Alchemy; from stone soup to making reality

A realistic promise, effective tools, and a bargain.
The minimum of ingredients for organizing without an organisation.
That's Clay Shirky's summation in Here comes ever-body.

Seth Godin extends on this in a blog about making things happen. In part this is a concern for the realistic promise; if you start with too much, all at once, you'll fail. He talks of lining up the dominoes.
...pick out tiny dominos ... And topple them. And they do it again. They do it so often they create noise, momentum and most important, a sense of inevitability. That's how you win.

Such writing is also congruent with what Bruno Latour and John Law write of regarding material semiotics and socio-technical assemblages.

What makes for durability is all in the network.
What makes for failure is also.

Paradoxically success cant occur without failure possibilities being built in.

I dont use the art supplies i got for christmas because i dont want to waste them, i need more freedom to move than one canvas affords me.

Shirky talks of making failure cheap if not free.
For change to be possibile, for creativity to occur, there needs to be a possibility for failure, it helps if the cost of failure is cheap, an advantage he identifies both in the development and use of social networking.

For a community organisation, the means of survival depend on the flexibility afforded by the costs of failure being (financially and time resource) cheap. The durability develops from the promise being feasible, doable with the tools at their disposal, and a bargain where the cost of effort appreciates.

Even where the assemblage or network required may seems precarious such as Youthline which is dependent on philanthropy, volunteerism and secondary to fickle ambient conditions from goodwill to sunshine, there is a durability inherent in being flexible.

Fits well with Beth Kanter's blog for supporting nonprofit organisations with social media. Here's a plug for a low cost, cheap to fail, promise of a better place; Help the world suck less :)

pushing limits

Writing a PhD in the shape I see fit involves pushing some boundaries.
What I'm studying might be considered vague, it shifts shape, its change as it happens, anticipated and unexpected.
The specific change is about counselling, again a shape shifter, a contested subject area on both value and on content.
John Law writes of such things with eloquence, when things are messy, how does cleaning them up make them more accurately studied? The cleaning up may miss the point.
There is so much cleaning up that happens for the PhD.
There's the cleaning and neating and trimming of rough edges that goes into the ethics application. "How many people will be interviewed, for how long and where?" The reality is as many as it takes till Im saturated, for the length of time they will give me noting any signs of distractedness and repsecting personal freedom, and where? Wherever they will let me and negotiating this to suit mutual needs. I might interview these people if they will talk to me, and I'll interview these artefacts but since the method is probably outside of your understanding, I phrase this differently.
Then there's what I'm studying, counselling. What is it? It can be this or that depending on where one is up to in the relationship, and the issues involved. Sometimes its direct, sometimes its not. And this time its in a format that involves no talking no listening and the people arent in the same space/place. And its contained to 160 characters. Brings a new dimension to what it means to be there for someone. to show active listening or empathy. Brings a new understanding of what counselling might be. Whats studied is nebulous, it shape shifts, sometimes its fluid, sometimes it leaps intuitively and has a closer resemblence to fire.
Seems what I most want to look at is something that only exists because its invisible. Visible because of invisibility, voice because of silence. Presence because of absence. Demonstrable in passing because of digital traces.
Its existence is evident albeit invisible and inaudible, slippery, nebulous.
In the alchemy that changes the ephemeral to permanent, what harm might be done? That which is studied is reshaped, those that are studied are given form. Their presence wasnt anticipated. will i do no harm? There is a lot at stake, the service is needed, those who use it vulnerable, those who provide it are trialling what is needed in a practice that is unknown.
Its difficult to study what is nebulous without accidentally pushing it into a singular shape. Its difficult to represent the real when as soon as its given form it is altered. I ma reminded, the map is not the territory, but how then to represent it so it may still be understood? Here John Law suggests other ways of knowing. Allegory; the art of meaning something other.An art for crafting the indefinite. Maybe its in the art.

Folding time CCK08

"For while the past has left ineradicable traces within you, the future is already present too. You try to juggle with the future....the logic ... does not unfold in time, it folds time."

