being us/ed:

Alan Levine at cogdogblog put me onto this video developed by Michael Welsch at digital ethnography (a working group of Kansas State University students and faculty dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography.)




The contrast of writing with digital communications is explored. Its a fast paced provocation for exploring how the medium is the message. Titled Web 2.0... The machine is us/ing us.
I am awestruck. And I think I am using the machine, but at the same time...

In the same week I came across an article (that's not the right word, a series of web pages) on the rise of the participation culture It is this participatory nature that grabbed my attention when first I delved into IT as a teaching and learning medium. ITs alive, it sparkles, I can follow what I want to, go where I choose to, add to what's out there as well as adding to my own development. Pushed and pulled. Beautifully captured. This same week I was also touched by an article, new criteria for new media, on how valuing of staff needs to be able to capture the new mediums being used; academia in its PBRF and promotion systems has yet to catch up with forms of dissemination and creating of knowledge that move faster than journal publications, textbooks or conferences. And I am pushed and pulled a little more ... how then to push the boundaries on how the study of an IT application in a doctoral study might be presented back to the academy in a format that sits alongside a thesis. How to have form and function in synch. How to have the quivering of what is brought up from the depths not lose its liveliness in translation to a form that can be examined.
But as a recipiennt of TIME person of the year, 2006, I trust my skills will be up to the task, I just need to continue letting the machines use me...