The value of content II
The war of who owns online content is getting increasingly aggressive. In Denmark Newsbooster, a media monitoring firm electronically doing the job that used to be done with scissors, have been sued for using what journalisten.no (in Norwegian) calls deep links and make money selling other people's content. (Along meandering paths by way of Rune Røsten).
I wrote about the rising value of academic content in February, and now it is obvious that content - academic or not - is what net-businesses need. Friendster, the social network site (or more appropriately dating site) where several prominent bloggers have profiles, makes it clear that they own all content generated in their space. There is also obviously a discussion going on about the ownership of content in comments which Mark Bernstein refers to, and it links to my own misgivings about the ownership of the content in the blogs that will be started using Dagbladet's future weblogging software (also in Norwegian, small note towards the end).
I find that this is tricky. While I have always said that others are free to use what I write here, both to quote and to develop ideas into their own independent work, the idea that others will own things I have written is disturbing. But at the same time: isn't this the familiar conflict between copyright and copyleft? Academic writing, at least in little state-sponsored academic ivory towers like Norwegian higher education and research, is more like copy-left writing. As long as people 1) cite me properly and 2) use what I have written to develop something independent, I don't want to claim ownership of my thoughts and ideas. But if the middle man - in Friendster's case the software provider - strips away the right to re-use what I have created, then yes, I have a problem with that.
The Danish journalist union won their case against Newsbooster. They claimed that doing electronically what monitoring firms have done by hand for decades is stealing content. To a certain degree I can agree with that, the monitoring firms at least buy the paper, and then put in the labour of reading, cutting and mailing, all of which are automated online. But I can't help cheering Newsbooster on when they set up their service so that their users can do their own searches - which is not yet forbidden by Danish law. When I buy a newspaper, the paper gets paid twice: from me and from the advertisers. I figure that just by reading a paper online I generate hits which the paper or magazine can use to sell ads, and so I have already paid for the paper just by reading it - by way of the cost of products I buy, as the cost of advertising is already integrated. It's a complicated economy of goods and information, as rhizomic as any non-linear text we can dream of.
In this conglomerate of interdependent economies, I can't see any other logic than copyleft for texts as well as software. Otherwise, as Mark says, the intellectual property will become useless, either because intellectual will stop providing content for the benefit of others, or because there will be no way at all to use, claim and benefit from it.
Friday, May 02, 2003
Dichtung Digital
Just sent off an article to Dichtung Digital, their Scandinavian issue (2003/4) edited by Markku Eskelinen. My article is about the concept of space in games; geography, topography, social spaces and non-places.
(I have no idea what the finnish text says about Markku, but I liked the picture!)
Just sent off an article to Dichtung Digital, their Scandinavian issue (2003/4) edited by Markku Eskelinen. My article is about the concept of space in games; geography, topography, social spaces and non-places.
(I have no idea what the finnish text says about Markku, but I liked the picture!)
Dagbladet blogs back!
Rune Røsten, publisher of the Dagbladet Weblog (Dagbloggen, as Eirik calls it), posts yesterday, May 1st, about the responses to the weblog and his article. Yes, Rune, exactly, this is what blogging is all about! The most indepth comments normally come in other people's blogs, not on your own. Now get those permanent links in place and the blogging can really get going!
(For English speakers who don't get Norwegian names - Rune Røsten has the most incredible name for a blogger! Rune is a letter in the norse sacred alphabeth, while Røsten means "the voice". And then the two lovely Rs to make it roll off my tongue. If I had to make up a name for a blogger, I couldn't do better!)
Rune Røsten, publisher of the Dagbladet Weblog (Dagbloggen, as Eirik calls it), posts yesterday, May 1st, about the responses to the weblog and his article. Yes, Rune, exactly, this is what blogging is all about! The most indepth comments normally come in other people's blogs, not on your own. Now get those permanent links in place and the blogging can really get going!
(For English speakers who don't get Norwegian names - Rune Røsten has the most incredible name for a blogger! Rune is a letter in the norse sacred alphabeth, while Røsten means "the voice". And then the two lovely Rs to make it roll off my tongue. If I had to make up a name for a blogger, I couldn't do better!)
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Blog you!
Vi Blogges - blog you (rather than see you) - is the headline of an article by the administrative director of Dagbladet as he writes about the new concept in the paper: their weblog. Their new weblog is frequently updated and organised chronologically, and has links. Sadly, since it's written by several different journalists and it basically links to the paper's own news, it's badly organised and can at present not compete with the better organisation of the online paper.
Rune Røsten, publisher and director at Dagbladet, mentions something else which is interesting - and perhaps a little alarming.
Vi ønsker også å bidra aktivt til demokratiseringen av nettet og vi har som ambisjon å tilby webloggverktøy for deg som bruker. Dette arbeidet er vi ikke helt ferdig med ennå, men vi lover å komme snart tilbake slik at også du kan lage din personlige avis. (We wish to contribute actively to the democratisation of the net, and our ambition is to offer a weblog tool for you as user. this work is not quite finished yet, but we promise to return so that you can make your own personal newspaper.)
Now that is interesting. Dagblades doesn't just wish to offer commentary blog style as several of the large, international newspapers as well as independent journalists do (and CNN's reporter Kevin Sites has stopped doing), but to build an arena within the paper where their audience - or more politically correct, their users - can create their own newspapers. This neatly follows up on Rune Røsten's concern about weblogs as source and competitor:
Riktignok er det ikke slik webloggene vil sette CNN og medier på sidelinjen. De aller fleste weblogger har slett ikke det som mål, men fungerer som private dagbøker eller løpende forskningsnotater bare for å nevne noen av anvendelsesmulighetene. Imidlertid er det likevel slik at webloggens kraft er noe etablerte medier må ta hensyn til, både som konkurrenter og ikke minst som kilde. (It isn't likely that weblogs will put CNN and other media on the sideline. Morst weblogs do not aim at that, but are private diaries or running research notes just to mention some ways to use them. But it's still true that the power of the weblog is something established media need to take seriously, both as competition and not the least as source.)
By offering a blogging tool within the confines of Dagbladet, rather than pointing to for instance blogger or movable type, the paper attempts to make allies of the potential, future competition. The power of the blogg is to be harnessed in service of the established media. If you buy the line of media as the fourth power of the state and absolutely neccessary for a functioning democracy, this is perhaps a good thing. If you, like me, is notoriously skeptic of the idealism of any established power and suspect them all to exist mainly to conserve their own activity level, then the thought of media-controlled blogs is suddenly not quite as sweet. I can't help asking: Who benefits. Let us just hope it is the user of digital media.
(By way of an email from Trygve)
(For an other post on this topic, in Norwegian, read JonBlogg, 30th of April)
Vi Blogges - blog you (rather than see you) - is the headline of an article by the administrative director of Dagbladet as he writes about the new concept in the paper: their weblog. Their new weblog is frequently updated and organised chronologically, and has links. Sadly, since it's written by several different journalists and it basically links to the paper's own news, it's badly organised and can at present not compete with the better organisation of the online paper.
Rune Røsten, publisher and director at Dagbladet, mentions something else which is interesting - and perhaps a little alarming.
Vi ønsker også å bidra aktivt til demokratiseringen av nettet og vi har som ambisjon å tilby webloggverktøy for deg som bruker. Dette arbeidet er vi ikke helt ferdig med ennå, men vi lover å komme snart tilbake slik at også du kan lage din personlige avis. (We wish to contribute actively to the democratisation of the net, and our ambition is to offer a weblog tool for you as user. this work is not quite finished yet, but we promise to return so that you can make your own personal newspaper.)
Now that is interesting. Dagblades doesn't just wish to offer commentary blog style as several of the large, international newspapers as well as independent journalists do (and CNN's reporter Kevin Sites has stopped doing), but to build an arena within the paper where their audience - or more politically correct, their users - can create their own newspapers. This neatly follows up on Rune Røsten's concern about weblogs as source and competitor:
Riktignok er det ikke slik webloggene vil sette CNN og medier på sidelinjen. De aller fleste weblogger har slett ikke det som mål, men fungerer som private dagbøker eller løpende forskningsnotater bare for å nevne noen av anvendelsesmulighetene. Imidlertid er det likevel slik at webloggens kraft er noe etablerte medier må ta hensyn til, både som konkurrenter og ikke minst som kilde. (It isn't likely that weblogs will put CNN and other media on the sideline. Morst weblogs do not aim at that, but are private diaries or running research notes just to mention some ways to use them. But it's still true that the power of the weblog is something established media need to take seriously, both as competition and not the least as source.)
By offering a blogging tool within the confines of Dagbladet, rather than pointing to for instance blogger or movable type, the paper attempts to make allies of the potential, future competition. The power of the blogg is to be harnessed in service of the established media. If you buy the line of media as the fourth power of the state and absolutely neccessary for a functioning democracy, this is perhaps a good thing. If you, like me, is notoriously skeptic of the idealism of any established power and suspect them all to exist mainly to conserve their own activity level, then the thought of media-controlled blogs is suddenly not quite as sweet. I can't help asking: Who benefits. Let us just hope it is the user of digital media.
(By way of an email from Trygve)
(For an other post on this topic, in Norwegian, read JonBlogg, 30th of April)
Praise and spanish bubbles
It was the last of SKIKT. Several important sounding people said nice things about the program, and there were discrete little bottles in pretty blue wrapping given out to all who spoke. The highlight of the evening for me was however Jon Bing's words about the book where I had published an article. Jon Bing is, besides a professor in law and informatics, a very active author who writes in some of my favourite genres: Science fiction and fantasy. He also plays computer games with a passion. I was more than delighted when he immediately addressed my article, and he addressed it with enthusiasm! That made the trip worthwhile, and the reception afterwards with fingerfood, important-looking people and dry, spanish bubbly white wine together with Ragnhild Tronstad and others I knew from earlier SKIKT conferences was the icing on a cake which already tasted very sweet indeed. As insecure as I am about my work at the moment, I soak up anything that sounds positive like a sponge, and that wasn't even praise-like, that was straight-forward praise from a man who knows both informatics, games and fantasy!
It was the last of SKIKT. Several important sounding people said nice things about the program, and there were discrete little bottles in pretty blue wrapping given out to all who spoke. The highlight of the evening for me was however Jon Bing's words about the book where I had published an article. Jon Bing is, besides a professor in law and informatics, a very active author who writes in some of my favourite genres: Science fiction and fantasy. He also plays computer games with a passion. I was more than delighted when he immediately addressed my article, and he addressed it with enthusiasm! That made the trip worthwhile, and the reception afterwards with fingerfood, important-looking people and dry, spanish bubbly white wine together with Ragnhild Tronstad and others I knew from earlier SKIKT conferences was the icing on a cake which already tasted very sweet indeed. As insecure as I am about my work at the moment, I soak up anything that sounds positive like a sponge, and that wasn't even praise-like, that was straight-forward praise from a man who knows both informatics, games and fantasy!
I am on the net!
Well, doh, I know I am, just look at this blog, but I didn't know that forskning.no yesterday published an interview with me. It is in Norwegian, so the english speakers will just have to take my word for this summary: Playing computer games is good for you, and playing with several people is even better. Playing all day can become a problem, because you need to move a little and also maintain a local social network.
Well, doh, I know I am, just look at this blog, but I didn't know that forskning.no yesterday published an interview with me. It is in Norwegian, so the english speakers will just have to take my word for this summary: Playing computer games is good for you, and playing with several people is even better. Playing all day can become a problem, because you need to move a little and also maintain a local social network.
Women and business flights
In the week, on ordinary work-days, men dominate the flights. When I get into the little Dash 8 from Volda with 10 men, I feel - not exactly special, just different. Gender is significant in the oddest situations. This time I didn't really see how important until I got off the plane at Gardermoen and was on the train from the airport to Oslo. Hiding behind the newspaper in order to fit in, suddenly somebody addressed me. It was a young woman, a blonde and nice one. She asked me very politely if I had a cellphone she could borrow. Her brother was expecting them at the wrong railways station in Oslo, and she needed to let him know they would be at Oslo Sentral Station and not at Nationalteateret. I looked surprised, I guess, but I gave it to her and said sure, and she didn't need to pay for the call as long as she didn't run off with the phone.
The call was finished quickly, she thanked me and left. As she left I noticed that she was in an other part of the train entirely. She passed by rows of business-men, some of them using their cellphones. As I got off the train I noticed that she was almost at the front with her little family, while I was almost at the back. From a wagon behind me, two women left the train. The four of us were the only females not in uniform on the platform.
The woman had walked through almost all of the train, passing perhaps 30-40 men, before she found me and adddressed me. I had my cellphone in the pocket, not visible; she gambled that I would have one. I think it is a pretty safe bet that she asked me because she was desperate - lots of luggage, two children one of whom was in a pram, and her brother at the wrong side of town - and because she didn't feel comfortable turning to a man. She turned to me for the same reason that the female students knock on my door when they don't find the person they really should contact, for the same reason that they approach me with their more complicated, personal problems, for the same reason they dare take their aggression out on me. It's because gender matters, and by addressing a person of the same gender, they eliminate several potentials for misunderstanding. It is more likely that I will understand, sympathise and not be offended, and less likely that I will take advantage or make fun of their predicament. And so, they will pass by 20 men in order to ask the one woman for help. Women still need women.
In the week, on ordinary work-days, men dominate the flights. When I get into the little Dash 8 from Volda with 10 men, I feel - not exactly special, just different. Gender is significant in the oddest situations. This time I didn't really see how important until I got off the plane at Gardermoen and was on the train from the airport to Oslo. Hiding behind the newspaper in order to fit in, suddenly somebody addressed me. It was a young woman, a blonde and nice one. She asked me very politely if I had a cellphone she could borrow. Her brother was expecting them at the wrong railways station in Oslo, and she needed to let him know they would be at Oslo Sentral Station and not at Nationalteateret. I looked surprised, I guess, but I gave it to her and said sure, and she didn't need to pay for the call as long as she didn't run off with the phone.
The call was finished quickly, she thanked me and left. As she left I noticed that she was in an other part of the train entirely. She passed by rows of business-men, some of them using their cellphones. As I got off the train I noticed that she was almost at the front with her little family, while I was almost at the back. From a wagon behind me, two women left the train. The four of us were the only females not in uniform on the platform.
The woman had walked through almost all of the train, passing perhaps 30-40 men, before she found me and adddressed me. I had my cellphone in the pocket, not visible; she gambled that I would have one. I think it is a pretty safe bet that she asked me because she was desperate - lots of luggage, two children one of whom was in a pram, and her brother at the wrong side of town - and because she didn't feel comfortable turning to a man. She turned to me for the same reason that the female students knock on my door when they don't find the person they really should contact, for the same reason that they approach me with their more complicated, personal problems, for the same reason they dare take their aggression out on me. It's because gender matters, and by addressing a person of the same gender, they eliminate several potentials for misunderstanding. It is more likely that I will understand, sympathise and not be offended, and less likely that I will take advantage or make fun of their predicament. And so, they will pass by 20 men in order to ask the one woman for help. Women still need women.
Monday, April 28, 2003
SKIKT conference
Tomorrow is the "wrap-up" conference for SKIKT, the research program that financed me, Jill and Hilde. I got last minute-funding (last-minute because I didn't get to the mail-box last week) due to having contributed to a book which is launced at this conference, so tomorrow I will be in Oslo again. Oh, the strenous life of a cyber-set scholar! (At least I can increase the female quota on the morning business flights Volda-Oslo.)
Tomorrow is the "wrap-up" conference for SKIKT, the research program that financed me, Jill and Hilde. I got last minute-funding (last-minute because I didn't get to the mail-box last week) due to having contributed to a book which is launced at this conference, so tomorrow I will be in Oslo again. Oh, the strenous life of a cyber-set scholar! (At least I can increase the female quota on the morning business flights Volda-Oslo.)