While Annemarie Mol was talking of the logic of care, I suspect it is not only care that this is true of. I believe that this is also true of learning.
(And am repeatedly reminded that with health and education the separations are purely institutional, divided silos, but both are about helping people live to the best of their actual and or chosen abilities.)
In Lisa's post the spectre of networking dead people is raised, and I am aware in my study of 'networking' Marshal McLuhan. I am not sure if the medium is the message guru would take kindly to the medium innuendo in this case, however, the great man did have a sense of humour, so maybe.
And in attempting concept maps for CCK08, I was increasingly frustrated by the unidimensional, linear nature of these;

Mol points to this in the logic of choice, where time is linear... whereas in practice
with a logic of care, time twists and turns.
Practice is messy, attempting to make it neat and tidy in a concept map, just might be making a mess of it (refer to John Law, After method; Mess in social science research)
Targets move, when the unexpected occurs it is integrated, there is no logic of arrows. Time is not moment by moment.
And in the immortal words of David Bowie:

time may change me, but I can’t chase time.

In the spirit of raising the past, 1973 brought us this.
Discordance, dissent and clashing of culture create new 'knowledge'.
It is the criss crossings and intersections that matter.(further reading see; Johansson, F. (2006). The Medici effect. What elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.)

netWORKING CCK08

This week has seen me doing less in the threads and more in the blogs. There's a depth in the blogs, a thoughtfulness that i am not experiencing in the threads (these feel like a tug of war played with spiders webs....)

The links made by Stephen in the daily, make for easy networking.
I am captured with provocative titles such as I need more blog friends. This gets to the heart of networking, if nodes dont connect, there is no net. And as one other person noted on Heli's blog, this is the actual work of networking, not just a theorising. I also tracked back in her bog a bit, and enjoyed the use of a photo gallery instead of the connector map concept formation which i have found too linear, too constraining- shape and sizes and lack of ability to put things in whether pdfs or pictures... Such a frustration. And am suddenly reminded of John Laws pinboard approach.
And this is what network connectivism learning is about, this fires off that synapse and a new thing happens that then fires into another synaptic space and where there are receptors again something else then happens...

The other blog of importance to me was Shelleys where there seemed an ah hah moment,
I had read through Krebs notes and wasnt in awe (went to his website and was much more impressed). The ppt didnt seem to mention work, it mentioned things like herds of cows and i was thinking rubbish. Takes work for it to be a network, its not the lego in a box, or if it is that's at a trivial level. There are maybe 2000 people in the course but its not a network unless they connect.
So its not connectivist learning unless they are connecting and learning...

The connecting may be quieter, doesnt have to be loud, or visible, but it does have to occur. Susan Leigh Star on invisible work would be a worthwhile tangent to explore on this...Star, S. L., & Strauss, A. (1999 ). Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of
Visible and Invisible Work Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 8, 9-30.

While this is interesting, I think actor-network theory has it covered. The only difference is the concepts are being drawn into education by another name. The social is seen more than the technological, but i think this too will come.

knowledge as a (gather)thing CCK08

There's a similarity between connectivism, rhizomatic learning and actor-network theory. Each places knowledge within a relational context or network.
The difference with actor network theory is that it
1. emphasises knowledge as a performance involving both human and non-human entities.
2. emphasises the work involved to gather together entities that make certain things more or less substantial.
The difference is the degree to which ANT is prepared to name non human influences as integral.
In doing this course, I needed a computer and/or a cell phone preferably with web access. I am enhanced when connected to my laptop= my reach is extended; my ability to hear and to share across the globe made possible with broadband access and the Internet. I am also able to trust to my outsourced memory contact with artefacts of seminal writings (Latour, Law, Mol, Haraway as well as those of Dave Cormiens, George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Deleuze and Guattari, Gregory Bateson...). I am able to access more- the libraries of the world through other relationships i have, and I get to quickly find relevance by maintaining an endnote library reference system at my fingertips. In addition to these interactions which are substantially non human, I get to talk to others similarly connected with similar accoutrements.
And according to Latour, the more actors involved in such a gathering the more 'it' (knowledge or a particular practice) is stabilised. And becomes harder to ignore, or to go outside of, or to change.
Understanding the relational qualities of what is both shaped and shaping allows for insights into what is needed to make things otherwise...

