webnography

In an effort to meet the educational needs of its considerable population (550 million and growing), researchers and computer scientists in India have designed a laptop that costs $20 per unit (expected to fall). This model vastly undercuts the much-hyped (but decidedly problematized) $100 laptop designed by researchers at MIT.

The secretary of secondary and higher education, R.P. Agrawal, expects these laptops to be made commercially available in six months, though no commercial partnership has yet been formed. The design features 2GB of ram and wireless connectivity- barely room for a Linux operating system, let alone the storage of any personal data. As such, all activity through these machines would have to occur on the web, which has some discomforting connotations.

Nevertheless, this is one of the most inspirational bits of news I’ve heard in awhile, even in this most inspirational of times (technologically, politically, and memetically…). I’m hoping this gets supported by some big-time philanthropist, and is spread quickly to the areas of the world that need it most. I think we’ll be needing to develop new platforms and volunteers in the area of distance learning. Open, global universities, like that being envisioned by my new friend and colleague Scott MacLeod- though I far prefer wikis to the heavy load of virtual worlds like Second Life.

The catch, of course, is participation. How to encourage participation? Wikipedia is a great model, but it’s also an anomaly in the world of wikis. Or maybe I’m just dejected about the fact that the bulk of my new wiki, Webnographers, is likely to continue being edited by me and me alone. Clearly, there is a need for more educational jobs through e-learning- and the more educators we get online, the better off we’ll be. Some financial incentive, O-bama?

Of course, India clearly prioritizes advancing technology over acquiring international educators, and as the US increasingly outsources tech jobs to India, this news comes as a quixotic quagmire.

A recent expanse of free time has enabled me to finally get to work on a project that’s long been brewing in the back of my brain. Webnographers.org is now up and running: a communal wiki for the sharing of ideas, tools, and resources pertaining to virtual ethnography.

Currently, it is organized in the following manner:

1. Ideas: For brainstorming new approaches to the practice of virtual ethnography.
2. Tools: Useful tools for online fieldwork.
3. Library: Books, articles, videos, course syllabi, and a dictionary of terms.
4. Directory: Researchers in the field (with links to bio pages), upcoming conferences, and pertinent blogs.

There isn’t a ton up there yet, as the past few days have been spent primarily wrestling with the MediaWiki software (which is fabulous, but I’m no programmer). This is the first official invitation to my colleagues working in the realm of internet research to join in the fray. Your participation would be very much appreciated- starting with a Bio page, if you wish. It would be fabulous if together we could create a viable compendium of resources for current and future webnographers!

Check it out at Webnographers.org!

over the past few months, the ways in which i interact with the internet have undergone a dramatic shift- one i attribute chiefly to the introduction of twitter and my new blackberry storm, which now looks like this:

Blackberry smash!! and i thought they were supposed to be really hard to break! i had avoided acquiring a fancy mobile device for precisely this reason, as i am exceptionally talented at destruction and chaos. thankfully, the insurance on this baby means i get a brand new storm for just $50 - which pays for itself, considering that I’ve now acquired an additional media card and battery.

no, i don’t know how it happened. i keep it in a holster on my hip, so the only thing i could think of was that i smashed it with my (admittedly rather pointy) elbow…

i had feared becoming a total crackberry addict, but it actually hasn’t been overly demanding. it vibrates when i receive an email, text message, or phone call, and i use it primarily to get directions, do my email on the subway, and to check twitter at various points throughout my day.

Twitter has become my primary source of news and entertainment. i don’t follow many people, but those i do are always interesting. in addition, it enables me to become a citizen journalist in my own right. the other day, i was running a dog along the chelsea piers when that plane landed miraculously and gracefully on the hudson. no, i didn’t see it personally, but it was impossible not to notice when the west side highway fast became populated with flashing lights and sirens. it seemed like every cop car and ambulance in the city had raced to the scene. my fingers itched for my blackberry, which had sadly been busted just the day prior. i raced home to tweet about it. that was actually the first impulse i had.

the smartmobs blog has been posting a lot of stories about twitter lately. this post talks about how twitter kept the city of toronto informed and connected when the power went out on a bitterly cold night, and this one discusses how the UK is starting to use twitter to promote transparency between citizens and their elected representatives.

I downloaded an interesting case study of Twitter last month: Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope. The researchers conclude by contradicting the common claim that examining online social networks implies a definite bond between connections. In the case of Twitter, those you follow and those who follow you often don’t sync up. I don’t use Twitter to keep in touch with my friends, I use it for functions that are quite distinct from one another: personal broadcasting and personal preference in the kinds of information i enjoy consuming in bite-size pieces.