Margaritas and new words
Friday April 25th, some time between 5.00 and 7.00 pm, I settled in a sunny corner of a restaurant on Karl-Johans gate. In the middle of my second margarita I decided that the world needs a new word. The word for which there is such urgent need describes the act of accessing an URL, for instance when opening a new website from an other. There should be no need for prepositions such as to, from, back, up, down, because the word itself decribes an action which has no geographical direction.
The word I thought of that sunny, lime-flavoured afternoon was dimle. When I click Jill's name here and her blog appears on my monitor, I have dimled her. When I click "back" I redimle my own blogg. If I update the page on the screen, I redimle it. This word does not indicate a movement in geographical space, but the repetition of an act.
In order to organise my thoughts about why we need this new word, I got a cappucino and a change of location. This was a physical act, as is the turning of the pages on a book. Something changes within the three dimentions of the flesh world when I open a book at page 54. This does not happen when I access Jill/txt, or amazon.co.uk, or whichever new URL I type in and see on the monitor of my computer. This is a change not of position, but of image. I am not in a new place, but in a new frame of information.
While we continue to use geographical metaphors for what we experience when reading web-pages online, we continue to limit our thinking about the potential of digital media. We permit the trap of three dimentions to hold us within a certain conceptual state even where physical restrictions are no longer valid. Dimle is a silly word. It's similar to dumle, a chocolat.covered toffee. Perhaps it is too silly to be useful, perhaps I should have researched meditation to find a word for accessing a state of mind, or made an acronym from some more common concepts: turle from to url - to turle, I turle, you turle, he, she it turles... This page was turled at 15.45, you are number 736 to turle this webpage... The syllables are unimportant, what is important is to give the act a word which is specifically its own.
(In Norwegian dimle will be: å dimle, dimler, dimlet har dimlet. Turle: å turle, turler, turlet, har turlet. It's easier to make a norwegian verb when the letter has an -e ending, and Norwegian is after all my language.)
Friday April 25th, some time between 5.00 and 7.00 pm, I settled in a sunny corner of a restaurant on Karl-Johans gate. In the middle of my second margarita I decided that the world needs a new word. The word for which there is such urgent need describes the act of accessing an URL, for instance when opening a new website from an other. There should be no need for prepositions such as to, from, back, up, down, because the word itself decribes an action which has no geographical direction.
The word I thought of that sunny, lime-flavoured afternoon was dimle. When I click Jill's name here and her blog appears on my monitor, I have dimled her. When I click "back" I redimle my own blogg. If I update the page on the screen, I redimle it. This word does not indicate a movement in geographical space, but the repetition of an act.
In order to organise my thoughts about why we need this new word, I got a cappucino and a change of location. This was a physical act, as is the turning of the pages on a book. Something changes within the three dimentions of the flesh world when I open a book at page 54. This does not happen when I access Jill/txt, or amazon.co.uk, or whichever new URL I type in and see on the monitor of my computer. This is a change not of position, but of image. I am not in a new place, but in a new frame of information.
While we continue to use geographical metaphors for what we experience when reading web-pages online, we continue to limit our thinking about the potential of digital media. We permit the trap of three dimentions to hold us within a certain conceptual state even where physical restrictions are no longer valid. Dimle is a silly word. It's similar to dumle, a chocolat.covered toffee. Perhaps it is too silly to be useful, perhaps I should have researched meditation to find a word for accessing a state of mind, or made an acronym from some more common concepts: turle from to url - to turle, I turle, you turle, he, she it turles... This page was turled at 15.45, you are number 736 to turle this webpage... The syllables are unimportant, what is important is to give the act a word which is specifically its own.
(In Norwegian dimle will be: å dimle, dimler, dimlet har dimlet. Turle: å turle, turler, turlet, har turlet. It's easier to make a norwegian verb when the letter has an -e ending, and Norwegian is after all my language.)
Have students - will travel
I have just been on a trip to Oslo with a group of first-year students. If people start telling me that younger people today are irresponsible, waste their time and their lives, are rude, unwashed and self-centered, they should have a therapeutic trip with this group. Not all were on the trip, mostly for personal reasons (illness and personal economy are valid excuses), but the 20 something who showed up were clean, awake (!), sober, polite, prepared (!!) and notoriusly on time. The group that had planned everything took the task very seriously, and they had made a good program with a wide range of information and public relations departments worth visiting. Not all the people they visited were as well prepared as the students. But from a pedagogical view, that was very good, because it showed my students how important preparation is in their kind of job, particularly knowing who you will talk to.
And we all agreed it had been a great trip.
I have just been on a trip to Oslo with a group of first-year students. If people start telling me that younger people today are irresponsible, waste their time and their lives, are rude, unwashed and self-centered, they should have a therapeutic trip with this group. Not all were on the trip, mostly for personal reasons (illness and personal economy are valid excuses), but the 20 something who showed up were clean, awake (!), sober, polite, prepared (!!) and notoriusly on time. The group that had planned everything took the task very seriously, and they had made a good program with a wide range of information and public relations departments worth visiting. Not all the people they visited were as well prepared as the students. But from a pedagogical view, that was very good, because it showed my students how important preparation is in their kind of job, particularly knowing who you will talk to.
And we all agreed it had been a great trip.
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Veiledning informasjon 4
Kjære alle mine studenter som kanskje leser dette. Det blir umulig å få fatt i meg denne uken, fram til og med søndag. Jeg er tilbake mandag 28 april. Da bør dere benytte anledningen, for jeg er i Ålesund 5-6 mai og drar igjen 13 mai til Australia, så det er ikke noen god ide å utsette en samtale med meg til siste liten.
Kjære alle mine studenter som kanskje leser dette. Det blir umulig å få fatt i meg denne uken, fram til og med søndag. Jeg er tilbake mandag 28 april. Da bør dere benytte anledningen, for jeg er i Ålesund 5-6 mai og drar igjen 13 mai til Australia, så det er ikke noen god ide å utsette en samtale med meg til siste liten.
Giving up control
This week I will follow the plans made by my students. They have planned and made all arrangements for a trip to Oslo in order to visit information departments and public relations bureaus all over the Norwegian Capital, and I'll be there for most of the time - except when they started planning a boat-trip to Copenhagen and back in the week-end. There are things teachers should not get involved with - and one of those is seasick students.
Not that I expect seeing much of that this week. The "study comittee" (fagutvalget) has done a great job, and as they say in the brochure they made to cover the visit: they stand on their heads (meaning: they'd do anything) for their fellow students.
So if you want to know what I am doing this week, call one of the members of the information study comittee - I am in their hands, and I plan to enjoy it!
This week I will follow the plans made by my students. They have planned and made all arrangements for a trip to Oslo in order to visit information departments and public relations bureaus all over the Norwegian Capital, and I'll be there for most of the time - except when they started planning a boat-trip to Copenhagen and back in the week-end. There are things teachers should not get involved with - and one of those is seasick students.
Not that I expect seeing much of that this week. The "study comittee" (fagutvalget) has done a great job, and as they say in the brochure they made to cover the visit: they stand on their heads (meaning: they'd do anything) for their fellow students.
So if you want to know what I am doing this week, call one of the members of the information study comittee - I am in their hands, and I plan to enjoy it!
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Friday, April 18, 2003
Easter in Volda
For once we are doing the stay-at-home thing for Easter. The family doesn't complain, we have always been travelling at any opportunity, and have crossed the southern part of the country over and over again to visit parents, aunts, sisters and the one brother. Before the kids were born we did this for the sake of our parents. Afterwards we did it to give the children a chance to know their many loving aunts, to make them feel at home in different cultures and even different countries. So what I have now is two socially very intelligent and relaxed teen-agers, who prefer to stay at home, lounge on the terrace, do dishes and help out rather than make the effort to go anywhere. To them staying at home is a luxury they enjoy, not a restraint or something they have been forced into.
But yesterday I did force them to do something. I made them walk up on Helgehornet, a small mountain almost in Volda, in order to enjoy the wonderful view west towards the islands and the ocean. Today they have a new layer of freckles and a pair of happy grins while I am sore and grumpy... which of course makes them feel even happier, more fit and ready to take over the world. The house smells of cocoa, which I made for breakfast, because spring, eggs and cocoa, melting snow and the scent of growing things mingled with sunscreen is all tangled in my memories of once-upon-a-time before growing up was forced on me by life, and I want to pass on the careless invincible promise of spring to my children while they can still identify with it and make it their own.
For once we are doing the stay-at-home thing for Easter. The family doesn't complain, we have always been travelling at any opportunity, and have crossed the southern part of the country over and over again to visit parents, aunts, sisters and the one brother. Before the kids were born we did this for the sake of our parents. Afterwards we did it to give the children a chance to know their many loving aunts, to make them feel at home in different cultures and even different countries. So what I have now is two socially very intelligent and relaxed teen-agers, who prefer to stay at home, lounge on the terrace, do dishes and help out rather than make the effort to go anywhere. To them staying at home is a luxury they enjoy, not a restraint or something they have been forced into.
But yesterday I did force them to do something. I made them walk up on Helgehornet, a small mountain almost in Volda, in order to enjoy the wonderful view west towards the islands and the ocean. Today they have a new layer of freckles and a pair of happy grins while I am sore and grumpy... which of course makes them feel even happier, more fit and ready to take over the world. The house smells of cocoa, which I made for breakfast, because spring, eggs and cocoa, melting snow and the scent of growing things mingled with sunscreen is all tangled in my memories of once-upon-a-time before growing up was forced on me by life, and I want to pass on the careless invincible promise of spring to my children while they can still identify with it and make it their own.
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Why I love my wireless
I can sit in the chair in front of the window and watch the sun set in pink and gold right where the islands protect the fjord from the open sea.
It's 10 am on a holiday morning, and I am in bed while I write this, drinking tea while my husband reads right next to me. I didn't have a book, so I surf the net.
When I meet a stream of boys on their way up the stairs ready to demand the use of the desk-top in the home-office, I can point to my son's laptop and wireless link and say: get back into the basement! you can check your messages from there!
My daughter's sullen arguments about how she can not do her homework research properly without the same desk-top in the office are easily countered by giving one or the other lap-top into her hands with the options of working in the guest/spare room, two kitchens, two livingrooms or even on her beloved warm bath-room floor (OK, this may sound odd, but I think this family is genetically disposed to prefer cable-heated bathroom floors as comfort- and even working spaces. Open the doors carefully, and be grateful there are options!) My one complaint: the heater in the concrete walled room with a veritable labyrinth of pipes exclude her from using the wireless link in her room. Sad but true.
The wireless phones have removed the need to yell in this house. We just call - on the internal network and free of charge - the other floor and speak in moderate, civilised tones. Delightful.
With the cellphone I can embarass my daughter at a wider range. If she is late getting home, I can call all of her friends and ask for her, without waking their parents, thus limiting the embarassment to the area where it hurts her the most.
And there are of course a lot of sensible work-related reasons which I should mention here... but I am just too comfortable to think outside of this building. The sun is shining, the tea is perfect, I am getting a little hungry, and I want to go out and change the soil in the flowerpots on the terrace to give my lilies and herbs a better life this spring. Norway has the longest easter vacation in the world, and I plan to enjoy it!
I can sit in the chair in front of the window and watch the sun set in pink and gold right where the islands protect the fjord from the open sea.
It's 10 am on a holiday morning, and I am in bed while I write this, drinking tea while my husband reads right next to me. I didn't have a book, so I surf the net.
When I meet a stream of boys on their way up the stairs ready to demand the use of the desk-top in the home-office, I can point to my son's laptop and wireless link and say: get back into the basement! you can check your messages from there!
My daughter's sullen arguments about how she can not do her homework research properly without the same desk-top in the office are easily countered by giving one or the other lap-top into her hands with the options of working in the guest/spare room, two kitchens, two livingrooms or even on her beloved warm bath-room floor (OK, this may sound odd, but I think this family is genetically disposed to prefer cable-heated bathroom floors as comfort- and even working spaces. Open the doors carefully, and be grateful there are options!) My one complaint: the heater in the concrete walled room with a veritable labyrinth of pipes exclude her from using the wireless link in her room. Sad but true.
The wireless phones have removed the need to yell in this house. We just call - on the internal network and free of charge - the other floor and speak in moderate, civilised tones. Delightful.
With the cellphone I can embarass my daughter at a wider range. If she is late getting home, I can call all of her friends and ask for her, without waking their parents, thus limiting the embarassment to the area where it hurts her the most.
And there are of course a lot of sensible work-related reasons which I should mention here... but I am just too comfortable to think outside of this building. The sun is shining, the tea is perfect, I am getting a little hungry, and I want to go out and change the soil in the flowerpots on the terrace to give my lilies and herbs a better life this spring. Norway has the longest easter vacation in the world, and I plan to enjoy it!
Playing females
Frequently articles and writing on playing female characters are steeped in so much theory you can't take the writer seriously. They look like the writer has a thesis nicked whole from the most recent book on gernder, identity and representation and then applied to the nearest computergame featuring a female heroine - and this frequently turns out to be Lara Croft. Jane at GameGirl Advance writes about Genderplay from the strength of her rich gaming experience.
Frequently articles and writing on playing female characters are steeped in so much theory you can't take the writer seriously. They look like the writer has a thesis nicked whole from the most recent book on gernder, identity and representation and then applied to the nearest computergame featuring a female heroine - and this frequently turns out to be Lara Croft. Jane at GameGirl Advance writes about Genderplay from the strength of her rich gaming experience.
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Adbusters
Yesterday I discovered Adbusters, through the means of an extremely interesting television documentary which it turned out had been made by our own students (!). The idea of Adbusters is to make visible the cultural hegemony of the large international corporations, and thereby expose this development to criticism. One of their means for this is The Corporate Flag. This flag was behing the head of the Estonian talking in the program... since I tuned in a little late I did not catch his name, but Monday I'll be there, ready with my finger on the record-button.
Their main objective is not to ruin any particular company or brand, but to raise our consciousness about consumption on a personal level. In their Boycott Brand America campaign they don't go out against one brand in particular, but against the general lack of consciousness as to what the brands does to our cultural identity, challenging people to choose one brand and stop using it.
It's almost ten years ago now that my son - then 5 years old - explained to the father of a girl in his pre-school that he wouldn't give her a barbie doll as a present for her birthday, because Barbie represents all the worst aspects of American culture. I had explained carefully to his somewhat older sister why I would not have a role-model doll that looked like an anorectic silicone-enhanced porn-star in the house, and his ears had been wide open... Today they both admonish me when I drink TAB, since it's produced by Coca Cola (I have cut back on that since USA invaded Iraq) (when I do drink it, my son says, with a grin: "enjoy the taste of capitalism."), they refuse to visit McDonalds unless it's an emergency, and they read Fast Food Nation with eyes wide open.
But back to Adbusters... Their call to arms is modern, ironic, high-tech, open source and directed at the future and the consuming generations. And they very much have the finger on the pulse of modern culture, as for instance with this meme-fest. I'll be watching them! And I really want one of those corporate flags!
Yesterday I discovered Adbusters, through the means of an extremely interesting television documentary which it turned out had been made by our own students (!). The idea of Adbusters is to make visible the cultural hegemony of the large international corporations, and thereby expose this development to criticism. One of their means for this is The Corporate Flag. This flag was behing the head of the Estonian talking in the program... since I tuned in a little late I did not catch his name, but Monday I'll be there, ready with my finger on the record-button.
Their main objective is not to ruin any particular company or brand, but to raise our consciousness about consumption on a personal level. In their Boycott Brand America campaign they don't go out against one brand in particular, but against the general lack of consciousness as to what the brands does to our cultural identity, challenging people to choose one brand and stop using it.