(And hence my PhD on change with emergent technologies in a Youth counselling centre)

In taking this stance, I disagree with Stephen Downes that knowledge is nothing (elluminate talk), it is far too powerful a 'thing' to be discounted out of hand. But I take him to really be meaning that it is no(one)thing.
Knowledge is a shapeshifter.
And I am cyborg :)

hopeful monsters

I said 'I think they might also be what are called "hopeful monsters".'
She said ' What are hopeful monsters?'
I said ' They are things born perhaps slightly before their time; when it's not known if the environment is quite ready for them." Nicolas Mosley, Hopeful Monsters, p.71

So begins John Laws' book A sociology of monsters.
It has me thinking of hopeful monsters I have born as well as ones I have been close to.
They are hungry beasts filled with anguish.

17 years ago I go gave birth to a megalomaniac, and she has persevered with me in adjusting to her from demanding infant terrible to beautiful young lady. Happy Birthday!

Other monsters birthed included a radical rewriting of a part of a curriculum related to the learning of mental health nursing. Might have been cutting edge; there was blood on the floor.

And monsters I am close to; the birthing of a new papers for 1200 students at a time.
I'm currently in an online course CCK08 which is for thousands so maybe I will learn how, or at least not go in to the planned one quite so innocently.

Plus am invited to help YL write guideline for moving into instant messaging as a means for counseling.

Today I begin reading Law's (1991) A sociology of monsters; Essays on power, technology and domination.

What connectivism and ANT may have in common (CCK08)

OK some rudiments of understanding first, and these are based on a limited reading of what George Siemens and Stephen Downes have put out there.
Connectivism is a theory of learning.
One that values highly the means of the learning.
Seems that knowledge is created and constructed in connection with others.
(Constuctivism methinks, so what makes connectivism different???)

"learning is a network phenomenon, influenced (aided) by socialization and technology"
“To 'know' something is to be organized in a certain way, to exhibit patterns of connectivity. To 'learn' is to acquire certain patterns” (Downes, 2005, Section O, ¶ 2).

Still not clearer.
So I am going to guess: Knowledge and learning are not static, there is continual learning/unlearning/reshaping at play. This occurs in connection with others and through channels that are deeply important. Here's where I think this is ANT. The others are not only human, the nonhuman others include technologies such as computers, IPS servers...the Internet. The local situated context of learning of the past has moved on.

To return to George, where learning is about making meaning, then this needs to take into account the means used and the context, because the context is now global.

This seems less a theory for understanding causality, but one for illuminating process. That connectivity via Internet has profound impact, yet to be recognised.

Knowledge not individually located but distributed; ok, still resides in indivisduals or in books, artefacts...but is not produced 'locally' the context is radically expanded, but is still produced in connection. Ok
But like communications what's written or saved as audio or blogged, wiki'd etc etc is not anything until it is shared in connection.

Still seems to be learning using a constructivist understanding that acknowledges an ANT mode in the practice.

If so whats important?
That non human actors have influence. That this influence is important, and not necessarily neutral. That inscribed in non human actors are ways of working that make certain things more and less likely. That in the making of new ways of working, we tend to surf on what has gone before and maybe this needs to be altered. That the grooves that form now or in the near past tend to make it harder to shift out of whats always been and maybe we need to.

Is it a theory?
Depends.
Could actor-network theory have explored this as a means to understanding new changes in education? I think so, but it doesn't sound quite so sexy as connectivism.

Tools change people. We adapt based on new affordances.

