short for "Oh, really?" Often seen when n00bs state the obvious.

Staying put

I am green with envy as I read Jill's conference notes from the Personal Democracy Forum. I wish I had been there, I wish I was experiencing something new and exiting, I wish I was in New York in spring and that the magnolias were still blooming.

I am not though.
Aaaannnnd, it's hard to admit it, but it's good.

Last year was a breathless race about the planet, exhaustion, guilt and worry combined with adrenalin and stimulation is an oddly exhilarating drug, and it makes me feel driven to perform perhaps at times beyond what I can defend. This year I can lean back and learn, find substance for my performace. And in reading Jill's notes - and the reports of others who are there, who are present where things happen, I find that my absence triggers my curiosity, and I start imagining what could happen.

And that, my dears, is where I tend to find my real motivation. Preferably bored, often frustrated, and wanting for something to happen, anything, really... and so I have to think it up. "What if..." in a grand or small scale, is all research is really about, isn't it?

So hip, so cool!

I was in Bergen and talked (the links) to the student community of Bergen, with VamPus, also known as Heidi Nordby Lunde. The student paper StudVest proudly proclaims that blogging will remain. "Bestå" (remain) in Norwegian means something which will last forever - that's not exactly what I said. I tried to indicate that I think it will be altered and absorbed in other technologies, but that some kind of easy written personal publishing with a similar form to current blogs will remain. But hey, doesn't sound as good, does it?

It was fun, I have, after 15 years of lecturing, finally lost my panic for talking in public, and VamPus is a pretty quick and clever lady. But I have to admit that the high point for me was to come home and check facebook and see that my daughter's friends think I am hip and cool, just like her. I mean, when students think some crazy woman old enough to be their mother is cool, either it's time for me to put on a pinstriped suit and stop dying my hair, or they are trying to impress my daughter.

Hmmm.

Anyway, message of the day: Vote smart, Vote Erla

Snubbed on Facebook

So, I did the deed and made a facebook profile. Not all that active, I log in once in a while to accept requests, play around a little to see how it works, and invite a few people I know to be my friends.

And then one of them doesn't approve me.

Who'd have thought.

Not that it matters, and of course it's no reason to accept everybody, but still, it's not like I invite all kind of people I never met. It felt weird to see others in the same group of people linked, and me left out. The visual lack of a connection was a stark declaration, a public rejection.

I suspect a large part of the power of facebook lies here, in the power to include and exclude, and make both the links and the lack obvious to the insiders, but still unvoiced, unspoken. Luckily I am no longer 10 years old and desperately unhappy when somebody doesn't pick me, or write in my book of memories. But it makes me wonder... what will I do the day somebody I am really uncomfortable about want to be my friend?

There is no way to aknowledge a link which is less than friendly, no such thing as "casual aquaintance" or "neighbour I never spoke to the 20 years we lived close" or "yeah, I know who that is, but that's all." The neutral, unemotional, that which is less than friendship but still more than strangers - there is no category for that. And that leaves an odd sensation of unease, as the world is split into friends and not-friends. It is just too simple.

Meta post - safe topics

No, I haven't gone crazy and changed the content here to overdone melodramatic fantasy writing. No worries. I just don't want to think or write or blog about what's up in my reality right now - too many potential traps there for lurking readers of evil (or just petty) intent. So instead, a list of safe topics.

Conference papers. They are already partly in the public sphere, and we all do it and we all have to work on it. Mine for the DAC conference in Perth, Australia, just got accepted, now I have to start working on it, to make it presentable.

Weather. Weather is firmly in the public sphere, and the last days have been wonderful! Spring has finally reached us, and the nature I live right in the middle of looks like it's been designed after a post card. And don't get me started on how the waterfalls looked this weekend. Notice the unfolding leaves on that birch.

Books published by others, as long as I say nice things. And that's the plan. I focus a lot on computers for the medium of gaming, but that's just a tiny slice of a big field. A lot of the gaming, particularly fantasy gaming, happens offline. Patrick Williams, Sean Q Hendricks and W. Keith Winkler have edited Gaming as culture, where they discuss a lot of other types of gaming, table-top, magic and other fantasy game topics. One article is on computer games, the other 9 are not. I have always been aware of the connections between computer games and the larger fantasy culture universe. This book is a very nice link between worlds which should be much closer.

Blogging is a way to direct my thought process, as well as release topics which keep distracting me. Today is a day for direction.

Get ready for the end!

Today's lecture was on semiotics, with Roland Barthes' rhetoric of the image as the main topic. So of course I needed some examples for analysis. I haven't been watching advertising and working with that for several years, but I think I probably should. There is so much going on out there on the web, all in the name of consumption.


Diesel's summer campaign is cleverly taking advantage of the whole global warming issue. With a name as heavily loaded with negative connotations in these fossile fuel crisis, they had to spin it in a daring direction - something diesel has never been afraid to do.

This year the slogan is "Global Warming Ready", and that they are!

WoW - an anthology!

Jill Walker and Hilde Corneliussen, our hard-working and eminent editors, have just sent off to MIT press a big fat stack of paper with the articles grown from our contacts and network in World of Warcraft. They have done a great job, and so have we all! I am just going to lean back and wait for the release party now!