It's almost ten years ago now that my son - then 5 years old - explained to the father of a girl in his pre-school that he wouldn't give her a barbie doll as a present for her birthday, because Barbie represents all the worst aspects of American culture. I had explained carefully to his somewhat older sister why I would not have a role-model doll that looked like an anorectic silicone-enhanced porn-star in the house, and his ears had been wide open... Today they both admonish me when I drink TAB, since it's produced by Coca Cola (I have cut back on that since USA invaded Iraq) (when I do drink it, my son says, with a grin: "enjoy the taste of capitalism."), they refuse to visit McDonalds unless it's an emergency, and they read Fast Food Nation with eyes wide open.
But back to Adbusters... Their call to arms is modern, ironic, high-tech, open source and directed at the future and the consuming generations. And they very much have the finger on the pulse of modern culture, as for instance with this meme-fest. I'll be watching them! And I really want one of those corporate flags!
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
A compliment delayed
March 13th I got a compliment (I think), and I didn't even know it:
Aside from "making out" with my thesis (yet *another* lame attempt at lightening the mood...always fails) I've been poking around Torill's blog as well as the Blogging Thoughts blog in case there are any useful links I could use in my thesis. As cliched as this may sound, Torill's blog is totally inspiring me to pursue a career in academia. Yes, you heard me right. Academia. I know. Stop laughing.
This was written by Nurul, a young lady in Singapore. She has written a paper about weblogs and community building, which sounds like a good place to start if you want to be future oriented and work in Academia. Go, Nurul!
March 13th I got a compliment (I think), and I didn't even know it:
Aside from "making out" with my thesis (yet *another* lame attempt at lightening the mood...always fails) I've been poking around Torill's blog as well as the Blogging Thoughts blog in case there are any useful links I could use in my thesis. As cliched as this may sound, Torill's blog is totally inspiring me to pursue a career in academia. Yes, you heard me right. Academia. I know. Stop laughing.
This was written by Nurul, a young lady in Singapore. She has written a paper about weblogs and community building, which sounds like a good place to start if you want to be future oriented and work in Academia. Go, Nurul!
Friday, April 11, 2003
blogging as publishing
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum asks if people should edit weblog entries, and Elizabeth Lane Lawley replies with "the party-line" from Rebecca Blood, that no, one should not do so.
I think it is circumstantial. First, there should be a distinction between which kind of blogs we are talking about. If they are subjctive, personal, and written mainly for the writing pleasure of the writer, he or she has no obligation towards the rest of the world. If they are or wish to be professional and part in a larger debate, if they profess to communicate facts or try to convince the reader of this or that view, then the editorial reliability becomes increasingly important.
In this blog, I change sentences or fix typos, because I always "blog hot" as MGK calls it. But I try to keep the gist of the post, and if I find out later that I was wrong, or if I need to correct or add something, I point out that I have updated or changed something. Occasionally I do delete or totally change posts. I think I have done that four times over two years of blogging. One was a post that I feared would be offensive to a person, the three others were posts where I found that I couldn't finish the argument I had planned for, and I deleted/altered them very shortly after posting.
Still, I don't consider this or other blogs to be as authoratitive sources of information as for instance peer-reviewed journals. I am after all just my biased self, as designer, writer and editor.
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum asks if people should edit weblog entries, and Elizabeth Lane Lawley replies with "the party-line" from Rebecca Blood, that no, one should not do so.
I think it is circumstantial. First, there should be a distinction between which kind of blogs we are talking about. If they are subjctive, personal, and written mainly for the writing pleasure of the writer, he or she has no obligation towards the rest of the world. If they are or wish to be professional and part in a larger debate, if they profess to communicate facts or try to convince the reader of this or that view, then the editorial reliability becomes increasingly important.
In this blog, I change sentences or fix typos, because I always "blog hot" as MGK calls it. But I try to keep the gist of the post, and if I find out later that I was wrong, or if I need to correct or add something, I point out that I have updated or changed something. Occasionally I do delete or totally change posts. I think I have done that four times over two years of blogging. One was a post that I feared would be offensive to a person, the three others were posts where I found that I couldn't finish the argument I had planned for, and I deleted/altered them very shortly after posting.
Still, I don't consider this or other blogs to be as authoratitive sources of information as for instance peer-reviewed journals. I am after all just my biased self, as designer, writer and editor.
Talking of roles...
There are still stunning facts to learn about people you think have been totally open and sincere in their blogging. But truth will come out!
Cracks up laughing, loving the confession, if not the plastic.
If you ever catch me with a special plastic holder for my deviled eggs, to fit inside the Round Cake Taker, you'll all know I have developed a new and to me quite deviant fetish...
Thank you Liz, I needed a laugh this morning!
There are still stunning facts to learn about people you think have been totally open and sincere in their blogging. But truth will come out!
Cracks up laughing, loving the confession, if not the plastic.
If you ever catch me with a special plastic holder for my deviled eggs, to fit inside the Round Cake Taker, you'll all know I have developed a new and to me quite deviant fetish...
Thank you Liz, I needed a laugh this morning!
Hiding in plain sight
Jill writes about how she hides behind her writing, and Mark questions the need to be exactly what you say you are. I find that hiding in plain sight is how people cope with their everyday life. With the advantage of knowing Jill, when her posts turn impersonal and businesslike, I know there's something wrong - which is why I tried to call her at odd intervals this last week. And that is because all writing somehow reflects yourself, even if it is not about your personal life. Our bodies and brains are our instruments, it is the tool we have to work with. Using tools lets us extend the body and mind, but not transcend it.
Even when playing a role or pulling off a scam, you are yourself. The role you play is taken from your own experience and knowledge, and if you trick somebody or lie to them, that is also who you are: you are a trickster, a lier, a fraud. Studying role-playing has taught me two very hard roles: to pretend that you are more intelligent than you are, and to pretend that you are more stupid than you are. The first one is impossible. You can perhaps make me think you have more education, more formal learning, more experience or more skill than you actually have, that you are of a different gender and live in an other culture, but to do that you would have to be at least as intelligent and a lot more ruthless than the victim of your fraud. The other one is hard, really hard. Real stupidity is hard to fake, the best option is to choose social stupidity caused by cultural bias or lack of social training. That is because it takes a very intelligent person to understand the way fools think.
To sum it up: Even when you make everybody believe you are very different from your legal and physical self, the fraud is part of your self. Your pretence is as tainted by your personality as is your sincerity. Somehow, even lying, you tell some part of the truth.
Jill writes about how she hides behind her writing, and Mark questions the need to be exactly what you say you are. I find that hiding in plain sight is how people cope with their everyday life. With the advantage of knowing Jill, when her posts turn impersonal and businesslike, I know there's something wrong - which is why I tried to call her at odd intervals this last week. And that is because all writing somehow reflects yourself, even if it is not about your personal life. Our bodies and brains are our instruments, it is the tool we have to work with. Using tools lets us extend the body and mind, but not transcend it.
Even when playing a role or pulling off a scam, you are yourself. The role you play is taken from your own experience and knowledge, and if you trick somebody or lie to them, that is also who you are: you are a trickster, a lier, a fraud. Studying role-playing has taught me two very hard roles: to pretend that you are more intelligent than you are, and to pretend that you are more stupid than you are. The first one is impossible. You can perhaps make me think you have more education, more formal learning, more experience or more skill than you actually have, that you are of a different gender and live in an other culture, but to do that you would have to be at least as intelligent and a lot more ruthless than the victim of your fraud. The other one is hard, really hard. Real stupidity is hard to fake, the best option is to choose social stupidity caused by cultural bias or lack of social training. That is because it takes a very intelligent person to understand the way fools think.
To sum it up: Even when you make everybody believe you are very different from your legal and physical self, the fraud is part of your self. Your pretence is as tainted by your personality as is your sincerity. Somehow, even lying, you tell some part of the truth.
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Strategies and realities
Developing a structure is a very different thing from studying or critizising it, which is why we have so many critics of everything, and so few real artists. These days I am struggling to develop a structure. And in this post I'll do what I claim in the title of this blog, I'll think with my fingers.
The Information Study at Volda college is being altered from a two-year study in a four-year cand.mag degree to a three-year bachelor study. Once upon a time I implemented the plans for the two-year study, and I now am leading education again, through the changes towards the bachelors degree. This is a unique chance to get rid of quite a few frustrating gridlocks.
The two years were split in four semesters, and the students had journalism, media theory and information/public relations theory and practice. Today there are still four semesters of required courses - or 130 points (1 full semester is 30 points), but they are scattered over the three years. This has disrupted the flow of the study, and worst of all, disrupted the experience of identity for the information students. In the third semester, for instance, I won't see the students at all, exept when I run into them in the hallway. This is not a good thing for the study, it breaks down the strong profile which we have in the business, and it limits the opportunities for the students when they leave the college. I need to rebuild a structure which takes care of the students, offers them good and relevant options in the semesters when they don't have required subjects, and still takes care of their right to not be here, if they choose to spend two out of six semesters elsewhere. I need to develop good optional courses, as well as change the required ones.
The most radical change of the required courses will be to take the students out of the journalism course and create a journalism course developed particularly for the information education. It's a half-semester course at beginners level for the journalists, and used to be one of the first things the information students did, but now they have to go through this course in the third semester, and will in certain aspects be a lot more advanced than their fellow students. I fear this will underline the already exisiting touch of antagonism between information and journalism students.
A more moderate change is to start an optional course in web editing. Inspired by Jill, I have an idea which I am trying to give enough substance that we can start it with a few students this semester. If it is a success, we will open it up for more students next fall, and establish it as a fairly advanced course in practical multilinear editing. I am writing the model now - had a three hour meeting between the start of this post and the end of it, during which I was trying to give the study form and content. As we know, they are interdependent...
Developing a structure is a very different thing from studying or critizising it, which is why we have so many critics of everything, and so few real artists. These days I am struggling to develop a structure. And in this post I'll do what I claim in the title of this blog, I'll think with my fingers.
The Information Study at Volda college is being altered from a two-year study in a four-year cand.mag degree to a three-year bachelor study. Once upon a time I implemented the plans for the two-year study, and I now am leading education again, through the changes towards the bachelors degree. This is a unique chance to get rid of quite a few frustrating gridlocks.
The two years were split in four semesters, and the students had journalism, media theory and information/public relations theory and practice. Today there are still four semesters of required courses - or 130 points (1 full semester is 30 points), but they are scattered over the three years. This has disrupted the flow of the study, and worst of all, disrupted the experience of identity for the information students. In the third semester, for instance, I won't see the students at all, exept when I run into them in the hallway. This is not a good thing for the study, it breaks down the strong profile which we have in the business, and it limits the opportunities for the students when they leave the college. I need to rebuild a structure which takes care of the students, offers them good and relevant options in the semesters when they don't have required subjects, and still takes care of their right to not be here, if they choose to spend two out of six semesters elsewhere. I need to develop good optional courses, as well as change the required ones.
The most radical change of the required courses will be to take the students out of the journalism course and create a journalism course developed particularly for the information education. It's a half-semester course at beginners level for the journalists, and used to be one of the first things the information students did, but now they have to go through this course in the third semester, and will in certain aspects be a lot more advanced than their fellow students. I fear this will underline the already exisiting touch of antagonism between information and journalism students.
A more moderate change is to start an optional course in web editing. Inspired by Jill, I have an idea which I am trying to give enough substance that we can start it with a few students this semester. If it is a success, we will open it up for more students next fall, and establish it as a fairly advanced course in practical multilinear editing. I am writing the model now - had a three hour meeting between the start of this post and the end of it, during which I was trying to give the study form and content. As we know, they are interdependent...
Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Blog Coverage
Very interesting piece of information about citations on weblogs and blogs from Ezter.
Very interesting piece of information about citations on weblogs and blogs from Ezter.
Web Dreams
Ultimately, I want the Media Department at Volda College to offer a Master's Degee in Convergence Media News Editing. We already teach Television, Radio and newspaper journalism and editing, and all the technical processes are digitalized. We have started to teach multimedia editing in general, on a small scale, but the Quality Reform opens up for Master's levels at the colleges. Until we have a full professor (in Norway just having tenure, a PhD and loads of teaching practice does not a full professor make) we will not be able to start a Master's study, but I can start out with smaller courses at lower levels, to give shape to what I want to create. And before I get there I have to find the right software in which to create all of this, the right theory to teach the students how to think in more than one medium at the time, and possibly I will have to write parts of that. And I have to find a way to relate this to news and reporting. I am actually looking forwards to it! I haven't built and established a new study in years...
Ultimately, I want the Media Department at Volda College to offer a Master's Degee in Convergence Media News Editing. We already teach Television, Radio and newspaper journalism and editing, and all the technical processes are digitalized. We have started to teach multimedia editing in general, on a small scale, but the Quality Reform opens up for Master's levels at the colleges. Until we have a full professor (in Norway just having tenure, a PhD and loads of teaching practice does not a full professor make) we will not be able to start a Master's study, but I can start out with smaller courses at lower levels, to give shape to what I want to create. And before I get there I have to find the right software in which to create all of this, the right theory to teach the students how to think in more than one medium at the time, and possibly I will have to write parts of that. And I have to find a way to relate this to news and reporting. I am actually looking forwards to it! I haven't built and established a new study in years...
Monday, April 07, 2003
Limbo
Once upon a time, I was trapped for an entire winter in a world of no mountains and no ocean. The landscape was flat and soft, fields and forest, the only diversion was watching the train as it passed through. It went from the ruthless city of the tiger and down to the sinful dens of the city of the king.
In this place I lived with a hundred other souls my own age, caught as I was, in limbo. Our futures were undecided, we could be angels or demons, descend or ascend. Somehow the landscape was amazingly appropriate to convey this. There was the line of the railroad tracks which gave us the choice of temptations, while the bowl of the sky was a lid over the frozen crust which hid the dark, dirty soil below.
In this long winter, I met some of the people I have loved the most, and some who taught me that sometimes indifference is charity. I saw madness, abuse and weakness, as well as talent, strength and delight. I learned not to fear deviants, and to accept that the norm is only a statistical value.
Most painful of all my experiences was oddly enough not any of the interactions with other humans. What made me realise that I was truly lost, in limbo, and with no way to return to anything familiar, was when I went for a walk. It was winter, and I was sick of the landscape I was trapped in. I needed the sound of open water, the scent of salt and the light - even the cold winter light - reflected off the surface of the sea. We were three miles away from the fjord, and I had a whole day for the walk. I still remember the houses I passed by, the surface of the road frozen under my feet, the garden decorations creating an odd otherworldly variaty - a tiny windmill, a garden gnome, toy-like animals. I was passing through the layers of a peculiar suburban limbo, and should have seen the signs of warning right there. But I was blinded with my own needs and desire, and pressed on, tired, hungry and impatient.
I found the beach. I found the polished pebbles and the rough sand, frozen tufts of beach clove and hard, tangled lumps of seaweed. But the expanse of water itself was hidden, deep below a thick layer of ice. There was no hint of salt in the cold, clear air, only a hint of woodsmoke from the nearby farm-house. The sounds were those of wintery farmland, not even broken by the signs of life in the forest, and the light the same unkind white glare from frozen fields. I think that is when I realised that I was not just in a school for a year, I was in transition, and that I could not expect any solace from nature or culture in this place. I would have to rely on the landscape within, in order to find my path up or down.
This was more than 20 years ago. Even then I knew that some failed and fell. But I am still struggling to find the path up and out, terrified to be trapped and held again in a limbo where I cannot see the open water.
Once upon a time, I was trapped for an entire winter in a world of no mountains and no ocean. The landscape was flat and soft, fields and forest, the only diversion was watching the train as it passed through. It went from the ruthless city of the tiger and down to the sinful dens of the city of the king.