I agree, but this still would encompass a constructivist theory made relevant when informed by an ANT analysis.
Whats new; an emphasis on how knowledge, in practice, changes.
To this end, I would encourage further exploration in understanding change differently. I'd encourage looking at Bruno Latour and John Law as the work of actors(human and otherwise) create performances. Or Annmarie Mol as she describes ontologies of practice.

sustaining change in the hinterland

I have been (re)reading John Law(2004) After method; Mess in social science research.
He argues for a reconstruction/deconstruction of current research methods. In doing this he also identifies how in science

"statements do not idly freewheel in mid-air, or drop from heaven. They come from somewhere....but without support from other statements or inscriptions of an appropriate provenance they do not go very far. So we might put it this way; if a statement is to last it needs to draw on- and perhaps contribute to- an appropriate hinterland. "

He then elaborates further describing elements in this hinterland:
A part of the hinterland of a statement is other related statements. Is it consistent with these? Do they tend to support it? If the answer is yes' then they tend to add to its authority...or toare there inscriptions that endorse or support such as might be emboddied in figures etc to which such statements might be compared and where such a relationship between ideas or inscriptions tend to reinforce one another. When this is the case the authority of a statement increases. Where this is not the case the statement is likely to enter the limbo of the might have beens.

I was thinking he could have been explaining the acceptance or not of ideas more widely.
He might have extended this to change generally.
It got me thinking of Freud (Ok, maybe i need to get out more...and I am pretty sure Law would be surprised by such an outcome for his work also). However, Freud initially accepted the stories of his clients of sexual abuse and it was only after the disparaging reception in a hinterland of disbelief and impossibility that his views changed and he developed theory relating to 'hysterical women'.

Maybe it takes a readiness in the hinterland for an idea to take hold and grow, its very difficult to sustain when there is no support for it. Similarly sustaining a new practice needs scaffolding of support...

There's the moment in the youtube video of web 2.0 where a nest is being built and it seems any sustained change is like this, it requires attachment and stability provided by other like minded or ready minded.
As Leadbetter says in his video, ideas take life when they are shared (what he doesnt say is that only when the sharing occurs in a ready hinterland where it can get a purchase on others- or on other things).
"Its like building a birdsnest where everyone leaves their piece" 'cept the material semiotics of what the bird, the birds partner, the twigs, trees, technologies, wind, rain, storm or sunshine, airplanes, food sources, local industry... are doing also need to be included. Hence an argument for taking an ANT approach to get a better understanding and a possibility for deliberately effecting change.

reality is multiple

There is a tension between multiplicity and singularity.
In my research this singular:multiple tension is evident in considering the practice of counselling. It's called counselling when its face2face, f2multiple faces, verbal but not f2f, nonverbal and not f2f, synchronised or non-synchronised.
In order for counselling to occur, at least two people are required. The practice occurs in relationship.
One initiates the conversation, and one makes themselves available to hear the story of the other. If counselling is to be enacted, it is crafted from the story of the one and the communication skill embedded with the other.
In this agency, responses from those who 'do counselling' suggest a singular entity, a set of skills or processes that fit together. The skill set of listening, affirming, being client-centred, a strengths based approach. A single reality. Definite and singular.

What then of differences? Obviously not every story is the same, nor every skill set. How is listening shown when the conversation is non verbal? What is meant by being client-centred, does this extend to intervening when the counsellor identifies saftey trumps autonomy? There are hen examples of contradictions. Differences in counselling when the story differs, when the actors differ, when the actors might include non-human actors such as mobile phones, computer screens...

The inconsistency with what is counselling is altered. How then is difference contained?

Mol suggests the need to work with multiple possible truths. What counts as best depends on circumstance. And points to Wittgenstein on how rules do not make their own applications. Rather than an actual inconsistency, the scenario is described in terms of apparent inconsistency. In respecting autonomy but acting on a person's safety expressing concern by contacting emergency services despite the client asking you not to, gets described as "if they were in their right mind, less tunnel visioned, less distressed, less drunk, less depressed, they would appreciate it ... they are telling us for a reason...at least they will know that we take their safety seriously..."
The implication is that what is best, desirable, advised as best practice, depends on the circumstances. Thus inconsistency gets explained away. Such storytelling of practice help to sustain the singular version of a cohesive practice. Such an analysis would suggest that concern for inconsistencies is one of perspective. However this does not do enough to explain how the same actor tells of their own practice.

