Where the wild things are: Connectivism, CCK2011#

This unpolished rant was brought on by wikipedias flame wars on connectivism as well as by Latour's and Law's discussions as to whether Actor-network theory is a theory or not.

I always thought philosophy and theory were a matter of scale; the one grander, more over reaching, and the other more grounded, more empirically tested. That the philosophy required internal consistencies a complex arrangements of how the world is seen and constructed and so can make meaning of the world.

Isn't philosophising about what ontologies, epistemologies,are? what is knowledge and how is it known...and in talking philosophy down to earth, what produces the 'good life' which is essentially contestable? While theorizing is more grounded in day to day practicalities?

Kurt Lewin suggests there is nothing so practical as a good theory.
So a theory gets tested in empirical research, in application, in my view it is not necessarily predictive, though this is the stance of 'scientific method' that it be repeatable and so provide consistency... case studies too can provide more and less support, more or less weakening of a theory.

In philosophising a good philosophy, paraphrasing John Dewey (1958) in Experience and Nature:

“Does it end in conclusions which, when they are referred back to ordinary life experiences, render them more significant, more luminous to us, or make our dealings with them more fruitful? Or does it terminate in rendering experiences more opaque than they were before?”

So I'm thinking ANT is philosophy. And at its finest :)
Its descriptive, and there are empirical accounts
But its not predictive.
It does not over-reach itself.
It illuminates knowing this also creates shadows: a self-conscious theory.
But importantly it meets Dewey's account for being fruitful, for creating the conditions of also knowing that things might be otherwise.

For connectivism, it's still establishing its clarity, its alignments, its contradictions, its loves and betrayals. But theory does not come into the world brand spanking new ready to go...its a little unfair to treat it in the same ways one might treat an adult or a teenager, when its still toddling. And a toddlers survival is not just about it's own robustness, it's also about the readiness of others to engage in more and less supportive ways.

Law in a sociology of monsters describes the newness of things also, citing a story

I said 'I think they might also be 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 let us not forget readiness is a distributed state also. A networked proviso.

I now turn to how criticism might be enhanced taking a relational approach.
Latour suggests in doing research one should always be respectful of one's informants/participants/people we work with...and as much as reasonably possible:

Always assume people are right, even if you have to stretch the point a bit. A simple rule, my dear pupil when you're studying a project. You put yourself at the peak of enthusiasm, at the apex, the point when the thing is irresistible. (p.36)

No reason we should not be so generous to newer theorists and theories in the making. They are not attempts to deceive.

And like Donna Haraway, to say, from a distance, that one knows better, is to see everything from nowhere as one's own situated knowledge is not acknowledged but treated as a gospel truism. Some reflective work on one's own positioning and how one positions others in the network might be useful here. A network is not a hierachy. There is no one at the top with a supreme world-view, instead accepted wisdom (knowledge) is also made and distributed on a network.

I take an ANT stance with this, being connected means being in relationship, so what would happen were the question treated relationally? In considering critique instead of criticisms, if instead of thinking is this good/bad/right/wrong we were instead to consider, what does this bring to the relationships with others (human or otherwise): then not only might it illuminate, and render less opaque as Dewey would ask, but perhaps we might also ask in what ways might that which is looked at, as well as the theorizing undertaken, be otherwise?

The following is a beautiful piece of prose on the type of criticism yearned for by one philosopher, from an anonymous interview titled the masked philosopher:

"I cant help but dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life: it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind,, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgements but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes- all the better. All the better. Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I'd like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightening of possible storms."

The masked philosopher was Foucault 1994, p. 326

To yearn for such criticism is to yearn for engagement, to enquire, and not to close down, but to foster connections...such that new learning might occur.

I don't know if i believe in connectivism as a new theory of learning, but what i do know is a connected world makes learning occur in ways that would previously have been very difficult. Technologies bring about new ways of being in relationship, and no learning is possible without relating.