In this place I lived with a hundred other souls my own age, caught as I was, in limbo. Our futures were undecided, we could be angels or demons, descend or ascend. Somehow the landscape was amazingly appropriate to convey this. There was the line of the railroad tracks which gave us the choice of temptations, while the bowl of the sky was a lid over the frozen crust which hid the dark, dirty soil below.
In this long winter, I met some of the people I have loved the most, and some who taught me that sometimes indifference is charity. I saw madness, abuse and weakness, as well as talent, strength and delight. I learned not to fear deviants, and to accept that the norm is only a statistical value.
Most painful of all my experiences was oddly enough not any of the interactions with other humans. What made me realise that I was truly lost, in limbo, and with no way to return to anything familiar, was when I went for a walk. It was winter, and I was sick of the landscape I was trapped in. I needed the sound of open water, the scent of salt and the light - even the cold winter light - reflected off the surface of the sea. We were three miles away from the fjord, and I had a whole day for the walk. I still remember the houses I passed by, the surface of the road frozen under my feet, the garden decorations creating an odd otherworldly variaty - a tiny windmill, a garden gnome, toy-like animals. I was passing through the layers of a peculiar suburban limbo, and should have seen the signs of warning right there. But I was blinded with my own needs and desire, and pressed on, tired, hungry and impatient.
I found the beach. I found the polished pebbles and the rough sand, frozen tufts of beach clove and hard, tangled lumps of seaweed. But the expanse of water itself was hidden, deep below a thick layer of ice. There was no hint of salt in the cold, clear air, only a hint of woodsmoke from the nearby farm-house. The sounds were those of wintery farmland, not even broken by the signs of life in the forest, and the light the same unkind white glare from frozen fields. I think that is when I realised that I was not just in a school for a year, I was in transition, and that I could not expect any solace from nature or culture in this place. I would have to rely on the landscape within, in order to find my path up or down.
This was more than 20 years ago. Even then I knew that some failed and fell. But I am still struggling to find the path up and out, terrified to be trapped and held again in a limbo where I cannot see the open water.
Time for celebrations!
Lisbeth is done with her thesis! this is great, wonderful, amazing and something that needs to be celebrated! And she got a job too, so we'll just have to celebrate twice! (Or twice as hard... being Scandinavians, perhaps that is not good survival tactics?)
(BTW, in case you wondered about my own progress, my eminent advisor Espen Aarseth is working on putting a comittee together, his suggestions are frighteningly good and I fear I may get a qualified evaluation. And I just wanted somebody to pick it up, weigh it and say: "this looks like a Ph.D. thesis. Fine with me!")
Lisbeth is done with her thesis! this is great, wonderful, amazing and something that needs to be celebrated! And she got a job too, so we'll just have to celebrate twice! (Or twice as hard... being Scandinavians, perhaps that is not good survival tactics?)
(BTW, in case you wondered about my own progress, my eminent advisor Espen Aarseth is working on putting a comittee together, his suggestions are frighteningly good and I fear I may get a qualified evaluation. And I just wanted somebody to pick it up, weigh it and say: "this looks like a Ph.D. thesis. Fine with me!")
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Stir Crazy
After a certain time in the beautiful, safe, predictable, healthy comfort of Volda, I feel the itch, the need to travel. My lungs are too clean of asphalt dust, my system too purified, the last of the heavily chlorinated drinking water flushed out by the mountain spring water in our taps, all my clothes cleaned of the smell of crowded bars and the grey patina from the subway. This is when I have forgotten about how the constant noise makes me feel like I am going subtly deaf, how all the people in large cities leave me with a kind of mental overload which makes me long for a familiar face, and all I can think of is the variety - more than one bar, one restaurant and three cafeterias. The ferry across the fjord is a slow and suitable metronome, timing the life here between the mountains to a stately adagio, while my feet long for a different beat.
It is a good thing I will be travelling to Melbourne in May. But the summer will be slower than ever, spent painting the house and tending the garden. And the ferry will run on summer schedule. It is going to be a long, quiet summer in Volda. I guess I will have to use some really strong solvent for the paint, if I want any excitement at all!
After a certain time in the beautiful, safe, predictable, healthy comfort of Volda, I feel the itch, the need to travel. My lungs are too clean of asphalt dust, my system too purified, the last of the heavily chlorinated drinking water flushed out by the mountain spring water in our taps, all my clothes cleaned of the smell of crowded bars and the grey patina from the subway. This is when I have forgotten about how the constant noise makes me feel like I am going subtly deaf, how all the people in large cities leave me with a kind of mental overload which makes me long for a familiar face, and all I can think of is the variety - more than one bar, one restaurant and three cafeterias. The ferry across the fjord is a slow and suitable metronome, timing the life here between the mountains to a stately adagio, while my feet long for a different beat.
It is a good thing I will be travelling to Melbourne in May. But the summer will be slower than ever, spent painting the house and tending the garden. And the ferry will run on summer schedule. It is going to be a long, quiet summer in Volda. I guess I will have to use some really strong solvent for the paint, if I want any excitement at all!
Thursday, April 03, 2003
Blogs and ethics
Stephanie Nilsson, a student in Umeå, has started a blog as a part of a research project. One of the first things she does is to raise a question about blogs and if they are public or private domain (post from april 1st - permalinks are broken). She also asked this question in an email for me.
My stance on this is that blogs belong to the public domain. They have been made public, and you as the writer and editor have full responsibility for what you write there. You can be quoted, but you should be properly cited when your thoughts and ideas are taken from your blog. Which means that having published something in your blog, you have actually published it, and can claim ownership to your ideas.
Something similar goes for letters and emails, by the way: once you have sent a letter or an email, it's no longer your property. It belongs to the other person, who can choose to make it public or keep it private, you have no more exclusive rights of your words once they have been sent or published.
Good luck with your work, Stephanie!
Stephanie Nilsson, a student in Umeå, has started a blog as a part of a research project. One of the first things she does is to raise a question about blogs and if they are public or private domain (post from april 1st - permalinks are broken). She also asked this question in an email for me.
My stance on this is that blogs belong to the public domain. They have been made public, and you as the writer and editor have full responsibility for what you write there. You can be quoted, but you should be properly cited when your thoughts and ideas are taken from your blog. Which means that having published something in your blog, you have actually published it, and can claim ownership to your ideas.
Something similar goes for letters and emails, by the way: once you have sent a letter or an email, it's no longer your property. It belongs to the other person, who can choose to make it public or keep it private, you have no more exclusive rights of your words once they have been sent or published.
Good luck with your work, Stephanie!
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Where's the remote?
Sleet and rain, sore from too much (or rather too little and then suddenly some) exercize, tired students, nervous colleagues, formal restraints that put Colleges at a disadvantage relative to the Universities and commercial research institutes in the ongoing battle for research grants, not a word of the progress on the processing of my thesis, not even a hint that there might be progress, and there is still war in Iraq. It's one of those "I-wish-I-could-change-channels-on-reality" days.
Sleet and rain, sore from too much (or rather too little and then suddenly some) exercize, tired students, nervous colleagues, formal restraints that put Colleges at a disadvantage relative to the Universities and commercial research institutes in the ongoing battle for research grants, not a word of the progress on the processing of my thesis, not even a hint that there might be progress, and there is still war in Iraq. It's one of those "I-wish-I-could-change-channels-on-reality" days.
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
What students do... - or too much information?
Just found the blog of one of my students. I visited him where he's doing his internship, and it felt like the family business. His supervisor was a student from way back when, and an other former student worked there as well. They took good care of the upcoming generation, and everything was idyllic. But the current student has to write his final little thesis, and his procrastination talents flower all over his blog, occasionally leaving me with images I'd rather not have of my students... But now I know how to keep an eye on him, and I'll be looking for frequent updates. Hmmm, not such a bad thing after all!
Just found the blog of one of my students. I visited him where he's doing his internship, and it felt like the family business. His supervisor was a student from way back when, and an other former student worked there as well. They took good care of the upcoming generation, and everything was idyllic. But the current student has to write his final little thesis, and his procrastination talents flower all over his blog, occasionally leaving me with images I'd rather not have of my students... But now I know how to keep an eye on him, and I'll be looking for frequent updates. Hmmm, not such a bad thing after all!
Norway travelling links
The Coastal Steamer: Hurtigruten
Norwegian State Railroad: NSB
Busses along the coast - Trondheim to Bergen, and Oslo - North-West Norway: Nor-Way Bussekspress. Notice: "rundreise" means roundtrip.
Maps of Norway; kart.no. Notice: Trondheim is in Sør-Trøndelag, Volda is in Møre og Romsdal, Bergen is in Hordaland and Oslo is in Oslo - almost invisible next to Akershus.
So now you all ought to get an idea about what is where in Norway. Lots of space, not so many people. And we like to hide in out-of-the-way places.
The Coastal Steamer: Hurtigruten
Norwegian State Railroad: NSB
Busses along the coast - Trondheim to Bergen, and Oslo - North-West Norway: Nor-Way Bussekspress. Notice: "rundreise" means roundtrip.
Maps of Norway; kart.no. Notice: Trondheim is in Sør-Trøndelag, Volda is in Møre og Romsdal, Bergen is in Hordaland and Oslo is in Oslo - almost invisible next to Akershus.
So now you all ought to get an idea about what is where in Norway. Lots of space, not so many people. And we like to hide in out-of-the-way places.
Monday, March 31, 2003
Blogs and orality
Jill asks her students if blogs are oral media? I grew up close to an oral tradition, a somewhat unique situation. My father's family were all more or less illiterate, not just in the understanding that they didn't like to read, but in the meaning of not being able to read. Their culture was an oral one, their knowledge passed on through stories. To this day, the outrageous, amazing, incredible story lives quite well in my family, along with the art of telling it, the pauses, the quick asides, the use of voice and body, in my family a story isn't just told, it's performed. But my uncles are masters of the form, they can sit down and tell a story full of elegant puns, silly metaphors, entertaining similes and memorable comparisons which stays with you for years after you heard it.
This embroidery is important in an oral tradition in order to make the important points memorable. I still remember, almost 20 years later, a story my uncle told which centered on new fishnet technology. The story was silly, happy and intricate, but the deep truth of how that technology was killing off the cod in the area where he lives, rendering the small-boat fishing close to the coast unprofitable and leaving thousands of fishermen unemployed and in need of government support was something that dawned on the listener slowly, as the elegant points were repeated, cherished and retold.
In an oral tradition knowledge has to be linked differently. Yes, we link in blogs, but the links we make are not so that our minds can recall the information, but so that our fingers recall it. I remember the incongruos image of fish getting glasses to find the way past the nets to shallow water in order to breed, but in a blog I would not need to create such an image to make the link between filaments, captured cod and breeding, I would link to the appropriate research information and that would be that. Point and click, no need to embellish further.
In my opinion blogs are very much a written form, they are the public letter, the open journal, the commentary column of the internet. Once in a while perhaps we find blogs where the art of telling stories has been preserved to the point that it approaches the skill of the sami story-tellers, but those people don't tell stories like that because they are blogging - they would do it in any format, the blog just happens to be useful.
(Sorry, all cod-fact links in Norwegian only.)
Jill asks her students if blogs are oral media? I grew up close to an oral tradition, a somewhat unique situation. My father's family were all more or less illiterate, not just in the understanding that they didn't like to read, but in the meaning of not being able to read. Their culture was an oral one, their knowledge passed on through stories. To this day, the outrageous, amazing, incredible story lives quite well in my family, along with the art of telling it, the pauses, the quick asides, the use of voice and body, in my family a story isn't just told, it's performed. But my uncles are masters of the form, they can sit down and tell a story full of elegant puns, silly metaphors, entertaining similes and memorable comparisons which stays with you for years after you heard it.
This embroidery is important in an oral tradition in order to make the important points memorable. I still remember, almost 20 years later, a story my uncle told which centered on new fishnet technology. The story was silly, happy and intricate, but the deep truth of how that technology was killing off the cod in the area where he lives, rendering the small-boat fishing close to the coast unprofitable and leaving thousands of fishermen unemployed and in need of government support was something that dawned on the listener slowly, as the elegant points were repeated, cherished and retold.
In an oral tradition knowledge has to be linked differently. Yes, we link in blogs, but the links we make are not so that our minds can recall the information, but so that our fingers recall it. I remember the incongruos image of fish getting glasses to find the way past the nets to shallow water in order to breed, but in a blog I would not need to create such an image to make the link between filaments, captured cod and breeding, I would link to the appropriate research information and that would be that. Point and click, no need to embellish further.
In my opinion blogs are very much a written form, they are the public letter, the open journal, the commentary column of the internet. Once in a while perhaps we find blogs where the art of telling stories has been preserved to the point that it approaches the skill of the sami story-tellers, but those people don't tell stories like that because they are blogging - they would do it in any format, the blog just happens to be useful.
(Sorry, all cod-fact links in Norwegian only.)
Thinking space
There's a stack of book on my desk, waiting to be read:
Gaston Bachelard (1958) The Poetics of Space, 1994 edition, Boston, Beacon Press.
Crang, Mike and Nigel Thrift, ed. (2000): Thinking Space, London and New York, Routledge.
Weinberger, David (2002): Small Pieces Loosely Joined, a unified theory of the web, Perseus Publishing.
Reading them will satisfy several purposes. One: a touch up on the concept of space for an article I am supposed to submit sometime soon. Two: Thinking about intimacy/publicity and digital spaces. Three: Prove to myself that I can still read a fairly complex book.
Until then.... I have papers to grade.
There's a stack of book on my desk, waiting to be read:
Gaston Bachelard (1958) The Poetics of Space, 1994 edition, Boston, Beacon Press.
Crang, Mike and Nigel Thrift, ed. (2000): Thinking Space, London and New York, Routledge.
Weinberger, David (2002): Small Pieces Loosely Joined, a unified theory of the web, Perseus Publishing.
Reading them will satisfy several purposes. One: a touch up on the concept of space for an article I am supposed to submit sometime soon. Two: Thinking about intimacy/publicity and digital spaces. Three: Prove to myself that I can still read a fairly complex book.
Until then.... I have papers to grade.
Friday, March 28, 2003
Welcome to the addiction
I feel the pull. I feel the need to let go, to spend all waking hours, and some when I should be sleeping, in this trancelike state of fictitious reality. My fingers hurt already, after a no longer familiar effort, and I growl in frustration as my goal eludes me - again.
Yes, somebody has opened up Dragon Realms II: The return of Balpherus. The main immortal is Kyndig of kyndig.com. One of my all time favourite players is acting as an immortal at the moment, because it seems like Kyndig will be absent for a while. The game isn't really anything like Dragon Realms of old yet, but for an old player with a new character which can't really explore much anyway, just being back with that familiar skill system, the oh-so-familiar leveling and the promise - no, demand - of role-play is like coming home. Seeing Gustalvo, the non-player character innkeeper in Haven was almost like seeing some old aquintance...
Anyway, if you want to see what I used to be so addicted to: go to Zugg software and download a version of ZMud. If you scroll all the way down you find the free, unsupported version. Then you log on to kyndig.com, port 9000. I may be there. Actually, unless I am teaching, eating or sleeping, it's pretty likely that I am there. Ooops, I found the boar that I had to flee from earlier today. this time around I'll get it! (Or I'll return to fighting clay pigeons...)
I feel the pull. I feel the need to let go, to spend all waking hours, and some when I should be sleeping, in this trancelike state of fictitious reality. My fingers hurt already, after a no longer familiar effort, and I growl in frustration as my goal eludes me - again.
Yes, somebody has opened up Dragon Realms II: The return of Balpherus. The main immortal is Kyndig of kyndig.com. One of my all time favourite players is acting as an immortal at the moment, because it seems like Kyndig will be absent for a while. The game isn't really anything like Dragon Realms of old yet, but for an old player with a new character which can't really explore much anyway, just being back with that familiar skill system, the oh-so-familiar leveling and the promise - no, demand - of role-play is like coming home. Seeing Gustalvo, the non-player character innkeeper in Haven was almost like seeing some old aquintance...