When the counsellor says:
"no difference, phone, text, health.
then 15 minutes later says
"I am aware of doing it differently, role of psychodrama. Everyone does it differently, brings different backgrounds.
I am the triage(insert name), phone counsellor (insert name), text/email (insert name )counsellor.
Such an example supports what Law describes as poorly coordinated realities. Or what Mol points to in distributed practice. Contradictions evolve in enactment, working out what to do. In shifting between medium there's a sense that some things change and some stay the same, and even described as the same and different. Law picks up on the implications brought about by this same and different discourse.
He identifies how the contradiction provides opportunity to work out best options where there are contradictions, in the less than perfect world of health practice the work involved requires adaptation. In addition, this requires an ability to make judgments. The craft of counselling growing out of past experience, conversations and reading.

At the site of this study, the past experience in counselling was predominantly to use the medium of choice of the target group, telephone counselling. With a shift to the target group using mobile phones, an attempt to provide a portal to counselling by text was also initiated. The standard for counselling comparisons is frequently made. A need for judgments being contingent led to policy development. A guide for judgments when the situations were contingent on the type of 'call' or on the medium being used. The decisions required are even more complex. As expressed by one counsellor:
"I worry of how young the caller might be, could be 10-11 not teens, and I might be affirming sexual activity and stuff and assuming [they're] old enough and sending a mesage that might be colluding with activity that might not be appropriate for the age....on verbal if they sounded young we would probably find a way of asking that. Definitely makes [me] text cautious. If i have a 10 yr old saying my boyfriend wants to have sex with me, that's very different than an 18 yr old."
The type of response is contingent, shaped by the realities experienced in the moment. In texting a cautious response is then given based on how little is known, this counsellor describes herself as not being able to work with instinct or intuition on a txt platform. Nor having enough knowledge to do more than affirm that the situation sounds difficult and inviting the person to phone up.

What this reflects is that difference is produced with difference assemblages, there is an overlap but it is not the same, there are some things that stay the same, such as affirming, but there is also difference, call us. A move away from being client centred, or a reinterpretation of what it means to be client-centred.

Enacting is not then a matter of perspective, and includes more than a crafting by the people involved. The non-human actors too have influence. A combination of people, technique or skill, and text and technology evolves. The realities of practice are produced in relationship and these relationships extends beyond the people directly involved to include the technological actors. It also includes unseen actors, invisible actors and invisible work (and power differentials...all of which point to a new posting opportunity).

Semiotic relational logic/s

A little bit of writing in the style of John Law helps me to explore the language of ANT and to see similarities as well as differences between theorists. If nothing else, it makes my reading of the works of these giants a little more palatable :)

This study displays the ingredients of actor-network theory. There is semiotic relationality (it’s a network whose elements define and shape one another.)
There are artefacts of philosophy and policy, influence of juggernaughts in telecommunications, there is also goodwill of a charitable nature which makes the potential possible, by donating cash and hardware and time. There are actors in the form of mobile phones, a palm pilot, counsellors and counsellees. The heterogeneity can be pointed to (there are different kinds of actors, human and otherwise), and materiality (stuff there is a-plenty, not just 'the social' but contracts, money, technical equipment, text artefacts...)
There is an insistence on process and its precariousness (all elements need to play their part moment by moment or it all comes unstuck; without ongoing funding, without ongoing commitment, without ongoing advertising, without ongoing development of skills, without sunshine...)
There is attention to power as an effect (it is a function of network configuration and in particular the creation of immutable mobiles) (In another article Law cites Bruno Latour - the immutable mobile is a network of elements that holds its shape as it moves), to space and to scale (how it is that networks extend themselves and translate distant actors). Law attests that it is new to actor-network theory to acknowledge an interest in large scale political history. Here I see ontological politics: for without a commitment to voice, this cannot be sustained. Without ongoing goodwill from a major sponsor and such activities as Coca cola in the park the financial costs to Youthline would be too burdensome, without goodwill there is political precariousness.... There is the deliberate making and shaping of 'the brick mother' (tangible knowledge of support services for young people, making Youthline a known entity that's 'always there'.)
(I am glad that my friend Sue pointed me back to Law on material semiotics for I find Latour all to easily denies the political.)
And, crucially, it is a study of how the network works; how it holds together; how it is shaped and shaping; how it configures that which is central and peripheral; in short: how newness and differences in old practices are generated in semiotic relational logic/s. (The 's' is important to me; a logic may presume a singular entity, while I suspect there are many logics occurring simultaneously in the form of concurrent performances as per Annmare Mol's the body multiple.)