Ref:
Dewey, J. (1958). Experience and nature. New York, NY: Dover Publications.
Michel Foucault, interviewed anonymously in Le Monde by Christian Delacampagne, April 6–7, 1980; reprinted in M. Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth (ed. Paul Rabinow, tr. Robert Hurley et al.), The New Press, New York, 1994.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14(3), 575-599.
Latour, B. (1996). Aramis: Or the love of technology (C. Porter, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Law, J. (Ed.). (1991). A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology and domination. London, England: Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=FsINAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=A+sociology+of+monsters:+Essays+on+power,+technology+and+domination&source=bl&ots=PN2gGPt9al&sig=Y1kZy4EfVYcqKssYcB-J9L5zZ_8&hl=en&ei=XRHKTPfyJYfcvwPyl5nWDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Infinite regression; its turtles all the way down

I'm feeling a little lacking in science today having presented a very descriptive account of an actor network as my PhD study in a work based seminar today. Nonetheless as Latour has it: If those textual accounts in notebooks don't look scientific enough, then what heavier equipment would do? They are all the science needed for grasping a recalcitrant object through some artificial device of representation.

"What is so wrong with mere descriptions? A good text is never an unmediated portrait of what it describes-nor for that matter is a portrait....
No scholar should find humiliating the task of sticking to description. This is on the contrary, the highest and rarest achievement." (p. 136)

I had found myself wanting to provide explanations for text message counselling being a preferred practice. Explanations that the audience might credit as having depth and meaning; fiscal forces from economics, ego protection from psychology, even a little bit of conspiracy theory in why I dont have an answer to questions asked twice...
Some nice grounding then from Czarniawska(2003). She calls it plainly, "behind the fiction there is always another fiction, it's turtles all the way down".
Representation is always representation.
And some Latour realism; "Much like safe sex, sticking to description protects against the transmission of explanations."

The lurch in my research question, from a process one (what is happening here) to an evaluative one (is the change good) suggests the work net has enrolled me in stabilizing the change i have been observing...or that i have enrolled the net...an infinite regression. And I really do not know which is true...and it may not matter.

Some more Latour to make my day feel better: A good text should trigger in a reader (or audience) this reaction" 'Please more details, I want more details.' God is in the details, and so is everything else- including the devil."
Today felt like this, questions a plenty, and answers that expanded rather than collapsed down. And knowledge too that it might always be otherwise.

And a snippet from Gell-Mann (discoverer of the Quark, a subatomic particle);
Chapter one draws me in:

I have never really seen a jaguar in the wild...
For most of my career as a theoretical physicist, my research has dealt with elementary particles, the basic building blocks of all matter in the universe. Unlike the experimental particle physicist, I dont have to stay close to a giant accelerator...in order to conduct my work....at most all I require is a pencil, some paper, a wastepaper basket. Often even those are not essential. Give me a good nights sleep, freedom from distractions, and time unburdened by worries and obligations, and I can work. Whether I'm standing in the shower, hovering between wakefulness and sleep on a late night flight, or walking on a wilderness trail, my work can accompany me wherever i go.

Refs
Czarniawska, B. (2003). Management she wrote: organization studies and detective stories. In S. Linstead (Ed.), Text/work: Representing organization and organizing representation (pp. 15-40). London: Routledge.
Gell-Man, M. (1994). The quark and the jaguar. Adventures in the simple and the complex. New York; Henry Holt and Company.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (p135)

An ANT like tweet

Historical tweets worth repeating, this one of Gutenberg following 'his' invention of the printing press reflecting some actor-network like black humour :)

what's in a name ; networks vs groups

I like the idea of connectivism for a theory of learning.
I can accept knowledge is not an out-there thing, that it is held in nodes, constructed in connections.
That the connecting and means of connection have influence and are worthy of focus.
BUT I continue to have a problem with the narrow conception and responses to ongoing dialogues regarding groups and networks.
An integration of actor-network theory (ANT) would provide responsiveness to the continued critiques defended in arguments of well if it doesnt do this it was a group not a network, to which there is no answer.
Does the one do cooperation vs this is collaboration, aligning vs intersecting? I'm not convinced, the real world is so much messier than that. The attributions are not stable.
A deeper understanding of how groups/networks function is needed.
Its the function that matters, not the name. The attributes of a group vs a network seem currently focused on their instrumental nature. It's to narrow a conception to say groups do this, networks do that, as this fails to account for shifts.
The rhizomatic understanding is useful as it can map the shifts, but is less useful in explaining their nature.
ANT provides for a deep understanding of shifts, whether fluid or fractional.
ANT also allows for this to be explored, retrospectively or in process.
Moving the debate away from group vs network as entities of fixed attribution could further add to the development of connectivism as a learning theory by providing insights into how to work the net as well as demonstrating connectivism in action; of learning as something worked in the nets.
Suggested authors for further reading:
Bruno Latour
John Law

An exploration into the unknown; between the nodes; a reality waiting to be constructed or connected?