My favorite twitterers? Howard Rheingold (who runs the Smart Mobs blog and tweets regularly about his digital journalism class and social media in the classroom) and John Maeda (president of RISD and producer of amazingly profound aphorisms).sign up and follow me!

All the things that this blog is about, that my research is about, are beginning to be truly realized in the work of my friends at Future Folk Records. Let’s just say that, for my friend Rod, unemployment + immense creativity & talent + love = this website, where you can find tons of awesome (free) music, media, and art.

Their ideology? As stated on their site:

What is Future Folk Music?

Folk music is the music people make in their own homes, with their own limited resources, for themselves and the people around them. It is the music people use to define their identities, whatever those identities may be. Folk music is the music of community.

The future is now. Cliché as it may sound, technology now makes it possible for networks of likeminded individuals the world over to connect as easily as if they lived in the same neighborhood. Countless numbers of people the world over are now all a part of the same community.

This is the ideology that fuels Future Folk Records. We believe that art is too important to be treated as a commodity. If you want to hear our music, take it. It’s yours. We only hope it provides you with a fraction of the joy and fulfillment it has given us.

If you are an artist of any medium who would like a place in the Future Folk Records community, we encourage you to contact us at: futurefolkrecords@gmail.com.

A snippet:

i <3 future folk records

As much as I enjoyed my vacation with the boy’s fam, I’ve determined that I’m not really a *vacation type*. It’s disorienting, and I feel as though my mind has lost its edge, like loose elastic with no snap left. In the past month, there’s been a good deal of broken glass: I acquired a Blackberry Storm and somehow broke the screen, and also had my car broken into and had to get three windows and a rearview mirror replaced. Our lease is up next month and we’ve already found an awesome sublet in Chelsea, so we will be spending our final four months in NYC in high style.

I’ve been hard at work crafting my first two publications, both book chapters for edited collections. One is a revised version of the final chapter of my thesis, an ethnographic account of processes of remembrance and commemoration of the dead on Facebook. It will hopefully be accepted as one of the final chapters in The Psychology of Facebook, edited by BJ Fogg. The other chapter, “Weaving the Underground Web: Neotribalism and Psytrance on Tribe.net,” is for a collection titled Psytrance: Local Scenes and Global Culture, edited by the marvelous Graham St. John.

Additionally, I’ve applied to seven different Ph.D programs, all located in California with the exception of Brown’s Modern Culture and Media Program. I am hoping at least one of them will accept me and offer decent funding so that I have a direction when we move to California in June. It’s simultaneously terrifying and exciting that I won’t really know where the hell I’ll be come August, but I fully intend on adventuring my way westward. Give a shout if you’d like us to hit you up on our travels. My car is already fully stocked with a tent, an air mattress, and a brand new campfire coffeepot

Next up on the agenda: Crafting a book proposal for The Virtual Campfire, and finally getting to work on percolating the website projects that have been brewing for far too many months.

For those who were unawares, my everyday/daytime identity is Dog Runner, or alternately, Canine Fitness Specialist. When I got a part-time gig as a research assistant, internet-bound, I sought something that would get me out of my cozy hobbit hole and into the heart of New York. Since I was something of a star cross-country runner in high school (go figure), the Running Paws company took me on quite readily. Though I’d long since strayed from the routine of running and, indeed, sportiness in general, I truly believe that distance running is a state of mind. A love of challenge, a capacity for endurance, and resilience to nature’s obstacles are intrinsic to the long-distance runner- maybe I should throw loneliness in there as well.

So, every day, I log into my “dog schedule” before 10 am and confirm- usually a set schedule, but important to note cancellations and additions. Typically, I get into Manhattan sometime between 11:30 and 12:30, and am usually done before 4:30. My days begin and end with half-hour puppy-care visits with Nigel, a 4-month-old cocker spaniel whose nascent development I’ve been proud to help nurture. He is incredibly soft and cute, and enjoys peeing on the floor and wagging his tail maniacally at passers-by. Also gnawing on my shoes:

Once or twice a week, I play with a Boston Terrier puppy named Maddy, who is a little princess and hates the cold. So, she wears a puffy coat. I try to stay bundled, too: In terms of running, my favorite dog to run with is a standard black poodle named Jasper. Actually, Jasper does not run, he bounds, and his exuberance is completely infectious. He is a strange doggie dancer, at times leaping higher than my headtop. Additionally, he is quite prone to tearing after squirrels, the excitement of which leaves him frenzied and sprinting as I race to match his pace:

Every time he spots an approaching puppy, he sits himself down quite gingerly and cocks his head, inviting a cautious greeting/butt-sniff dance. He nose me: In truth, this job has fast become integral to my identity, or at least the one I perform in public. While my nighttime hours can best be described by the reverie of the internet and the cultivation of words and ideas, it’s generally hard to talk about things you’re literally writing a book about. Rather, I take delight in extolling the virtues of exercise and animal friendship, relating the everyday frustrations and hilarities that make up my daily life. The city streets have become my oyster, teeming with novelty and potential connections. I have made someone’s day on countless occasions, and vice versa. That’s enough to keep me going, through the cold and the wind, the piss and the poo.