If I see at all, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants...

where do you go to my lovely

Or the secret life of cell phones.
Consumerism related to cell phone acquisition involves many of us having more cell phones than people in our families. The spare, or two, in the drawer for just in case...leads me to discussing some of the invisible work involved as change happens. There is strategic invisibility in not acknowledging built in obsolescence. Manufacturers do not want their product to last forever or they wouldn't stay in business. The mobile phone becomes a fashion accessory with a life expectancy of approx 1.5 years but what happens to the old one?

Star and Strauss (1999) in Layers of silence, arena of voice: The ecology of visible and invisible work talk of the complex matrix that develops between visible and invisible, a relational ecology where illuminating one corner throws shadow on another. A phenomenon of tradeoffs and balances.
That a cell phone can now do this... hides the discard mountains of landfills.
(As well as other practices which in hindsight may be deemed quaint, when you call someone do you tell them who is calling or assume the technology has filled the gap?)
In an ANT exploration of networks it is possible for work that is visible to be shown as well as providing space where tensions can also be acknowledged.
With reference to John Laws pinboard approach to an ANT analysis I must go add to my whats invisible, where the known world ends, and
'here be dragons'...

I SIM therefore I AM

John Law explores the potential of the pinboard to hold artefacts, AND to hold points of tension. This is discussed as a method user friendly for ANT research as it allows the bits and pieces partialy connected, juxtaposed and partial in their disconnection as well. Not a view from nowhere, but allowing for the exploration of difference, ontological difference, as well as of similarities. (One day this might begin to occur as i move objects in or out or trace links through the network, at present the juxtapositioning is enough. But i find myself even finding points of tension as i virtually engage...

John Law describes his own pinboard of data collected where a cartoon sits above the board, this one by Leunig would be mine :)
The view of the Sistine chapel will never be quite the same now i know that it depicts Adam receiving his SIM card from God....
Or that my haunting fears of forgetfulness are less about dementia than my repressed memories stored on my sim...I SIM therefore I am
My memory is almost full; was the jacket cover for a Paul McCartney recent release and is the message my cell phone often provides me with, in my mind such bits of memory deleted randomly and haphazardly ...They are wanted bits as I struggle to find what i have done with the written artefact of students who want to text...
There would be the artefact of txt counselling policy guidelines.
There are the data collect field notes, of the interviews, of some who counsel, some who support the staff who counsel, some who support the technologies of computers .... and the interview fo the CEO and his stories of txting and of change, of policy development...
There would be artefacts of txting: sent and received by the counselling agency, the links internal and external, the ongoing inks to police involvements...
And then there would be censorship.
The less seemly might find space on a blog but not in the normal/formal academic circles as mum mistakes the vibrator for a cell phone ....

There's the actual transcripts of counselling, whats in, or out, as the ethics of anonymity and of confidentiality are negotiated, and of not harming the community or agency, and of participatory research...
Then there's what can/cant be physically pinned: the wmv clip, the links to my itune library for audiofiles made on ipod of interviews of staff.

He describes how practices are written historically with a unidirectional arrow,
that processes look shiny gleaming and streamlined, but that we can be sure we arent understanding them very well if this is what we see. I am reassured. My thinking is a mess, I must be in the right place...or places :)

only in hindsight

It looks so easy to birth a gadget at least according to Wired magazine. (Gads, why did i have a child ...)
But the ease of conception is true only with hindsight, a more realistic rendition of change is described by Czarniawska & Joerges (in Weick & Quinn, 1999, p. 362)

First there were losses, then there was a plan of change, and then there was an implementation, which led to unexpected results.