Anyway, if you want to see what I used to be so addicted to: go to Zugg software and download a version of ZMud. If you scroll all the way down you find the free, unsupported version. Then you log on to kyndig.com, port 9000. I may be there. Actually, unless I am teaching, eating or sleeping, it's pretty likely that I am there. Ooops, I found the boar that I had to flee from earlier today. this time around I'll get it! (Or I'll return to fighting clay pigeons...)
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Recovery in progress
After a the shock of sending the thesis away, I am settling into new routines. They are not back to normal - as if I could know what normal is - they are oddly different. I sleep a lot. I don't just sleep late or go to bed early, I fall asleep around 9 pm and sleep with only a short break for brushing teeth and crawling into bed until 7 am. And I do this all the time. I work out in order to wake up and get back into shape, but that has almost turned into a new obsession. When I am not swimming, sleeping or eating, I go through my exercizes. I managed to read Life of Pi, but that little book took me almost two weeks. I kept napping over it, concentrating on the story at one level put me to sleep, to catch the deeper meaning was way beyond me. I will just have to read it again. Later.
After the years of frantic activity, even the periods of no writing being frantic (perhaps particularly those, frantic scrambling to find something to write, to process material and books and all those aborted attempts), it seems like my brain has lapsed into a coma. It has said to my spine: "I am taking a break, you run this thing." And my spine does the things it knows how to do well - lapse after lapse in the pool, eating and sleeping. Occasionally it leads me into newer territory, like blogging.
I hope my poor vacationing and recovering brain doesn't stay in Helen Keller mode. Or perhaps that is what I ought to let it do, perhaps that is the only way to be free.
After a the shock of sending the thesis away, I am settling into new routines. They are not back to normal - as if I could know what normal is - they are oddly different. I sleep a lot. I don't just sleep late or go to bed early, I fall asleep around 9 pm and sleep with only a short break for brushing teeth and crawling into bed until 7 am. And I do this all the time. I work out in order to wake up and get back into shape, but that has almost turned into a new obsession. When I am not swimming, sleeping or eating, I go through my exercizes. I managed to read Life of Pi, but that little book took me almost two weeks. I kept napping over it, concentrating on the story at one level put me to sleep, to catch the deeper meaning was way beyond me. I will just have to read it again. Later.
After the years of frantic activity, even the periods of no writing being frantic (perhaps particularly those, frantic scrambling to find something to write, to process material and books and all those aborted attempts), it seems like my brain has lapsed into a coma. It has said to my spine: "I am taking a break, you run this thing." And my spine does the things it knows how to do well - lapse after lapse in the pool, eating and sleeping. Occasionally it leads me into newer territory, like blogging.
I hope my poor vacationing and recovering brain doesn't stay in Helen Keller mode. Or perhaps that is what I ought to let it do, perhaps that is the only way to be free.
Warblogging
Dagladet, somewhat late, covers warblogging. I guess the word "warblog" only gets any meaning for journalists when other journalists have used it first.
Elisabeth Lane Lawley has been interviewed for this piece on c|net on the use of blogs to spread news in wartime and times of upheaval and change.
Dagladet, somewhat late, covers warblogging. I guess the word "warblog" only gets any meaning for journalists when other journalists have used it first.
Elisabeth Lane Lawley has been interviewed for this piece on c|net on the use of blogs to spread news in wartime and times of upheaval and change.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
No-war blog
This one, by way of my almost-wall-to-wall colleagues Erling and Thomas: No War Blog.
It has an impressive blogroll, but not all of those links go to blogs which are primarily concerned with war or no war.
This one, by way of my almost-wall-to-wall colleagues Erling and Thomas: No War Blog.
It has an impressive blogroll, but not all of those links go to blogs which are primarily concerned with war or no war.
Smartmobs and anti-war rallies
From Mark Dilley, who uses a Wiki for his blogging, a hint that I should look at smart mobs. That was an exellent idea, although the anti-war blogging has cooled down a little there (not so novel any more), the mixture of technology and demonstrations is fascinating.
From Mark Dilley, who uses a Wiki for his blogging, a hint that I should look at smart mobs. That was an exellent idea, although the anti-war blogging has cooled down a little there (not so novel any more), the mixture of technology and demonstrations is fascinating.
Do you know any blogging of USA anti-war rallies?
A media researcher in Norway, Rune Ottosen, who wrote a very good criticism of the last Gulf war as well as a discussion on the rhetoric of war after September 11th (both in Norwegian, though), is of course very busy these days, but not too busy to reply to my email. I asked him if the Norwegian under-reporting of the anti-war rallies in the US is caused by Norwegian editorial choices or by under-reporting from US sources. His reply was that the large Norwegian newspapers Dagbladet and Aftenposten are both very critical of the war and of current American politics, but they take most of their news of USA from CNN. This is probably what causes the underreporting at this end of the line, since CNN seems to have chosen sides.
Rune Ottosen ends his letter by asking me if I know of any blogs that report these protest. Most of what I have on them I however have from sporadic reports, like Alex Golub's uncommon post (march 20th) and occasional remarks in Mark Bernstein's and Elizabeth Lane Lawley's posts, or emails from people like Pattie Bell Hastings. These report some of the resistance, but are not focusing on it. Does anybody out there have better samples for me to pass on to Rune? The email is tmathivoldadotno.
A media researcher in Norway, Rune Ottosen, who wrote a very good criticism of the last Gulf war as well as a discussion on the rhetoric of war after September 11th (both in Norwegian, though), is of course very busy these days, but not too busy to reply to my email. I asked him if the Norwegian under-reporting of the anti-war rallies in the US is caused by Norwegian editorial choices or by under-reporting from US sources. His reply was that the large Norwegian newspapers Dagbladet and Aftenposten are both very critical of the war and of current American politics, but they take most of their news of USA from CNN. This is probably what causes the underreporting at this end of the line, since CNN seems to have chosen sides.
Rune Ottosen ends his letter by asking me if I know of any blogs that report these protest. Most of what I have on them I however have from sporadic reports, like Alex Golub's uncommon post (march 20th) and occasional remarks in Mark Bernstein's and Elizabeth Lane Lawley's posts, or emails from people like Pattie Bell Hastings. These report some of the resistance, but are not focusing on it. Does anybody out there have better samples for me to pass on to Rune? The email is tmathivoldadotno.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Blogging classes
In the middle of a surrealistic conversation, Alex Golub writes about blogging a class. He - or Mena, if there is a difference - is concerned with the knowledge which is not conscious, the knowledge gained by making connections, through insights, not through rote learning.
I don't make my students blog, the way Jill does, but I make my students log their progress all the way. They write not just papers, create products which we assess etc etc, but they have a diary, a log of their work. this is because I want them to focus on the process, an attempt to make it clear for them that in this situation what they end up with is not as important as the insights they make while they are striving towards the products we ask them to produce. Which means that if we ask them to work on a web-site for an organisation, it's not important to finish the web-site, what I want is an analysis of what they tried to do and why they couldn't finish said site. I have students who are ambitious and want to show off their work. they know it's important to have a portfolio when they come out there in the real world, so I don't need to push them towards the product.
Nothing puts focus on the process like a diary, journal or log. When you have to sit down and put into words all those little decisions, you get a clear image of what has been going on, and you have a chance to see not only what didn't work, but if there were freak combinations which worked. A blog is just the same thing. It's public and electronic, it has a few better search-features than your handwritten journal, but it gives you a chance to go back and check where thoughts, ideas and combinations came into your writing, from where and why.
With or without a lightsaber.
In the middle of a surrealistic conversation, Alex Golub writes about blogging a class. He - or Mena, if there is a difference - is concerned with the knowledge which is not conscious, the knowledge gained by making connections, through insights, not through rote learning.
I don't make my students blog, the way Jill does, but I make my students log their progress all the way. They write not just papers, create products which we assess etc etc, but they have a diary, a log of their work. this is because I want them to focus on the process, an attempt to make it clear for them that in this situation what they end up with is not as important as the insights they make while they are striving towards the products we ask them to produce. Which means that if we ask them to work on a web-site for an organisation, it's not important to finish the web-site, what I want is an analysis of what they tried to do and why they couldn't finish said site. I have students who are ambitious and want to show off their work. they know it's important to have a portfolio when they come out there in the real world, so I don't need to push them towards the product.
Nothing puts focus on the process like a diary, journal or log. When you have to sit down and put into words all those little decisions, you get a clear image of what has been going on, and you have a chance to see not only what didn't work, but if there were freak combinations which worked. A blog is just the same thing. It's public and electronic, it has a few better search-features than your handwritten journal, but it gives you a chance to go back and check where thoughts, ideas and combinations came into your writing, from where and why.
With or without a lightsaber.
Monday, March 24, 2003
Who are "we"?
L.t. Smash writes live from the sandbox. And the management moves his site around, as well as presented us with a set of site regulations where they essentially say that they own everything written in the site and all emails sent to the email address. I am curious about who "the management" is.
L.t. Smash writes live from the sandbox. And the management moves his site around, as well as presented us with a set of site regulations where they essentially say that they own everything written in the site and all emails sent to the email address. I am curious about who "the management" is.
Iraq and USA in the Media
From bloggers I read and emails received I have come to realise that there are protests inside the United States against the war in Iraq. As I have mentioned already, this is hardly ever mentioned in the Norwegian media. Concerned with this, I asked my colleague, journalist and teacher at the television documentary education here at the college, if there are ways to find out where the information on USA stops.
Today, the news-tree is no longer the simple structure of stringers, journalists, foreign offices, main international news-agency, national agencies and newpapers/television/radio. The net has done us the service of dissolving the power of several of the gate-keepers in the old structure. On the other hand it has become a lot less obvious where the information stops. Are the american news-media writing about the local protests? I find a few references to anti-war rallies in for instance USA today, and New York Times has an article on international anti-war rallies where the source is Associated Press. A quick peek at AP newspapers around the US, random samples from as diverse areas as Montana and Texas, Oregon and Georgia, comes up with exactly the same headlines and the same picture at the front page of their internet version, and all of them are concerned with the same topics as the Norwegian media coverage.
A Norwegian free-lance journalist has started a blogg-like site devoted to media criticism, inspired by the way journalists and media were controlled during "Desert Storm": mediekritikk by Henning A. Hellebust. It's written in Norwegian, but it's basically a criticism of the coverage of the war centered on the situation in Iraq. My concern today is not so much what we actually learn from Iraq, but what we do not learn about the rest of the world while all media attention is on Iraq. One example is, as I have already mentioned, what happens inside USA while they wage war abroad? The war will end, but the internal shifts of power in USA may have far more influence on the future Norwegian politics and also economics. What happens in Afghanistan? Angola? Palestine and Israel? We get no other news at present but endless special broadcasts from Iraq and from the camps of the Americans and their allies.
What I want to know is whether this is because Norwegian editors are doing a lousy job at choosing material for us, or if the obsession with information - any information - about bloodshed and horror and the potential thereof is better than all the rest of the news generated in the world during the last week.
From bloggers I read and emails received I have come to realise that there are protests inside the United States against the war in Iraq. As I have mentioned already, this is hardly ever mentioned in the Norwegian media. Concerned with this, I asked my colleague, journalist and teacher at the television documentary education here at the college, if there are ways to find out where the information on USA stops.
Today, the news-tree is no longer the simple structure of stringers, journalists, foreign offices, main international news-agency, national agencies and newpapers/television/radio. The net has done us the service of dissolving the power of several of the gate-keepers in the old structure. On the other hand it has become a lot less obvious where the information stops. Are the american news-media writing about the local protests? I find a few references to anti-war rallies in for instance USA today, and New York Times has an article on international anti-war rallies where the source is Associated Press. A quick peek at AP newspapers around the US, random samples from as diverse areas as Montana and Texas, Oregon and Georgia, comes up with exactly the same headlines and the same picture at the front page of their internet version, and all of them are concerned with the same topics as the Norwegian media coverage.
A Norwegian free-lance journalist has started a blogg-like site devoted to media criticism, inspired by the way journalists and media were controlled during "Desert Storm": mediekritikk by Henning A. Hellebust. It's written in Norwegian, but it's basically a criticism of the coverage of the war centered on the situation in Iraq. My concern today is not so much what we actually learn from Iraq, but what we do not learn about the rest of the world while all media attention is on Iraq. One example is, as I have already mentioned, what happens inside USA while they wage war abroad? The war will end, but the internal shifts of power in USA may have far more influence on the future Norwegian politics and also economics. What happens in Afghanistan? Angola? Palestine and Israel? We get no other news at present but endless special broadcasts from Iraq and from the camps of the Americans and their allies.
What I want to know is whether this is because Norwegian editors are doing a lousy job at choosing material for us, or if the obsession with information - any information - about bloodshed and horror and the potential thereof is better than all the rest of the news generated in the world during the last week.
Sunday, March 23, 2003
Salam Pax on reality
:: Friday, March 21, 2003 ::
as usual Diane comes to the rescue
IS SALAM PAX REAL?
please stop sending emails asking if I were for real, don't belive it? then don't read it.
I am not anybody's propaganda ploy, well except my own.
2 more hours untill the B52's get to Iraq.
:: salam 7:05 AM [+] ::
Good attitude. The reality or not of online persona is a lot less important to me than what they actually say. I am intrigued by Where is Raed and I’ll keep reading it. But that is because I think of blogs as highly subjective, and as such not the carriers of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If I thought I could get objective information through blogs, I’d probably be very interesting in determining the “real” source of this blog. In that case I would have a real trouble most places online.
For instance, I got an ETA yesterday. That is an Electronic Travel Authority for Australia, one that will let me visit on a tourist visa: up to three months at the time for the next year. But who knows, the 20 dollar I paid may by now be in the pocket of some clever scamster, and when I get to Australia I’ll be refused entry and sent back on the next plane. It could turn out to be a rather expensive error. Reading Where is Raed holds no such danger, and I do it freely and with great interest.
:: Friday, March 21, 2003 ::
as usual Diane comes to the rescue
IS SALAM PAX REAL?
please stop sending emails asking if I were for real, don't belive it? then don't read it.
I am not anybody's propaganda ploy, well except my own.
2 more hours untill the B52's get to Iraq.
:: salam 7:05 AM [+] ::
Good attitude. The reality or not of online persona is a lot less important to me than what they actually say. I am intrigued by Where is Raed and I’ll keep reading it. But that is because I think of blogs as highly subjective, and as such not the carriers of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If I thought I could get objective information through blogs, I’d probably be very interesting in determining the “real” source of this blog. In that case I would have a real trouble most places online.
For instance, I got an ETA yesterday. That is an Electronic Travel Authority for Australia, one that will let me visit on a tourist visa: up to three months at the time for the next year. But who knows, the 20 dollar I paid may by now be in the pocket of some clever scamster, and when I get to Australia I’ll be refused entry and sent back on the next plane. It could turn out to be a rather expensive error. Reading Where is Raed holds no such danger, and I do it freely and with great interest.
Friday, March 21, 2003
Online Role-play in education
By way of Jan Ole Bolsø, a link to the Nord-Trøndelag College where Knut Ekker arranged a role-playing game for his students in order to train them in argumentative techniques, language and online communication. The text is in norwegian, but it describes a cooperation between colleges and universities in different European countries. IDEELS is short for Intercultural Dynamics in European Education through onLine Simulation, and is a research project where five universities and colleges in Europe cooperate in order to find ways to use the net to increase intercultural understanding.