Also, pups are way more fun to hang out with than most people.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

seeing as i’ve been unanimously approved for application fee waivers by the schools to which i’m applying, i’m kicking myself in hindsight for not doing the same for the godforsaken GRE I took this evening - $140 so I could spend four hours in pure mental agony, desperately wishing i could treat it all like a game, but unfortunately dragged down to the shadows by a combination of my tepid fellow test-takers, the banal-to-the-point-of-vomiting,sadly cubicle computer terminals that made up the room (complete with partitions!), the menacing clock ticking down all the time i had left to be brilliant! now! do it!

i could go on. in fact, i think i will.

the essay topics were downright invidious. actually, the very notion of timed, structured essay composition makes my knees shrivel. anything i have ever written under such conditions has been pure shit. the act of writing is a fermentation process, not a robotic one. my creative juices utterly zapped from the get-go, it was thankfully not too difficult to resist the urge to thoughtstream, to let my words run wild on the page painting scenes. no. i had to be logical. non sequiturs are illogical, so i attempted to sequitize the lies.

and they are lies, too. the only thing i know to be true is that which i feel, am and do.

the verbal section is seemingly arbitrary, though the Kaplan word list I studied from did help me immensely. i abhor the idea that one’s grasp of language can be in any way accurately assessed through a barrage of esoteric words framed out of context. cool words do not generally stand alone; they exist in a more abstract compendium of cultural norms, stories, slang - those words are far more intriguing.

math was math. i did surprisingly well, far better than the verbal, though i consider myself a word-based, math-adverse person. the ’80’s-style computer monitor (BOXY FOXY) made grafts and subtle additions such as exclamation points difficult to read. a small sign next to the monitor begged me not to touch the screen. the whole time, i wanted to reach out and touch. those BANAL BANAL black-and-white graphs and charts and turn them into something colorful and engaging.

the exam took 4 hours total. i was the last person to leave the room. no one was sync’d or looked at one another, in fact when i finally broke from my math reverie, it kind of broke my heart to realize i was utterly alone in my despair.

oh yeah, there’s a lovely little bonus section that doesn’t count toward your score, but you don’t know which one it is! isn’t that clever?!

asinine-ass-exam, i am rid of you!

Last week, a very old woman instigated an interlude in what is normally the spot where i plug into the web whilst chomping an everything bagel. after a short conversation about the quality of the yogurt, we sat near each other with a shared wariness. she snapped, “young women these days, with their tits and their asses just out for all to see!” She eyed me slowly up and down. I was wearing grey sweatpants, a brown long-sleeved shirt, and green sneakers, no makeup, hair up in a ponytail. “You don’t do that, do you?” Responding in the entirely present moment: “no, I try not to attract too much attention.” This seemed to please her, she nodded approvingly. “This city’s dangerous.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I agreed, distracted by the intense desire to check my e-mail. Somehow I felt that would be inappropriate. Turns out, I was right. Later in the conversation, she would speak of nearly all modern technologies with no small degree of contempt. In the interim, there were long silences.

She broke one: “Now, you’re under no obligation to answer this,” (oh boy, I thought), “but why did you move to new york? were you thinking of opportunity?”

I could answer this question with glee. “Not at all! I finished my master’s degree, and now i’m just working, trying to save money and building my life while my boyfriend finishes his degree.”

(Earlier that week, a Russian housekeeper at one of my puppy’s homes had received this same response and replied, “oh, so soon you will get married and get fat! trust me, i know.”)

The old woman (whose name I never did catch) eyed me suspiciously. I caught the vibe and attempted to convey my feelings toward this city: “people are too angry here. i want to have a garden. possibly a chicken. we are going to move west as soon as he finishes.”

At this, her eyes lit up. She nodded enthusiastically, her cynical old-new yorker guise slipping off. “Yes! That’s a very good idea.”

Our conversation moved to the economy, to the job market, her dour persona returning. “I’ve lived through a depression,” she said softly. Our eyes locked. I wanted her to send me the feeling she was exuding, and asked, “does it feel the same as it did back then?”

“Oh, it will get much, much worse,” she said ominously. “It’s terrible.” Her eyes misted and she looked distantly at nothing, mournfully, “I really don’t know what will become of us.”