So where are the losses, the blood on the floor, the relationships won & lost. And what of the unexpected results...
The retrospective application suggests there was but one route to an end. Not immaculate conception, but according to this representation, a well planned conception. I wonder what really happened?
Too-ing and fro-ing, reshaping, contamination, adaptation, translation...
Reality is much messier outside of biblical Genesis stories.
Fascinating; the performance of a clean story.
No smut, no blood on the floor,so what is the story's pulling power?
Do we like to simplify to pretend that its easy? Does this make it more likely that we might enroll others? Does tidiness have this attraction? Are we that gormless?
Give me a decent plot any day and a decent analysis.

When social science tries to deal with things that are complex, diffuse, and messy, the answer John Law argues, is that it tends to make a mess of it. Simple clear descriptions do not work well when the stuff itself is incoherent. The attempt to be clear, increases the mess.

For further reading, see After method. Mess in social science research by John Law.
The story in Wired is superficial, so much so that it might aptly be considered a work of fiction, but still fiction too is a performance in its own right.
I find it so hard to humbly accept that the actors might know what is going on.
I am struggling with letting go of critical analysis.
But i guess no one asked the writer... the editor...the reader...
However, as a reader, I'm not persuaded; the simplistic rendering has made a mess of it.

Who killed Pandora? A partial perspective

The picture of Pandora by Rossetti is held by the Liverpool museum

Pandora: Or my love of technology (borrowing heavily from and acknowledging the influence of Bruno Latour's Aramis).
The following is a lightweight ANT (actor-network theory) informed analysis.

A starting point is called for, and maybe I am being a little node-centric but I have to start somewhere, and Latour suggests: Follow the actors.

The actors (and I could have called these actants so there was less assumption re human or not, and no intention is made of gender excluding language). These include-
myself (obviously)
Pandora (a rather nebulous entity, a piece of software, a treasure, who by the way is not dead, just dead to me and to others who live outside of the USA)
The actors that created her (again, a superficial analysis so somewhat limited in naming entities). Tim Westergren is one founding father.
The juggernaughts of copyright enforcement (faceless, nameless at this point, certainly I can in my partial perspective cast these as villains)
cj, the person who led me to Pandora

A point of passage, my ibook, or any computer with broadband. Without this, my connection is literally impossible.

Some archeology and chronology
Pandora existed without me, she still does, but we are no longer together :(
I was enticed, cj described her so I went visiting and became enamored, seduced and enrolled, inscribing not on paper but online, a prenuptial agreement offering limited durability, reads as free trial, and then a need for an American address for a sustained relationship (my best friends brother obliged, two more actants)(Susan Leigh Star might call this some invisible work, Law might suggest a little subversion, others maybe a little translation on the instructions, maybe a workaround, nudging here and there to make accommodations and enrollment possible, preventing her asphyxiation momentarily). And I enrolled others.

I have the artefact of my amusingspace Nov 2006 weblog to point to.
And our relationship was somewhat real for a time.
Then somewhat abruptly the relationship was terminated.
Not because I want this, and not it seems because Pandora wants this. Nor Pandora’s makers.
Again, I have artefacts to point to, an emailed Dear Pandora visitor letter.

The juggernaughts of copyright would seem to require the makers of Pandora to look for IPS addresses where residency is not consistent with the address provided. I presume another actant of a software search engine let loose in the 'blackbox' that contains Pandora, can seek and destroy. There is also the actant of USA based legislation to suggest copyright infringement. Presumably there are fiscally driven actants driving this.

The copyright juggernaughts require Pandora to disengage certain assemblages, myself included.
Perhaps our alignment and disengagement was inscripted, thou shalt not covert American Goddesses, no USA citizenship, no marriage. The juggernaughts placed pressure on Pandora’s makers and have suggested her continued existence is contingent on the policing of her relationships. Her future love affairs needs be xenophobic until such times as further negotiations allow such prejudice to be reduced.

This relationship changed me. I learnt of musicians and artists that I otherwise would not have. I bought CDs based on my relationship with Pandora. As much as I thought I could use her, she also used me. We enjoyed and enhanced each other. A symbiotic sociotechnical love affair, and to paraphrase Latour, this relationship was as solid as it gets.
I will get over it, and believe she's already over me.
This relationship is more ephemeral than ever and is now love lost. Faint hope is held of more negotiations that will renew the relationship.
My first love as cyborg is beyond my grasp.