By way of Jan Ole Bolsø, a link to the Nord-Trøndelag College where Knut Ekker arranged a role-playing game for his students in order to train them in argumentative techniques, language and online communication. The text is in norwegian, but it describes a cooperation between colleges and universities in different European countries. IDEELS is short for Intercultural Dynamics in European Education through onLine Simulation, and is a research project where five universities and colleges in Europe cooperate in order to find ways to use the net to increase intercultural understanding.
Protests in Chicago
Alex Golub reports from Chicago. This is an other of those things that don't show up in Norwegian media. Norwegian media have special broadcasts day and night covering Iraq, with one of our more interesting young writers, Åsne Seierstad, trapped in Bagdad and reporting from the spot when ever she has a line out, there are observers at the UN, in Washington and glued to the internal disagreements of the European Union, but nobody tells us that there are riots and police actions taken against protesters in Chicago. Thank you, Alex, for going against your self-imposed rules for good blogging.
Alex Golub reports from Chicago. This is an other of those things that don't show up in Norwegian media. Norwegian media have special broadcasts day and night covering Iraq, with one of our more interesting young writers, Åsne Seierstad, trapped in Bagdad and reporting from the spot when ever she has a line out, there are observers at the UN, in Washington and glued to the internal disagreements of the European Union, but nobody tells us that there are riots and police actions taken against protesters in Chicago. Thank you, Alex, for going against your self-imposed rules for good blogging.
FYI
Ruthie at Ruthie's Top Secret Diary wrote to tell me that the name of her blog is highly ironic. So, in case there were any misunderstandings: Ruthie says it's highly ironic, and google doesn't reveal secrets to you even if you make a search which says "top secret".
Ruthie at Ruthie's Top Secret Diary wrote to tell me that the name of her blog is highly ironic. So, in case there were any misunderstandings: Ruthie says it's highly ironic, and google doesn't reveal secrets to you even if you make a search which says "top secret".
Warblog
I have added Bjørn Stærk's Warblog to my blogroll. I don't always agree with his opinions of Norwegian politics and this war, but at least he has the presence of mind to mean something while I am too overwhelmed to watch a newscast without falling asleep from sheer denial.
I have added Bjørn Stærk's Warblog to my blogroll. I don't always agree with his opinions of Norwegian politics and this war, but at least he has the presence of mind to mean something while I am too overwhelmed to watch a newscast without falling asleep from sheer denial.
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Melbourne in May!
It's now official, I'll be in Melbourne for DAC 2003 Streaming Worlds. Jill, Lisbeth and Susana will be there, Adrian is already there, and many many more who I do not yet know will make their way to Melbourne in the fall (isn't that amazing?). I am absolutely exstatic, I love Australia, I love Australian food - the incredible mix of all different cultures and all those fruit and vegetables- , I love their wine and there are some chocolate cakes, like die covered with chocolat and coconut which I have been totally unable to get out of my mind since I visited in 1996. 7 years. I have been away for far too long!
It's now official, I'll be in Melbourne for DAC 2003 Streaming Worlds. Jill, Lisbeth and Susana will be there, Adrian is already there, and many many more who I do not yet know will make their way to Melbourne in the fall (isn't that amazing?). I am absolutely exstatic, I love Australia, I love Australian food - the incredible mix of all different cultures and all those fruit and vegetables- , I love their wine and there are some chocolate cakes, like die covered with chocolat and coconut which I have been totally unable to get out of my mind since I visited in 1996. 7 years. I have been away for far too long!
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
I am aware
that there is a war, although the first battles have not been fought yet. I don't think there will be much about it in this blog though, mainly because I don't know how to deal with it. It's such a horror - while I have always had the standard academic distrust of America and the cultural arrogance of that huge, rich nation, I have never imagined - even after the many other wars USA has been involved in - that they would declare war on a smaller nation without the support of UN. Perhaps I have been naive. Perhaps I believed too firmly in the values of democracy, freedom and peace that the US has preached, despite the many proofs against it. The result is that now I am numb and unable to deal with the loss of those many lives, the potential pain, the lurking horror. I am aware that it's not here, Norway is far, far away in a corner of the world, but I still somehow feel personally violated. I think what has been violated is my trust, my faith in the world order, as the fragility of the terror balance becomes apparent.
that there is a war, although the first battles have not been fought yet. I don't think there will be much about it in this blog though, mainly because I don't know how to deal with it. It's such a horror - while I have always had the standard academic distrust of America and the cultural arrogance of that huge, rich nation, I have never imagined - even after the many other wars USA has been involved in - that they would declare war on a smaller nation without the support of UN. Perhaps I have been naive. Perhaps I believed too firmly in the values of democracy, freedom and peace that the US has preached, despite the many proofs against it. The result is that now I am numb and unable to deal with the loss of those many lives, the potential pain, the lurking horror. I am aware that it's not here, Norway is far, far away in a corner of the world, but I still somehow feel personally violated. I think what has been violated is my trust, my faith in the world order, as the fragility of the terror balance becomes apparent.
email spam - little gripe
I don't think I'd mind the spam so much if they at least could get my gender right. I know that women might have an interest in Viagra, but why should I want a larger dick? Why should I want to build bulging muscle to impress the girls? Well, OK, I could be a butch dyke, but I hardly think they are a large part of the female population... And why should I want the endless supply of hot teenage sluts longing to suck hard dick?
Perhaps these headlines would cheer me up:
Skilled sweedish masseurs wielding essential oils for you!
Eager proofreaders happy to remove all blemishes!
Let me pamper your hands! (feet/hair/skin/brain are good options here)
Stay in bed, get in shape: accomodating trainers in your home. (OK, that one is gender neutral...)
Chocolate goes with everything! (depends on the time of the month)
Men who really want to explore your mind! Call our hot number 8009666777!
Well, I would still delete it, but I'd do it with a smile!
I don't think I'd mind the spam so much if they at least could get my gender right. I know that women might have an interest in Viagra, but why should I want a larger dick? Why should I want to build bulging muscle to impress the girls? Well, OK, I could be a butch dyke, but I hardly think they are a large part of the female population... And why should I want the endless supply of hot teenage sluts longing to suck hard dick?
Perhaps these headlines would cheer me up:
Well, I would still delete it, but I'd do it with a smile!
All tomorrow's parties
Amazing thing, search-engines. Looking for old-fashioned boots, laced and with an underslung heel, I found a copy of All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson. It's a Russian site, so I don't know what more might be hidden here. Wonder if this is a bootleg version or if Gibson actually lets his book be available online like this?
Amazing thing, search-engines. Looking for old-fashioned boots, laced and with an underslung heel, I found a copy of All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson. It's a Russian site, so I don't know what more might be hidden here. Wonder if this is a bootleg version or if Gibson actually lets his book be available online like this?
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Secret Diaries
A boy in Thailand writes his secret diary in english, so his teachers and parents won't know that he has one and what he writes, but he wants to adress his readers. Is it a secret diary, or a clever trick - perhaps a diary that has developed into something else? It is a very public secret, a very visible and loud confession.
My Secret Diary is software with password protection, so little brothers won't be able to peek... Unless the little brothers turn out to be clever little hackers, which they frequently are...
The Secret Diary is about journal writing, but not online: The art of writing paper diaries.
This is an application for linux users, possibly an interesting blogging tool, if you want a public Secret Diary.
And of course, blogspot has its secret diary, this one written by Ruthie, a nice little journal at the moment mostly concerned with what happens in the library where she spends time with her books and friends.
I am looking at these secret diaries mainly because I keep thinking about intimacy and personal publishing, but so far I am just sidling up to the topic, sniffing at it carefully, kind of waiting to see how it will develop.
A boy in Thailand writes his secret diary in english, so his teachers and parents won't know that he has one and what he writes, but he wants to adress his readers. Is it a secret diary, or a clever trick - perhaps a diary that has developed into something else? It is a very public secret, a very visible and loud confession.
My Secret Diary is software with password protection, so little brothers won't be able to peek... Unless the little brothers turn out to be clever little hackers, which they frequently are...
The Secret Diary is about journal writing, but not online: The art of writing paper diaries.
This is an application for linux users, possibly an interesting blogging tool, if you want a public Secret Diary.
And of course, blogspot has its secret diary, this one written by Ruthie, a nice little journal at the moment mostly concerned with what happens in the library where she spends time with her books and friends.
I am looking at these secret diaries mainly because I keep thinking about intimacy and personal publishing, but so far I am just sidling up to the topic, sniffing at it carefully, kind of waiting to see how it will develop.
Monday, March 17, 2003
Free?
I keep turning to the computer, thinking I need to edit an other chapter, do some proofreading, write... something. And then there is no more I need to do. It feels odd, like loss. My sister the artist likens the sensation after giving up a new work of art to grief. I think she is right, this feels like grief, like the loss of a lover, like the end of an affair. My mind keeps returning to it, keeps thinking I need to spend time with my significant other - only to find that it's over, I have sent it away.
I keep turning to the computer, thinking I need to edit an other chapter, do some proofreading, write... something. And then there is no more I need to do. It feels odd, like loss. My sister the artist likens the sensation after giving up a new work of art to grief. I think she is right, this feels like grief, like the loss of a lover, like the end of an affair. My mind keeps returning to it, keeps thinking I need to spend time with my significant other - only to find that it's over, I have sent it away.
Salam Pax
By way of Elizabeth Lane Lawley, who thinks this is for real, a link to a blogger in Bagdad. I have no idea if Where is Raed is actually written from Bagdad, and I really don't think Salam Pax is a real name, as it means, as far as I can interpret: Welcome Peace. I do however think it's a very interesting blog, real or not, so it's there, on my blogroll. And I hope Raed will turn up and not be lost.
By way of Elizabeth Lane Lawley, who thinks this is for real, a link to a blogger in Bagdad. I have no idea if Where is Raed is actually written from Bagdad, and I really don't think Salam Pax is a real name, as it means, as far as I can interpret: Welcome Peace. I do however think it's a very interesting blog, real or not, so it's there, on my blogroll. And I hope Raed will turn up and not be lost.
Google second guessing us?
March 11th I wrote about Google, blogger and language. I have had a few responses to this. Desbladet comments on the connection between content and advertising:
The search engine lives and dies by associating content with key words. Their advertising model does, too - I understand that they're good enough at this to charge more than the going rate in the industry and I dare you to claim to be surprised.
The conclusion is that the value of content increases, as I observed in February.
Ezter Hargittai, Ph.D. student at Princeton University, disagrees with that conclusion in her blog. In an email, she points me to her post about how local google sites second guess users. Her conclusion is that google sees where we log in from, and generate ads due to the log-in. That is a logical but unsettling claim, as it does bad things to anonymity, but I am not entirely certain that she is correct.
I can't use this blog as a test-case, since I pay to keep it ad-free, but I have a few others. Blogonblog is for instance managed by me and Jill, written in English, and yes, the ad is in English. Trial and error, the blog I post to when I play around with templates, is in both languages, and there the ad is in Norwegian. Interestingly enough the ad in notater, Torill, the blog I use when I post things for lectures, is in English - or it was at the time I checked. The writing there is in Norwegian, and I post to it from Norway, but in this case, neither assumption seems to be correct.
I guess the conclusion is that google is doing stuff to integrate blogger and use it to sell ads... not sure exactly what yet.
(update: at 15.00 my time the language in the ads in "notater, Torill" is danish, which comes pretty close...)
March 11th I wrote about Google, blogger and language. I have had a few responses to this. Desbladet comments on the connection between content and advertising:
The search engine lives and dies by associating content with key words. Their advertising model does, too - I understand that they're good enough at this to charge more than the going rate in the industry and I dare you to claim to be surprised.
The conclusion is that the value of content increases, as I observed in February.
Ezter Hargittai, Ph.D. student at Princeton University, disagrees with that conclusion in her blog. In an email, she points me to her post about how local google sites second guess users. Her conclusion is that google sees where we log in from, and generate ads due to the log-in. That is a logical but unsettling claim, as it does bad things to anonymity, but I am not entirely certain that she is correct.
I can't use this blog as a test-case, since I pay to keep it ad-free, but I have a few others. Blogonblog is for instance managed by me and Jill, written in English, and yes, the ad is in English. Trial and error, the blog I post to when I play around with templates, is in both languages, and there the ad is in Norwegian. Interestingly enough the ad in notater, Torill, the blog I use when I post things for lectures, is in English - or it was at the time I checked. The writing there is in Norwegian, and I post to it from Norway, but in this case, neither assumption seems to be correct.
I guess the conclusion is that google is doing stuff to integrate blogger and use it to sell ads... not sure exactly what yet.
(update: at 15.00 my time the language in the ads in "notater, Torill" is danish, which comes pretty close...)
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Life Continues
After the impact of submitting the thesis has become more of a memory and less of a painful blow, Life continues. A few things wait for my attention:
SKIKTs wrap-up conference.
The Information Study and the Quality Reform, new curriculum and potential international contacts.
DAC 2003 - where do I find time (and funding) for that?
Digital Spaces - rewrite and revise chapter 10 to be published as an article.
The Digital Juggler - multitasking and play, an article I have wanted to write for a long time.
Public Intimacy - about blogs, possibly an article with Jill, depends on which of us is the more busy.
But first, I'll go join my family in making dinner. I'll put the computer down, and not feel guilty about it.
After the impact of submitting the thesis has become more of a memory and less of a painful blow, Life continues. A few things wait for my attention:
SKIKTs wrap-up conference.
The Information Study and the Quality Reform, new curriculum and potential international contacts.
DAC 2003 - where do I find time (and funding) for that?
Digital Spaces - rewrite and revise chapter 10 to be published as an article.
The Digital Juggler - multitasking and play, an article I have wanted to write for a long time.
Public Intimacy - about blogs, possibly an article with Jill, depends on which of us is the more busy.
But first, I'll go join my family in making dinner. I'll put the computer down, and not feel guilty about it.
Students visited
One of the fun things I do is visiting the students in their internships. They spend two months in the information department of some organisation, anything from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by way of Burson-Marsteller to the Norwegian Church Aid.
Most of the time it's just nice, I get an update on how information- and public relations departments are organised these days, I get to meet a lot of people knowledgeable in the same things as I work with, I have a lot of nice cups of tea and coffee, and get to stay a few nights in Oslo, which means a little bit of shopping and some nice meals. Some of the time it becomes hard work: occasionally I need to negotiate between the students and their supervisors, or interfere with the internship if I see that the student is suffering/misbehaving. Some times I get new, different and fresh experiences. This time I visited the Romanian Embassy, where I have a student. Getting the appointment was surprisingly complicated. At first I didn't find their phone-number anywhere. When I finally did, by way of the cell of the student in question, I did not get a reply from the embassy as to when I could come and visit. Talking to the counsilor on the phone was totally out of the question.
So you imagine, it was with mixed feelings I went to see the student and her in-house supervisor, the counsilor. It turned out that I was not just expected, but the expectations were expressed through the etiquette of international diplomacy. I was received in a very elegant room, conversed eloquently and politely in a German which I am now quite happy that I once spoke frequently enough to have been fluent in it, invited to think about options of cooperation between Volda University College and Romanian Universities which I had not offered a thought until that point (Oh yes, that was one professional diplomat), and then escorted out - all the way to the sidewalk - with a warmth and enthusiasm about our mutual friendship that can compete with any other latin country.
For a while there, I really was out of Norway and in Romania. I guess that is what an embassy really is. I just didn't expect to make the journey by stepping from the clear, sharp spring sun of March in Oslo into the cool shadows of one of those elegant Villas in Oscarsgate, behind the Castle.
One of the fun things I do is visiting the students in their internships. They spend two months in the information department of some organisation, anything from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by way of Burson-Marsteller to the Norwegian Church Aid.