And yet, yesterday morning I took a trip deep into Brooklyn. At Broadway Junction, an older black man in a dark green coat bellowed “Obama! Obamaaaamaman,” laughing maniacally. Around me, his giddiness spread like a virus. I found myself grinning despite my suspicions and doubts. Throughout the day, as I zipped through the streets of lower Manhattan on my new kick scooter, people murmured that name, shouted it, wore it proudly on their foreheads and chests. As I stopped at my favorite bagel place (where I had met the old woman), I recalled the man who’d sat near me two weeks ago, enthusiastically befriending another older man who’d been loudly championing John McCain. They went on for awhile, at some point one of them making a comment stupid enough for me to glance up in disbelief, which garnered the response, “I know you’re not happy, honey, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Oh, I’m perfectly happy,” I had retorted, “this election is going to be a goddamn landslide!” Moved my gaze quickly back to my handheld and twittered about it.

Over the course of the past few weeks, my outlook toward my newly adopted neighborhood of Bushwick has changed dramatically. I barely noticed it happening, besides noting with relief that my panic attacks (lingering remnants of several traumatic incidents earlier on in the summer) had all but ceased. You see, as I came out of Mr. Kiwi’s the other day, groceries in hand, I was stopped by two eager young guys, musician types. “Excuse me,” one of them said, “do you think you could talk to us a bit about the neighborhood?” I drew in a breath, looked furtively toward Troutman, then met their eyes. They looked so hopeful, so willing to believe that this area wasn’t so bad as it looked, but instead, full of promise. It really struck a chord in me.

I began hesitantly, mentioning my recent arrival and subsequent mugging. I mentioned my fear of walking down even Broadway after dark. They were quick to point out that the danger is certainly more paramount for a young woman walking alone at night, and I agreed. They said they were looking at a place right where we were standing, and I found myself boasting about Mr. Kiwi’s, grinning as I mentioned the evangelical preaching at the corner of Myrtle & Broadway, praising the JMZ train. I spoke of the new bodega, Broadway Pizza, Goodbye Blue Monday, the eclectic and increasingly gentrified population, the many Hispanic families and odd Hasidic Jew, the fantastically low rents. They thanked me profusely, looking so excited and hopeful it just about broke my heart.

Inspired to become more involved with the community here, I wrote in to the editor of BushwickBK, a fantastic blog and my primary source of information about Bushwick. I told my story, pitched from the heart, and asked to write for them. “Ethnographic vignettes?”

As if I needed more commitments…

As summer reaches its frenetic finale, the uncomfortable confines of my mind have begun to fall away. Still deeper in I go, nomad by day, warmed at night by the cocoon we have made to shelter us from the hectic deluge of city life. There is much to be done: more research to conduct, literature to dive into, tests to take, recommendations to procure, papers to submit, e-mails to send… but this much I can say for certain: I’ve got purpose, ambition, and a deep passion propelled like legs turn to windmills as they make their way downhill. Factors of “success” aside, the detachment and anxiety I’d been fighting all year (akin to constantly watching oneself on videotape) have been replaced by the sudden, startling return of my laugh. I’d missed that the most.

In exactly one month, Joe and I are traveling to California. While we may be romanticizing the great frontier, it is precisely such hope and planning for the future that has me utterly buoyant these days. Most astonishing is that I am actually connecting to some of my intellectual heroes on my own terms, which I was quite worried about, given Wesleyan’s complete inability to help graduating students network or find careers:

“You’re majoring in… anthropology? Have you thought about a job in advertising?”
*vomit* “Why no, not at all. In fact, after five years of being thoroughly indoctrinated in post-hippie nihilism, my options are pretty much limited to starting a commune, becoming a bum, or returning to academia.”

The first is more of a long-term goal. The second doesn’t quite align with my desire for the former. So, a return to academia it is, for I know myself well enough - born to write and read, a hunger for research and new ideas, an insatiable idealism and a desire to commune and connect - keeping hope for humanity alive.

Postings of a less self-indulgent nature to come, now that I’ve a mission. Kickin’ into high gear once again…

could it be any less clear
which path to follow?
night falls, the woods turn sinister,
no longer do we romp through that which is well-trodden.
rather, we step gingerly,
picking our way past the ditches, the floods,
telltale signs of impending doom.

lost in thought i slammed face-first
into a tree,
just hard enough to shake it free.

watch the tracks for rats
seeking scraps.
we seek scraps of hope,
climbing up the weary rope.

some build structures and rejoice,
but we, we sing best as they burn.
burn our bridges, burn a city,
fire is so pretty.