In a constructivist approach, knowledge is built, and I would argue, built collectively. The implication is that it occurs because of connections. Its not that it, knowledge, is out there just waiting to be found, as if it were to fall from a tree, but that it is made through aggragation, this with that as well as with these people and these appliances that make it possible.

My studying of connectivism through CCK08 and as espoused by Siemens and Downes leads me to contemplate that knowledge does not exist 'out there' as a reality but is held in the nodes of connections. And thus occurs in contested forms where different knowledge/s will be held based on the aggragations of people and technologies being available to them.
There will be and are tensions between different enactments, performances, posturings as to what is good, bad, desirable. This is not at all surprising when knowledge is seen as an aggragation of what is thought known and possible within one technosocial mileu.

In that there are constantly changing mileu, across space and across time, this supports a belief that reality and realties will be experienced as multiple. An actor-network take on how reality and realities are constructed through enactment.

This seems to sit with Law (2004) where he is explaining how tensions appear between different enactments (and knowledges) of reality is made manifest. And that realities are then crafted and acknowledged as indefinite gatherings, coherent and non coherent.
And taking this still further, there is strength where knowledge is continually growing and evolving being formed by differing aggregations of sociotechnical possibilities. Stagnation only occurs where limits are imposed, where boundaries are placed on what's possible. Perhaps enlightened thinking is only possible when such borders are permeable, where there is flux, where things create their own durability because they are changing and adaptive, where intersections are possible and valued. That "things hold together precisely because they dont." (Law, p.142)

reference
Law, J. (2004). After method. Mess in social science research. Abingdon: Routeledge.

dipping

Holiday reading has included Seth Godin's the dip, the extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick). Not because my job needs this and not because of the PhD either, but it's still a worthwhile read on reviewing where one is at as well as a parallel area of interest in studying change.
I am still finding it a bit hard despite reading the book to know what's a dip vs a cul de sac except when looking back retrospectively. How will i know when persevering is going to do it or not? Its a bit like caving (not that i do this) but the ideas a bit like not throwing good money (or one's time) after bad. There's lost opportunities that might also be considered.
What i have found is some gems relevant to my study of change vis a vis Bruno Latour. While Seth Godin does not mention any philosophers there is a resonance in here. He describes the valley of death where 'the dip is so long and so deep that the nascent competition can't catch up.' Its a bit like cj talking of the habits and ruts made where the walls then get so high that doing anything else becomes harder and harder, you get out of the rut for a moment but are likely to fall back in. Its an easier path where its well trodden. And one that can be deliberately made in shaping th epath so getting out of it is harder still and its here that Seth Godin refers to microsoft where the building of relationships and establishing so many stds makes it essentially inconceivable that word or excell could be challenged. A similar analogy is also provided with ipod anditunes and apple. Instead of resting on laurels a whole raft of essential relationships are formed to make the "network"

Seth Godin describes how its easy to be seduced by the new (just as with the bright and shiny, just coz its new doesn't mean its good) and i like his description of how this leads to addictions and short little spans of attention but he also points out that many people are not led by the new but by the tried and true. Both can be problematic.

And thats where i find myself wondering if I'm in a dip or a cul de sac, again.
I'm left knowing, retrospectively, what I've got myself into. Nonetheless a few more clues provide me a bit more hope in not working myself into corners.

These are timeless themes, when is it useful to change, and when is it not. How might change be made, and what contributes to its fluidity or to its stickiness...And then there is also the effects not only of the dip on the people dipping, but the effects of the people dipping, on the dip... aggressive acts may not only make the people worse, but also the dip.
A very actor-network way of thinking about change.

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.

Here be dragons

Such dragons are begat by Wilma White in Kaiaua New Zealand. I have several of this dragons siblings...