Spring, stuff, sick leave

I keep forming blogposts in my mind, about the beauty and the melankoly of really early spring, the light on trash revealed after the winter, dirty flecks of melting snow and the scent of new growth. But I never get around to post those or the pictures, as life rushes on.

I have just operated one of my eyes, an operation I have mentioned before. This means I am on sick leave this week, and I really don't feel like straining my eyesight much for a while now. It will take weeks to heal and longer to adjust and settle. Good news is: I love my new glasses, and it seems like this will get coordinated.

Yesterday I got a phone call from my mother, and she was at the hospital. So my period of sick leave and destressing is suddenly filled with hospital visits, figuring out a way to care for two fat, spoiled tomcats and how to have some easter fun with the family although there will be very little skiing and cabin life. Lucky I have a wonderful family who don't panic at the thought of spending their vacation between Volda, Ålesund and visits to the hospital.

I have to put a lot aside to deal with my mother's weakened condition and my own momentarily slacking health, but it's just one of those things. I have been complaining I didn't know how to say "no" to interesting propositions. This spring is a forceful lesson in priorities and letting go. I still don't know how to do it gracefully though.

Nordic Media Days

Bergen hosts a very nice and interesting event, an annual series of lectures and presentations which manages to mix the media professions and the media scholars in a very interesting exploration of the field. It's fairly well established, I remember being offered a job as a coordinator way back when I was finishing my masters. It's one of those jobs I regret I never took - instead I finished my University degree. Oh well.

Anyway. This year I will be in Bergen the day before it starts, talking about weblogs at the Bergent Student Union. I am quite exited about that, as the students have managed to find an interesting person for me to meet: VamPus, the Norwegian blogger who dropped her anonymity when she got into a conflict with her then-blog-client-owner (bah, bad word) over the infamous Mohammed caricatures.

So, I tried to figure out what's going on with the media days on the 9th. I check program. Nothing. I check if i can get a day pass, because the prices are stiff and I can't just shake down the department for any whim I want to have satisfied - nope, it's the whole thing or nothing.

There are some lectures there which are worth catching if I can. Arnt Maasø talks about new sound conventions in the age of YouTube. I'd really like to catch that one. Irshad Manji talks about Jihad: holy media strategies, defiitely a hot issue, particularly with the little reminder of the Mohammed Caricatures in the back of my head.

Oh well - I'll gamble that it's possible to buy a day pass at the door - or something. If not I'll look up some friends and hang out in a coffee shop in the area and look intellectually arrogant and talk about how utterly bored I'd be if I had to attend the Nordic Media Days...

New positions for Ph D candidates

The University of Oslo announces up to 20 new positions for Ph D stuents! These are open and not yet tied to any particular topic or part of the University. This means that if you have a great project, you are invited to apply along with everybody else. Some strategic considerations will be made when the projects come up for the final acceptance.

Dance to the music

It's my birthday today, and I am old enough that I really don't care to tell you the exact number. But I know I don't look any younger than I am, I am a woman at my own age, looking it. I have long been forbidden entrance to the stores where women my age can buy clothes more suitable for 14 year olds but in my size, the prohibition enforced by a strict "No, mom!" from kids no longer kids and much taller than me.

But I can still have wonderful birthdays, so this morning I was up real early and cleaned the bathroom and had a shower and did my hair nice and hurried back into bed to pretend to be asleep before the family came to wake me up. They pretended not to notice that I snuck past on the way back from the bathroom, and woke me up with a song. As lovely now as when they were 5 and 3.

Then we had breakfast, and they had set the table and made an omelet and collected a heap of presents. I got lots of silly stuff from my many loving family members, but the one that almost made me cry was a CD I had wanted to buy, but forgotten, and then my husband remembered, my daughter bought it and her girl friend packed it.

It was a memento mori. It was "Dans til musikken", written by a friend from our student days, and performed by different Norwegian artists as a homage - published the same day he died from cancer.

So, on the day celebrating my own my birth and life I danced the morning away with my husband and children, to the music of a dead friend, his music insisting on the dance.

And in China today is the festival of lanterns, a day celebrating freedom from strict regulations, love, matchmaking and, of course, a day with lanterns everywhere. Here in the darkness of February, while the winter holds us firmly in it's cold, dark grip, I like that thought. At the other side of the planet they celebrate my birthday with lights, lanterns, everywhere.

I hope they dance too.

Me, the Other

Second Person is out now, and while I havent' seen the book and the pages and my name right there on them, I know it exists.

Saying no

This is the season of saying no. Not because I don't want to. Not because I don't care about the things I am being asked to comment on, participate in or help out with. I just have to start protecting myself and my own time. There is too much going on, and I have found my ability to work 18 hour days is limited. Something slips, and I worry about what it may be next. Because I do care. And I keep telling myself that soon I will have things back on track, and I can start saying yes again.

But I find myself envious/angry/bitter as I see opportunities slide by. I have learned to say no, but I haven't learned to accept the neccessity. That is a more advanced class, I guess. Got to practice: being sensible, then being graceful about it.