Most of the time it's just nice, I get an update on how information- and public relations departments are organised these days, I get to meet a lot of people knowledgeable in the same things as I work with, I have a lot of nice cups of tea and coffee, and get to stay a few nights in Oslo, which means a little bit of shopping and some nice meals. Some of the time it becomes hard work: occasionally I need to negotiate between the students and their supervisors, or interfere with the internship if I see that the student is suffering/misbehaving. Some times I get new, different and fresh experiences. This time I visited the Romanian Embassy, where I have a student. Getting the appointment was surprisingly complicated. At first I didn't find their phone-number anywhere. When I finally did, by way of the cell of the student in question, I did not get a reply from the embassy as to when I could come and visit. Talking to the counsilor on the phone was totally out of the question.
So you imagine, it was with mixed feelings I went to see the student and her in-house supervisor, the counsilor. It turned out that I was not just expected, but the expectations were expressed through the etiquette of international diplomacy. I was received in a very elegant room, conversed eloquently and politely in a German which I am now quite happy that I once spoke frequently enough to have been fluent in it, invited to think about options of cooperation between Volda University College and Romanian Universities which I had not offered a thought until that point (Oh yes, that was one professional diplomat), and then escorted out - all the way to the sidewalk - with a warmth and enthusiasm about our mutual friendship that can compete with any other latin country.
For a while there, I really was out of Norway and in Romania. I guess that is what an embassy really is. I just didn't expect to make the journey by stepping from the clear, sharp spring sun of March in Oslo into the cool shadows of one of those elegant Villas in Oscarsgate, behind the Castle.
When stuck writing
I was not used to that, before I started writing the big thesis. My writing normally happens in quick, desperate bursts, almost trancelike, in the minutes between lectures, student supervision, meetings and the many other little tasks that make up the life of a teacher in a small, busy college in a half-forgotten corner of the world. While I wrote the thesis, I saw the shamanistic value of online places, and I used chats and games the way William Gibson, yes, the writer, uses ebay, and Jill uses writers' blogs. Or I wrote here, in the blog, about all the things which did not belong in the thesis.
Now I am however back to a writing rhythm with no writer's blocks. The last year and a half, while I have been back to my regular job as well as finishing the thesis, the moments when I have had the time to work on the thesis have been treasured. I have had to make an effort to be able to have the time, and after making that effort, very little could come between me and the keyboard. Yes, I have moaned that I have had a hard time here and there, but that has not been a writer's block, but a thinker's block.
To think the thoughts I need for the thesis is an effort. To grasps what I want to write about is to build my inner ivory tower block by block, and when I have left it for a while, for the worldly pursuits on the intellectual plains of teaching, the climb back up is longer and more exhausting every time. That is perhaps a bad sign: my work isn't smooth and easy to traverse, and my logic does not create an efficient machine that elevates me step by easy step to the peak. Perhaps have I not built a tower at all but a maze, with thorny hedges catching at the reader.
But when I find the unfinished part of this maze, the work itself is not hard. Traversing the old thoughts to this point though is like walking on roses... very painful.
I was not used to that, before I started writing the big thesis. My writing normally happens in quick, desperate bursts, almost trancelike, in the minutes between lectures, student supervision, meetings and the many other little tasks that make up the life of a teacher in a small, busy college in a half-forgotten corner of the world. While I wrote the thesis, I saw the shamanistic value of online places, and I used chats and games the way William Gibson, yes, the writer, uses ebay, and Jill uses writers' blogs. Or I wrote here, in the blog, about all the things which did not belong in the thesis.
Now I am however back to a writing rhythm with no writer's blocks. The last year and a half, while I have been back to my regular job as well as finishing the thesis, the moments when I have had the time to work on the thesis have been treasured. I have had to make an effort to be able to have the time, and after making that effort, very little could come between me and the keyboard. Yes, I have moaned that I have had a hard time here and there, but that has not been a writer's block, but a thinker's block.
To think the thoughts I need for the thesis is an effort. To grasps what I want to write about is to build my inner ivory tower block by block, and when I have left it for a while, for the worldly pursuits on the intellectual plains of teaching, the climb back up is longer and more exhausting every time. That is perhaps a bad sign: my work isn't smooth and easy to traverse, and my logic does not create an efficient machine that elevates me step by easy step to the peak. Perhaps have I not built a tower at all but a maze, with thorny hedges catching at the reader.
But when I find the unfinished part of this maze, the work itself is not hard. Traversing the old thoughts to this point though is like walking on roses... very painful.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Bye bye, baby
I just packed five copies of my thesis and sent it off to Section of Humanistic Informatics, together with an application - or is that supplication - to be permitted to submit this thesis for the degree of Dr. art. at the University of Bergen. I am still numb with the shock of seeing it all wrapped up in that little box, labeled and about to leave my sphere of influence.
I just packed five copies of my thesis and sent it off to Section of Humanistic Informatics, together with an application - or is that supplication - to be permitted to submit this thesis for the degree of Dr. art. at the University of Bergen. I am still numb with the shock of seeing it all wrapped up in that little box, labeled and about to leave my sphere of influence.
Book Crossing
Jill Walker and Erik Newth have discovered the concept of Book Crossing, and I am happy to blog it again, it's still a tantalizing idea! I think I will prepare a book for the next time I go travelling.
Jill Walker and Erik Newth have discovered the concept of Book Crossing, and I am happy to blog it again, it's still a tantalizing idea! I think I will prepare a book for the next time I go travelling.
Google, Blogger and language
I have noticed one change after google bought blogger: The ad in a Norwegian language blog I occasionally read is in Norwegian! It's an ad for one of the most intelligent Norwegian comedians, Knut Nærum. I love his style and his topics, so finding that he uses blog ads for an advertising campaign is kind of interesting, but I am amazed that google/blogger (goggler? Bloogle?) distinguishes between languages and figured out that that blog is in Norwegian. There's no Norwegian language option in the settings, for instance, so it had to happen from somehow recognizing the language.
The blog in question is Gummihjertet, Rubber Heart, written by Muskat. Which means Nutmeg, so it's definitely an anonymous blog. It's updated very sporadically.
I have noticed one change after google bought blogger: The ad in a Norwegian language blog I occasionally read is in Norwegian! It's an ad for one of the most intelligent Norwegian comedians, Knut Nærum. I love his style and his topics, so finding that he uses blog ads for an advertising campaign is kind of interesting, but I am amazed that google/blogger (goggler? Bloogle?) distinguishes between languages and figured out that that blog is in Norwegian. There's no Norwegian language option in the settings, for instance, so it had to happen from somehow recognizing the language.
The blog in question is Gummihjertet, Rubber Heart, written by Muskat. Which means Nutmeg, so it's definitely an anonymous blog. It's updated very sporadically.
Monday, March 10, 2003
Golublog
Just added Alex Golub's Golublog to my blogroll, just because I like the way he writes. And he writes about things I am interested in, but with writing like his, that's a bonus.
(oh, and he has lancelot in his domain-name... that's the kind of romantic twist I am such a sucker for.)
Just added Alex Golub's Golublog to my blogroll, just because I like the way he writes. And he writes about things I am interested in, but with writing like his, that's a bonus.
(oh, and he has lancelot in his domain-name... that's the kind of romantic twist I am such a sucker for.)
In the beginning
An essay by Neal Stephenson: In the beginning was the command line. I have it on paper here somewhere... and yes, it's recommended reading for all those who wonder what's "right", PC or Mac.
An essay by Neal Stephenson: In the beginning was the command line. I have it on paper here somewhere... and yes, it's recommended reading for all those who wonder what's "right", PC or Mac.
Errors
I just found the source of much disagreement between me-the-advisor and my students. I keep correcting the way they cite Jim Collins' article in Channels of Discourse, and they keep making the same error over and over again... Turns out the error is generated by the book itself. In the list of content the article is called "Postmodernism and Television", while in the text it is called "Television and Postmodernism. Heh, the things I learn while wrapping up the bibliography...
I just found the source of much disagreement between me-the-advisor and my students. I keep correcting the way they cite Jim Collins' article in Channels of Discourse, and they keep making the same error over and over again... Turns out the error is generated by the book itself. In the list of content the article is called "Postmodernism and Television", while in the text it is called "Television and Postmodernism. Heh, the things I learn while wrapping up the bibliography...
Sunday, March 09, 2003
Family conversation
Me: "I hate having to do this, it's painful, I have to force myself to do it."
Husband: "That's exactly how I feel about what I am starting now."
Me: "You can't feel as bad as me, I have been trying to finish this for four years!"
Husband: "OK, so you win this time, but afterwards, I want to suffer more."
Me: "Until I have submitted this thesis, I hurt more than you, always!"
Husband: "Then get it done!"
I guess I ought to take his advice.
Me: "I hate having to do this, it's painful, I have to force myself to do it."
Husband: "That's exactly how I feel about what I am starting now."
Me: "You can't feel as bad as me, I have been trying to finish this for four years!"
Husband: "OK, so you win this time, but afterwards, I want to suffer more."
Me: "Until I have submitted this thesis, I hurt more than you, always!"
Husband: "Then get it done!"
I guess I ought to take his advice.
About time
Time to do it. Time to put the manuscript together, print it out, copy it and send it to Bergen. I have spent the morning doing laundry, ironing curtains and cleaning windows, a sure sign that there is something else I avoid. It is this: to finish the thesis, to send it away, to say that this is it and now I have to live with what genius or stupidity it expresses. I am not ready, but I realise that I never will be. It is time for me and my thesis to part. I am not good at endings or departure.
Time to do it. Time to put the manuscript together, print it out, copy it and send it to Bergen. I have spent the morning doing laundry, ironing curtains and cleaning windows, a sure sign that there is something else I avoid. It is this: to finish the thesis, to send it away, to say that this is it and now I have to live with what genius or stupidity it expresses. I am not ready, but I realise that I never will be. It is time for me and my thesis to part. I am not good at endings or departure.
Good Friends
Francis Strand blogs an incredible email from an admirer. Lucky for Francis, he immediately guesses who sent the letter - the rest of us can lean back and enjoy a piece of exuberant verbal leg-pulling.
Francis Strand blogs an incredible email from an admirer. Lucky for Francis, he immediately guesses who sent the letter - the rest of us can lean back and enjoy a piece of exuberant verbal leg-pulling.
Saturday, March 08, 2003
Columbia Guide to Online Style
I have mentioned the problems of citing computer games. The Columbia guide to Online Style has already tackled this problem:
2.16 Software Programs and Video Games
Humanities Style
Cite the name of the author or corporate author (if available); the title of the software program, in italics; the version number (if applicable and if not included in the software title); and the publication information, including the date of publication (if known).
ID Software. The Ultimate Doom.
New York: GT Interactive Software, 1995.
Scientific Style
Cite the last name and initials of the author (if available); the date of publication or release, in parentheses; the title of the software program or video game, in italics; the version number (if applicable and if not included in the software title), in parentheses; and the publication information.
ID Software. (1993). The ultimate doom.
NY: GT Interactive Software.
I have mentioned the problems of citing computer games. The Columbia guide to Online Style has already tackled this problem:
2.16 Software Programs and Video Games
Humanities Style
Cite the name of the author or corporate author (if available); the title of the software program, in italics; the version number (if applicable and if not included in the software title); and the publication information, including the date of publication (if known).
ID Software. The Ultimate Doom.
New York: GT Interactive Software, 1995.
Scientific Style
Cite the last name and initials of the author (if available); the date of publication or release, in parentheses; the title of the software program or video game, in italics; the version number (if applicable and if not included in the software title), in parentheses; and the publication information.
ID Software. (1993). The ultimate doom.
NY: GT Interactive Software.
Digital Genres Initiative
In an email Alex Golub asks that I promote the upcoming conference on Digital Genres in Chicago, May 30-31st. Speakers at the conference are Greg Costikyan, Edward Castranova and David Weinberger, so I guess the topics will be games and blogs. How can I resist?
Well, I know one way: this conference almost clashes with DAC2003 in Melbourne (May 19th - 23rd), for which I am reviewing papers and where I know I will meet some really good friends. If I manage to wrangle time and funding from the Department of Media Studies here at the College for one of the conferences the other will be out of the question. We'll see though - miracles happen... anybody got a spare one?
In an email Alex Golub asks that I promote the upcoming conference on Digital Genres in Chicago, May 30-31st. Speakers at the conference are Greg Costikyan, Edward Castranova and David Weinberger, so I guess the topics will be games and blogs. How can I resist?
Well, I know one way: this conference almost clashes with DAC2003 in Melbourne (May 19th - 23rd), for which I am reviewing papers and where I know I will meet some really good friends. If I manage to wrangle time and funding from the Department of Media Studies here at the College for one of the conferences the other will be out of the question. We'll see though - miracles happen... anybody got a spare one?
Friday, March 07, 2003
Virtual faith
Lisbeth writes of a Virtual diocese. It is an interesting post with some intriguing points about communication and religion, but I would like to comment on the use of "virtual", particularly in relation to faith and religion. I have not read the book Lisbeth refers to, so this is purely based on her post and my thoughts as I read it.
In my opinion, the digital communities and digitally mediated communication has a much larger immediate impact on our fleshy selves than religion has. Religion is a system of symbols, built on trust and cultural expressions, and as such no more and no less tangible than the online experiences and event. The churches which have stood there for centuries, in some cases millennia, are incredible expressions of what people can do within a structure of social connections, but so is the internet! The hard-ware which makes up the net has the same function as a church: a structure where people can get together and communicate. Communication and Communion comes from the same root and means pretty much the same thing: something to be done together, an act of sharing - which is what the world wide web is about as well. So how can a digitally mediated diocese be virtual? In my opinion it is as real as any other, and if it needs to be distinguished from non-computer-mediated groups that should be done for instance by positioning it to for instance the "space" it exists in: cyber diocese, net diocese, or if it expresses a particular religious dogma, by recognizing that; as with the Baptistes, Lutherans or Catholics. I am however not comfortable with the use of a word that indicates that it is any more or any less "real" than other groups who share a faith.
Lisbeth writes of a Virtual diocese. It is an interesting post with some intriguing points about communication and religion, but I would like to comment on the use of "virtual", particularly in relation to faith and religion. I have not read the book Lisbeth refers to, so this is purely based on her post and my thoughts as I read it.
In my opinion, the digital communities and digitally mediated communication has a much larger immediate impact on our fleshy selves than religion has. Religion is a system of symbols, built on trust and cultural expressions, and as such no more and no less tangible than the online experiences and event. The churches which have stood there for centuries, in some cases millennia, are incredible expressions of what people can do within a structure of social connections, but so is the internet! The hard-ware which makes up the net has the same function as a church: a structure where people can get together and communicate. Communication and Communion comes from the same root and means pretty much the same thing: something to be done together, an act of sharing - which is what the world wide web is about as well. So how can a digitally mediated diocese be virtual? In my opinion it is as real as any other, and if it needs to be distinguished from non-computer-mediated groups that should be done for instance by positioning it to for instance the "space" it exists in: cyber diocese, net diocese, or if it expresses a particular religious dogma, by recognizing that; as with the Baptistes, Lutherans or Catholics. I am however not comfortable with the use of a word that indicates that it is any more or any less "real" than other groups who share a faith.
SMS language
I started to type a comment to Jill's post, but the comment boxes insist that I give them my email-address, and I hate that. OK, so I normally type in some bogus address, but even having to make up one annoys me, the things insist that I either lie or surrender. Those are not options I like.
Anyway. SMS-language and school-work.
the kids around here write SMS messages not just in text-messaging shorthand, but in dialect shorthand. The word "til", which means "to", is pronounced "te" or the same way as the letter "t" when you say the alphabeth in Norwegian. The word "me" in dialect means "with" "us" "also", and is used rather than any of the other synonyms to these words. Not being fluent in the local dialect or the local sms-dialect (I can barely read it, my daughter moderates her messages to me and her father) I can't give you the more intricate examples, but you get the drift.