In trying to map the invisible, one risks destroying the positive aspects of invisibility – should the map simply be marked, “here be dragons?” Star and Strauss (1999)

In my research interviews I have data that has left me in a conundrum.
What gets told, what gets told in a de-identified way, what will be less important with the passing of time, what might be portrayed to different audiences...
I am reminded by cj that research is an inherently political act.
The article by Susan Leigh Star and Anselm Strauss (1999)titled Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work, provides an excellent synopsis of such dilemma: There is both good and bad invisible work. Positive invisibility requires discretion. Within the the visible-invisible matrix it is impossible to define anything as inherently visible or invisible; similarly, it is impossible a priori to say that either are absolutely good or bad, desirable or undesirable.
These authors are not recommending “more visibility” in any simplistic form, but cite Grudin’s (1988) and Robinson’s (1993b) criteria of equity as an evaluation precept. This discusion of “good invisibility” and “bad invisibility,” is traced to questions of discretion, autonomy, and power over one’s resources. They identify the relation between invisible and visible work as a complex matrix, relational, with an ecology of its own. For every gain in granularity of description, there may be increased risk of surveillance. In the name of legitimacy and achieving public openness, an increased burden of accounting and tracking may be incurred. The phenomenon is one of tradeoffs and balances, not absolutes and clear boundaries.
Some suggestions they make include:
In managing the balance of visible and invisible work, it may be important for
processes to become visible for a time, or remain invisible for a time. It may be of value to consider time release (it may be possible with the passing of time that the issues are deemed less important or a forgivable 'passing phase') 'Stuff' may fade decay over time.
A metaphorical curtain might be drawn. Deidentification of data being one part of this.
Having the analysis consider tradeoffs and balances because increasing the visibility of work processes has pluses and minuses.

I can move forward now.
The dragons can rest easy for the time being.

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'...

potentially precarious

The network of relations are not all pulling together, sometimes they pull apart. The pushing and pulling on the strings that bind make for a precarious existence.
For txt messaging at Youthline, how useful is it that a sibling organisation, lifeline also uses txt, email and Internet postings? In part Lifeline's use provides credibility as a larger and more conservative organisation takes on practice that was innovative. Concurrently, this has been made possible through winning the contested funding. Its amazing that charitable organisations can work cooperatively when the processes shaping them encourage competition.
The Gods seem to be smiling on Youthline today; it is the Coca-Cola Christmas in the park tonight and it is not raining. This pulls on all the resources (people) Youthline can muster as its largest fundraising event. That the rain holds off contributes significantly to Youthline's wellbeing. The ability to raise charitable donations is to a large extent subject to the benevolence of God/s and/or the fickleness of Auckland's early summer weather.
There is the huge goodwill of volunteers, and also of paid employees (well beyond financial remuneration). What is it that creates the circumstances of giving the gift of time? (Titmuss wrote of this regarding the gift relationship; from human blood to social policy. What creates such philanthropy? What creates such philanthropy in NZ today? A whole new chapter to consider. A whole new thesis I suspect!).
There is also a funding war keeping the cost of txting down.
People dont use what doesnt work.
"People will use technology if it helps them, if it makes their lives better"
Stephen Downes said this regarding the 45-page guide to the evaluation of e-learning. The same might well be said of the use of txt, Internet postings, and email for counselling.
The philosopher in me struggles with such pragmatism, but here it is:
There is no pleasing everyone. Whats used, is used, to the extent that it is useful.
Sounds profound.
Might need to revisit this when the Oyster Bay wears off....
Circular arguments, and the profanity associated with such pragmatism, might not look so good in the morning :)

Pragmatism and fragility. hmmm.

Drowning in description

I lost the plot.
And revisited Bruno Latour

Professor — So… I take it that you are a bit lost?
Student — Well, yes. I am finding it difficult, I have to say, to apply Actor Network Theory to my case study in organisations.
Professor — No wonder— it isn’t applicable to anything!
Student — But we were taught… I mean… it seems like hot stuff around here. Are you saying it’s really useless?
...
Professor — [ANT's] a theory, and a strong one I think, but about how to study things, or rather how not to study them. Or rather how to let the actors have some room to express themselves.

So, no more discourse analysis.
Except...
I'm a slow learner.
The discourse analysis was a means to considering how txt is shaped by the cell phone. That being invisible to each other requires questions of identity and of clarification. That the first letter is default capitalised, that there are 160 characters incl blanks so messages are constrained.
(so why do people write txt as short as poss? They rarely use 160, seems the average would be between 50-70)
Back to following the actors....