I think this is a good thing, it shows a high level of consciousness as to the language they speak: they don't abandon their spoken language for the written norm of the cell-phone interface. This is a highly political issue in Norway, and the youths around here have chosen their own language over the adjusted official norm: good for them.
When this language creeps into the school-work, it is a version of rebellion. It's permitted to write in your own dialect in Norwegian. The two official languages are constantly adjusted and revised in order to give Norwegians the freedom of just about any way they want to write, as long as it will sound like a word when you read it out. SMS-laguage doesn't, though. That's why it is such a wonderful code, a secret language based on the redundancy in written language and the unspoken agreements among certain groups: a perfect secret code which others do not pick up and if they do - do not understand. We had codes like that, slang is a code like that, based on connotations and specific cultural knowledge which was shared through diffusion, not education. And when a girl writes her english essay in text-messaging language, she doesn't say: "This is how I write and my language has degenerated to the point that I don't know any other style." Her message to the teacher is: "Catch me if you can, I belong to a different group, a different generation, a different millennium than you, this is the future and you are way behind me." I don't say that she is right - but an essay like that is not an indicator of lack of communicative skill, but of rebellion. And rebellious teen-agers is hardly news...
I started to type a comment to Jill's post, but the comment boxes insist that I give them my email-address, and I hate that. OK, so I normally type in some bogus address, but even having to make up one annoys me, the things insist that I either lie or surrender. Those are not options I like.
Anyway. SMS-language and school-work.
the kids around here write SMS messages not just in text-messaging shorthand, but in dialect shorthand. The word "til", which means "to", is pronounced "te" or the same way as the letter "t" when you say the alphabeth in Norwegian. The word "me" in dialect means "with" "us" "also", and is used rather than any of the other synonyms to these words. Not being fluent in the local dialect or the local sms-dialect (I can barely read it, my daughter moderates her messages to me and her father) I can't give you the more intricate examples, but you get the drift.
I think this is a good thing, it shows a high level of consciousness as to the language they speak: they don't abandon their spoken language for the written norm of the cell-phone interface. This is a highly political issue in Norway, and the youths around here have chosen their own language over the adjusted official norm: good for them.
When this language creeps into the school-work, it is a version of rebellion. It's permitted to write in your own dialect in Norwegian. The two official languages are constantly adjusted and revised in order to give Norwegians the freedom of just about any way they want to write, as long as it will sound like a word when you read it out. SMS-laguage doesn't, though. That's why it is such a wonderful code, a secret language based on the redundancy in written language and the unspoken agreements among certain groups: a perfect secret code which others do not pick up and if they do - do not understand. We had codes like that, slang is a code like that, based on connotations and specific cultural knowledge which was shared through diffusion, not education. And when a girl writes her english essay in text-messaging language, she doesn't say: "This is how I write and my language has degenerated to the point that I don't know any other style." Her message to the teacher is: "Catch me if you can, I belong to a different group, a different generation, a different millennium than you, this is the future and you are way behind me." I don't say that she is right - but an essay like that is not an indicator of lack of communicative skill, but of rebellion. And rebellious teen-agers is hardly news...
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Blog Aesthetics
I like the cool green of Jill's new blog design, and the lack of borders, lines and frames which gives the page lay-out an open, airy look. It reminds me of the intellectual newspapers in the 80-ies and 90-ies, Dag og Tid had that open look with lots of air around the columns. Somehow, I connect this type of lay-out with Movable Type. Hilde uses lines to limit her text-blocks, but they are broken up, they can be penetrated, white space touching through the boundaries. Matthew G. Kirschenbaum does the same, only here it's the dark grey that is barely held at bay by white, a reverse white-space aesthetic. (I like the way his blog fades in and out, by the way, as if it is reluctant to come and to go, emerging from the print on my blog, dwindling into a distance as I move on.) It takes a bit of scrolling to find out that Esther MacAllum's Ten Seconds to Midnight is powered by Movable type, but already before I find it with her copyright information, I have guessed, the large letters, the white expanses of her blog, the open frames and the lines about her quotation boxes indicators.
What I wonder is if these are options in Movable Type to the exclusion of others, if they just happen to be in fashion at the moment, or if people who happen to like a certain design switch to/choose that client to publish their blog? I expect that it's possible to do the same to all types of blogs: blogger-blogs have their typical "look", I expect others do as well, but does that mean that picking blogger or Movable Type is a choice which has more to do with form than function?
I like the cool green of Jill's new blog design, and the lack of borders, lines and frames which gives the page lay-out an open, airy look. It reminds me of the intellectual newspapers in the 80-ies and 90-ies, Dag og Tid had that open look with lots of air around the columns. Somehow, I connect this type of lay-out with Movable Type. Hilde uses lines to limit her text-blocks, but they are broken up, they can be penetrated, white space touching through the boundaries. Matthew G. Kirschenbaum does the same, only here it's the dark grey that is barely held at bay by white, a reverse white-space aesthetic. (I like the way his blog fades in and out, by the way, as if it is reluctant to come and to go, emerging from the print on my blog, dwindling into a distance as I move on.) It takes a bit of scrolling to find out that Esther MacAllum's Ten Seconds to Midnight is powered by Movable type, but already before I find it with her copyright information, I have guessed, the large letters, the white expanses of her blog, the open frames and the lines about her quotation boxes indicators.
What I wonder is if these are options in Movable Type to the exclusion of others, if they just happen to be in fashion at the moment, or if people who happen to like a certain design switch to/choose that client to publish their blog? I expect that it's possible to do the same to all types of blogs: blogger-blogs have their typical "look", I expect others do as well, but does that mean that picking blogger or Movable Type is a choice which has more to do with form than function?
Students towards independence
Volda College is known for the close cooperation between students and teachers. Staff familiar with the traditions of the Universities in Norway are always surprised at how closely we watch the development of our students. We give them tasks where they get guidance while they work at them, and evaluate their work, not just once or twice, but over and over, each new task an other step on the road towards working as a journalist or, as in the case of my students, information consultant.
After almost two years of holding their hands every step of the road, in the last semester we throw them into the water to see if they can swim. OK, so we don't do this without a safety net: we call them, visit the ones we manage to reach, and keep in touch through the entire period. This year I have however been a little late in checking on "my" students, due to the delay in New York and my illness. I knew what would happen, so I was prepared when the first emails arrived about lack of relevant tasks, no contact with their supervisors, and just general wishes for some sign of life from Volda. They need us to not let them go entirely yet, to smooth the road a little, to help them see how things interconnect, and to make them more visible in the organisation where they try to make themselves useful.
On the other end of the scale are the students who have just forgotten about us. They sound surprised when I call them, and their minds are somewhere else: out there in the life they are leading right now, on the next case, on the next task, on the next problem. It is equally important to reach this group, and I contact them, force their minds back to Volda Mode. They are not supposed to lose themselves in the ocean just yet... a few more months in the nursery in the deep fjords before they head out.
But this period is one of the most important, not because they learn more than they learned while in Volda, but because they realise that they have learned a lot here. Up until this point they have been among equals, others who know the same things, who have read the same books and been to the same lectures. It is as if nothing has changed, their peers are at the same level as themselves. Now they are among people who do the jobs these students dream of, and suddenly they see that they don't just master them, they have knowledge to give, to share, and their knowledge is appreciated and desired. That is perhaps the most valuable experience, a boost to their confidence before they go out there all alone, without the lifeline back to Volda - in a world where they can't expect me to show up and talk to their boss if something doesn't work out.
Volda College is known for the close cooperation between students and teachers. Staff familiar with the traditions of the Universities in Norway are always surprised at how closely we watch the development of our students. We give them tasks where they get guidance while they work at them, and evaluate their work, not just once or twice, but over and over, each new task an other step on the road towards working as a journalist or, as in the case of my students, information consultant.
After almost two years of holding their hands every step of the road, in the last semester we throw them into the water to see if they can swim. OK, so we don't do this without a safety net: we call them, visit the ones we manage to reach, and keep in touch through the entire period. This year I have however been a little late in checking on "my" students, due to the delay in New York and my illness. I knew what would happen, so I was prepared when the first emails arrived about lack of relevant tasks, no contact with their supervisors, and just general wishes for some sign of life from Volda. They need us to not let them go entirely yet, to smooth the road a little, to help them see how things interconnect, and to make them more visible in the organisation where they try to make themselves useful.
On the other end of the scale are the students who have just forgotten about us. They sound surprised when I call them, and their minds are somewhere else: out there in the life they are leading right now, on the next case, on the next task, on the next problem. It is equally important to reach this group, and I contact them, force their minds back to Volda Mode. They are not supposed to lose themselves in the ocean just yet... a few more months in the nursery in the deep fjords before they head out.
But this period is one of the most important, not because they learn more than they learned while in Volda, but because they realise that they have learned a lot here. Up until this point they have been among equals, others who know the same things, who have read the same books and been to the same lectures. It is as if nothing has changed, their peers are at the same level as themselves. Now they are among people who do the jobs these students dream of, and suddenly they see that they don't just master them, they have knowledge to give, to share, and their knowledge is appreciated and desired. That is perhaps the most valuable experience, a boost to their confidence before they go out there all alone, without the lifeline back to Volda - in a world where they can't expect me to show up and talk to their boss if something doesn't work out.
Happy days to my blog!
I set the alarm on my cellphone to remember the date, two years blogging, because the calendar on the computer has a nasty tendency to alert me of events the day after. Perhaps because I turn the alerts off, as they interfere with my writing. And writing is what this is about for me, the computer, the blog, my work - even when I play computer games I think in terms of writing. My son laughs at the vocal stream of commentary I make if my hands are busy with the console, mouse or keyboard in non-writng modes, as if the words need to get out and fall out of my mouth and into the air. I do the same while cooking, whispering to myself what I do and why, a stream of instructions and commentaries. I think I am turning into an excentric old lady, muttering orders to the voice-activated brain, when I can't write it down, shaping writing into voice rather than voice into writing.
The voice into writing has been going on here, online, publicly, for two years today. It has become a part of me, and mirrors my own work and growth - sometimes sparkling quick and challenging, sometimes - like these days - slow and labouring, the result of a brain mostly concerned with immunity issues and with little energy left over for thought.
I set the alarm on my cellphone to remember the date, two years blogging, because the calendar on the computer has a nasty tendency to alert me of events the day after. Perhaps because I turn the alerts off, as they interfere with my writing. And writing is what this is about for me, the computer, the blog, my work - even when I play computer games I think in terms of writing. My son laughs at the vocal stream of commentary I make if my hands are busy with the console, mouse or keyboard in non-writng modes, as if the words need to get out and fall out of my mouth and into the air. I do the same while cooking, whispering to myself what I do and why, a stream of instructions and commentaries. I think I am turning into an excentric old lady, muttering orders to the voice-activated brain, when I can't write it down, shaping writing into voice rather than voice into writing.
The voice into writing has been going on here, online, publicly, for two years today. It has become a part of me, and mirrors my own work and growth - sometimes sparkling quick and challenging, sometimes - like these days - slow and labouring, the result of a brain mostly concerned with immunity issues and with little energy left over for thought.
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Weird Weather
Cyborg Mommy is unhappy because Cyborg Child hates snow. This spring she should have lived here. Even I can't complain about the weather these days: bleak sunlight that carries the promise of spring and warmth, no wind or rain, dry roads and pavements, and lovely, snow-clad mountains with exellent skiing conditions framing it all.
Cyborg Mommy is unhappy because Cyborg Child hates snow. This spring she should have lived here. Even I can't complain about the weather these days: bleak sunlight that carries the promise of spring and warmth, no wind or rain, dry roads and pavements, and lovely, snow-clad mountains with exellent skiing conditions framing it all.
Monday, March 03, 2003
First Page
So close, so agonisingly close... I am waiting for the proofreader to finish with the bibliography of my dissertation - two more days before I panic, but he's good, he is really good at keeping his word when it comes to how quickly he can work. He's also a really good proofreader, even I can see that the text looks smoother, more mature and that the language flows easier after he has had his hands on it. His name is Ian Harkness and if you need a proofreader in English or a Norwegian to English translator, you can reach him through Volda College, where he works part time. That was today's recommandation, and I hope the future brings him just enough work that he can go on proofreading, but not enough that he is too busy when I need him...
I have decided not to go an other round to find funding to proofread it again, by the way. I'll just have to live with the errors in it now. If a publisher picks it up afterwards, we can talk new rounds of proofreading. Now I just want to finish, rather than wait a month or two to have the language checked again!
But the agony is still there. What I am torturing myself over today is "What should be on the front page"? What kind of information does the Faculty of Arts expect from me when I submit the thesis? Should I include the aknowledgements, or will those come later, in six months, when the thesis (hopefully) is accepted and published? Silly questions, I know, but fraught with insecurity as the conclusion of four years of working in what feels like total obscurity not to speak of darkness, I have no idea of what will be important when I hand my dissertation over to the commitee.
So close, so agonisingly close... I am waiting for the proofreader to finish with the bibliography of my dissertation - two more days before I panic, but he's good, he is really good at keeping his word when it comes to how quickly he can work. He's also a really good proofreader, even I can see that the text looks smoother, more mature and that the language flows easier after he has had his hands on it. His name is Ian Harkness and if you need a proofreader in English or a Norwegian to English translator, you can reach him through Volda College, where he works part time. That was today's recommandation, and I hope the future brings him just enough work that he can go on proofreading, but not enough that he is too busy when I need him...
I have decided not to go an other round to find funding to proofread it again, by the way. I'll just have to live with the errors in it now. If a publisher picks it up afterwards, we can talk new rounds of proofreading. Now I just want to finish, rather than wait a month or two to have the language checked again!
But the agony is still there. What I am torturing myself over today is "What should be on the front page"? What kind of information does the Faculty of Arts expect from me when I submit the thesis? Should I include the aknowledgements, or will those come later, in six months, when the thesis (hopefully) is accepted and published? Silly questions, I know, but fraught with insecurity as the conclusion of four years of working in what feels like total obscurity not to speak of darkness, I have no idea of what will be important when I hand my dissertation over to the commitee.
Sunday, March 02, 2003
The Infinite Point
Once in a while I check if The Infinite Point is still open, and every time I am as happily surprised by finding that not only is it still open, but my old character is still there, with all of her old abilities. Some of the spells have been modified and are useless now, some of the items are gone or adjusted until they are not much more than junk, but she's still there. She also still wears Sauron's black cloak, and is divinely protected from all harm.
It's odd and reassuring, a link to an other me, the me who loves to play, to be somebody else, who could spend whole nights lost in fantasy. And I wrap that elusive textual body about my imagination and wander the streets of Muirthemne, waiting to see Sauron wake up from some odd coding task, the only one from the old days I really expect to meet there. But I always hope...
Once in a while I check if The Infinite Point is still open, and every time I am as happily surprised by finding that not only is it still open, but my old character is still there, with all of her old abilities. Some of the spells have been modified and are useless now, some of the items are gone or adjusted until they are not much more than junk, but she's still there. She also still wears Sauron's black cloak, and is divinely protected from all harm.
It's odd and reassuring, a link to an other me, the me who loves to play, to be somebody else, who could spend whole nights lost in fantasy. And I wrap that elusive textual body about my imagination and wander the streets of Muirthemne, waiting to see Sauron wake up from some odd coding task, the only one from the old days I really expect to meet there. But I always hope...
Saturday, March 01, 2003
flattering?
At first glance, I was very flattered to find that my article Playing with Players was the topic for a discussion group at the University of Cape Town. But I have no idea what they said, it might have been a slaughter....
At first glance, I was very flattered to find that my article Playing with Players was the topic for a discussion group at the University of Cape Town. But I have no idea what they said, it might have been a slaughter....
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