Professor — ... I would abstain from frameworks altogether. Just describe the state of affairs at hand.
Student — ‘Just describe’. Sorry to ask: but is this not terribly naïve? ...
P — Because you think description is easy? ...I have, myself, always found this incredibly demanding.... we go, we listen, we learn, we practice, we become competent, we change our views. Very simple really: it’s called field work. Good field work always produces a lot of new descriptions.
S — But I have lots of descriptions already! I’m drowning in them. That’s just my problem. That’s why I’m lost and that’s why I thought it would be useful to come to you. Can’t ANT help me with this mass of data? I need a framework!
P —‘My Kingdom for a frame!’. Very moving; I think I understand your desperation. But no, ANT is pretty useless for that. Its main tenet is that actors themselves make everything, including their own frames, their own theories, their own contexts, their own metaphysics, even their own ontologies… So the direction to follow would be more descriptions, I am afraid... if your description needs an explanation, it’s not a good description, that’s all. Only bad descriptions need an explanation. It’s quite simple really....I have never seen a good description in need of an explanation. But I have read countless numbers of bad descriptions to which nothing was added by a massive addition of ‘explanations’! And ANT did not help…

I just revisited cj's advice on data collecting, its succinct:

stay broad, eschew structures

back to following the actors...

actor net working

Using bubbl.us, thanks to a link on mindmapping and tracing connections on
mashable.com
A piece of free social software that lets me trace connections. Posting this edition, lets me demonstrate the starting phase of data collecting post ethics, in this research performance. You can move it to centre it, increase by zooming in... My posting it is more to keep a chronology going (as per Latour's suggestion of notebooks for different purposes).

holding on and letting go

Do an internet search for Leunigs holding on and letting go cartoon, its a special piece advising one to hold on as one might a day old chicken, or a live fish, or the queens handbag....and that letting go is a whole new area to be managed in another cartoon, another day.
In making change happen, the hype isnt enough.
No matter how evangelical the early adopters might be, this isnt enough.
No matter how sparkly the innovation, the sparkle does not create its own S shaped curved trajectory.
To make change happen in Health promotion there is a mantra about making the healthy choice, the easy choice.
Sometimes this is about letting go- recognising habits, letting go of whats comfortable, identifying goals, creating opportunities for doing things differently ...
Leunig's cartoon wisdom on how to hold on points to this.
Latour, Callon, Law all point to this. Actor network theory identifies the 'work' involved but it still seems that the letting go is often bypassed when talking about change. I have just been reading futurelab 2006 on social software and learning networks. Little regard was given to what would have to be unmade, unattached.
Looking at what maintains the status quo is as important as strategizing implementation.

Your panties are showing, the dark side of a novel medium

A literal novel use for the ubiquitous mobile:
NZ Herald , pge B4 Fri Sept 28,
Tom Leonard, a New York writer, has an article on the writing of novels on the screen of a cell phone.
Tracking the story, an earlier form of the story in the Wall Street Journal identifies that in
Japan novelists find a novel way of writing stories
Of the 10 Japanese bestsellers in 2007, half apparently started life as keitai novels.
A mobile phone novel website, Maho i-land, started 7 yrs ago and now lists a million novels. In Japan, more than 3 million text based novels were sold in the first half of the year, literally outstripping pulp (tree based) fiction!

The prose seems to have accommodated the medium, its described as heavier in dialogue, and has less descriptive build up of scene or of characters: and has short paragraphs.
I think its probable that the writers and readers as well as the screen size have influence. A network of actors at play/work.
Still, the medium is the message- working with this medium involves being contained by the small screen. Construction accommodates the constraints: the work arounds involve fitting the (small)screen. Thinking becomes blank areas, spoken speech takes as few words as possible to get meaning across... some critiques of the genre suggest this is similar to comic culture...
It might also be that the writers having a preference for particular types of literature, manga being a cited example.

manga characters

differ from their anime counterparts in both visual design and characterization. The manga has more "ecchi" and whimsy, but certain aspects of the plot are darker.

k, maybe the panties were too dark an example, but its a snapshot of the genre.

A preference for dialogue over scenery or character depth is portrayed, whether its readers and writer preference or cell screen sized influence.

I can't see the thesis being written on a cell phone...however

Fanfiction
is huge. (I do not need to worry about my teenage daughters reading or writing, it just looks different when it involves fanfiction, the books are less visible).
It would be easy to say, but its just a tool, the reading and writing still happen. But it is more than a tool, this tool has extra 'special effects'. The reader chooses whether or not be a passive audience, whether or not to be an isolated one. While still awaiting the favourite authors next installment, , these readers are writing the next alternate installment, prequel or sequel! And actively contribute to shaping each others work by providing each other feedback on their writing.

So audience, you have your topic....
The thesis: how mediums used for counseling are both shaped and shaping.
The study: to be informed by Actor network theory.
What comes next?????

still waiting
still ...

will
I
write it?

will
u?

Image obtained from
Rah_manga_panties.jpg‎ (300 × 299 pixels, file size: 53 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
Source: Momose Takeaki; Izubuchi Yutaka (2004). Kit Fox. ed. RahXephon Vol. 1. trans. Joe Yamazaki. San Francisco, CA: VIZ Media. ISBN 1591164079.
Website reproduction: http://www.viz.com/onlinemanga/om.php?chap=rax-hi-chapter-1
Original manga ©2001 Yutaka Izubuchi / Takeaki Momose / Shogakukan
Translated text ©2004 Viz Media (Viz LLC)

afraid of the dark?

I was running a counselling training group for Youthline when the lights went out. My co-facilitator was part way through saying "is anyone afraid of"(with one person saying me) the dark. She had her cell phone out and had altered the backlighting faster than the sentence could be completed. Within 2 mins I also had a txt from my home alone teenage daughter saying the lights were out followed by a tearful phone call. The effect of too many horror movies were quickly relieved in being able to say that the lights were out where we were too. No personalized axe murderers, stalkers just for her.
Having learned very quickly from my student, I could advice re the use of the mobile as a torch and she could then find candles.
Being an aging hippy I had missed the learning of how to use cell phones at a concert..." "dangerous little devices these cell phones" Bono, U2
Here's an ANT informed rather gorgeous study by Chris Chesher of U2 creating the milky way using cell phones. The ubiquitous cell phone can:
1. make and receive ph calls (21stC daughter thinks it hilarious that anyone would ever have stayed home all night waiting for a boyfriend to ring)
2. send and receive txts,
3. leave and retrieve messages,
4. a means to check weather,
5. play music,
6. play games,
7. take, send, and or store store photos, videos,
8. a reminder of appointments,
9. my alarm when travelling
10. CSI forensic location tracking device
11. something for the self conscious to do with their hands now that smoking is frowned on,
12. a means of establishing social cred,
13. a means of political activism,
14. creating the milky way
15. and a torch.....

Not surprizing then that teenage daughter couldn't work out how to function without her cell this weekend past- no money on the prepay. I naively suggested the cute invention of landlines, but no, speaking to anyone was to be avoided.
Or of using a computer to send an SMS, no- they wont know whose txting (say what? I know you can add that in the message)
There's an attachment here that I could barely figure (if the hard drive hadnt died on my laptop recently, i dont think i could have empathized at all).

not articulated very well, a darth vader moment

Sherry Turkle, suggests therapists take Second Life seriously as tool for understanding their clients’ innermost thoughts and desires- "playing out the self that they want to explore....It’s not always who they want to be. Sometimes they can be exploring a dark side of themselves.”

This is a blog.
I use it as an unreal place, a musing space.
If I thought i wouldnt get lost in space, i could separate, compartmentalize or distribute myself, so that in this place it was only the phd stuff, but then I might want or need a different place for the higher ed stuff and a different place for the bits that are not work nor phd stuff.
I know my capacity to compartmentalize is not that efficient.

Welcome to the dark side.

The rapid movement between superhero/cyborg and Darth Vaderish dark moments seem more pronounced in a medium that only punctuates the moments. The reference to cutting and pasting now seems larger than the muse it was meant to be.
Maybe Ulises of Ideant fame might see this as an example of being nodal centric- we attend most to the nodes in a network, the actors, what is indelible. (I confess to skim reading what I found quite dense- If I understood it at all). However, what is not seen, is not necessarily not influential. Thats what the chardonnay does- makes for very convoluted sentences (even though the wine is invisible now also). But its a lot harder to give credence to actors, actants, and translations that are fleeting. Similarly, it must be quite hard to choose which ones to focus on in any research write up. In the writing, some things just look larger than intended. And in the reading also.